Nearly a year after its launch, a community violence intervention program based in northeast Oklahoma City updated the public on the progress of its goals recently and announced plans for a "summer of peace."
LiveFree OKC, started in August last year, is piloting the state's first gun violence intervention program in the city's Ward 7, home to the city's historically and predominantly Black neighborhoods. With local rapper and entrepreneur Jabee Williams as its executive director, LiveFree OKC aimed in its first year to reduce gun violence by 20% in the city's northeast community.
According to recent data provided by the Oklahoma City Police Department and shared by LiveFree staff, the number of shooting-related deaths on the city's east side has dropped sharply in the last several months.
“We have only had three homicides in the northeast community this year, and we know that only two were the result of gun violence," Williams said. "In 2021, we had 15 homicides. In 2022, we had seven, and in 2023, we had 12. And so we can say, in 2024 ... we're going into the summer, feeling good about the possibilities."
The decline in gun violence deaths corresponds to program activity and service interventions by LiveFree OKC within the same time window. The program staff involves a PeaceTeam of several PeaceMakers, a LifeCoach, and a board of directors with well-known advocates from across the city.
'It's the whole community, and it's going to always take us all'
But LiveFree staff remained humble about their effect on the recent statistics, arguing that the reduction in gun violence was the combined effort of the community and not just the program itself.
"I think everything has been going pretty good," said Brandon Banks, the lead PeaceMaker for the LiveFree OKC PeaceTeam. "We're out engaging with the community, talking with the youth, just trying to effect change and effect peace, man, and they seem to be receptive. But, you know, you've just got to kind of really stay on them, man."
"Overall, though, I think the PeaceMakers are doing a great job, and I think the community is doing a great job. It's not just LiveFree OKC, it's the whole community, and it's going to always take us all. That's the beauty of it all."
Williams and other local activists were introduced to the violence intervention program model in 2022 by Pastor Mike McBride, director for the nationwide Live Free USA nonprofit devoted to reducing gun violence and mass incarceration. The network approaches gun violence as a matter of public health, implementing a data-driven, evidence-based "logic model" built on developing trust and intervening in crises for people at the highest risk of involvement in shootings.
As a lifelong resident of the city's east side, Lyn Jackson, the LiveFree OKC board secretary, said she knew the community's history with the police would cause many of its residents to feel unwilling to depend on the department for help. But she also said the community was now benefitting from having the LiveFree team work with the department, "not in a manner of turning over information or solving cases for them," but in bettering the community partnership proactively with the police and allowing for a different approach.
"There is something about having people in the community that you trust," Jackson said. "There's something about having individuals in the community that you are able to trust and that you're able to talk to, to say that these situations are going on, and these individuals being able to serve as an example and show a different way in handling the problems that are going on within the community."
How the LiveFree PeaceTeam works, and the challenges it's faced
The LiveFree PeaceTeam works to identify people at high risk of violent confrontations, allowing trusted community members to intervene. Once issues are peacefully resolved, the nonprofit provides case management and wraparound services to those high-risk individuals to constructively support their mental health and divert them away from cycles of retaliation.
The program faced immediate challenges in September of last year when a fatal shooting occurred after a Sunset Sundays event on the corner of the NE 23 EastPoint development, near the LiveFree offices. The shooting frustrated Williams and other members of the community, but LiveFree staff members believe the current statistics for this year indicate their work is having a positive effect.
Williams — who has lost a brother and other family members and friends to gun violence — urged the community to remain diligent and to continue working together toward a "Summer of Peace." The hot seasonal months are known to be a time where gun violence trends upward nationally, but Williams and other community advocates are hopeful their efforts can keep the number of shooting deaths down.
LiveFree staff acknowledge, however, it won't be an easy task. The day before LiveFree held its news conference in the EastPoint breezeway, police responded to a reported shooting near NE 23 and N Martin Luther King Avenue. The victim was hospitalized with minor injuries.
And the same afternoon as the LiveFree conference, a 4-year-old was rushed to an area hospital after being shot at a home near NE 16 and N Lottie Avenue in what police were initially investigating as a possible accident.
A look at the statistics:Gun violence is a public health crisis, surgeon general says
The statistics for gun violence elsewhere throughout the United States are grim. Jess Eddy, director of LiveFree OKC operations, pointed to a recent advisory from the U.S. surgeon general declaring gun violence a public health crisis for the country.
The first-of-its-kind report from the nation's top doctor called out the rise in deaths of young people attributed to firearms, and the cascading effects of firearm deaths on Black Americans and other communities as part of the crisis.
"While the report paints a stark picture of the level of harm we are experiencing, it also provides recommendations on effective ways for us to mitigate the spread of gun violence, because it travels from person to person just like a disease," Eddy said. "Implementation of community violence intervention programs like LiveFree are the cornerstone to what the surgeon general recommends and describes as a public heath approach to treating a public health crisis."
Numerous leaders from citywide and countywide organizations were thanked for their collaborative partnerships with LiveFree OKC, but Williams said more work needed to be done. He then announced a “Peace Needs” Conference would be held Sept. 26-28 at the Fordson Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City.
“We have to continue to come together, learn, discuss and expand our collaboration, if we are going to truly eliminate gun violence in our communities,” Williams said. “We will create a space and time for our community to come together and build peace. We’re calling it the Peace Needs Conference because peace needs every one of us.”
The conference is expected to bring to the city national experts on gun violence and leaders in its prevention. Keynote speakers will include peace activist Diana Oestreich and Public Enemy rapper Chuck D.
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