BALTIMORE — Catholic Charities Safe Streets is celebrating 10 years of partnership with the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement at its Sandtown-Winchester location in Baltimore.
The site opened on March 17, 2016, as one of four Catholic Charities Safe Streets locations. Over the past decade, the program has worked to reduce violence and homicides in the area, offering resource and job fairs and other wraparound services to the community.
Greg Marshburn, program director for Safe Streets at Catholic Charities, said the program has come a long way since its early days.
Catholic Charities Safe Streets celebrates 10 years of violence prevention in Baltimore
"It's amazing to me because when we first got here, people used to laugh at us and tell us it wouldn't work and y'all are crazy and those same people end up coming and asking us for a job," Marshburn said.
Marshburn said the transformation of the people who come through the program is central to its success.
"We have to be the change that we want to see and just to see them come in. Everybody usually comes because they want a job that pays right but during the course of you coming here for that, you end up getting some things that you didn't necessarily sign up for that matures you and helps you progress through the process," Marshburn said.
Neighbor Hope Crosby said she has relied on the program personally and has seen its impact on the broader community.
"I had this teenage daughter, but now she's a grown woman and it's been times where she lives on her own now, where she's had girls come to fight her and I wasn't able to get there, and I've called Greg and Nichole and they sent their violence interrupters and was able to you know intervene in that," Crosby said.
Crosby said she has also witnessed a transformation in the people who work for Safe Streets.
"I've seen some pretty hard young men and women who I would never think they would be gainfully legally employed, be employed, and I'm very proud to see them do that and transform and to law abiding citizens," Crosby said.
William Stewart, a violence prevention coordinator and former violence interrupter, recalled an intervention in which he said he saved two lives.
"So he had two weapons on his lap and he was saying like listen I'm gonna kill my girlfriend or whatever because she's cheating on me and I said oh take a deep breath relax," Stewart said.
Stewart said he helped the man think through the consequences of his decision, and the man changed his mind. Stewart said being a familiar face in the community is what makes violence interrupters effective.
"Being a violence interrupter sometimes individuals want you to talk them down off the ledge so they can see us out there and before they do something they wanna talk with somebody that they're familiar with somebody that's been out there with them so he wanted someone to talk him down off the ledge so I just happen to be on the post and be that person," Stewart said.
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