After a string of shootings in Harlem last year refocused the spotlight on local violence, one organization is turning to ex-felons to keep young people from committing violent crimes.
Operation S.N.U.G.—which spells “guns” backwards—recruits former gang members and others who have served prison time to work directly with at-risk youth.
“It’s a credible messenger approach,” said Courtney Bennett, director of community and government relations for the New York City Mission Society, which operates S.N.U.G. “And the guys who’ve been through it make much better messengers.”
Launched in 2009, the state-funded program employs six outreach managers, each responsible for about 15 teenagers, as well as two “violence interrupters.”
“We tend to use an approach where we canvas the street and deal with specific hot spots,” Bennett said.
He likened the violence interrupters to rangers or firefighters who go into a forest fire to suppress the fire before it gets out of hand.
“Whenever there’s a shooting or a stabbing, we go to the hospital, and we try to find out what happened and if there’s going to be a retaliatory attack,” he said.
When outreach managers identify young people who might turn to guns or gangs, “we find out what they’re doing on a regular basis, help them stay out of trouble, and connect to services,” he said. “If they’re in school, we try to help them stay in school, or if they’re trying to get to college, we connect them to those services.”
Bennett stressed that while S.N.U.G. and the New York Police Department ultimately share goals, the program does not exchange information it may learn about premeditated shootings with the police.
“We don’t tell the police what we know, if we know anything, and we don’t ask the police. If something’s going on with them, we usually know before anyway.”
S.N.U.G. is based on a Chicago program called Ceasefire Chicago, which uses similar techniques of intervention and mediation. Sociology professor Carla Shedd, who has worked with at-risk youth in Chicago, said that S.N.U.G.’s method of employing violence interrupters was effective.
“I think the idea of embedding people in the midst of the violence who are familiar with the dynamics is valuable,” Shedd said. “They do have this on-the-ground knowledge and it immediately opens up a respectful exchange between actors.”
City Council member Inez Dickens, who has been a vocal advocate to stop what she has called the “unfortunate proliferation of violence,” has supported the efforts of S.N.U.G.
“It’s a holistic approach, working for the many things we need to put in place to save our children. I don’t believe in acting when a crime happens—you need to act before to lessen these horrible incidents,” Dickens said. “We have to show our young people that there’s another way.”
That need may be greater than ever, Bennett said, as “there’s a much greater potential for violence than most people actually realize.”
“In our work, we’ve had over a hundred mediations, most of which would have turned into physical violence without our intervention,” he said. “We know there are kids with their finger on the trigger, ready to go if the wrong thing happens.”
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