Ep 1: Gun Violence
Gun violence is horrifying, and each life lost to a gun is a tragedy. Most interventions involve creating punishments for gun possession or use. That can sound like common sense, but in reality, it's a racialized practice. And it's not been that effective for keeping people safe from guns. Are there better ways to prevent gun violence? For this episode, we go to Queens to talk with the fine folks at Community Capacity Development. They have time-tested ideas about the causes and antidotes to gun violence. They're doing the work in Queensbridge, one of the biggest public housing projects in North America.
useful Links
Community Capacity Development (CCD) was our primary guest for this episode. Thank you to the Human Justice Ambassadors Dominique Robinson, Elijah Shippe, and Gary Taylor and CCD founder K Bain for speaking with us and walking us through Queensbridge. Read more about CCD’s work and the Cure Violence movement in an interview with Judy Brown Fears, CCD’s Community Coordinator, here.
There’s a long-running financial problem that faces many great New York City nonprofits. The city delays contracts and payments to the breaking point for many programs, creating impossible pressures. In fall 2024, CCD was forced to lay off their staff and switched to an all-volunteer model. That’s not stopping them from working on Safe Summer 2025. Support their work any way you can.
Here’s Governor Hochul’s 2024 press statement about decreasing gun violence, which is mentioned in the episode.
We mentioned the visionary Eddie Ellis in this episode. Here’s a 2012 talk Eddie Ellis gave in Brooklyn that talks about Human Justice and his work.
Further reading:
In the Marshall Project: 5 Things to Know About the Failed War on Gun Violence.
In the Triibe: “The war on gun violence has failed, and Black men are paying the price.”
In the Trace: A Historian’s Revealing Research on Race and Gun Laws and Chicago Economist Argues for Social Intervention on Gun Violence.
Transcript
Kathleen (host): This is the Problem with Punishment Podcast. Spoiler alert! The problem with punishment is that it doesn't work. But the bigger problem is that we turn to punishment in every aspect of our lives. From our families to our neighborhoods, our boroughs, our city, we keep expecting punishment to make things better when for the most part, it makes whatever problem we're addressing worse.
Every time punishment fails, it hurts. Some people have taken the pain of that failure and turned it into purpose. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño, and I'll be talking with a range of New Yorkers who have experienced firsthand the failure of punishment and who found or created something better to do instead.
From gun violence to child abuse to drug addiction, New York can lead the way in actually solving some of our most pressing problems. But first, we have to talk about the problem with punishment.
Kathleen (host): I'm a born and raised New Yorker, and like many sensible people, I'm concerned about gun violence. Every time there's a school shooting, every time I hear about a homicide or someone dying from gun violence, I feel the pain and loss. I think about the family left behind. I know people who've lost loved ones in circumstances involving guns. The whole range from suicides and accidents to homicides. In the 90s, the neighborhood I lived in had a lot of problems, including gun violence, and gunfire was a part of our everyday lives. I learned the difference between the times when you hear gunfire and you pretty much go about your business, or you have to get behind something because you also hear the sound of bullets whizzing in the air.
I know this is a horrible problem worth addressing, and like many people for years, I thought, well, it's going to mean locking people up, longer penalties for crimes committed with guns, or for being in possession of a gun. I thought this was how we were going to end gun violence. The reality is that, probably sometimes, those things might help prevent gun violence, but there are other strategies that are less harmful and more effective.
Rates of gun violence are going down across the country. In the summer of 2024, Governor Hochul had a press conference and attributed a drop in gun violence in New York State to the laws that she'd put in place and $300 million of funding. Most of that money goes to enforcing rules and punishment. Some of the smaller buckets, when you talk about where the money goes, is for work happening at the community level. That isn't about policing and who you put in prison, but community building. It sounds soft, but it is real, and it's an important strategy to end gun violence.
So we went out one afternoon in the community of Queensbridge and spent time seeing what this work looks like on the ground. We went out with Community Capacity Development. They were doing the daily work to intervene and prevent violence. And I knew other folks from CCD. They invited us to Queensbridge, but this was the first time I met Dom.
