The third of three parts. Read part one and part two.
DeVon Madden has come Downtown most afternoons since September, when he learned that its sidewalks had become overrun with teenagers who were bumping into pedestrians, stealing from businesses and fighting with each other.
Now he knows with precision why Downtown has become a gathering place for teenagers. Pittsburgh Public Schools students are dismissed at 2:15 p.m., and many of them transfer buses Downtown on their way home. Some of them get a bite to eat at McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts while they wait for their next bus. And some of them decide to continue hanging out. So there’s a crowd there already, which causes other kids to flock Downtown and join them.
Urban Pathways Academy dismisses at 3:30 p.m., as does City Charter High School 10 minutes later. Dozens more students join the crowd that’s already formed near McDonald’s.
Some kids hang at Starbucks. And some kids go out of their way not to walk by McDonald’s because they say those kids are too rowdy. And oftentimes it’s not the groups of kids that hang out right after school — but others who come Downtown an hour or two later — who have been causing the most trouble, Madden said.
Madden works as a violence intervention outreach worker for REACH, a violence prevention program run by the nonprofit Center That Cares, which receives its funding from the city of Pittsburgh. If you go Downtown after school hours, you’ll often see him in a football jacket, in or near a crowd of teenagers, ready to point a finger or give a glare when he sees signs of trouble.
“I'm trying to build relationships like, ‘Yo, yo, yo, stop it. Don't be throwing that paper on the ground.’ ‘Don't slap a girl.’” he said. “I'm in there with 'em because if I don't, the girl is going to slap him back. He’s gonna slap her harder. Now she’s gonna call somebody.”
The city hasn’t been able to hire as many police officers as it has budgeted for in recent years, so there aren’t as many bodies to go around. And the Gainey administration has made it clear that it doesn’t want police bringing teens into the criminal justice system for minor offenses. As the city looks for ways to address problems Downtown, one of the most promising to emerge is a plan to increase the number of violence interventionists working there.
Pittsburgh Police officer Eldridge Kimbrough, who patrols Downtown, said violence interrupters do work he can’t because some kids don’t trust anyone in a police uniform, he said. And his responsibilities are more broad than those of the interrupters.
“I may be standing here looking at these kids, but I'm also paying attention to what the heck is going on at Market Square,” he said. “[DeVon] is not really worried about Market Square too much. He's down here worried about these kids. But as soon as I hear homeless men sleep in some place or domestic [violence] going on, kids are like the last thing on my mind. So that's why it's so important to have them down here.”
After school success in Carrick
On a cold Monday afternoon in December, Madden stood on the corner of a shopping center across the street from Pittsburgh Carrick High School as the school doors opened and kids streamed out.
He spoke with a freshman who had broken his foot roughhousing: Where was the boy’s protective boot? After a few similar conversations that lasted about 15 minutes, only a few students remained hanging around the shopping plaza.
Madden was originally hired to do outreach in South Side and south Hilltop neighborhoods, including Knoxville and Carrick. He began the 2022-2023 school year focused on kids gathering outside Carrick High School. The nearly empty plaza in December was a far cry from September, according to Brian Shelton, a Pittsburgh Police officer who has monitored it for around three years.
“There was a time we had maybe five fights going on at one time. You got 250 kids,” he said. “That's all stopped.”
The fights often involved petty issues, Shelton said. The kids just needed someone to listen and help them respond. That’s where Madden and two of his REACH colleagues who work in the plaza with him, excel, Shelton said.
Chelsea Gennetti, who works at Pizza Hut in the plaza, agreed. The restaurant used to lock its doors to prevent students from coming in after school and causing trouble. That’s changed in the past couple of months.
REACH’s success at Carrick offers a potential model for reducing some of the violence and disruption that businesses complain about Downtown. The city says it is increasing the number of violence intervention workers it relies on, and REACH already has begun to tentatively shift its focus from five other areas across the city to also include Downtown. But so far, it hasn’t had a consistent presence Downtown other than Madden.
The city has proposed a new ambassador program Downtown this year that would provide an additional adult presence. (The city cut funding for a similar program in 2009.) The city also plans to transform its Downtown police substation this year to make it more welcoming for the community, although it has offered few details about how these changes could reduce teenage mischief.
The violence intervention program, on the other hand, already has been used in other parts of the city, such as Carrick.
This isn’t the kind of work that just anyone can do, according to Cornell Jones, the city’s director of street outreach and violence intervention coordinator. They must be familiar with the kids who live in the communities, and they must have credibility.
“We're bringing in people who are seasoned that understand the element of dealing with the street,” he said.
Some kids say they feel safer hanging out Downtown than in their own neighborhoods because it’s traditionally been considered neutral ground amid neighborhood rivalries. That presents a unique challenge for violence interrupters because Downtown draws students from all across the city. And there aren’t many people with the contacts and skills to connect with them, Jones said.
“DeVon is one of those people who could bounce around, which is good,” he said. “Not everyone's like that.”
Connected and relatable
One of Madden’s biggest strengths, he said, is his life experience. He flunked seventh grade twice and was kicked out of Oliver High School after his freshman year. His high school football coach described Madden as one of the best athletes he’d ever seen but also called him “wild.” Madden graduated from Brashear High School with a 1.6 GPA.
