Everyone deserves to live in safe and thriving communities, but unfortunately, that is not the reality for many.

Coming up on IGI, we feature a discussion about community violence and the groups mobilizing to decrease violence in our communities.

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(♪) Welcome to IGI.

I'm your host, LeTiffany Obozele.

Shawnee County has a 50% higher rate of violent crime compared to overall violent crime statistics for the state of Kansas.

What can we do to stop violent crime?

What groups have come together to address this issue?

And what are the societal factors that contribute to violent crime?

Community Inspired Violence Intervention Coalition, otherwise known as Civic, is a group of dedicated organizations and businesses that have come together with the mission to prevent and reduce violent crime in our local communities.

Here with me today are Courtland Davis, Director of operations for the YWCA, and Daniel Martin, social worker for empowering people and communities.

Courtland and Daniel, thank you so much for being here today.

I know some people listening may have heard the acronym, but tell people who are listening what civic stands for.

Thanks for having us.

First of all, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you for being here.

So civic is the Community Inspired Violence Intervention Coalition.

It came about, in 2023.

It was in response to, a record number of homicides, that happened here in Topeka, Shawnee County.

And essentially, it's a collective of citizens, who, I'll name it, just were frustrated.

We didn't feel like enough was being done top down, to try to curb some of this violence.

And so, we took it upon ourselves as citizens of Topeka, Kansas, to form a coalition to start looking at what can we do?

As individuals, but also as a collective, to, to start working towards stemming or reducing the number of violent incidents in Topeka.

What are the goals of, civic.

Primarily violence reduction?

Strategically, to form, a data driven, approach to, help, help, public health approach to, reducing, violence.

Those two things were really important.

For us, the data driven part of it.

Right.

We need, a program that's been proven, tested, and has been successful.

Which that's how we came upon CVI or community violence, intervention.

And we also knew that we needed a public health approach which relies on the social determinants of health.

We needed those factors in order to be successful.

You know, our thing was like, why reinvent the wheel?

And, and using those, those things to form, the heart and soul, I believe, of, CVI programing is the, street team, or your trusted messengers.

Who do the the, the ground level work.

The boots on the ground, if you will.

To interact with community and, unite community around the specific goal of of violence reduction.

I like that.

Danielle, I know you're a part of the CVI team.

Tell us what it's like to be on the CVI team and what goals you've already accomplished and are looking forward to doing.

Well, first of all, you know, I grew up in the Central Park community area, and, when I was 14, I got shot in the face in that that same block on 13th and Western.

And so in this happened back in 1984 and it has gotten worse.

And so, my goal is to decrease the shootings in the area and, you know, try to find a way where we can mediate the conflict.

That's, in Topeka, because you don't always have to, handle your differences with a gun.

And that's the first thing that people run to is a pistol.

And I think that it stems from, psychological conditioning where, the person, the perpetrator and the victim feel like they're less than.

And so they have no problem killing somebody else because they're not getting the proper respect from society.

So the first conflict, you're going to respect me or I'll kill you.

Okay, so I'm hearing that we got some lived experience for being on the team, and then I hear you saying that data matters, too.

So I know in talking to you, that depends on where you look at the data and what it says.

But in general, what is the data say about, the community's most at risk and the violence that's going on here?

And, Shawnee County.

And I want to be specific about where we are now.

With the data that we've looked at over looking at 23, 24 and coming into, year 2025, there are obvious disparities, in, when you, when it comes to the racial makeup of the folks who, who are most affected by this violence.

Black and brown men and boys, are impacted, significantly more than folks, than, other folks.

And, that, those disparities are pretty, pretty glaring.

So understanding that as we're going into it, but then also understanding that as we move forward in this street team, comes together and they start doing their work that there's so much other information that we're going to need to collect to understand.

On a, on a macro level, how violence is happening.

Who it's happening to, where it's happening.

And, and use that information and follow that information is a, it's a guide or a roadmap, to how we interrupt those cycles of violence.

None of this works without data.

I think for a couple reasons.

One is because math is science, and we want to follow the science.

Another reason is because if we're not getting two different types of data, right.

The data that we're seeing that comes out 24 to 48 hours after an incident, is one.

But, it's imperative that the street team has access to real time data.

Things, things that as they're happening, because, interfering or interrupting that cycle, as it's happening, is paramount, to resolving, conflict and helping to reduce the number of overall number of violent acts.

I guess when you get that data and you put it together, right, because you have to collect it, you have to have those facts and your hope is to be able to get people to sit at the table and have a conversation instead of a gun.