Dom R: If there's a potential shots fired or somebody actually got hit, it's our job to respond to that. Come outside right away. Communicate with each other. We actually found a link-up spot near where the incident happened or shots fired happened. We'll pick a spot to link and meet up to gather information to even confirm that it was a shooting, or if it was a shooting, we got the information and we debrief and we check on, say if someone got hit or injured, we check on the victim by doing a hospital response. Half of the team will go to the hospital responding to see if the victim and the family need assistance, and the other half of the team will stay out here and just canvas and constructively shadow. Our job is to basically just watch the community, make sure everything is calm, and there's no violence.
Kathleen (host): On the day we walk through Queensbridge. Bridge, 139 days had passed without a shooting. The numbers were written on a big whiteboard in their office for each of those 139 days. Dom and the other Human Justice Ambassadors were out on the Canvas, they called it. They walk up and down every sidewalk and pathway. They greet everyone they pass. People know who they are. The kids that are biking around know them. The old guys on the bench know them. Folks listening to music know them, and everybody knows what they're there to do. Queensbridge, one of the largest housing projects in North America, does seem like any other neighborhood you might visit… when there's not a shooting.
Kathleen (host): And so, in the Canvas, like you just go out and walk around, or are you walking around just for us?
Dom R: No, we walk around every day. It could be from 4 hours to 6 hours. We construct a shadow. Also, construct a shadow and consist of us basically just checking in with the youth, checking in with the senior citizens, and watching anybody. Like just watching the community, basically to make sure nothing goes, like escalates any conflicts or situations.
Kathleen (host): We're also out on the canvas with Elijah.
Elijah S: We just work to create sustainable relationships with the people in the community, advocate for public safety, and to make sure that we're taking care of each other. You know what I mean? And that's what all of this work is about.
Kathleen (host): Looking out for each other. That's what this work is all about. Elijah's really good at it. Elijah is also a Human Justice Ambassador with CCD. He's why I wanted to go there. He's an expert on Queensbridge, not just because he grew up there, but because he's chosen to make it his job to look out for everyone in his community.
Elijah S: We have four different catchments. We categorize these catchments by a letter. So we have Catchment A, we have Catchment B, which we're working on right now, or also our office is on Catchment B, we have Catchment C that is further down this way which is going towards Vernon Boulevard. And then Catchment D is 40th Avenue. So that's basically the whole strip that connects all of these blocks. All of the catchments, like I said, this catchment right here is where our office is at Catchment B, it's kind of like the heart of Queensbridge. We call this the Hill, you know what I mean?
Dom R: So yeah, we do.
Elijah S: Obviously, you can see it's a little hill that kind of comes up. That's why we call it the Hill right here.
Kathleen (host): When we walked around on this random weekday, it did seem like any other neighborhood. Queensbridge has been made famous for a reason by rappers like NAS. He set his real-life stories of violence and trauma to music. In 2022, when a member of Congress was proposing new gun legislation, she held her press conference at Queensbridge and for a reason. Gun violence is not equally distributed, and Queensbridge has too much of it. So why? There are a lot of stories about how Queensbridge is not a safe place. It's where people get shot and get shot at. It's defined at times by gun violence, but the folks who live here, they want to break that cycle of violence. They want to be seen as a community, getting respect for how hard people are working to build it and to build themselves up.
Elijah S: I don't want to hear that Queensbridge is not a safe place. What are you talking about, the whole bad apple thing, right? And it's like you have certain individuals that have been forced into survival mode, as we like to call it, where we have to tap into the underground street economy, tap into our entrepreneurial skills, and all of these other things. But people here are working, people here are taking care of their families. People here are doing things day in and day out to better themselves. And those stories need to be told more and highlighted more than a news headline about who got shot or who did something negative.
I feel like the people just wait for the underserved communities, they wait for something to happen in the underserved community to create a certain narrative. And we're doing our best as an organization, as Community Capacity Development, to change that narrative and to shift that narrative. So a lot of our kids are going to college, right? A lot of our young people are in extracurricular activities that are helping them advance and become leaders in the community and things of that nature. So those are the things that we want to show. I don't like it when people say that Queensbridge is not a safe place, because while we're here, we feel like it's safe and we keep it safe.
Dom R: I'm gonna say this as much as some people may think that Queensbridge is divided now, we are the 41st, the 40th side, or just overall here in stories. It's not true. We all like, we really are like a big family. Like, I don't know, my friend might be somebody that's my god sister or something. And we all connected in some way. Like, I just feel like we're all just connected period. That we basically are family.
