WATCH: MPI’s Vaughn Bryant and INVC’s Sam Castro Speak with WTTW About Summer Uptick in Violence
As Chicago faces an uptick in predicted summertime gun violence when compared to last year, WTTW reports that the city’s Community Violence Intervention (CVI) organizations continue to respond through street outreach, crisis intervention, and victim services.
Executive Director of Metropolitan Peace Initiatives (MPI), Vaughn Bryant, and Samuel Castro, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives at the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago (INVC), spoke with WTTW about what CVI is, their professional understanding with the city’s police department, and community-based solutions to violence.
“Community violence intervention is basically a non-punitive approach to gun violence,” Bryant explained. “We’re more preventative and intervention. It is really based on the idea that people that live in the local community are closest to the problem and more of the solution.”
CVI is no replacement for law enforcement, but Bryant and Castro describe a delicate, one-way line of communication with CPD, where CVI organizations help respond to violent incidents but don’t interfere with investigations or damage credibility with the community.
The real relationships outreach workers have with neighbors and participants is key to the ongoing success of CVI initiatives. This gives CVI staff license-to-operate where the police may be initially mistrusted.
“Lived experience is something that you can’t learn out of a book,” Castro shared. “This is something that we went through. There’s real humans doing the work that have been impacted by violence, trauma, all through their life, and we’re running back to the fire to help people.”