Pursuing Peace Street teams target individuals in effort to stop group violence story by
ADAM RAYES
photography by
BRIAN K. POWERS
When it comes to violent crime in Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Department
of Public Safety Assistant Chief Dave Boysen is focused on how many violent crime arrests he isn’t making. That’s because of Group Violence Intervention (GVI), a strategy KDPS has been using since 2013 to reduce violent crime in the city. It’s a strategy that emphasizes communication and human interaction with “street groups” that have the propensity to commit violent crimes. “Most of your shootings and violent crime has a group dynamic in it,” Boysen explains. “And if you can deal with that small percentage of these high-risk people that are involved in these groups, you can really make a big difference impacting (the) overall amount of violent crime in your city and shootings.” As of 2017, less than half of 1 percent of Kalamazoo’s residents were responsible for 50 percent of the homicides and nonfatal shootings in the city, according to KDPS. And many of those offenders had some sort of group affiliation. Group violence is unique in that one incident is significantly more likely to set off a cycle of retaliation that perpetuates the violence, Boysen says. “If you're in a street group and if you get shot and wounded, you're expected amongst your peers to retaliate, and if you don't, you show weakness and you look like you're weak out there,” he says. Boysen sees the first few years of the GVI program as evidence of its success. In 2014 there were 47 shootings in the city, 18 of which had a group member involved. But in 2018, the number of shootings had dropped to 18, seven of them involving group members. The years in between also showed a downward trend. Group-involved shootings rose significantly, however, in the first half of 2018, so GVI took immediate action, and the number of these shootings dropped from 18 in the first half of the year to four in the second half.
Direct communication There are two parts to the GVI strategy. The first is to figure out who the groups are and offer help to certain individual members who have been involved in violence previously. The word “group” is intentionally broad. It’s been made clear by Boysen and others involved in GVI that Kalamazoo is not dealing with gangs. The city’s groups are too small and disorganized to be considered gangs, they say. What the city does have are people who are connected by familial relationships or location and might, for
22 | ENCORE MARCH 2019
example, control a “territory” (such as a particular block or street) or deal drugs together. “And then it's just direct communication with them,” Boysen says. “That's one of the things that we didn't ever do before.” A GVI team reaches out to group members who have been involved in a violent act and have the potential to get involved in another one. The aim is to give them a way out of the cycle of violence. KDPS, for example, helps group members in getting education or employment by connecting them with specific social service organizations and community members. The second step, which is a “last resort,” involves KDPS using threats of increased enforcement to try to ensure that violent offenders don’t, for example, “pick up a gun” again, Boysen says. KDPS does this through two primary forms of communication: “custom notification letters,” which are used to reach out to a group member personally, and “call-ins,” where people on probation or parole who are members of groups involved in violence are brought in, as a condition of their parole, to hear an anti-violence message from law enforcement, social services, faith organizations and community members, which they could then spread to their respective groups. At the program’s first call-in, in June 2017, law enforcement officials told the 22 attendees that they care about them and are doing everything they can to keep them alive and safe. But they also gave them notice that the next group whose member committed a homicide in the city or was the most violent group would face enhanced law enforcement attention. “We're looking at (people at) high risk for not only being suspects, but at high risk for victimization,” Boysen says.
‘It’s not OK’ The sharp uptick in group-involved shootings in the first half of 2018 prompted GVI to have a second call-in, on July 19 of that year. During both call-ins, attendees heard from someone directly affected by group violence: Thosha Suggs, the mother of Tim Palmer, who, at 18, was shot and killed, on July 8, 2007. Palmer had graduated from Loy Norrix High School a few weeks earlier. He was the front-seat passenger in a car at the intersection of Portage Street and East Stockbridge Avenue when he was shot in the head, according to documents from the U.S. District Court. A streetside memorial at the corner of Stockbridge and Portage Avenues marks the spot where 18-year-old Timothy Palmer was shot and killed in 2007.