It was a brisk November night around 2 a.m. My phone went off and startled me. I recognized the caller ID – it was a family member. Having worked at the Nonviolence Institute (NVI) for 16 years, I’d grown accustomed to being awoken suddenly in the middle of the night. A large percentage of the violence in Rhode Island occurs in the early morning hours when the clubs empty out and intoxicated (often young) people too often make bad decisions. Part of the NVI’s mission is to respond when violence occurs – dispatching teams to the hospital and sometimes also to the streets to support victims and to head off retaliation.
Most of the time, the calls come straight from Rhode Island Hospital’s Social Work Department. They let us know that someone has been shot, stabbed or assaulted. Could NVI assist? The first thing we ask is for the victim’s name, and that’s for a simple reason: We want to be mentally prepared. Having worked in the state for 24 years, our staff often know the individuals involved. Sometimes that’s because our outreach specialists – also known as “street workers” – have built relationships with those most at-risk. Sometimes it’s simply because we ourselves are from the communities we serve.
The level of our alarm in each case doesn’t necessarily track the seriousness of the underlying crime. A random bar fight between strangers can end in a homicide. We are often more concerned by a less lethal incident between two known enemies from rival neighborhoods. That’s because, as Rhode Island’s own Dr. Megan Ranney’s research proves, violence is contagious. Any given incident could prompt retaliation. And as we know, cycles of retaliation left uninterrupted can make it so that violence becomes “normalized.” That’s why we do our work, to upend the culture of violence…