BALTIMORE — Protecting the community and helping to minimize shootings and homicides is no easy task, but it’s the mission not only for law enforcement but for community groups like Safe Streets.
Troy Bradley is one of the leaders from the Cherry Hill Safe Streets location, he talked about how they’re working every day to reduce shootings and homicides in our city.
Intercepting violent incidents that could turn deadly is the key job description of many Safe Streets workers, and Bradley is one of the people on the front lines risking their lives to save others.
“We grew up in an era where drugs destroyed the community, they were pulling drugs into communities across the country. You know, now they're pulling guns into our community,” Bradley said.
The guns, drugs and violence is what inspired Troy Bradley, who’s a violence prevention coordinator for Safe Streets in Cherry Hill, to do this work, reaching and teaching the community.
“We see violence as a disease. So we like to give injections, the same injection that we were given at trainings, emotional intelligence, you know, conflict, mediation, and the list goes on. We go out there and kind of use those skills when we're engaging with young men out there,” Bradely said.
Each Safe Street site has multiple violence interrupters who go out into the community and try to interrupt a situation before it turns deadly.
“We kind of get ahead of that to prevent something from going from a simple argument, or a simple back and forth tiff that might lead into a shooting, or homicide,” Bradley said.
As of July 18th of 2023, between all the Safe Streets sites combined, there had been 941 mediations. Bradley said often times the job itself generates danger.
“If I'm standing here in a target area, and this guy has a conflict with someone, and they come to shoot at them, they're not going to say, wait a minute, safe streets is out there, they're going to shoot. And that's why you have sometimes see a Safe Streets member was shot and killed,” Bradley said.
Like 46-year-old Dante Barksdale, who was killed in January of 2021, 44-year-old Kenyell Wilson, who was killed in July of 2021, and 29-year-old DaShawn McGrier, who was killed in a quadruple shooting in January of 2022.
On July 1st , the day of the Brooklyn mass shooting where 30 people were shot and two of them murdered, the Brooklyn Safe Streets site workers mediated 5 incidents before that shooting.
Bradley said this culture of violence that’s been adopted throughout the city and country has greatly impacted everyone, especially the youth. He believes it’s deeper-rooted discourse that’s adding to the violent culture.
“You can't listen to a rap song without them killing someone, committing adultery, fornication, doing drugs. I come up with fight the power of self destruction, U-N-I-T-Y you know, all these different things, they don't have that. So these things have been breaded into our youth, you know, the music and the TV shows, and things like that, and death. And this is the end result of disrespect, promiscuous, young women, children doing drugs at the age of 13, and things like that guns in elementary schools, this what you have,” Bradley said.
And he’s convinced the only way to implement change is for leaders, parents and people in the community to be persistent and to keep doing the work to change the culture of violence.
“Put the guns down , mediate your conflicts, let those things go,” Bradley said.
After the Brooklyn mass shooting, a meeting with city leaders highlighted the breakdown in communication between Baltimore Police and community groups like Safe Streets.
The mistakes that BPD made when responding to the event that led to the shooting were also amplified.
Community members are still waiting on the “after action” report to show who exactly made the wrong calls that day and how community groups like Safe Streets will strengthen their relationship with BPD to further minimize violence.
