Tyrone Parker, Violence Interruption Veteran, Reflects on Current State of Affairs

This spring marks 34 years since Tyrone Parker joined four of his longtime friends in launching the Alliance of Concerned Men (ACM), one of a handful of grassroots organizations credited with the significant decline in violence during the 1990s and 2000s. 

Parker’s efforts, and that of other anti-violence juggernauts of his time, have set the stage for a situation where violence interruption is almost exclusively in the hands of the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE) and the Office of the Attorney General (OAG)’s Cure the Streets. 

With the D.C. Council to soon consider a bill that gives the mayor even more purview over violence interruption by absorbing Cure the Streets into ONSE, Parker counts among those calling for less— not more— government control in anti-violence affairs.  

“Man, there’s too much politics in it,” Parker told The Informer. “D.C. Councilmember [Brooke] Pinto is trying to assign [violence interruption] to ONSE but it should be an independent agency that would be able to function… It doesn’t have to be subject to the mayor or anyone else. You just run the program.”

During the latter part of March, as Pinto announced her introduction of the Peace D.C. package that, among other things, facilitates Cure the Streets’ absorption into ONSE, Parker, a returning citizen and violence interruption veteran, was planning promotional events across the D.C. metropolitan area for his new autobiography: “The Man, the Message and the Mission that Helped to Save the Nation’s Capital.”  

With book talks at The Episcopal Church of the Atonement on East Capitol Street and Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast under his belt, Parker is scheduled to appear at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Northwest in April. As the clock winds down to this highly anticipated event, Parker continues to make the case for a boots-on-the-ground violence reduction strategy, like what he’s currently executing. 

“It’s all about outreach,” Parker said. “You got to be willing to go into these places to talk to people that need to be talked to and bring them out.” 

At the height of ACM’s existence, Parker worked with young crew leaders to settle beef that had the Benning Terrace community under siege in the 1990s. Decades later, in the post-pandemic era, Parker collaborates with Nation of Islam’s Mosque #4 in Southeast and C.R.E.W.S. to host a safe passage program that operates near John Philip Sousa Middle School before and after-school hours.  

That project, Parker said, immersed him deeply in the community, giving him enough rapport to negotiate a truce between two neighborhood groups warring near Sousa Middle School and Kimball Elementary School, both in Southeast. Similar results, he told The Informer, could unfold in other parts of the District once the D.C. government places more trust in the activists with a proven record of grassroots violence interruption. 

“If you’re going to have that natural resource that’s in these communities, they will bring to the table the real challenges that can be,” Parker said. “But government programs don’t work like that. They rely on somebody to tell them what’s going on. We’re functioning as an independent agency with its own autonomy, own budget, that’s not attached to the ONSE office.”

In Peace D.C. Bill, Pinto Focuses on Violence Interruption and Returning Citizens

Last fall, Pinto, chair of the council’s Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, conducted oversight hearings for ONSE, an entity named, along with the Department of Youth and Rehabilitation Services, in a federal bribery indictment against former Ward 8 D.C. Councilmember Trayon White (D). 

By that time, the Office of the D.C. Auditor had published a report proposing a merger between OAG’s Cure the Streets with ONSE, which D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (I-At large) attempted to take on via the Safe Neighborhoods Amendment Act. Months later, Pinto calls the merging of the two violence interruption programs under ONSE the best means of helping returning citizens who are placed in a unique position to serve their community. 

This undertaking, she said, would be facilitated by an advisory committee over three years. 

“It makes much more sense to have [violence interruption] based out of a mayoral agency and in one place so that we can have more wraparound support offered to people,” Pinto told The Informer. “We would have consistent training for individuals both on how to do this work, but also cognitive behavioral therapy… and also how to do some of the more business related functions like writing a grant proposal or responding to reporting requirements about what you use the dollars for.”  

