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'It's a bully tactic': Minneapolis violence interrupters stand off with the city • Minnesota Reformer [1]

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Date: 2025-08-21

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence.

At the height of the racial justice protests in 2020, the Rev. Jerry McAfee was on the front lines in Minneapolis. When residents filled the streets after George Floyd’s murder, McAfee and other veteran peacemakers handed out food, broke up fights, and tried to dissuade further violence. In one case, they formed a protective escort for police officers moving through a tense crowd to reach a stabbing victim. At that point, McAfee had walked the city’s most gun violence-stricken areas, working with active and former gang members to prevent shootings, for nearly three decades.

“We were the line between the police and the community,” McAfee said of 2020, recalling the climbing rates of violence at the time. “The city needed us out there.”

Five years later, the urgency has faded. Gun violence in Minneapolis has trended downward, though at a slower pace than in many other cities, and the network of street-level interrupters that emerged from that chaotic summer are caught in a contract standoff with the city, at risk of losing critical momentum in maintaining the decline in shootings.

In March, Minneapolis’s Neighborhood Safety Department approved a new round of biannual contracts for a group of city-funded violence intervention groups. Only three organizations, Restoration Inc., Metro Youth Diversion, and Sabathani, have agreed to the terms. At least four others have walked away, accusing the city of imposing burdensome requirements — dictating where the outreach teams can operate, how they should engage the community, and how much they’re allowed to pay staff — that they say make it harder for them to do their work.

“They’re bullying the organizations to sign these contracts in this new structure,” said Muhammad Abdul-Ahad, who leads TOUCH Outreach, an organization that does street outreach and intervention work. “It’s a bully tactic that they’re using. Take it or leave it.” Abdul-Ahad said he was sent a revised contract by the Neighborhood Safety Department earlier this week, but hasn’t signed it.

The ongoing dispute exposed a foundational fracture in the city’s community violence intervention efforts. In 2020, as Minneapolis poured millions of city and federal dollars into containing the historic shooting surge during the pandemic and rebuilding public trust, the city’s Public Health Department was working successfully with Adbul Ahad and other grassroots leaders through its Office of Violence Prevention, which was established two years earlier. But in 2022, the office was folded into a newly created Neighborhood Safety Department, an initiative that brought multiple public safety programs under one umbrella. That structural shift, according to several local activists, marked the beginning of a more top-down, enforcement-driven approach.

“What was a fast and growing violence prevention effort was then shuffled from the Health Department to a new department, under a new commissioner, that has four other departments to help and support,” said Sasha Cotton, who led the Office of Violence Prevention before it was absorbed into the Neighborhood Safety Department in 2022. “It sort of bastardized the CVI work and left it hanging out to dry.”

Since its creation, the Neighborhood Safety Department has cycled through multiple commissioners, faced allegations of mismanagement, and withheld funding to CVI groups.

The fabric further unraveled in November 2023, when the Neighborhood Safety Department was sued by local attorney Dean Thomson, who alleged that the city had failed to track how CVI dollars were being spent, including who was paid and what services were delivered. As part of a settlement reached last August, city officials pledged to tighten oversight and increase transparency, but several CVI leaders said the new requirements undermine their mission by requiring drug testing, background checks, and visible ID badges for the workers.

“I think there’s a lack of true understanding of what violence intervention and prevention is from the top,” Cotton said.

Amanda Harrington, the newly appointed director of the Neighborhood Safety Department, would not comment on the details of the individual contracts, but said the office is willing to address the concerns of community outreach workers in the negotiation process. When asked about concerns that the ongoing disputes will stymy shooting decreases, Harrington said “a mix of different strategies” by the city contributed to the overall decline, including ongoing efforts by police and prosecutors. “The department is going through some changes, and there are growing pains that go along with that,” she said.

Abdul-Ahad said changing the designation from independent contractors to city employees would be more in line with the new contract requirements and make workers eligible for city benefits. As contractors, they have little support.

When Abdul-Ahad launched TOUCH Outreach in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, police-community relations had reached a breaking point, and “we were just trying to hurry and get services out to the community,” he said. Residents depended on CVI workers to make up for the lack of law enforcement presence. Now, homicides are down 23 percent and nonfatal shootings have dropped 30 percent, according to police data, putting both metrics below pre-pandemic levels from 2019. The police are more active, but as local CVI leaders see it, a steady presence of violence interrupters across the city is still vital to sustaining the progress in lowering shootings.

“You’ve got direct intervention, and you got prevention. Most of the money is going towards prevention and very little to direct intervention,” said McAfee, who has recently clashed with officials over the direction of violence reduction. His boots-on-the-ground violence intervention organization, 21 Days of Peace, is not currently contracted with the city, and two of its workers faced weapons charges earlier this year after a shooting. While prevention is more focused on long-term, systemic changes to address violence, intervention deals with the more immediate actions necessary to stop violence.

CVI groups often disagree about how the work should be done and who should be leading it, a common dynamic in cities grappling with high levels of gun violence, and not everyone is dismayed by the city’s approach.

Connie Rhodes, who runs Restoration Inc., a community-based organization focused on outreach, education, and gun violence reduction, signed the new contract. She believes there needs to be more of a “give and take” between community leaders and city officials, “a compromise,” she said, acknowledging that violence prevention efforts are better rooted in a public health framework, as they used to be. “It shouldn’t have left the Health Department.”

Cotton thinks there’s a middle ground. “Everybody has their own role to play in this,” she said. “If the goal is to do violence prevention work, then we should be able to look past our different approaches and focus on what we bring to the space.”

Community leaders worry that the disagreement over the new contract will disrupt outreach at a time when federal funding is being cut, and consistency and trust are critical. That’s why Abdul-Ahad said his organization will continue to do the work, whether they’re partnered with the city or not. “We still have work to do,” he said. “We’re going to keep doing it.”

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[1] Url: https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/08/21/its-a-bully-tactic-minneapolis-violence-interrupters-stand-off-with-the-city/

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