INDIANAPOLIS — Interrupters will be on the front line to meet and greet people who might be on a path of violence.
"I've been trained to be a community resource provider. I have been trained to be a violence interrupter," said Shane, lead interrupter trainer.
During a Zoom meeting, Community Violence Reduction Director Shonna Majors introduced Shane as the city's first Interrupter. It's what the city is calling people recruited to try to help Indy avoid another record year of deadly violence. The primary target is the homicide number Indianapolis experienced in 2020, which ended with IMPD Investigating 215 criminal homicides.
Majors told 13News that everything her team does is a grassroots effort to make the city a safer place to work, live and visit.
Majors has her work cut out for her. As a gunshot wound survivor, Majors believes in turning to people who have inside access to what happens in the community and those who might even know the people responsible and impacted by crime.
"They are kind of the big homies in their area, if you will, and have some street credibility that lends themselves to be able to get into places that the rest of us can't get into," Majors said.
That meant sending a recruit to a program that already utilizes interrupters. Shane, a former convict-turned-community advocate, traveled to Oakland, California for intensive hands-on interrupter training.
"Me and an Oakland interrupter taking me to their shooting scenes," Shane said.
Now to help stop deadly shootings and the cycle of violence, he's training other recruits to be interrupters. The local recruits are from various neighborhoods and age groups. Shane has already had to show some tough love, demanding their best because so much is at stake for the grassroots efforts. That includes their own safety and knowing all parts of their job as they try to intervene and help with conflict resolution.
"They know how to log in and Zoom, they know how to keep up with the stats and the data, they know how to intake a guy. They know how to triage a guy. They know what a CBO is, a Community Based Organization. I didn't know any of this," Shane said.
Majors has already seen success recruiting peacekeepers to her team. She hopes interrupters like Shane can reach people most likely to be connected to the deadly violence in the city.
"Such as being involved with the criminal justice system, being shot before themselves or someone very close to them being shot in the last 12 months," Majors said.
Shane is training people already recruited to be interrupters. They hope to hit high crime neighborhoods in just a few days. The interrupters will offer their help to people who want to end their own cycle of violence.