As it relates to returning citizens, a group that often takes on violence interruption work, Pinto’s Peace D.C. plan builds upon her Secure D.C. omnibus bill. The plan seeks to lead returning citizens to stable housing, along with public and private sector employment. Another provision would allow D.C. residents in the Federal Bureau of Prisons to serve the final six months of their sentence at D.C. Department of Corrections. 

At a time when the District faces budget constraints created, in part, by the loss of tax revenue from the hemorrhaging of the federal government, Pinto, echoing a point often repeated by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), said it’s important now, more than ever, to invest in public safety, economic resiliency, and education.

“Peace D.C. falls really in all those categories,” Pinto said. “Violence interruption is an important part of our public safety ecosystem, and that includes paying the people who do this often-dangerous work appropriately and making sure that we are recognizing some of the challenges in addition to pay, like housing and [lack of] avenues to other forms of employment.” 

The Controversy Surrounding Violence Interruption Programs 

For the better part of a decade, ONSE and OAG’s Cure the Streets have served as government-operated entities dedicated to preventing and reducing gun violence, while providing returning citizens with an opportunity to get compensated while helping their community. 

ONSE, established with the council’s passage of Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results  (NEAR) Act, executes a violence interruption model intended to address potential conflicts, stabilize communities in the aftermath of conflict, and offer support to those at high risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of crime. 

Other offerings include: the job training program known as the Pathways Program; multiagency family and survivor support; and ONSE Leadership Academy. 

In recent months, amid a prolonged transition in leadership and former Ward 8 D.C. Councilmember White’s legal woes, ONSE has faced immense criticism from residents and police union leaders alike. The controversy continued during the latter part of March, when former ONSE Deputy Director Dana McDaniel pleaded guilty to bribery in a case where, similar to White, she was alleged to have at least agreed to influence violence interruption contracting in exchange for money. 

Cure the Streets, in existence since 2019, hasn’t fared much better in the public eye, despite some success. 

By the time Pinto announced the introduction of her Peace D.C. legislation last week, law enforcement officials had already identified former violence interrupter Cotey Wynn as one of two men responsible for the death of realtor and college basketball phenom Blake Bozeman.  

Wynn and his co-defendant Antwan Shelton will stand trial for the fall 2023 nightclub shooting where Bozeman lost his life and three other people sustained injuries. Both men, prosecutors said, walked, and later shot, into what was then known as Cru Hookah Lounge, a popular spot on the H Street corridor in Northeast, located not far from the community Wynn once served as a full-time program supervisor in OAG’s Cure the Streets. 

For Pinto, Wynn’s contact with the law hints at the work left to be done in supporting violence interrupters and other members of the returning citizens community. 

“It demonstrates how important it is that we’re addressing the trauma that goes with being involved in violence, whether you have perpetrated violence or been victimized by violence,” Pinto told The Informer. 

“In D.C., we sadly know that that often is the same category of people who’ve both been perpetrators and victims,” she continued. “And so when we are lucky to get people to engage in this work that can often be violent and dangerous in and of itself, we really need to be making sure that we’re equipping them with the resources to do it effectively.” 

Another D.C. Government Resource for Returning Citizens  

Shortly after Wynn’s most recent criminal charges, OAG released a statement expressing solidarity with victims’ families while touting the co-defendant’s contribution to citywide violence interruption efforts.    

“These allegations are deeply troubling, and our hearts go out to the victims, their families, and their loved ones,” an OAG spokesperson said. “Our office had no knowledge of Cotey’s potential involvement in any events related to his arrest. He is well known throughout the District for his anti-violence work and is respected across the community. We will support our law enforcement partners as they finish their investigation and respect the need for the legal process to unfold.”

Violence interrupters working in the District earn an annual salary of between $35,000 and $65,000, which for some, has called into question whether the people serving these roles have enough incentive to walk along a straight and narrow path. Such a discussion happened earlier this year when Briyon Shuford, a former ONSE violence interrupter who was sentenced to more than a decade for his role in a drug trafficking ring and drive-by shooting, told prosecutors that he engaged in illegal activity to supplement his annual income of $50,000. 

