After a shooting, the emotional work starts for the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network

Around 2 a.m. on Aug. 21, several teenagers were walking on Allegheny Avenue near North 18th Street. According to a police report, they encountered another group of juveniles walking in the opposite direction. The two groups exchanged angry words, tempers flared, someone pulled a gun, and shots were fired. In the aftermath, two teens were injured and rushed to Temple University Hospital.

It was one of 150 shootings that occurred in the city this year between July 29 and Aug. 25. Police finished their initial investigation with a plea for anyone with information to come forward.

» READ MORE: Six people injured in three shootings across Philadelphia in a violent early morning

For the last five years, when police exit a crime scene, the city’s Community Crisis Intervention Program (CCIP) team enters. One factor credited with helping the homicide rate decrease dramatically is ongoing neighborhood-level involvement.

To date, there have been 187 homicides in Philadelphia in 2024, a 40% decrease from 2023.

“The last several years there has been a movement in City Council, that I have led, to support boots-on-the-ground organizations. And the reduction is a direct result of that level of investment,” City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said. The city’s current budget proposal includes millions of dollars in anti-violence funding outside of traditional policing.

After every shooting, workers go into the community to try to quell retaliatory violence and help the traumatized while making certain that community members don’t mistake them for police officers.

“What we are really in is the business of relationship with people, because without relationship you don’t have a way to get people to listen and to consider what they need to remedy trauma,” said George D. Mosee Jr., executive director of the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network (PAAN), which manages CCIP, a city-created and -funded initiative that started 2018.

“When COVID-19 hit, community groups gathered, and we predicted that with the isolation and the closing down of the whole community, we knew violence would go up,” explained Chantay Love, cofounder and director of Every Murder Is Real (EMIR) Healing Center.

PAAN was started in 1989 by former Mayor Wilson Goode, as a successor to the city-funded Crisis Intervention Network (CIN), an anti-violence organization that employed ex-gang members to help stop gang-related fatalities. CIN received national attention for its innovative grassroots outreach efforts, but was disbanded in 1988 due to allegations of financial mismanagement.

When Mosee, a former first assistant in the District Attorney’s Office, took the helm of PAAN in 2017, gun violence rates had been escalating since 2015, when there were 280 homicides. “There was an increase [in gun violence], but it was an increase that pales to what happened in 2020,” said Mosee. In 2020, the number of homicides jumped to 499.

“Social institution was shut down and the impact on everyone was devastating.”

“I was surprised by the magnitude of the violence,” Mosee acknowledged. “Literally anything you did in society was a matter of life and death. Social institution was shut down, and the impact on everyone was devastating. I believe people lost access to those things that really helped them to live in civilized society peacefully. And for some, violence was the outcome.”

But the numbers are going down now. PAAN’s citywide implementation of intervention and rapid response protocols are part of the reason.

CCIP was modeled after both the Crisis Intervention Network and Cure Violence (previously called Cease Fire) where community members, known as credible messengers, worked to develop relationships with people at risk of pulling the trigger or getting shot. Most trusted messengers are like CCIP Director Don “Ike” Jones: people with lived experience working with people living the experience.

Jones was sentenced to life for murder and robbery when he was 17 years old. He served 27 years inside, being released in 2019 at age 44. He was freed as a result of a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said mandatory life-without-parole homicide sentences for those 17 and under was cruel and unusual punishment.

As a trusted messenger, Jones had a strong sense of what would motivate teenagers to shoot at each other on Allegheny Avenue in the middle of a hot summer night.

“Teenagers are very impulsive and lead with their emotions,” Jones said. “Any sign of disrespect can trigger violence. Mix into that they may have been drinking or using drugs, and you’re going to get a bad outcome every time.”

In October 2019, Janet Woodson, 51, along with her husband and 17-year-old and 6-year-old sons, were shot to death inside their home on the 5000 block of Walton Avenue. Woodson’s 29-year-old son confessed to the killing. “He just obviously had some kind of hatred for family members … and made a decision to kill them,” Acting Philadelphia Police Commissioner Christine Coulter said at the time.

It was a well-liked family who lived in a tight-knit, quiet community. The murders touched a large circle — family, coworkers, students, teachers, and neighbors were devastated. The case became one of the first mobilizations of the city’s new Rapid Response Team.

In contrast, when Cheryl Seay’s 18-year-old son, Jarell Seay, was murdered on his West Philadelphia porch on Easter Sunday in 2011, she said there were very few formal services for her to tap into. “Except for Mothers In Charge and the DA’s victim support office, I don’t remember anything.”

What she discovered was an outpouring of informal support from religious organizations and people who shared her grief. A neighbor helped by rinsing the blood off her porch.

» READ MORE: Parents struggle with shooting death of their son

Rapid response provides immediate trauma support, social services, blight remediation, and anti-violence resources. Member organizations include the city’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services (DBHIDS), Department of Public Health, Town Watch Integrated Services, and Licenses and Inspections.

CCIP’s role is to respond to every shooting in the city. For those considered rapid response, they must intervene promptly.

The Allegheny Avenue shooting was a rapid-response case, a status determined by the Philadelphia Police Department and the managing director’s office.

“I went [to the crime scene] myself last night,” Jones said the day after the shooting. “There’s a school at 17th Street. There’s a senior center, and there’s a storage place. There’s not much going on.”

The area around 18th Street and Allegheny Avenue, a former manufacturing strip, isn’t a residential block. This means there are fewer potential witnesses but also fewer traumatized neighbors.

Jones learned that along with the two teens, a 44-year-old bystander was injured. Despite police finding 21 shell casings, none of the three suffered life-threatening physical wounds.

With few neighbors to canvass, the next step was seeing to the victims. “We went out to their homes, but the juveniles had given us bad addresses,” Jones said, adding that it’s not unusual to start out with a bad address. Trying to locate the bystander and determine his needs was also challenging.

Despite a dispiriting start, Jones said they will continue to try to meet with the three people involved in the shooting and offer to help them.

“We will try to track them down,” Jones said.