There were around 10 children in his house growing up, he said. Although many of his siblings were older and out of the house, his mom also took care of his nieces and nephews.
“I didn't have a lot of social and emotional support in my house,” he said. “So school for me became just a place as an outlet to rest, get food and hang out. Academics wasn't a priority because everybody was surviving.”
Madden lacked the grades to get a top football scholarship, but he eventually landed at what was then known as Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Madden was close to flunking out when his football coach called Madden “a cancer” and cut him from the team.
Football had always motivated Madden to stay on track in life. Only after he’d been cut from the team, he said, did he more fully turn his life around. Madden started mentoring high school athletes in the Pittsburgh area through a workout program called 2/10ths. That spurred his idea to “shadow” students who, like him, needed additional support. Since creating the nonprofit Shadow Student Athletes a decade ago after he graduated from Clarion, he’s led a prominent 7-on-7 football program in the area and helped oversee a small staff of mentors who worked in Pittsburgh Public Schools.
So when he’s Downtown, Madden often is interrupted by students or community members who know him and want to say hello.
“When I go Downtown and I see a 15-year-old Black kid, I automatically see myself,” he said. “So even when I see a kid being a jerk — being rude, being disrespectful — I have to always take a moment, like I was there before. That particular kid might be having some personal issues at his home.”
Continued problems
On a recent Thursday, Dontae, a 15-year-old Perry High School student who Madden knew from Grandview Elementary School, had gotten into a fight.
Dontae told Madden that kids jumped him and tried to take his money in McDonald’s. Dontae had been getting into problems with another group of kids through social media, Madden said, and the online fight became real when they crossed paths Downtown.
One day later, Dontae was outside the McDonald’s, hanging out with his friends again. This time Madden stood nearby. Madden had arrived later than usual the day before, and he said the fight wouldn’t have happened if he had been there.
“I have enough rapport with him that he respects me enough,” Madden said.
Dontae agreed. “I knew Coach Von since I came out the womb,” Dontae said. “Some people, they see Coach Von and be like, ‘Oh, nah, we can't do that right now. We'll have to wait until, like, he leaves or something.'"
But Dontae’s mom, Shantese Skrine, isn’t so sure. She said she asked for information about the fight but wasn’t impressed with the response. “They really didn't have any answers, and they really didn't stop anything,” she said. “They're still going to fight. They're not a cop. Those kids don't care.”
She worries that the kids who jumped her son could return with weapons.
Jones, who coordinates violence interrupters for the city, said worries like hers have merit.
“A lot of times if we don't deal with it, it will build up to shooting,” he said.
Dontae plays football in the fall but doesn’t have after-school activities the rest of the year. So he often hangs out Downtown after school. A month after the fight, Madden told Dontae that if he wants to be part of Madden’s 7-on-7 football program in the spring, he can’t hang around Downtown past 5 p.m. anymore.
Not enough Maddens
Madden has been the only interventionist — besides police —– who has been a regular presence Downtown during five visits by WESA.
Jones, who coordinates the interventionists for the city, said Downtown wasn’t part of the city’s original plan for deploying them. Instead, it focused on neighborhoods where they thought violence was more likely to occur. REACH’s website says it works in The Hill District, North Side, Eastside, South Side, West End and Hazelwood. Downtown didn’t have as many problems before the pandemic, Jones said.
“Downtown…came later as a place that we would go to start dealing with stuff,” Jones said.
Downtown needs more interventionists, Madden said. Right now a volunteer group, MAD Dads, sends a couple of men to the neighborhood a couple of days each week. But Madden pointed to several hot spots that need a consistent presence.
“You got to have somebody at McDonald's. You've gotta have somebody at Market Square. You gotta have somebody on three blocks on Liberty,” he said.
Kimbrough, the police officer, said increasing the presence of interrupters would make it less likely that kids would end up in an altercation with police.
“I just don't see enough of them down here,” he said. “... I would love to have more of them down here. That would be fantastic.”
Neither Jones, nor spokespeople for the city or public safety department confirmed how many violence interrupters the city intends to have overall or Downtown. A city spokesperson said she initially thought the plan was to double their numbers in 2023, from 15 to 30, but didn’t respond to multiple emails to verify this. The city contracts through REACH, and Jones said REACH already employs about 30 people.
“Honestly, I don't know the exact number because I know we just brought on like two more recently,” Jones said. “We're still in expansion mode. I know that there will be some more presence Downtown.”
Madden said it’s important that any people who come Downtown are trained to do quality work. The need for high quality intervention, and not just bodies, is backed up by Pittsburgh’s past. The city started another violence interruption program in 2004 after a spike in homicides; One Vision One Life focused on the South Side, the North Side and the Hill District. But the program was discontinued in 2012; an analysis of the city program published the year before showed that the program didn’t appear to be reducing violence. Instead, in comparison to other neighborhoods with similar challenges, the number of violent incidents increased in the very places where the violence interrupters were working.
Last week an 18-year-old was arrested and charged with criminal homicide, following a Downtown shooting just as schools were dismissing students.
One of the challenges of doing this work during a time of rising violence, Madden said: Nobody notices when his presence deters violence.
“The moment someone gets killed, people feel that violence prevention isn't worth investing in and it's not working,” he said.
Editor’s note: Read An-Li Herring’s report on the concerns of downtown businesses and Sarah Schneider’s story on options for young people after school.
