'It takes a village': Community-based 'violence interrupters' de-escalate conflict among at-risk youth
A New York-based nonprofit is combatting gun violence by deploying what it calls "credible messengers," outreach workers with roots in the community they serve, around local schools to deescalate conflict among at-risk youth.
"We've been there. We've done that. We've been traumatized also. You know, we survived. We're still going through what they are going through," said Lance Feurtado, executive director of the King of Kings Foundation in Jamaica, Queens.
Lance and his brother, Todd Feurtado, both former gang members, founded the organization in 2005 with the mission of educating kids about the "dangers of guns, drugs, gang violence and lack of education," according to their website.
Their anti-violence outreach is built around the "Cure Violence" model, which treats violence as a public health epidemic and addresses it with evidence-based strategies. This approach has three main objectives: detecting and interrupting potentially violent situations, identifying and changing the behavior of those most likely to engage in violence and changing group norms that perpetuate the use of violence, according to the Cure Violence Global website.
On a recent school day, ABC News joined members of the King of Kings team as they headed to their target schools for what Lance calls "climate control safe passage."
"It's really just to ensure our kids, our future leaders are making it home safely," Lance said.
Trained "violence interrupters" work directly with kids in the community to get in front of potential conflict, Lance said.
"We do our best to get in front of any little thing and diffuse it before it escalates, you know, or it escalates into shots being fired," Lance said.
The intersection of Springfield and Linden boulevards in southeast Queens is one spot the foundation pays close attention to, Lance said. In 2009, 13-year-old Kevin Lamont Miller was shot and killed after walking out of a McDonald's and into the middle of a gang fight.
"Kevin Lamont Miller was a young man who was thriving. He was excelling academically. And his mom wanted to reward him and she gave him some money to go to McDonald's and treat himself," Lance said.
The slain teen's photo is shown on a memorial at the northwest corner of the intersection, which the city renamed as "Kevin Lamont Miller Jr. Way" in 2015.
Alan "Wax" Settles, director of operations, is one of the violence interrupters who works with those who are "high risk," he said.
"When we bring the kid in and we see him grow, we know his fate ain't for jail," Settles said. "I know these kids. I was these kids."
Team members who work for King of Kings said it's important for them to have credibility with the population they serve; Settles says that's why the foundation doesn't work with police.
"It's about having the relationship and the respect," said Rana Epps, the organization's hospital response supervisor.
Epps said her goal is to deescalate conflict among family and friends of the gun violence victims at the hospital.
"Things can get a little out of hand, because people are broken. You know, there's a lot of emotions and sometimes the only emotion that people know to display at moments like this is anger," said Epps, adding that she knows what it's like to see someone experience their "worst day ever" due to 30 years of working in health care.
"We are hearing the youth saying they're being hunted or they're hunting. It is just, it's sad. Just for a lack of words. It's very sad," the mother of two continued.
Epps beamed with pride at one of her sons who now works with at-risk youth for the King of Kings Foundation.
"It takes a neighborhood, a community, a village to raise a child. The King of Kings position is we are that village," Lance said.
