Transforming Community Safety with the Healing Streets Project

Why this investment?

Healing Streets began on paper in 2019, but its roots go back to when Founder Danny Givens was involved in a shootout with an off duty Ramsey County Sheriff after a robbery. During the altercation, Givens did not know the man he shot, but later realized that the sheriff was his grandfather's best friend. Despite being shot, the sheriff testified on Givens’ behalf during his sentencing, arguing that the state should not throw away the key on a young man. Givens was eventually sentenced to 12 to 18 years in prison, but the sheriff stayed in contact with him and his family and advocated for his release the entire time. After 12 years, Givens was released from prison and came home in 2008, as he recalls, “with this heart to want to do something different in regards to what happens in our communities.” After about 10 years of working in the community as a pastor and community leader, Givens began receiving requests for assistance from local law enforcement and the Ramsey County Public Health Department to help figure out a way to address group and gun violence in the community, ultimately leading to the birth of the Healing Streets Project. 

Healing Streets was chosen as an ARPA investment because of its alignment with Ramsey County’s strategic plan that envisions a vibrant community where all are valued and thrive. The strategic plan sets out four goals: strengthen well-being, cultivate prosperity, enhance opportunity, and model accountability. The Healing Streets Project is a part of the County’s Transforming Systems Together initiative, which began in 2019 to create a shared decision-making program designed to rethink how the County delivers services and invests in the community. This initiative is intended to change the way the County makes decisions about priorities, approaches, budgets, and program design by having community members at the table as an equal voice.

What is this investment?

Healing Streets focuses on disrupting long-term cycles of violence through a community-centered approach focused on the three pillars of prevention, intervention, and healing. When an act of group or gun violence occurs, Healing Streets community mediators work to provide support services to the families of people involved. Services cover four areas: community-centered violence prevention and intervention, healing and grief services, hospital-based violence intervention, and school-based intervention. In terms of prevention, Healing Streets works with community partners to increase positive self and community perceptions, promote awareness of the wider harms caused by group or gun violence, and advance youth leadership. Through intervention, the program provides a variety of supports such as employment assistance, job training, education, grief supportive services, and health and mental health care. The program’s third dimension—healing—is what Givens feels differentiates it from other crime prevention initiatives. Rather than focusing on the negative aspects of crime in affected communities, Givens and Healing Streets highlights the positives of rebuilding through identifying and remedying unaddressed community grief. 

When the Healing Streets team responds to an incident, they do not arrive ready to investigate or accuse, rather they show up offering support for those affected. Mark Campbell, Director of the Healing Streets Project and Violence Prevention Coordinator at Ramsey County, explains, “One of the first questions that I have staff ask, anytime we interact with an individual is: what would help you begin to heal right now? What does healing look like to you?” Campbell says that they are very intentional in not asking how Healing Streets can help people as an effort to avoid making people feel put down, but instead emphasizing they are there to provide support in whatever way they can. 

In addition, Healing Streets does not look at group or gun violence issues on a binary scale of victim and perpetrator. As people who come from these communities and can speak to the lived experience, both Givens and Campbell recognize that the situation is much more complex than that. “We look at it holistically,” Campell says. “We don't separate and disregard anyone. We're saying, you're all a part of this ecosystem and we all have different needs. We may come in through the door of that person who was impacted, but we make sure that we have wellness plans for everyone because they're all impacted, so we create a wellness plan that's specific to them.”

Centering equity in the program

Givens and Campbell try to center equity in all aspects of the program, beginning with who is on their staff. As someone who spent 12 years in prison himself and was able to eventually get a government job, he wanted to make sure people who have gone through similar situations had the same opportunity. “I challenged HR,” Givens says. “The olive branch was extended to me, but let's make this a practice.” His challenge was successful and has allowed Healing Streets to bring in other people who have been impacted and give them a government job that has benefits and an equitable wage.

Healing Streets is particularly sensitive to the role law enforcement plays in group and gun violence. “From a law enforcement standpoint, law enforcement has been around for hundreds of years and if we go by just the data, it hasn't worked and it hasn't worked specifically for black and brown people.” Campbell says. As a founding member of the Black Lives Matter Minneapolis chapter, Givens understands this problem and is shaping the program to work toward partnering with local law enforcement and gaining better community engagement results.

Outcomes to date

Healing Streets started providing support in 2019 and is now in the evaluation stage. Givens and Campbell feel that the numbers will only provide a part of the story, and that the qualitative data will be more telling. “It's not just about what you've done, it's about the impact of what you've done,” Campbell says. “It is about what you have done to make sure that you are tangibly making a difference, not just saying you're making a difference in the report.” To measure whether or not the people they support are healing, the program uses a qualitative scale where a client rates their own progress in their own perspective. “If you measure us in one year, you can look at it as like, well, this person isn’t all the way on the continuum where we want them to be,” Campbell says. “But that doesn't mean that they haven't begun to heal, it doesn't mean that they haven't begun to unpack some of the damage that was caused to them. We look at that journey as a continuum.”

In this way, Healing Streets is very proud of the relationships they have made over the past few years, particularly with law enforcement. Given his past history with law enforcement, Givens says that reaching out to law enforcement wasn’t something he was looking forward to, but ultimately realized it was necessary. “I wasn't excited to build a relationship with law enforcement—as a Black man in the heart—but I've realized the need for all of us to do this work and not some of us,” Givens says. “So in that realization I was like, let me go have a conversation with law enforcement about this idea to do this work. We both have similar values in this, let's create the intersection and let's do this work together.” Since the realization and conversation, Healing Streets has developed a strong relationship with local law enforcement that has enabled them to work together effectively.

Relationships have been the key to the success of Healing Streets, whether it be with law enforcement, hospitals, or schools. However, establishing these relationships haven’t always been easy, especially with hospitals. Campbell says that when Healing Streets was first getting started and trying to work their way into hospitals to support community members affected by group or gun violence, the relationships tended to be transactional. Hospitals would call and hand off patients who were people of color, but wouldn’t let the Healing Streets team in the building, only in the parking lot. Healing Streets made it clear that this was not the type of relationship they were looking for, and have since fostered more positive and mutually beneficial relationships with local hospitals that embrace the Healing Streets approach and mission.

In May 2024, Healing Streets formalized a partnership with St. Paul’s Regions Hospital through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to launch a Bedside Hospital-Based Violence Intervention program. This initiative provides bedside support for gunshot victims, with trained community members offering emotional assistance, acting as liaisons between families, medical staff, and police, and guiding survivors through the healing process. Danny Givens emphasizes the importance of personal connections, especially from individuals with lived experience, in the aftermath of violence. The program is designed to adapt to the evolving needs of survivors and will be fully implemented after training for both the Healing Streets team and hospital staff.

Toward transformative change

After speaking with the County manager, Campbell says that Healing Streets is being worked into the actual County budget, even after the end of ARPA funding, and will continue the incredible work they have been doing over the past five years. One recent development that has come about from their work in the St. Paul Public School system has been the interest garnered in other parts of Minnesota, particularly Moorhead. Because of the work Healing Streets has done with youth and young adults, Moorhead has asked for them to come and help establish a similar project in their city. 

From their experience, Givens and Campbell have particular pieces of advice for those who are interested in establishing similar programs. Both believe that the leadership for programs such as these have to come from the community itself—they have to know what it feels like to navigate through these lived experiences, and hire people who know what it feels like, too. Campbell also points out the importance of setting your ego aside. He believes that being able to acknowledge that what cities and local governments have been doing in the past hasn’t been working is the key to paving the way forward for successful new models of crime prevention and rehabilitation programs like Healing Streets.