Kathleen (host): Those community connections are both the reason that what the Human Justice Ambassadors do works and the reason the violence is ongoing. The trauma of every shooting ripples out and affects everyone. The Human Justice Ambassadors know they have to address that trauma. If they're going to build the sort of community that can resist and prevent more violence.
Elijah S: All of us are Human Justice Ambassadors, and that's what that's really about. So, showing families that we actually care. Showing them that we're here for them and that if they need anything, they can come to us.
Kathleen (host): We're on our second or third loop, and one of the kids bikes by again. They say hi again, and Dom tells me a little bit more about him.
Dom R: His father was a victim of gun violence and lost his life.
Kathleen (host): Now, on some level, I can relate to that kid. He's young, 9 or 10. I was 15 when my brother was killed. The circumstances were different, but my brother's life was ended by a gun. In the most important ways, the impact is the same. The loss of someone to a gun homicide is just unspeakable grief, rage, such a deep sense of powerlessness that someone you may or may not even know in a split second can take everything from the person you love and create a hole in the lives of you and your family. That's never going to be filled in the same way. There's a permanence to it. It's too easy for people to make horrible, permanent decisions when there are guns around. That's why everything that takes guns out of people's hands in everyday life has an impact. But the story we hear most of the time is that after an act of gun violence, the thing that's going to prevent future violence is finding someone and punishing them. But there is a role for healing in preventing future violence, a role for healing in creating communities without more gun violence. I know there's something else here, and the Human Justice Ambassadors are actually doing it.
Elijah S: Everywhere we go. We know somebody, people showing us love, and we're changing the narrative and the culture out here where it's like, no, you should be able to go to the other side to go meet up with your cousin and not have to worry about somebody saying, this is my block, or this is my turf, or this is mine, mine, mine, right? What kind of strides or progress will we be able to make when everybody has the proper training and has the proper resources and assistance to be able to be more effective and help people progress and grow, right? How is it that we're able to be twice as good and half the time, right? And being able to work with the bare minimum and still being able to succeed and hit milestones and find ways, innovative ways at that, to be of service to our people and our community even when we have absolutely nothing. But we have the bare minimum.
Kathleen (host): They're here in the community every day, ready and able to be of service. They understand that creating community is one of the best ways to prevent the sort of escalating of violence that's causing so much pain and suffering, and they're getting just a drop in the bucket of the hundreds of millions of dollars that our state is spending to prevent gun violence.
Elijah S: We don't have the funding or the manpower to cover certain parts of the neighborhood, which we wish that was different, because imagine if we had access to a square mile versus, you know, a square block, right? And I feel like that's what Human Justice is, us expanding and being able to take the work that we do and the resources and the tools that we have to touch people, you know, on a larger scale. We don't want to just be confined to one neighborhood or one area, right? We have a team deployed in Woodside, Queens. We have other Cure Violence sites that we collaborate with across the city. Our community liaisons go to several neighborhoods around the city, right? Our community liaisons canvassed Queensbridge, Woodside, and Astoria houses all today, just today. So it's about building our network. And, you know, our equation is human rights plus human development equals human justice and inalienable freedoms, making sure everybody has the right to their basic needs, food, water, shelter, right? Opportunity, we talk about development, people being able to tap into certain resources, and being put in environments where they can flourish and thrive, right?
Kathleen (host): As I'm walking around with Dom, I ask her how she became a Human Justice Ambassador.
Dom R: Before I even got into this work, my friend, one of my close friends, she was the one who opened the door for us to even find out what a Crisis Management Site is. Also anti-gun violence site, we didn't even know that existed. We didn't even know anything like that was in place. Where they have an organization, a nonprofit in different boroughs that focuses on only tackling gun violence. Even though that's not the sole overall, but that's the main thing that we tackle. So me already being a safe person, I am living in Queensbridge, already stepping in front of violence, interruption, and stuff like that, it was an easy kind of, I guess it came easy to me.
Elijah S: Canvassing and being in tune with the community is one of the most important factors, because how can you really help people if you don't meet them where they're at? You know, and check in with them on a recurring basis to make sure that they're okay, and let them know that as an organization and as individuals, we care about their well-being. We care about their development and their future. Shout out to our team for-
Dom R: Yes.
Elijah S: Being boots on the ground.
Kathleen (host): It's not easy to be the person who goes and talks to people when they've lost a loved one. It's one of the hardest things to do. It's so hard that most people don't do it.
