Hassan Shariff, with Cure Violence, stands with other members of Cure Violence at the perimeter of a triple homicide scene in the 5500 block Floy Avenue Wednesday, July 29, 2020. Shariff, a Cure Violence interrupter, and the other Cure Violence workers are assigned to the Wells-Goodfellow and Hamilton Heights neighborhood but came to Floy Avenue which is outside their area to check on people they know. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
W. Charles Hatley, left, and Hassan Shariff, with Cure Violence stand at the perimeter of a triple homicide scene in the 5500 block Floy Avenue Wednesday, July 29, 2020. Hatley, a Cure Violence outreach worker and Shariff, a Cure Violence interrupter, are working for the Cure Violence program in Wells-Goodfellow and Hamilton Heights neighborhood but came to Floy Avenue which is outside their area to check on people they know. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
ST. LOUIS — City officials should expand the violence reduction program known as Cure Violence to more neighborhoods — even before its first three centers have fully launched, leaders of the program said Saturday during a panel discussion on the program’s progress.
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved $7 million last fall to fund Cure Violence centers in three high-crime areas for three years. Nonprofit Employment Connection of St. Louis won a contract to run two of the neighborhood efforts — one in the Wells-Goodfellow and Hamilton Heights area and the other in Dutchtown. The Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis will run the third center in Walnut Park.
The Chicago-based program has launched in cities around the world including Baltimore, Milwaukee and New York City. It treats violence like a contagious disease by attempting to prevent its spread in high-crime neighborhoods. It works through a staff of “violence interrupters,” people with close ties to the neighborhoods where they work, who are hired to try to divert residents from violence through employment, counseling and other aid.
The St. Louis neighborhoods picked for the first three Cure Violence centers accounted for about 28% of the city’s homicides in 2019, but made up just 10% of the population, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis of police data.
So far, one out of the three has fully launched, despite Mayor Lyda Krewson’s office initially aiming to have all three operating by Aug. 1 this year.
Nevertheless, leaders of the program speaking Saturday at the annual Violence Prevention Summit sponsored by the North Newstead Association said Cure Violence’s effect on crime in the region would be greatly increased if it could expand to more areas.
“It’s like taking a sponge and trying to absorb a sink full of water,” said James Clark, who heads the fledgling Urban League Cure Violence program in Walnut Park. Clark said he is confident the program will show positive results when it is fully operational. “We are going to absorb some of the crime and violence, but we are only in three neighborhoods.”
Clark said he thinks Cure Violence is needed in at least 12 St. Louis neighborhoods as well as six areas in St. Louis County and five across the Mississippi River in the Metro East. He added there has been some interest from private sources, like corporations, in funding the program’s expansion.
Sal Martinez, chief executive officer of Employment Connection, which runs the other two centers, agreed. Martinez said crime is often interconnected among neighborhoods, so with more centers, interrupters could work together when violence crosses neighborhood lines.
For now, the three programs are each designed to have a team that focuses on a 10-square-block area, based on where violent crimes are happening most often, Martinez said.
Staff members go to shooting scenes to try to dissuade retaliation. Each has a caseload of 15 “high-risk” people they try to steer away from violence. Those considered high-risk are typically between ages 16 and 25 and may have recently been shot or have had a relative who was shot; are known to carry guns; recently left prison or are engaged with high-risk groups or activities, Martinez said.
One center launched
The city’s first Cure Violence site in Wells-Goodfellow and Hamilton Heights launched in June.
Martinez said the first team of staff includes several people who have been shot themselves or have served prison time. That can give them added credibility and shared experiences to be effective with those they help.
The COVID-19 pandemic slowed the program’s start. Cure Violence has not publicly released data on the efficacy of its work.
According to police data, however, homicides are down in Wells-Goodfellow so far this year. From January through October, the neighborhood had eight homicides compared with 14 in that period a year before. Total aggravated assaults with a weapon remained about the same between the two years.
In Hamilton Heights, the other neighborhood the center touches, homicide was up significantly through October this year: 12 in 2020 compared with 4 in 2019. Aggravated assaults held steady in that time.
Across the city, homicides and aggravated assaults have risen significantly, in line with trends seen in large cities nationwide following COVID-19 shut downs this spring.
In St. Louis, homicides are up about 33% and aggravated assaults rose by 8% compared with last year. Property crime has fallen this year.
Two centers to come
The Dutchtown center for Cure Violence fell short of the city’s goal of getting it running by August.
Martinez said finding people who meet the program’s standards and are willing to work late hours has been difficult. Violence interrupters work 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 3 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.
So far, about half the staff has been hired, Martinez said. The center has opened in a building that houses other area nonprofits, the Neighborhood Innovation Center at 3207 Meramec Street.
Martinez continues to search for people willing to do the work: “This is not a desk job. Our cure violence staff don’t have the luxury of sitting in a cozy office,” he said. “They are expected to be out in the community 70 or 80% of the time.”
The Walnut Park location, run by the Urban League, now has a staff of 12 hired, but they need to be trained, Clark said Saturday.
Clark is confident that the model will work.
“I bet my life on it, that we will get positive outcomes,” he said.

