D.C. Councilmember Trayon White’s federal bribery indictment inspired, and even exacerbated, critique and scrutiny of the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE) from all directions over the last couple of months.
However, members of the violence prevention community who recently testified before the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary & Public Safety had just as much to say about the local government they charged with never fully supporting ONSE from the start.
“It’s clear that for whatever reason, prevention has never been a priority,” said Pastor Delonte Gholston in his lengthy, collegial exchange with D.C. Councilmembers Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) and Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1) on the afternoon of Oct. 7.
Gholston, pastor of Peace Fellowship Church in Ward 7, counted among dozens of public witnesses who flooded Room 500 of the John A. Wilson Building in Northwest during an oversight round table intended to examine ONSE’s management of violence intervention grants. His appearance before the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety followed meetings with District officials over the years that he said haven’t moved the dial on the implementation of an all-hands-on-deck violence prevention strategy.
“We had a plan,” Gholston told council judiciary committee members, eventually asking that they revisit and push for the full implementation of the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results (NEAR) Act. “Y’all asked us to come up with a plan on the Police Reform Commission. We had David Muhammad’s organization [National Council on Crime and Delinquency]. They had a plan. We don’t have any lack of proposals and plans in this city. We lack vision implementation and strategic coordination.”
For several minutes, Gholston leveraged his on-the-ground experience and political science background to question whether the government had provided ONSE and its partner institutions the resources essential for preventing violence. In his reflection, he touched on instances when, after learning that ONSE couldn’t provide housing relocation support, he and his pastoral colleagues pooled resources to place traumatized families in hotels and AirBNBs.
Gholston recounted making similar strides for ONSE grantees who had to wait weeks at a time for disbursement of funds.
“We got executive directors funded through ONSE and Cure the Streets who’ve had to come out of pocket to cover bills,” Gholston said. “They’re out here hustling to make sure these guys and ladies [in their programs] are paid on time. There’s clearly a procurement problem in terms of how the resources are hitting the streets. The discussion about accountability has to happen on both sides.”
Questions about Violence Interruption Reemerge amid Political Scandal
In the wake of Ward 8 Councilmember White’s bribery arrest, news outlets identified Life Deeds as Human Source #1 in the federal indictment alleging that the council member agreed to get government contracts diverted to the nonprofit. Per the indictment, White stood to make more than $150,000 from the scheme. He also allegedly accepted a total of $35,000 in cash payments for his efforts.
The allegations triggered not only Pinto’s oversight ambitions, but the launch of a council ad-hoc committee to determine White’s future on the D.C. Council.
On Oct. 1, the beginning of Fiscal Year 2025, ONSE extended Life Deeds’ contract for 30 more days while the agency brings on a new provider. Meanwhile, D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services and D.C. Child and Family Services Agency didn’t renew Life Deeds for another fiscal year.
ONSE, in existence since 2019, provides a couple violence intervention and prevention grants per year. Kwelli D. Sneed currently serves as the interim director.
The agency’s formation was a key provision of the NEAR Act, which became law without D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s signature in 2018. Since its inception, it has established partnerships and implemented violence prevention strategies through the use of public health and public safety tools. The agency also engages D.C. residents who are most likely to be involved in gun violence through its Pathways Program.
Last month, D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton wrote a letter demanding an evaluation, and possible defunding, of violence interruption programs, like what ONSE facilitates. On Sept. 30, Bowser, responding to an Informer inquiry, denied knowing about Pemberton’s letter. While she didn’t delve too deeply into her feelings about the NEAR Act, she touted the Pathways Program and violence interrupters as effective tools in driving down violence.
“We’ve been very pleased with our Pathways Program,” Bowser said. “We also know that we have a number of very effective violence interrupters. We have a number of very effective credible messengers. We just want to make sure we attack any vulnerabilities in these programs.”