What are some other things you hope to do once you're collecting that data and you have, additional data to help with the mission?

Do you want to speak to that?

Yeah.

I think that data is just one piece.

And it just it doesn't tell the narrative of the story of why it's happening.

Yeah.

You know, it's just telling you the demographics of who is happening to.

But it doesn't tell you the story.

And the story starts with poverty, and the story starts with, you know, a person feeling like they don't have anything to lose and they don't have a purpose in life.

And so here it is.

They do, they leave school at an early age.

They get suspended or they drop out.

And once that happens, all you have left is the streets.

And so when you talk about the community, the community really means common unity.

And you can't have a community without economics.

So there are really no jobs in the community.

Just check cashing places.

Liquor stores.

Tobacco.

What is it called?

The, alcohol density?

No, the where you go, the smoke shop.

Sometimes someone smoke shops.

Yeah.

And then, you know, you got to drug dealers and drug dealers probably make, you know, more money than all three of them.

So they're going to follow the money.

And so drugs bring crime and crime.

Part of that is violence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, you know, also understanding the historical context.

You know, we're talking about areas, that have been historically, disinvestment.

Right?

The infrastructure is not equivalent to what you're seeing in other parts of the city.

You know, systemic racism.

These other, you know, outside factors, that folks are living under, you know, very oppressive, factors.

And so, you know, something else that we're looking at is, what are the needs?

What are the barriers?

What are the gaps?

Folks, you know, it's it's sitting down and having a conversation or mediating, you know, something so it doesn't escalate.

Is, is is extremely important.

Also understanding what the needs are, what do we have to offer?

What resources can we bring, to to assist folks as they navigate away from, just making, you know, split-second sometimes decisions, that are based on, you know, their lived experience, and a lot of other, factors that shape that experience.

So how do we counteract that?

A big a huge part of the work is, is also, elevating folks, out of, some, some really just awful, awful situations.

Economically, you know, housing insecurities, all the things that have that affect, a lot of folks who live at or below the poverty line.

But also understanding that, statistically and realistically, folks of color are impacted even more, by those same things.

Okay.

So I've heard a couple things that you're saying.

I want to give you an opportunity to explain the structure and maybe where the funding and how that comes from.

And then what I hear you saying is you can't do it alone.

And so the other part of this is that it's a coalition.

And so I want to give people the opportunity to hear who's in this coalition, that's helping make this a community issue.

And not limited to just one community that's more affected.

So structure what does the structure look like?

So there's a couple different things happening.

You have civic, you know, the coalition.

Who is that's made up?

We have, you know, person from the county health department, from the sheriff's office.

Stormont Vail, has been extremely, supportive of the work we're doing.

And we will do hospital based interventions to, so, yeah, Department of Corrections.

There's a lot of different folks.

Topeka jump.

In the faith based community have been extremely, extremely supportive.

And that support was necessary because also understanding when civic formed, what we agreed on was that one goal.

Right.

We're going to form an evidence based, program, that, helps reduce violence, but also that this week none of us were being paid to do it.

We were meeting every Friday, every single Friday for our lunch hour.

We we got this collective of people to give up their lunch hour every Friday for an hour.

To just brainstorm, you know, look at historically what hasn't worked, and then try to start.

Painting a picture or, of of what will work.

And we did that for several months.

There was, first we applied for a grant.

It's called, NATO.

It's the National Association of Cities.

I forget the the exact name.

It's a lot.

But that first grant was smaller.

And and we all went to Colorado together as a coalition.

And started learning about what CVI is.

And then, later, we applied for the burn skip Grant, which was a larger amount, which would help us build out that, street team and start implementing, that work, the, the, YWCA part in it.

I'm employed there.

One part.

The other part is, we agreed to be the fiscal agent, which, was was a pretty big deal for me.

It kind of, it was it was humbling, you know, and then also the understanding with, with the center for Safety and Empowerment that the YWCA is a isn't new to, working with folks who are experiencing violence.

And, so, yeah, we received that grant and we started strategizing.

We contracted with a company called TCS or Trajectory Changing Solutions out of Chicago.

Norman Kerr is the executive director of that.

Entity.

He's also one of the, original architects of the queer violence model.

His experience goes back decades.

And so they're the ones kind of helping us, and advising us as we start building the street team.

I'm pretty excited to say that we, as of, last Friday, I'm starting our first round of interviews.

I'm doing another round of interviews today.

And we'll start doing the second round of interviews later this week.

With the hopes of having this team hired and ready to go to work.

You know, by, the third week of September.

And then there's a lot of the training and other things that will be involved for the team, but, we've made a lot of progress.

