Phila. CeaseFire intervenes to stop the violence

Terry Starks' voice rang out as he shouted through a bullhorn at a busy intersection in North Philadelphia.

"We're tired of the senseless violence out here," Starks, 34, called out to passersby and a handful of people milling in front of a bar at Ridge and Cecil B. Moore Avenues. "A brother lost his life out here Friday."

"We're Philadelphia CeaseFire," Brandon Jones, 26, yelled through another bullhorn. "We are here because we think change can happen here."

Their comments drew the attention of some pedestrians who paused to listen; others responded with wary gazes.

The pair, wearing orange T-shirts with the word Interrupter emblazoned on the back on a recent weekday evening, were participating with others in a "Walk for Peace" as part of an antiviolence outreach effort started in July in a hardscrabble slice of North Philadelphia.

The program's area of focus is the 22d Police District, which police said had 34 homicides in 2010. There have been 38 homicides in the district this year from Jan. 1 to Oct. 6, police said.

Philadelphia CeaseFire uses a public-health approach to reducing violence among teens and young men, said Marla Davis Bellamy, program director in Philadelphia.

The idea is to identify young people who have been shot and those at risk of being shot and to offer them guidance and counseling from street-smart "interrupters" who know violence firsthand.

CeaseFire approaches "the whole notion of violence being a public-health issue and looks at it as a disease," Davis Bellamy said during a recent morning meeting with the program's five-member staff, three of them ex-offenders, at its office at Temple University at Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

Philadelphia CeaseFire is based on CeaseFire Chicago, which was launched in 2000 and which was the subject of a documentary, The Interrupters. The effort uses a three-pronged approach to preventing violence: identification and detection; interruption, intervention, and risk reduction; and changing behavior and norms, officials said.

Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist, developed the program in Chicago using techniques he employed during years of combating the spread of AIDS and other diseases in Africa. It was created in conjunction with the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. The Philadelphia program is linked to Temple University Hospital.

In a telephone interview, Slutkin discussed how the program looks at violence as an epidemic.