Calls to overhaul District's violence reduction strategy

When the shots hit Reginald Jackson's front door in Northeast D.C. in September 2022, bullets left holes in the metal screen and shattered the frame. He was inside when the shots were fired and said he didn't see a thing, though he soon found a young man bleeding badly on his front lawn.

"That's all I knew then, and that's all I know now to the story,” he told the News4 I-Team.

What Jackson didn’t know is the young man who was killed outside his home that day was someone D.C. leaders worried would meet a violent end. He was Jamal Gibson, a 23-year-old father and aspiring musician.

Those close to Gibson confirmed he was also part of D.C.'s People of Promise program – an effort designed to help those the District believes are most at risk for being a victim or perpetrator of violent crime – and had received other services from D.C.’s violence interruption efforts.

Several people close to Gibson declined to be interviewed on camera by News4, but by their many accounts, his death isn’t a sign those programs failed, but points out just how hard and ongoing the work is.

It also represents why one prominent violence reduction expert said D.C. must do more to get it right.

“We've had D.C. be one of the few cities in the country with a massive increase in gun violence and we know what we need to do, but it just hasn't really happened,” said David Muhammad, a strategist hired by cities across the country, including the District, to develop plans to bring down gun violence.

His organization, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, helped design the People of Promise program and, in 2022, published a 16-point gun violence reduction plan.

“D.C. is particularly challenging given there's a good amount of resources. There's also a lot of talented people,” Muhammad continued. “They're just not coming together. They’re just not coordinated.”

But that’s a criticism D.C.’s deputy mayor for public safety and justice flatly rejects.

"I don't agree,” Lindsey Appiah said.

"I will not say we're coordination poor," she added. "I would say that we have ways in which we can grow in coordination and also in focus of what coordination looks like.”

And there’s a lot to coordinate. In October, the city administrator testified at a D.C. Council hearing the District has “about 100 different programs, activities and initiatives across 20 agencies” that contribute to reducing violence.

Appiah oversees some of them. In addition to police, fire and national guard, her portfolio also includes the Office of Neighborhood Safety & Engagement, which runs community-based violence prevention efforts.  

That’s separate, however, from even more violence reduction programs run by the Office of Attorney General and the city administrator, who do not report to her.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser estimated the District spends more than $100 million a year to run these programs. In a public event last January, Bowser said evaluating the success of such programs can be “elusive” and acknowledged “there is likely some more coordination that we could do” between the programs her office runs and those by the attorney general.

At that time, Bowser also said, “I think what people want to know is if you’re spending $115 million, is it working?”

After 2023 closed with the highest number of homicides in years, the News4 I-Team asked Appiah the same.

“We have to look at: Are we getting the types of outcomes we want? Our crime numbers are telling us we have to make changes,” Appiah said.

Muhammad has long advocated for D.C. to merge its primary violence reduction efforts into a single shop with a clear leader.

“That person needs to have considerable amount of authority with police, but they need to have authority over the Office of Neighborhood Safety & Engagement, authority over the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, authority over all these other [efforts],” Muhammad said.

“D.C. is not that large to have so many offices,” he said.

Muhammad noted the District was on its way to consolidating some of those efforts under Linda Harllee Harper, who briefly led both the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement until her sudden death in May 2023. She has yet to be replaced with a permanent leader.

Councilwoman Brooke Pinto, who leads the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, said if she had her way, she’d merge all of the city’s violence interruption programs – including those run by the attorney general – into one department with one person in charge.

"Every expert, every book I've read, every conversation I've had about best practices when it comes to violence interruption includes the point that there has to be city leadership that is behind the effort to coordinate it. That's not what we have right now,” she said.

But Appiah said it’s not that easy and said, when it comes to public safety issues, she holds herself accountable.

“Ultimately, the buck stops with me,” she said.

Muhammad said the District is no doubt making strides, with the police department recently standing up a team to review each shooting for possible retaliatory violence. He’s hopeful even more changes could be coming this year, including hiring someone to replace Harllee Harper.

“In D.C. … we can do better and we can save lives,” he said.

No one knows, of course, if any of those changes would’ve been enough to save Gibson, whom News4 first profiled in 2018 when he was in juvenile custody receiving mentorship through another program.

Gibson eventually went to college, but for reasons that are unclear, left in the years that followed. Some of those who knew him said his mentors stayed close even when he got into legal trouble again.

In the end, they said, what Gibson did with the resources he was offered was ultimately up to him.

No one has been arrested in his murder.

This story was reported by Ted Oberg, produced by Katie Leslie, shot by Jeff Piper and Steve Jones, and edited by Steve Jones. News4 photographer Evan Carr contributed to this report.