The red jail album was down from the shelf, and Donte Barksdale fingered its glossy pages. He looked into the eyes of East Baltimore brothers sent to prison. Some were still there, others were back on the streets. Too many had become statistics in the city's grim homicide tally.
"Lance got killed right after the All-Star Game," Barksdale said, as if announcing the weather, to a half-dozen men gathered in a rowhouse on Monument Street.
For Barksdale and the others, it was a fate they once felt powerless to escape. They were foot soldiers and lieutenants in the drug game, and in a city where the No. 1 cause of death for people ages 14 to 24 is homicide, they were waiting for their number to be called.
Now they are soldiers of another kind. Tired of the corner life, sick of the murders, and desperate for their children to grow up in a better place, they have signed on with Operation Safe Streets, a Baltimore Health Department program that hires ex-offenders to stop the shootings in their own neighborhood.
"It's gonna take [guys] like us in the 'hood," Barksdale, 33, was saying to a young man he met on Monument Street last week, not far from the Safe Streets office, pressing a flier into the youth's hand. "The police can't do it. It's impossible."
Safe Streets, modeled on similar programs that have shown promise in other cities, began last June in McElderry Park, an East Baltimore neighborhood just blocks from the Johns Hopkins medical campus, rife with open-air drug markets and controlled by the Bloods gang. More than a quarter of the homes are vacant; about one-third of the residents live below the poverty line.
Pounding pavement
The four outreach workers are drawn from this population, identified through community networks for their passion for something better. Safe Streets sends them out to canvass the community, mediate conflicts and mentor young men at risk of being the victims or perpetrators of shootings. Since June, no one has been killed in McElderry Park. For the same period in the previous year, three people were killed.
Sometimes the workers sort out fights and disputes they come upon while on the streets. Other times they are called for help. When one of the clients was threatened by a rival gang, the workers invited the warring parties to the office. Thirty people crowded into the program's rowhouse, talked it out and agreed not to harm one another.
Putting out brushfires
"A lot of the shootings can be over relatively minor disputes, because people think that's what they're supposed to do," said Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, who sees youth violence as a behavior that can be treated. "Getting people to rethink how they respond to provocation can be critical to changing the violence epidemic."
Operation Safe Streets is a replica of a Chicago program called CeaseFire, which has led to double-digit reductions in shootings and homicides since it began in 2000. The Baltimore results, though preliminary, are drawing attention. In a remarkable scene last week, academic researchers with advanced degrees visited the Monument Street office to listen to the outreach workers - guys without high school diplomas - explain their work.
A 'duty to teach'
"It's our duty to teach the generation that's coming behind us that what we felt was slick and cool - violence, the street life, the ghetto life - it's not slick," Tard Carter told the researchers, who nodded their heads. "It's a life of misery."
Carter knows. He grew up in McElderry, raised by a single mother. More than once, he came home from school to find his family's belongings on the street. He wasn't long for school, anyway. He says he's a natural leader and a manipulator. "I was trouble," he said. "I'm the one who introduced people to the game."
His adult record includes arrests for assault, drug possession and firearms possession. Though slight at 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds, Carter was respected on the street. But he got tired of the revolving door of prison, tired of the same old 'hood conversations, tired of wondering if he'd reach his next birthday.
"I could name fallen soldiers who could fill a tennis court," said Carter, now 31. In prison in 2002, he came across the Book of Job and was inspired to change. He signed on with Safe Streets last summer. Now, he says, gang members flash him the peace sign when he canvasses the neighborhood with his message of change.
Progress, though, comes fitfully. Last Wednesday night, shortly after 10 o'clock, a man was shot in the leg in McElderry Park. The outreach workers responded to the scene and tried to calm the community.
When there is a shooting, Safe Streets responds with a march, vigil, barbecue or in some other way to let people know that violence will be met with action - not the silence that has been the norm. Two weeks ago, a man was shot two blocks outside the McElderry Park target area, close enough that Safe Streets took notice. A few nights later, a dozen people marched to the shooting site, sang songs and prayed.
"How ya doin'?" Jerrod Lewis said to a woman who came to her door to see what the fuss was. As the program's violence prevention coordinator, Lewis works with community groups and organizes responses to shootings. He gave the woman a flier.
"I'm Jerrod Lewis from Safe Streets," he told her. "You hear about the shooting here? A person died, and we're just saying, 'Enough is enough.'"
The marchers waved "Stop the Shooting!" signs in the middle of the street and chanted until a police cruiser pulled up. A cop got out and asked what they were up to. "You guys are free to go about your business," the officer said, "as long as it's peaceful."
Safe Streets' relationship with law enforcement is delicate. To maintain their credibility, the outreach workers do not want to be associated with the police. (They agreed to walk their neighborhood with a reporter and photographer only once, fearing that the community would think they were working with undercover cops.) They stress that their job is not to report crimes, and they do not give information to the police.
Instead, they offer alternatives. Besides helping people find jobs and earn GEDs, they organize movie screenings, basketball games, barbecues and other activities to build relationships and keep kids off the corners. One Friday last fall, Safe Streets partnered with Amazing Grace Church for a night of dance contests and rapping. About 250 people showed up.
"And it was peaceful, which doesn't always happen at outdoor events in this neighborhood," said the church's pastor, the Rev. Karen Brau, who has worked in McElderry for 18 years. She said Safe Streets makes the neighborhood feel cared for in a way it hasn't for a long time.
"People are hungry for peace," she said. "I think this group is hugely important in allowing peace to permeate in people's lives in a way that people are longing for."
The Health Department has asked the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence to evaluate the program.
"We know the idea is a good idea, and it should work," said Phil C. Leaf, the center's director. But the study, due in December, could confirm that.
Expansion on horizon
In March, Safe Streets, funded by a federal grant, will expand to Ellwood Park in East Baltimore. It has already opened a second site, in Union Square in Southwest Baltimore. Sharfstein is trying to secure $2 million to fund those posts and two more through June 2009. Mayor Sheila Dixon has pledged $1 million from the city. Sharfstein hopes to get the rest from foundations and the business community.
Wherever the money comes from, Tard Carter will continue his mission. He recently heard from a client who had been robbed of his marijuana stash. The client wanted to confront the thief. Carter tracked down the thief - another dealer - who said that he was the one who had been robbed. A crowd gathered.
Carter took the dealer and his client to a side street and talked to them. He appealed to them to act like men, not boys high on emotion. Violence was averted when the thief's gang agreed to reimburse Carter's client.
"Is it really that serious that you want to kill a dude over a couple bags of marijuana?" Carter asked.
Everyone wants peace, he said. Sometimes they just need help getting there.
stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com