Fraud, Waste Grip D.C.’s Costly Anti-Crime Program that Uses Ex-Cons as Violence Interrupters

In the latest scandal to rock the District of Columbia’s doomed program to reduce crime with ex-con “violence interrupters,” a nonprofit that claims to serve at-risk populations spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars earmarked for the initiative on trips, lavish meals, an alcohol-filled pool party and to pay family members. The money was part of $3.6 million awarded by D.C.’s famously corrupt government to a leftist nonprofit called Life Deeds that was supposed to use the funds to help reduce shootings by deploying violence interrupters—many of them convicted of serious felonies—to crime-infested neighborhoods. Instead, a substantial chunk of the public funds was improperly wasted, according to an investigative article published this week by the area’s mainstream newspaper. That includes the D.C. government reimbursing the disgraced executive director of Life Deeds, Allieu Kamara, twice every month for rent on the same building, awarding him $60,000 in duplicate payments in a year. The city’s administrator confirms in the story that the spending was a “completely inappropriate use of public money that should not have happened.”

Though D.C.’s costly violence interruption experiment was launched years ago and has done little to crack down on skyrocketing gun crime in the area’s most violent neighborhoods, officials gave Life Deeds millions in 2023 because homicides surged to levels not seen in a generation, according to the news story. For some Life Deeds employees “the city’s investment in violence interruption became an extra business opportunity,” the in-depth article states, adding that the executive director and employees used at least $400,000 in city funds in ways that undermined the anti-violence mission and should never have been allowed. Besides the previously mentioned expenditures there were trips to a New Jersey shopping mall and payouts for businesses owned by Life Deeds staff to provide decorations, refreshments, and entertainment for parties. Incredibly, Life Deeds had already been blacklisted by D.C. after falsifying criminal background checks for employees while carrying out $20 million in city contracts to help homeless people and troubled youth. The D.C. Department of Human Services terminated the deals after discovering the serious violations by the charity.

But the shady track record did not stop D.C. officials from entrusting the group to help reduce violence, awarding it millions of taxpayer dollars to disburse “reformed” criminals to complete a mission that has failed miserably. The agency that oversees D.C.’s violence interruption program, Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE), refused to comment about this latest scandal when contacted by the newspaper that just published this exposé. Last spring Judicial Watch reported that a disgraced D.C. councilman (Trayon White) who served in ONSE was arrested and charged in a bribery scheme for taking tens of thousands of dollars in cash bribes to help extend violence prevention and youth services contracts. Around the same time an ex-con, Cotey Wynn, got charged with his second felony since D.C. officials hired him to be a violence interrupter. Wynn has an extensive rap sheet and had served a decade in prison for first degree murder, possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, and distribution of a controlled substance when D.C. officials hired him to help curb crime.

D.C.’s ill-fated violence prevention venture began as a special safety program known as Cure the Streets launched by former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine to reduce gun violence by treating it as a disease that can be interrupted and stopped from spreading. Cure the Streets typically hires men and women with criminal histories as violence interrupters because they know first-hand about the challenges that residents of crime-infested communities live with. The reality is that many of the ex-cons paid by the city to rein in crime end up getting arrested again, creating serious doubts about the effectiveness of the anti-violence initiative in the neighborhoods it is supposed to help. The president of the D.C. Police Union, which represents some 3,000 officers, recently said “violence Interruption in DC is nothing more than a grift for the government to funnel tax dollars directly to illegal gangs and violent criminals.” The police union president, Gregg Pemberton, added that there is no evidence the program has any level of efficacy and every month a violence interrupter gets arrested for a “heinous act.”