LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Looking at a picture of her son Tyree, Sherita Smith remembers the birthday present he got her in September 2021.
"It always takes me back to a couple weeks before it happened," Smith said. "My birthday was on the first and he said, 'Mama, your birthday present is gonna be a little late.'"
Tyree got her the newest pair of Jordan shoes, to match some he had. Tyree, then 16, told her they were a few hundred dollars, and when Sherita told him he shouldn't have spent so much, he said, "Well, you spend all your money on me."
"And so it just always took me back to how kindhearted he was; he got his job and all he ever thought about was buying this for his sister, buying this for his brother...he just always thought about doing stuff for other people," Smith said.
That was the last birthday they would spend together, as Tyree was killed as an innocent bystander in a drive-by shooting at a bus stop on Sept. 22 in the Russell neighborhood.
"It was times I was like, ‘I'll change and switch places with my son any day,'" Smith said in 2021.
For the last three years, Louisville leaders have been trying to force these sad stories into the minds of gang and violent street group members to show them the pain gun violence is causing. They do it through the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) program.
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GVI is an anti-violence strategy being used in over 50 cities around the world. The idea is to gather all the city's top law enforcement, prosecutors and social service providers together to share a message of focused deterrence with the small number of people responsible for the majority of the violence.
The program reaches people in two ways: call-ins and custom notifications. A call-in is a meeting at a neutral site where offenders on probation or parole hear from the mayor, chief of police and grieving mothers. The hope is that they will engage in social service programs for housing, food and more instead of turning back to a life of crime.
In a FOCUS Investigation this past March, FOCUS investigator Travis Breese showed how a strict legal definition from the Kentucky Department of Corrections was stopping anyone from being required to attend a call-in, and rather only encouraged.
However, plans were being developed to start requiring people through court orders.
On Aug. 24, at a meeting that has not been publicized until now, new GVI Director Michael Bogan flipped the call-in strategy on its head. Instead of organizing call-ins around adults and the adult court system, Bogan instead organized a juvenile call-in.
It was the first ever in Louisville and one of only a handful that have been done across the country.
"For the simple reason that the juveniles we were looking at were the drivers of the violence," Kim Moore said, who is the "credible messenger" for GVI.
According to the city, 19 juveniles attended, many with their parents. This far surpasses the attendance the city had been averaging at adult call-ins, which was four people.
"We had all the major players from different gangs; O-Block, E-Block, Victory, all of those people in the same room at the same time," Moore said. "And we didn't have any kind of chaos at all."
The meeting was held at the Muhammad Ali Center and it was called "Leave to Lead", as in, "Leave the streets to become a leader in the community," according to Moore.
A combination of court orders from juvenile judges and referrals from other programs were used to get the 19 attendees. The mayor's office said many of the attendees had cases still pending in court, and they ranged from robbery to first degree assault charges.
But the meeting was not about arresting people or court cases.
"I mean of course every time, you know, the feds and the police is involved and people show up with criminal records, they think they're gonna get locked up," Moore said. "But we let them know on the front end that, that meeting...there was no enforcement energy. Unless your behavior became, you know, bad in that meeting, and then it would be some, you know, enforcement."
The meeting was more so about emphasizing to these young people that they still have time to change, and they may not have long lives if this continues.
Moore was adamant there are no "free passes" with GVI.
"So, if you have committed a crime, of course, you know, you're gonna go to court, and there are times when we have to know that people have to go sit down," Moore said. "And even though I like little Johnny, and I think he was on the road to coming out, he caught another gun charge. So, he has to sit down. When he sits down, when he decides to get out. He contacts me, his family contacts me, one of these agencies contacts me, or whoever else that’s in our mix and we still work with them."
Sherita Smith was the community impact speaker at the meeting. She was very pleased with the amount of counselors, doctors and nurses at the meeting as well. She felt with the multi-layered message, they really got through to the kids.
"You could tell some of the ones that were ready to change," she said. "Like the officers were saying, 'We know who you are.' And once you're figured out, what else can you do?"
Moore says the attendance at the juvenile call-in is just one example of the new momentum GVI has under Director Michael Bogan, who has led the program since July.
"One of the things they did differently is they went to see every one of these juveniles before the call-in," she said. "And so, I think that was the catalyst to get the families to buy in."
Bogan said he spent much of his first four months on the job educating people about what GVI is.
"I found that I had a quite a bit of work to do to increase awareness about what our mission and message is, and I'm still working on that," Bogan said. "But there is a sense of urgency when I speak to the community when I speak to our stakeholders, because the crime rate is before us."
He said going forward, he will hold both juvenile and adult call-ins.
"Mayor Greenberg has given me the resources to do all of the above," Bogan said.
No dates have been set for the next adult call-in, but it is being planned according to officials. The legal definition from the KY Department of Corrections is still preventing adults from being mandated to go without a court order.
The city gave this statement when asked about increasing attendance for all ages:
We desire full participation from all GVI focused individuals which include adults and juveniles. Court orders are the most desired method to encourage participation. However, not all participants are court ordered. Regarding juveniles, nearly half were court ordered and the remaining were a combination of referrals and guardians wanting to do something for their children. Regarding the adults, a small number were court ordered. For those not court ordered Probation and Parole will utilize the following methods to increase attendance: all participants are mailed an official GVI Call-in Meeting letter, participants are encouraged (during a face-to-face meeting) to attend by their assigned officer, participants receive phone/text reminders of the meeting.
The city also said that 128 people have received the GVI message this year through call-ins or custom notifications.
While the attendance numbers and points of contact are going up, the numbers that Louisville residents want to see go down are homicides and the number of gangs in Louisville. Earlier this year, the FBI said it is aware of 20 or more gangs or violent street groups operating in Louisville.
"What I have to focus on with [GVI] is what we can control," Bogan said. "This is what we can control: we can control how often do we get our message out to individuals, we can control who the focus is going to be. It's going to come down [to] individuals making a choice."
Bogan also said he wants to see the percent of violent crime tied to gangs go down. Louisville Metro Police Chief Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel has recently said that about 30% of the city's violent crime can be tied to gangs or street groups.
Metro Government has not been able to provide any records that show that number is actually being tracked in an official way.
Josh Crawford, who is on the city's GVI governance committee and has been critical of the program in the past, said he sees it improving as well.
"In order for GVI to function really well, you need the city and state to deliver a 'B+' job at least," Crawford said. "The city is now doing about as well as I could expect for them."
Crawford did say he thinks a disconnect with the Department of Corrections will continue to affect adult call-in participation, but that is not the city's fault.
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