It's been a long journey.

I would like to add to that.

But the community violence interruption team, we can't fix, change or save anybody.

We're just conduits of love and light and letting them see, a different perspective of a way to handle your problems.

There's a lot of frustration that goes along with, you know, violence.

There's a lot of frustration.

Financial, low self-worth, no purpose in life.

And so how do we give hope to the hopeless?

Yeah.

You know, and that's one of the things that, that, I'm a mental health therapist, and so one of the things that I do is I give them options.

And right now, when you're living in an impoverished environment, your options are reduced to, should I sell drugs or should I work for $7.50?

Two jobs, and either one, one of them would go to jail, and then the other one.

I still don't have enough money to get my needs met, so I'm going to end up supplementing my income anyway.

You know.

Okay, so I hear that you got the money to, and you're doing interviews to get that crisis intervention team.

I hear you're helping folks with mental health to give them love, light and other options and ways to, deal with issues.

What are some other hopes as you get the crisis intervention team up and running, that you're hoping you can do?

Once it's together?

One of my hopes is, is that empowering the neighborhood where they start taking pride and taking care of you know, their own neighborhood.

Because you can put the whole city coalition and we can have them say, hey, you know, let's do these great things in these neighborhoods.

But you need the neighborhoods permission.

And just because we're out there and we're in the neighborhoods don't mean that the community is going to be receptive.

And so it's important that you get people that's actually from the neighborhoods that can actually connect to the people, because right now there's a disconnect.

Yeah.

Amongst each other in the community.

Yeah.

And so my hope is, first thing that I want to do is, I would like for us to have a sit down and ask them, how long are we going to do this?

If two rival gangs get into it, how do we determine the winner?

Yeah.

Are there plans to be able, once you have that team together to, identify and be able to go in and have those, sit downs?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, using using trusted messengers.

And Daniel spoke to this, a couple of years ago, and it was, it really resonated with me that, you know, in this situation, the folks who are experiencing, the violence should and absolutely must have a voice in how we pivot away from, violence.

The importance of community buy in, is top tier.

So there's trust building that has to happen in that trust building.

Happens through the credible messengers who who have lived there.

They have lived experience some of have been, perpetrators of violence, been recipients of violence or victims of violence.

And, and have have managed to kind of change their trajectory.

And these are the folks who will go into the neighborhood and work with the folks at the highest, at the absolute highest risk, violence.

The other part is Daniel was saying was then you're then you're building off of that, right?

They're working with the highest at risk.

We're also pulling community.

And so the community is working amongst, each other.

And that's kind of where they're, you know, we'll do pop ups and things like that, where the community is, you know, standing up and saying, we're just we're not we're not doing this anymore.

There has to be a better way.

And then, you know, when you kind of step back and look all together.

When we say community, everyone has a piece in this, it doesn't matter where you live.

In in Topeka or Shawnee County.

You have a piece, in this.

Because violence affects all of us.

And so the other piece is making sure that we're collaborating and partnering with agencies and organizations, stakeholders who can, who can assist along this journey because we're going to need every resource at our disposal, for this to work.

You know, again, you know, let's say Daniel is working with, a person who, we're just going to say this person shooting this person is a shooter.

That's what they do.

That's their path.

And Daniel's in his.

You know, they're doing the work to to interrupt that cycle of violence.

Stop.

But there has to be something else.

There has to be something for this person.

Was that person need.

And we're going to need to rely on, other partnerships in order to provide that.

And might, you know, this agency offers this resource and this one offers a different resource.

It's not just about what resources there, but it's also about understanding, that gun violence is at a place in this country where if it was a hospital, it was triage.

These are the folks who are going straight in.

To to see the doctor.

Why some other folks are kind of having to weigh because these, we're just at a point to where we can't sit back.

So if a person if it's food insecurity, it's not just about how do we get food in the home?

How do we help?

With stability.

It's about this has to be prioritized.

Which is which is, I think, want to be a little different.

I don't know that that that, folks are used to navigating.

But this is an all hands on deck.

The alarms are ringing.

Yeah.

It's it's time for us to collectively, prioritize, something that, as we saw in 2023, was absolutely devastating.

I don't know, a person of color who was not affected on a very personal level by the amount of violence we saw in 2023.

And even now, you know, that's why we have to have a better understanding of the data, because what folks don't always see is maybe we've had a decrease in, in homicides, but an increase or very small decrease in shootings.

Some could say that that's violence reduction or some could say that maybe the trauma centers just getting better at their job.

Right.

They're getting better at saving lives.

