Cure Violence

Jerome Williams worked to head off violent conflicts in the Dutchtown neighborhood in south St. Louis.

Live Free USA, a faith-based organization out of Oakland, will fill the training and technical support role previously occupied by Cure Violence Global. Mission: St. Louis will be in charge of hiring the people to do the interruption work in the community, a role previously held by Employment Connection and the Urban League.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says his agency will offer up $100 million in grants to groups that try to stop people from committing violent crime.

The program operates in five of the city’s highest-crime neighborhoods. It trains residents of those neighborhoods to intervene in conflicts to try to prevent them from turning deadly.

The St. Louis mayor and public safety director backed a plan last week to bring in 50 federal agents to reduce violent crime and fill a shortage of local police officers.

The Dutchtown neighborhood, in southeast St. Louis, has seen anti-violence initiatives come and go over the years.Now it’s one of three neighborhoods…

Early this spring, Shamyia Ford Jennings, 17, walked with her cousin and a friend to a corner store in north St. Louis. Minutes later, she was in St.…

St. Louis will soon start spending money on a program that officials hope will make a difference in reducing violent crime throughout the city.The St.…

Updated Oct. 3 with approval by the Board of Estimate and ApportionmentFunding to start a nationally recognized anti-violence program in St. Louis has…

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 25, 2010 - Candles have an especially unpleasant meaning for Jeanette Culpepper. She recalls a…