Dom R: I already was doing this. It's something I've been doing all my life. I'm still learning as I go. Basically, my point is, it's more than just knowing somebody because you're from there. You have to actually have a set of tools to really get in between interruptions and stuff like that.
Kathleen (host): I feel compelled to just say, objectively, crisis intervention is difficult.
Dom R: Yes, it is.
Kathleen (host): When you say it's easy for you, what you're describing is a gift or a talent.
Dom R: As in like, yeah, a gift. I guess you could call that a gift. Basically, it's trying to be here for my community.
Kathleen (host): Dom and Elijah and the other Human Justice Ambassadors I met that day, they're both extraordinary and ordinary at the same time. There are people who realize they have a gift. Connecting with people in the hardest moments of their lives, that it makes a difference and they commit to using that gift fully. We walked around together and I saw so many people greet them. The neighbors know they're there on the good days and bad days. They're always looking out. They're not coming from outside the community to look over people's shoulders, but they're in it with them. Is this kid going to be okay today? What does that family need? They're also thinking about the big picture. What does this community need to be safer? As we walked around the sycamores, Elijah shared with me his perspective on reinvesting back in the community, creating a cycle of people who also want to give back and contribute to the development of the neighborhood. That's part of what makes this Human Justice approach so effective. It can be scaled up.
Elijah S: When you talk about reinvestment, when you talk about giving back to your community, giving back to where you're from, that's what brought me here. So I was outside in the neighborhood. People out here in Queensbridge know me to be a positive guy. I'm an artist. I like to have a good time. I always make sure my people are good, take care of my family. "E, you a credible messenger? I think you should come work on my organization." That's how I was approached by the other credible messengers and Human Justice Ambassadors that work here, that wanted to pay it forward, and to make sure that people that are from the community are a part of the work. So that's how I found my way to doing this work specifically.
Kathleen (host): And Elijah found his way to doing this work through Community Capacity Development. They're focused on human justice and healing rather than figuring out who to punish. I want you to hear from K Bain, the founder and CEO. He shared an example of a policy that was part of people's daily lives here for years, and how it fell short.
K Bain: When Stop, Question, and Frisk, for example, was finding firearms–it was less than 1% of those 700,000 in a year produced a gun–we doubled down on those things. We need to take that same energy and approach to Human Justice, to healing work and say, you know what? It's not going to be perfect. There will be errors. There will be places, opportunities for improvement. But let's really dedicate ourselves to this process of rehumanizing. And let's try something different, because what we've been doing hasn't worked.
Kathleen (host): And try something different because what we've been doing hasn't worked, that's exactly it. Because trying to punish our way out of gun violence, it isn't working well enough or fast enough. That's what K was seeing and why he turned to a focus on Human Justice when he started CCD.
K Bain: So when you pose a question that makes us think about rehumanization instead of punishment as a solution, I think it fits nicely into our sustainable growth plan, into our rehumanization approach that looks at people in survival mode that have survival behaviors that haven't had an opportunity to, as was so eloquently laid out, define and design their own purpose.
Kathleen (host): One of the fundamental misunderstandings people have about almost any form of violence is that the most effective point of intervention is immediately before the violence happens.
K Bain: We don't like to take that sophisticated, in-depth look. We want to oversimplify and put things in boxes, right? And we want to invest in things that have not worked. We spend $87 billion a year incarcerating people. And yet the prison industrial complex grows, and violence increases. But we don't say, hey, let's do a reassessment of that. We continue in the ways, in the spaces, that have not been successful. And so I love your question in how we approach this. We understand, I heard someone say recently, hurt people, hurt people, and it hurts. And so violence begets violence, which begets violence.
Kathleen (host): In a lot of people's minds. They believe that a violent act occurs only because someone got there a moment too late. But in a lot of cases, it's more like a year or five years too late. We can't always prevent the worst thing from happening five seconds before it happens, but there is a way to go upstream.
Elijah S: Every day we canvas and we're outside, even when we're not on the clock.
Dom R: Yep.
Kathleen (host): Their framework is they have to be twice as good in half the time. That's the standard they apply to themselves for what CCD is trying to accomplish for their community in Queensbridge.