Another part of the problem concerns a job market that has some way to go in embracing returning citizens. 

During the month of April, also known as Second Chance Month, the Mayor’s Office of Returning Citizens Affairs (MORCA) will host programming intended to connect returning citizens to employment opportunities and other tools for stability. 

The month will start with a “Jobs, Not Drugs” event at Our Lady of Perpetual Help on Morris Road in Southeast on April 9. Other events—including MORCA Authors Talks at Lamond-Riggs/Lillian J. Huff Library in Northeast and the Welcome Home Expo for Returning Citizens at the D.C. Armory— are aimed at changing the dominant perception of those who’ve paid their debt to society,  MORCA Executive Director Lamont Carey told The Informer.

“Even though we have moved the needle where individuals can get in front of employers and not have to worry about them asking about their criminal record, sometimes it comes back and that barrier pops up,” Carey said. “We’re trying to teach employers that returning citizens can be some of the best employees. They have the work in them…trying to prove to themselves they’re not the person that they used to be.” 

In 2019, Bowser tapped Carey, a returning citizen with a violent criminal history, as acting MORCA director. Since fully taking on that position, he’s headed an office where the majority of employees are either returning citizens or have a returning citizen in their family. Carey explained that, given the intensity of their jobs, he and his employees often engage in government-sponsored health and wellness programming. 

They do so while connecting returning citizens with jobs, training programs and social services, including counseling and health insurance, to mitigate the effects of incarceration. On the employer side, Carey touted the Access to Jobs grant — subsidies for employers that hire returning citizens — as a hallmark resource. 

“This helps stabilize the household that a returning citizen is in because right now most of our people [are] in impoverished households where the income is already …below the poverty line,” Carey said. “So meeting those basic needs relieves some of the stress and the ability for us to connect with them to get them health insurance and encourage them to see a therapist.” 

Even though some of MORCA’s offerings mirror provisions of Peace D.C., Carey, when asked, didn’t mention speaking with Pinto about the legislation. 

“Our main conversation is with the mayor,” Carey said. “We identify the barriers and challenges for returning citizens and she has implemented things to try to remove those barriers.” 

Parker Gets Reflective, and Even Spiritual 

Parker’s book, “The Man, the Message, and the Mission that Helped Save Our Nation’s Capital,” details the author’s violent upbringing, prison stints, and evolution into a grassroots violence prevention activist. It also delves into the violence interruption strategy that, in 1997, spawned a truce between two warring neighborhood crews in the Benning Terrace community of Southeast. 

“When we went there, we had no computers, no calculator, no strategic plan,” Parker told Denise Rolark Barnes, Washington Informer publisher and event moderator, during his Feb. 28 book signing at The Episcopal Church of the Atonement. “We just had the spirit of God, and God moved the components together…  Black men going up to our children and saying, ‘What can we do to help?’ and the D.C. Housing Authority came with the jobs and opportunities once we were able to bridge them.” 

On Feb. 28, amid all the discussions across the city about violence interrupter training, Parker shared the stage with Rozier “Roach” Brown who also provided some historical context about the District’s relationship with incarcerated people. 

Parker, sticking to his theme of grassroots activism, told Rolark Barnes that returning citizens working toward peace have much more to teach than people in power often acknowledge.  He went on to call for a different, more esoteric kind of training that returning citizens could appreciate. 

“One thing I would like to do is to have been able to really be able to give individuals a sense of the spiritual God that they serve, to give them more of a purpose and a reason for being able to reach out to a person,” Parker said. “That’s the concept that I think that a lot of returning citizens bring back to the table. They look at redemption. They look at atonement. They want to serve… and they’re willing to put their lives on the line to be able to do these things.”

NOTE: This article was updated to correctly reflect Briyon Shuford’s former employment with the Office of the Safety and Neighborhood Engagement.