Members of Gideon's Army, June 2019
Psychologist Abraham Maslow wasn’t talking about the American criminal legal system when he wrote in 1966, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” More than 50 years later, though, the aphorism serves as a devastatingly clear description of the way policing and mass incarceration have been wielded against an array of societal challenges, with crushing blows aimed disproportionately at Black Americans.
Understood through that frame, the call coming from historic demonstrations in the streets of hundreds of American cities and towns — protests in response to the police killings of more Black men and women — is as simple as it is radical: Put down the hammer.
As crowds around the country chant “defund the police” and citizens demand that local government officials pursue alternative strategies for public safety, many observers may wonder what such a future could look like. One potential answer is in the heart of historically Black North Nashville, in the work of Gideon’s Army. Without serious support from the Metro government, the small community outfit has been making use of different tools to confront violence and harm.
Gideon’s Army was started several years ago by Rasheedat Fetuga, a former schoolteacher motivated by the pain of losing students to gun violence. Her community activism flows from an understanding that so much crime and violence is the result of metastasized deprivation and despair, of unmet needs and unresolved trauma. Fetuga and others like her have dedicated their lives to the belief that these things will not yield to a police officer’s baton or the walls of a jail cell.
Through Gideon’s Army, Fetuga spearheaded the movement to bring restorative justice practices into Nashville schools. She wanted to address the root causes of student disciplinary issues and repair the harm caused by misbehavior within a caring community — as opposed to a system that can often lead to expulsion and incarceration or death.
Last year, Gideon’s Army expanded on that work by deploying Violence Interrupters into the streets of North Nashville (an effort that was the subject of a June 2019 Scene cover story). The unarmed crew — which patrols North Nashville — has established a deep presence in the community, but with the goal of keeping the peace and de-escalating potentially violent situations when they arise. When a shooting does occur, another member of the violence interruption team, Deidre Nicole, responds to the home of the victim’s family within 24 hours. She offers support, whether that’s assistance in filling out victim’s compensation forms or planning and paying for a funeral. Meanwhile, the rest of the team works to understand what led to the shooting and to intervene and resolve any conflicts. The goal is to treat violence like public health officials treat an infectious disease — to isolate it and stop it from spreading. A lot of their work is focused on preventing retaliatory violence. The members of Gideon’s Army say they’re particularly equipped to do so because they have credibility in the neighborhood that police officers lack.
“The police work in our community — we live in our community,” Hambino Godbody, one of the Gideon’s Army Violence Interrupters, told a crowd gathered for a block party at Public Square Park last weekend.
At a separate weekend event hosted by Gideon’s Army, another Violence Interrupter, Chef Mic True, explained the importance of that credibility, which comes from the group’s roots in the community, as well as their personal histories.
“By empowering those like me,” said True, “who came from the urban community, who’ve been to jail, who sold drugs, who done shot pistols, who’ve been in the game, who done lived that entire life, for us to be empowered now and be in a better position, they already respect us. So that same voice that I used to say, ‘Hey man, shoot him,’ I can say, ‘No man, if you don’t put that pistol down …’ ”
True went on to emphasize how he and his comrades interrupt the pathways that can lead to violent crime.
“We feed the community, we engage with the community, we pay community bills,” he said. “We meet you where you at, and we make sure that you have what you need, no matter what it is. It ain’t even about violence. It’s just about, what do you need? Do you need a ham sandwich or a hug? Whatever it is, we’re there for you.”
Fetuga tells the Scene excitedly that Gideon’s Army’s violence prevention and restorative justice work is expanding, thanks to grant money and donations. They’ll soon be putting more Violence Interrupters on the streets of North Nashville and facilitating more restorative justice opportunities for people who want to resolve disputes or respond to harm without the police.
“I’m not waiting for the mayor because, you know, I’m kind of mad at him right now,” Fetuga says. “Everybody has asked for him to defund the police, and then he comes out talking about body cameras.”
She does have some demands for Mayor John Cooper and the rest of Metro’s elected officials, though. Among them: Get police officers and their search dogs out of schools; establish a team of mental health first responders who can intervene in mental health crises instead of armed police officers; and fire Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson on the way to defunding the police.
Some of those ideas are also being proposed by local elected officials. Like Fetuga, District 29 Metro Councilmember Delishia Porterfield is a former schoolteacher, and she has called for a rethinking of how so-called School Resource Officers are used in Metro schools.
“I’ve seen elementary students leaving school in handcuffs,” Porterfield says. “And there’s no reason that should be happening. I remember years ago there would be situations where a student was putting their head down in class or refusing to do their work and the teacher would threaten to get an SRO. And the SRO was on the campus in the event that a crime was being committed.”
Metro Nashville Public Schools tells the Scene there are generally two officers at each zoned high school, one at each of the city’s magnet schools and one at every middle school.
Porterfield also says she wants the city to rethink what jobs it asks armed officers to carry out — for the good of civilians as well as the police officers themselves, who are sometimes sent into situations they may not be equipped to handle well. Such situations range from the sensitive and unpredictable, like mental health crises, to mundane scenarios that can be unnecessarily escalated.
“Why do you need an armed police officer to handle a fender bender?” Porterfield says. “That doesn’t make sense. You can have a traffic enforcement agent who handles fender benders.”
The way forward, she says, has to be determined in conversation with the community.
While “defund the police” is easier to fit on a sign, the Nashville activists pushing that approach are insistent on building something new — not just tearing the old system down. And beyond the work Gideon’s Army has been piloting in North Nashville, around the country there are examples of established alternatives to police and the broader criminal legal system.
In Eugene, Ore., a crisis intervention program called CAHOOTS was established 30 years ago and now responds to a variety of calls — like mental health crises and intoxication reports — that were once handled by the town’s conventional police department. For a fraction of the cost, they respond to around 20 percent of the police department’s calls and go through 10 times more training. San Francisco just announced that it will be employing a similar approach.
In Brooklyn and the Bronx, a program called Common Justice offers an alternative response to serious and violent felonies, including assault and robbery. With the consent of the victims, such cases can be diverted to Common Justice, “into a process designed to recognize the harm done, honor the needs and interests of those harmed, and develop appropriate responses to hold the responsible party accountable.” The program includes restorative justice circles — mediated meetings between the person who has been harmed and the person who has harmed them that are like the restorative justice circles facilitated by Gideon’s Army. Resulting agreements can include restitution, extensive community service, and commitments to attend school and work along with violence intervention programs. Upholding those commitments means a person is spared the prison sentence they would have likely faced otherwise.
Those dreaming of a society without police or jails or prisons are clear about the fact that any such society would also have to be far more dedicated to eradicating poverty and inequality than ours is now. The Nashville People’s Budget Coalition, crucially, emphasizes not just divesting from parts of the current criminal legal system they see as harmful, but also investing in communities that have been slowly starved for decades.
Another oft-used metaphor in discussions of the latest incident of police violence or misconduct is that of the “bad apple.” The question at the heart of the movement that has seized the country’s attention is, again, simple and radical: What if the problem isn’t a few apples, but the whole tree? What if we started uprooting it and sowing the seeds of something new?