In 2022, the Office of the D.C. Auditor released a report saying that ONSE fulfilled the reporting requirements to fully assess the Pathways Program. However, as explained in the report, the impact of ONSE’s violence interruption efforts remains unclear. Other concerns outlined in the report included violence interrupters falling short in consistently establishing close ties with community leaders.
Pinto, in but so many words, echoed those sentiments on Oct. 7, saying that violence interrupter training will create the foundation for conversations about pay and benefits. Seconds later, Roger Marmet, founder of Peace for D.C., an organization that provides violence interruption coordination and strategy, told the Ward 2 council member that violence interrupter training, like what his organization’s Peace Academy provides, is a “missing puzzle piece.”
“Not just training, but healing. We have to go beyond that,” Marmet told Pinto and Nadeau. “We talked about an independent system that’s out of the political cycle but requires contract signers to participate weekly and monthly with each other and get technical.. assistance. The danger… is how much of the money is getting out to the ground game. Training everybody who’s an outreach worker or violence interrupter should be trained before they’re on the job.”
Kathy Henderon, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 5, was a bit less forgiving in her assessment of D.C.’s violence interruption programs.
Henderson, commissioner of Single-Member District 5D06, looked back on previous encounters with violence interrupters, most of whom she said ingratiate themselves within the worst elements of her community rather than try to improve it. She later said that those violence interrupters could’ve prevented the shooting death of Najee Dickens, which happened a couple days prior on the 1600 block of Trinidad Avenue in Northeast.
“Where were they when Mr. Dickens and his colleagues were running for their life on Saturday [Oct. 5]?” Henderson said. “No one [in the Metropolitan Police Department] received viable information to help [address] the homicides.”
Henderson went on to call violence interruption a “money grab” no longer deserving of investment.
“I told this council that the program was ill-conceived and not properly vetted,” Henderson said. “We cannot continue to throw taxpayer dollars to a program that has no accountability. I’m disappointed to hear there’s an effort to continue supporting a program that doesn’t work. We’ve given it a chance.”
The Bigger Picture, and a Moment of Truth
For others who testified, however, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to navigating the violence interruption ecosystem.
For instance, some public witnesses spoke about the mountains of paperwork and documentation that discourages engagement with ONSE for grant funding. Nadeau, in her dialogue with public witnesses, also mentioned that, without recurring funds in Bowser’s budget proposals for violence interruption programs, it often becomes difficult to guarantee funding for programming beyond a year.
Several minutes later, Marcellus Queen, a Pathways Program graduate and founder of Representation for the Bottom, explained to the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety how gaps in grant funding impede his efforts to help families in Congress Park community.
“I’ve had to wait in between grants,” Queen said in his testimony. “Once funding is over, [one of my] youth was arrested for carjacking and shooting in Prince George’s County. I have 10 mothers calling me all night long. I have to figure out how I’m going to make this happen.”
Finesse Graves, a Southeast resident and Peace for D.C. Peace Academy graduate, provided a perspective as a survivor of gun and domestic violence, who, as she recounted, received few options for safe, temporary housing in the aftermath of her incident. She pleaded for a holistic violence prevention solution that accounts for the underlying socioeconomic causes of violence in the District.
“The funds are being allocated without a plan so no one can be held accountable for the violence continuing,” Graves said. “There’s no prevention plan to show how people can be assisted on their surviving journey and their regular journeys. D.C. is already a congested area where violence continues because people don’t have housing and food to eat.”
In his testimony, Robert Brannum Vinson didn’t speak directly about violence interruption, but the circumstances under all eyes are on ONSE.
“We’re not here merely as a duty of oversight but because an elected council member and other District officials violated vows for monetary greed unto themselves,” Brannum Vinson said. “We’re here because people allegedly solicited a cut from government funds for a family vacation. It’s unfortunate that community-based organizations with missions to interrupt community violence are now being scrutinized because one, two or three individuals may have engaged in schemes to steal from the public purse and violate the public’s trust.”