At the Cleveland City Council Safety Committee meeting on Wednesday, the room was packed by workers from community violence prevention groups in the city. It was the first time there wasn’t an open seat in the room since I started covering these meetings as a reporter for Ideastream Public Media.
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
In 2022 and 2023, the federal government distributed close to $200 million nationwide for this kind of work. Every year, the Cleveland Foundation disperses around $1 million in grants for community violence prevention from the Neighborhood Safety Fund, which was created with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
With the funding, these groups have proliferated through the city. In many cases, people were already doing the work before this source of funding arrived. But now, they’re expanding what they do.
There’s a couple ways to do community violence prevention – indirect intervention involving mentoring and after school activities that steer young people away from life on the streets. And direct intervention – responding to conflict in the neighborhood, mediating the issues that lead to retaliatory shootings.
I’ve been thinking about the limits of this work while reporting a story about one group, New Era Cleveland, and its leader, Antoine Tolbert.
For years, New Era has done both indirect and direct violence prevention work. Most notably, they conduct armed “safety patrols” in neighborhoods around Cleveland. One of those patrols, in 2022, led to Tolbert’s arrest on weapons charges that never made it past a grand jury and led to an $80,000 settlement with the city.
Another part of Tolbert’s work – going to small businesses in the community and demanding they sign onto a code of conduct governing interactions with community members (also known as their customers) – has led to new criminal charges and an ongoing case in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.
Reporting the story, I’ve been struck by the way perspectives have come into conflict as community violence prevention expands.
New Era started a boycott of certain gas stations on the East Side after owners refused to take an active role in preventing violence at their properties or helping people in distress. That boycott led to extortion charges against Tolbert.
In court papers and in bodycam footage following his arrest in 2022, officers and prosecutors referred to Tolbert as a “vigilante.” To New Era and many community members familiar with the group's work, they are simply “community organizers.”
When Tolbert’s allies met with representatives of the gas station right after his arrest, they said they were there to “de-escalate” the conflict between the owners and New Era. But that meeting led to more charges for one of the people in attendance, this time for “intimidating a victim or witness.”
It’s hard to say whether violence prevention groups are successfully reducing violent crime in Cleveland. Each group is working independently, seeking grant funding on a year-to-year basis, offering some but not all of the services needed to address violence.
And what would happen if crime starts to go up again in Cleveland, this summer, next summer or in five years? Following enormous spikes in violent crime in Cleveland during the pandemic, police officers were given enormous raises to show they were supported and attract applicants.
At the same time, what would happen to the funding for community violence prevention if crime goes up?
The police and the prosecutor’s office believe Tolbert and his group New Era have gone too far in their efforts to address crime.
Tolbert has denied the charges against him and his case is making its way through the court.
But the issue remains – who decides what community violence prevention groups can do, the government or the community members trying to do the work in their neighborhoods?
