Can widespread trauma therapy prevent gun violence? This community leader says yes.

Will Latif Little can pinpoint the moments that changed his life.

One was when he was 13 years old and heard his mother and her then-boyfriend fighting in the other room. The man hit his mom, he said, and he tried to intervene. But the man grabbed him and threw him against the wall. Then, Little said, the man pulled out a gun, stuck it in his face, and threatened to kill him.

The man let him go, but something inside Little shifted that day, he said. He knows now that moment and others in his childhood — growing up in poverty, without a father, alongside his mother’s abusive partners and a backdrop of violence — had deeply affected and scarred him.

“I said I was OK,” said Little, now 52. “But in reality, I wasn’t.”

He had no access to therapy and didn’t know how to process his anger. So he held it in, and eventually, it enveloped him. By 14, he was selling drugs on the corners of South Philadelphia. He fought at school, then stopped going altogether. He robbed people and stores, he said. Then, his best friend was shot and killed.

“I had no love at home, so I found love in the streets,” he said.

It’s a story that mirrors a far-too-familiar experience for many young people in Philadelphia: a stressful childhood, often filled with trauma and little structure; a teen who feels hopeless, and finds friendship in the wrong places; getting money by whatever means possible to escape poverty.

“I was the lost kid, I was a fatherless kid, I was the robber kid, the carjacking kid,” he said.

His crimes progressed, and then, at 19, in a shoot-out with a rival crew, he killed another teen.

Little went on to serve a decade in prison. While he was behind bars, he reflected on his life and the decisions that led up to pulling the trigger. He told himself he had to decide whether he would blame others for his struggles or find a way to change his mind-set, accept what had happened, and turn his life around.

Little believes that unaddressed, widespread trauma is at the root of the city’s gun crisis, as was the case for him. Thousands of Philadelphians, especially young men, he said, are living with pent-up pain and anger that are affecting their relationships and ability to process emotions, and escalating to acts of violence.

» READ MORE: Wounded City: A weekend of gun violence in Philadelphia shows the immense trauma that residents regularly endure

“It’s an emotional problem we’re dealing with,” Little said of the gun violence epidemic. “It’s people who don’t know how to handle their emotions or understand consequences.”

Little is part of a growing chorus of antiviolence advocates and experts across the country who believe emotional intelligence and trauma-informed therapy — or cognitive behavioral therapy — is a critical component in the effort to interrupt the cycle of violence by shifting the mind-set of at-risk people.

Integrating therapy into violence prevention isn’t necessarily new, said David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institutefor Criminal Justice Reform. A handful of organizations have sought to use this model, like Roca in Baltimore and Oakland, Calif.’s “Healthy Wealthy and Wise,” but the approach isn’t widespread.

“We need to get this healing more broadly into schools and communities,” Muhammad said.

Philadelphia announced in 2020 that it would launch a version of a Chicago program that integrates cognitive therapy into outreach, but its official start date remains unclear. And while a few other programs in the city use a variation of this model, there is nothing on a larger, city-funded scale.

With gun violence reaching historic levels and each shooting bringing tremendous trauma, the need has never been greater — or more urgent, Little said.

So he’s tapping into his personal journey — from the streets of South Philly and a decade in prison to becoming a respected public speaker and life coach — to advocate for the programs he says saved his life, and doing the work himself, whether the city is on board or not.

“If we focus on the mental and emotional aspects, we can save the city,” Little said.

Little was raised in South Philly. His mother worked several jobs to provide for him and his sisters, he said, but food wasn’t plentiful, and heat and electricity weren’t guaranteed. He was smart but shy, and was bullied at school. He hardened quickly, he said, from the violence he saw in the street and inside his home.

When he started selling drugs, things escalated. Then, in 1989, Little and his crew got into a shoot-out at 20th and Christian Streets, and he shot and killed an 18-year-old who was part of a rival group. At 19, he pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, and was sentenced to over a decade in prison.

Inside Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison, Little started reflecting on his life. He asked himself how he became this person and how he could release the pain he’d harbored for so long. He began mentoring other inmates, and mediating jail beefs.

He forgave those who had hurt him. Then, he forgave himself.

When he was released in 1999, Little continued this self-improvement. The brother of the man he killed forgave him. He worked at a barbershop, cutting hair and mentoring kids on the side. He started attending conferences, taking classes, and speaking publicly about his journey.

He learned about personal development and the meaning of emotional intelligence, a person’s ability to understand, use, and manage their emotions in positive ways, to better communicate, relieve stress, and overcome challenges and conflict.

He grew determined to bring these healing and coping strategies to Philadelphia — where about a third of all homicides stem from arguments — and make them accessible to communities of color. People who’ve experienced violence need these skills to help them slow down, think differently about a situation, and respond in a more measured, less confrontational way, he said.

Research has long shown that violence is a cycle and that people who’ve been victimized or traumatized are more likely to engage in violent behaviors. Not every victim of violence will go on to become violent, but that trauma can manifest in other aspects of their life, said Muhammad, of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. It can affect physical and emotional development, academic achievements, and relationships, he said.

Healing those traumas is not the sole answer to preventing violence, but an important piece, Muhammad said, and research on the work has seen impressive results. Oakland’s initiative — a 16-week program that worked with 110 young adults, most involved with gangs and previously incarcerated — saw 90% of participants avoid future arrest, and less than 5% were involved in gun violence afterward.

Still, integrating this approach on a large scale isn’t easy, he said — teachers are already overwhelmed and schools underfunded, and research has shown this work is often most successful in smaller settings where a person has access to a mentor.

But Little believes that it’s possible, and that personal development classes and therapy should be woven into every facet of Philadelphia life — inside schools, jails, recreation centers, and workplaces.

Little, a father of six, does the work himself on a smaller scale. Every morning for the last year, he’s hosted a free Instagram Live class where hundreds of people tune in over about two hours to share their feelings, struggles, and affirmations. The virtual sessions are meant to be more accessible, with the hope they can shift a person’s mind-set first thing in the morning.

The group has become a family, with dozens of members even gathering for retreats in the Poconos this fall and winter. And members often join Little at rallies to call on the city to fund and develop more of these programs.

The city is taking notice. Little is in talks with SEPTA about training its workforce, he said, and hopes to work with the city’s main antiviolence group, Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network, next year.

“We are breaking that chain of that cycle of hurt,” he said. “We all have the ability to tap into it. Now it’s about giving them the tools to do that.”