The windshield of a pickup truck is left shattered by bullets on Thursday, October 8, 2020, remnants from a June 13 shooting outside the Bad Habitz Social Club, 3111 North Grand Boulevard. Four people were injured and two men died as a result of the shooting. The truck is parked next door, in front of Young Auto Repair where Kae Chris, center, runs the shop. "We have to change," said Chris. "What do you want to see in your community?" Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Employees of Young Auto Repair move a bullet-ridden Pontiac to their lot for repair in the 3100 block of North Grand Boulevard on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020. The shop, which opened in 1977, is sandwiched between Bing Lau Chop Suey and the former Bad Habitz Social Club, where shootings outside both businesses this year have left three men dead and four wounded. "We can't even conduct business in a normal way without being worried about people carrying guns," said manager Kae Chris. Though the body shop does all types of work, bullet holes are a common repair. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Kae Chris checks damage to the scooter of Robert Wallace, 85, as he stops by Young Auto Repair in the 3100 block of North Grand Boulevard on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020. The shop, which opened in 1977, is sandwiched between Bing Lau Chop Suey and and the former Bad Habitz Social Club, where shootings outside both businesses this year have left three men dead and four wounded. "We can't even conduct business in a normal way without being worried about people carrying guns," said Chris. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Ashlei McCrary, 36, holds the shirt she had made for her boyfriend Willie Jackson III on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, after he was killed in a shooting outside the Bad Habitz Social Club in the 3100 block of North Grand Boulevard in June. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

A spent shell casing is found on a sidewalk by an employee who declined to be named outside Young Auto Repair in the 3100 block of North Grand Boulevard on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020. The shop, which opened in 1977, is sandwiched between Bing Lau Chop Suey and and the former Bad Habitz Social Club, where shootings outside both businesses this year have left three men dead and four wounded. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Mitch Norris picks up a dart board from the shuttered Bad Habitz Social Club, 3111 N. Grand Boulevard, on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020. The night club was shuttered by the city following a June 13 shooting of six people outside the club. Willie Jackson III died at the scene. Daniel Cameron died weeks later from his injuries. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

St. Louis police homicide detectives arrive at the scene where Preston Bell, 21, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds outside a crashed sedan at the corner of Carter Avenue and North Grand Boulevard in a shuttered bank's parking lot on Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Taylor Davis, left, Meshel Moore and Cameran Chatman await visitors to a drive-by haunted house behind the Herbert Hoover campus of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater St. Louis on Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. Sitting on the footprint of Sportsman's Park, the center has taken care of children since 1967. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Patrons must be 35 to go through the red door at the historic Zodiac Lounge, 3517 North Grand Boulevard, on Friday, Oct. 23, 2020. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Charles Lee, 47, sings along with Rufus and Chaka Khan on the jukebox to his date Nikki Atkins at the historic Zodiac Lounge, 3517 North Grand Boulevard, on Friday, Oct. 23, 2020. For longtime patron Fred Blount, 79, rear, the Zodiac is his only spot. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, no troubles," said Blount. "I think the young people are coming around, and coming together." Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Egg Roll Kitchen owner Lee Phung, 51, delivers an order through an opening in bullet-proof glass on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020 at 3620 North Grand Boulevard. Phung's father opened the business in 1968 and his son took over 21 years ago. His wife and two children live in Manchester. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Gelender Shannon, left, Venus Nisbet, and Donna Washington, pray with a woman at right whose son was recovering from gunshot wounds to his stomach, during a food and clothing giveaway in a private park at the corner of North Grand Boulevard and Barrett Street on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. Shannon, 65, wears a panda head along with a regular mask to keep safe when going out in crowded areas. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

A St. Louis Police crime scene officer photographs the scene clerk Robert Woods was shot to death by a robber at the Dollar General at 4038 North Grand Boulevard on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Across the street from a Dollar General store where clerk Robert Woods was shot and killed in 2018, Kennisha Harris takes her children Harrison, 5 and Khori, 7, roller skating at Fairground Park on N. Grand Boulevard on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2020. Though the Harris family doesn't live in the neighborhood, Kennisha likes to expose her kids to the 'skate culture', listening to Albert 'Albizness' Jacobs as DJ for a 'Hump Day Skate'. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Unidentified people stand beside an ambulance after Preston Bell, 21, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds outside a crashed sedan at the corner of Carter Avenue and North Grand Boulevard in a shuttered bank's parking lot on Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com
Erin Heffernan • 314-340-8145 @erinheff on Twitter eheffernan@post-dispatch.com