So we really need to have, a better understanding.

And, that's exactly what what we intend to do.

Also, that, CVI is kind of new.

It was new to me till two years ago.

Understanding that this isn't like a grant opportunity to figure out if this is viable.

This needs to become integrated in our community and sustained over decades.

It's very vital.

Especially, for our young folks of color who were just.

I mean, if you're paying attention, they're getting younger and younger.

And so the time is now, and that's what I think.

Civic, partners that we're working with.

And I believe even folks in the community already ready to move.

It's up to us.

Really?

Is.

So I hear you guys talking about neighborhoods.

I hear you really emphasizing that community means all of us.

Just because it affects, one group more, it still takes all of us to be able to help with the problem.

Is there any kind of social disapproval to this?

Are there people, that are disapproving the culture of violence?

And, how can we change that?

How can you help it?

Well, everybody hates violence.

Until, I mean, everybody is okay.

A lot of people in the community is okay with violence until it happens to one of their loved ones.

And then it's.

Oh, that's one that's messed up, but all violence as well.

Yeah.

And so here it is.

You know, somebody gets killed in the community, and what they do is they get a t shirt, you know, and then they do a balloon release, and then they'll put it on social media and then after that, you know, is everything is cool until the next gun violence.

And it's just a rinse and repeat.

And so my thing is, is that how do we get to, to, to the point where we stop the retaliations because violence hurts everybody in that community that's involved.

Yeah.

And each person that you got, kids, you know, walking around with semiautomatic weapons and, you know, each bullet that they have in that gun is meant for another person that looks just like them.

So the hate is real.

The self hate is real, and it's more, like a psychological conditioning where it's reinforced through the music, is reinforced through their uncles getting out of prison.

It's reinforced in, to the point where that's their hope and expectation is to catch a body.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the, you know, just kind of echoing what Daniel saying, I don't think there's well, there's probably some folks who actually do like violence.

I think the overwhelming majority of folks do not like violence.

They don't want to be a part of it.

They don't want it around them.

Unfortunately, for, for for brothers like me and Daniel, it becomes a part of our everyday existence because there's so much of it around us.

That does not mean that the black community, or, the Latinx community are okay with it.

It just means that there's work to be done and there's trust to be built.

So we can pull folks in and create spaces where they feel empowered to disapprove of what this what's happening.

But in a very loud and vocal way.

As we say, we're going to have to make noise.

We're going to have to rally together our our our, one of our approaches is if there's a shooting within 24 to 48 hours, we'll pull it up.

We're going to rally support and we're pulling up, and we want to make noise.

And, everything from signs, to bullhorns.

I'm talking.

We're going to make noise and give folks, a vessel to carry that message that we're not doing this anymore.

This is not okay.

That is the active part of that social disapproval.

And then also understanding the just because it's Daniel was saying it didn't affect someone directly.

A loved one, someone close to you.

That you're still playing a role in the violence by not saying something.

So we're going to have to build that trust.

We're going to have to, elevate those voices.

If there's someone watching right now, what website can they go to to get more information to get involved?

The you can go to the YWCA website.

I believe there's a spot on there where you can click under CVI, and that will take you to civic in the CVI page, on the YWCA website.

If folks want to, engage, they can also just send an email to CVI@ywcaneks.org.

Right now things are rolling along.

We're super busy.

So sometimes it might be, you know, two, two days.

Three days.

But we will reply.

We will respond.

And we will, we're happy to have anyone.

Matter of fact, it's it's not happy to have any when we absolutely need anyone who wants to be involved.

To be involved.

We'll start organizing those pop ups and we'll start making that noise.

And, we'll start doing the work that's necessary and proven.

Effective.

That's the, you know, we we probably did not pick the best time with the current climate in our country to start doing this work, because there's a lot of voices, that use the law and order approach.

We know for a fact what the data shows us.

What science says is that, you can't incarcerate.

We can't incarcerate our way out of this, right?

It's going to make some folks feel safe.

Right?

Which understanding that safety is actually a construct with safer.

You might not be safe for me.

The only way that we, that that that we start to correct this and to reduce those numbers is with community involved interventions.

If incarcerating our way out of it was going to work, it would have worked.

So we invite community in, and let's start building the trust.

And let's start making an impact of Cortland and Daniel.

Thank you so much.

That's all the time we have for this episode of IGI.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at Issues@ktwu.org.

If you would like to use this program again or any previous episodes of IGI, visit us online at watch.ktwu.org.

I'm LeTiffany Obezele and thank you for watching.

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We appreciate your financial support.

Thanks.

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