Elijah S: There aren't that many, if any, underserved communities in the country that have gone a whole year without shooting. That's just like, virtually unheard of, right? So for us to be able to do that, and being that CCD is a newer Cure Violence organization, right? Even though all of the individuals and credible messengers, the Human Justice Ambassadors that are part of our team, have been doing that work, this working way before we even got where we're at. You know, that's how we even were selected to be in the position that we're in, doing the work before we even were recognized for it, right? So imagine instead of it taking five years, it took two, or it took three. Instead of stopping one or two, we stopped one or 200 like, you know, and it's not being televised and talked about, and it's not something that you can necessarily put your finger on if you're not directly here, you know, and physically here day in and day out.
K Bain: I think there's a connection here in the fact that we focus on changing mindsets, developing transferable skill sets.
Kathleen (host): Part of what strikes me is spending time with them is that they are going upstream. They're tending to the community and working on the big picture, how this community and all the people in it are either going to thrive or suffer together.
K Bain: It's interesting, though, that we have access to the highest quality, high-powered firearms, and we can't get organic arugula if our life depended on it. We can't get produce of any standard. Our technology, we suffer and struggle in that area. It's hard to get Wi-Fi in the projects and housing developments. Still, with all the money given to the infrastructure, you can't catch my call. Half the time we ain't FaceTiming or nothing while you're in the hood. So it's ironic that we have access to so much and then access to so little.
If any other industry were measured the way that prisons are measured, it would be a terrible, tragic failure. If an automobile company or manufacturer, after one year, a third of their models didn't work, after three years, 60% of what they produce failed. That's the recidivism rate in prisons. If this were the reality, Eddie Ellis taught me, then they would be out of business. But prison is the one place where you can fail year in, year out and increase your revenue and profits on the return.
Kathleen (host): K mentions Eddie Ellis. So I'll just say he's a pillar of the movement to end violence. He worked on state-level violence directed at communities, and also on interpersonal violence and communities. He was a mentor to so many people. He had a vision for human justice, and he studied and talked about how communities where the government investment was in prisons and punishment didn't have resources for other strategies that could work better. And we're changing this. The folks at CCD are living this change right now.
K Bain: So we know that prisons don't work. What works, though? What works is investing in human beings and seeing them as such. What works is understanding that you are born with rights to dignity, fairness, justice, and equity. What works is to be heard, seen, and listened to. To build your personal sustainable growth plan, and then make sure that we work with you to achieve what success looks like for you. And as much as I appreciate them acknowledging our stopping gun violence, I wish they would pay closer attention to our tools and to how we, again, help people foster their self-discipline, how we foster communication intergenerationally.
You know, there was a time in Queensbridge when I came, and some of the old heads, the elders, would say, "Yo, these kids over here need to pull up their pants or stop smoking in front of the building."
Well, as the years progressed, those elders found their way to talk to those young people and say, "help me with my groceries and pick up your pants."
And so that happens more readily when you're involved in Human Justice work. And young people go to elders more and say, "You know what, I need some help and support with this, or I need a ride here or there."
That communication is something that we're very proud of, helping people find more effective communication. Because when you don't have it, when you're not working on emotional intelligence or communication, then violence finds its way in.
Kathleen (host): This is what we're talking about when we're talking about going upstream on the problem of gun violence. There are a lot of ways we can take guns out of conflict and out of people's hands, without relying solely on coercion and punishment. This Human Justice Ambassador approach that puts being there for people first, thinking about what their basic needs might be, and helping them meet them. It isn't the sort of thing that makes for splashy headlines, but it's a core part of strategies for the hard work of reducing and someday eliminating gun violence.
You can learn more about Community Capacity Development's work at their website, ccdworldwide.org. Thanks so much for listening.
This podcast was produced in Brooklyn, New York. The unceded ancestral lands of the Lenape and Canarsie people. We thank all the ancestors for caring for this land over the generations, and we're committed to the work of creating a shared future that includes the Native communities that are still here, and all the people who call this land home.
Thank you to the team at Community Capacity Development for welcoming us to Queensbridge for this episode, Dominique Robinson, Elijah Shippe, Gary Taylor, and CCD founder, K Bain. Thanks to our podcast team, Dr Candace King, Emilce Quiroz, Rafael Issa, Reverend Doctor Sharon White-Harrigan, and Tess Weiner. Thank you to our Resonate production team, especially our creative partner, Julius Shepard-Morgan. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño. This podcast is a project of the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, with support from Trinity Wall Street. You can learn more about the collaborative and our other creative projects at beyondpunishment.org.
