A new kind of first responder has emerged in Lansing's struggle with gun violence

LANSING — For the past three years, Lansing has endured what researchers deem a public health crisis that’s led to lost lives and left some of the luckier victims facing long recoveries.

The epidemic has spread through the city, including at least seven more who fell victim this past Sunday.

Aaron Blankenburg is on the front lines, but he isn’t a medical professional. He’s a Lansing School District employee who coaches youth football on the side.

The epidemic he’s worried about: Gun violence.

From 2020 through June, Lansing had 54 fatal shootings. In that 42-month period, police also responded to at least 173 nonfatal shootings, about 300 shots-fired calls and seized more than 1,200 firearms.

Blankenburg is a neighborhood change agent with Advance Peace, a nonprofit nearing one year in Lansing that the city has committed to funding through at least next year, for a total of at least $300,000. It’s one of a growing number of community violence intervention groups around the country — often called violence interrupters — that are using long-standing, community-based approaches.

The mission is to curb retaliatory gun violence, which researchers consider the most contagious.

And there’s growing belief among law enforcement, academics and researchers — finally catching up to where community activists and organizers have been for decades — that these groups can play an important role and provide necessary resources in the fight.

But while the availability of new tools and more funding have been heralded, 22 hours in Lansing on Sunday showed just how difficult the task ahead is, and what’s at stake.

"To be honest, police and prosecutors ain't set up to stop gun violence," Blankenburg said. "They set up to get you after you done committed the crime. We set up to prevent the crime. We're set up to stop it."

Contagious violence and the public health model

On Monday, one day after a bloody Sunday that began with a mass shooting and ended with one person dead and at least seven wounded in at least four separate shootings, Lansing police Assistant Chief Robert Backus stood in front of TV cameras and reporters in the department’s downtown headquarters.

Police investigations were ongoing, but Backus said they'd made an arrest in the shooting that left 22-year-old Manuel De Jesus Flores dead, and also identified suspects in the mass shooting that injured five.

Police don't believe the suspects they've identified in the mass shooting were involved in any other weekend shooting. However, they are looking into the possibility that the Flores homicide has a connection to the others.

In a Monday statement, Mayor Andy Schor said the number of illegal guns in Lansing is having a devastating impact.

"I’m angry — as both a Mayor and as the father of two young people in this city," he said. "There are too many guns on the streets and too many young people with access to them. It’s just that simple. Stupid fights turn into wild west shootouts and our young people are paying the price."

This is the contagious violence that researchers say can best be treated with a public health model. In this approach, organizations rooted in the community identify the small number of people most at risk of picking up a gun to settle a dispute. They build relationships and trust with them and, on a daily basis, work to show them a gun isn’t the solution.

"We're not born grabbing guns and carrying them," said Paul Elam, chief strategy officer at the Michigan Public Health Institute, the nonprofit that’s running the Advance Peace program here in Lansing.

"Something happens based on our lived experience."

The term contagious violence doesn’t refer to violent acts spreading through a community like the coronavirus. Instead, it refers to the kind of retaliatory acts that police, prosecutors and advocates say have been driving much of the gun violence the past few years — in Lansing and cities across Michigan and the country.

A dispute leads to a shooting that leads to a retaliatory shooting, which could lead to another shooting.

Advance Peace hopes its relationship building can pay off. Elam said Advance Peace works with 15 fellows who before the program were actively involved in Lansing's gun violence. The fellows, whose identities are not disclosed to police, attend regular group meetings and the organization helps them find work, pay a bill or connects them with other resources they need.

The organization acts as a support and resource network the fellows didn't have growing up and wouldn't have without it.

"Most of these guys (shooting) aren't in school," Elam said. "They're not employed. They're not connected with any human service system in terms of mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment. Many of them have been shot. They've never had any follow up treatment other than going to the emergency room to get the bullet taken out."

Elam said the hope is that getting someone the help and resources he needs will lead to changed behavior.

Elam and Advance Peace aren't the first to take this approach. Advance Peace was started in 2009 in California by Lansing-native DeVone Boggan, whose brother Dan is principal at Sexton High School.

And violence interrupter groups go back decades, from CureViolence in Chicago to Boston CeaseFire, meaning they've been around long enough for academics to study.

The most-effective ones are well coordinated and can bring multiple agencies or resources to the table, said Chris Melde, a Michigan State University professor whose research focuses on street gangs and youth violence.

Because when you grow up in neighborhoods with poverty and frequent violence, he added, your worldview becomes more day to day. Decisions become more risky, which lead to flawed thinking and flawed self-protection norms, he added, like the idea that someone needs to engage in violence to protect themselves from violence.

"When people grow up in marginalized communities, when they are marginalized themselves, when they've experienced trauma," Melde said, "their worldview becomes very shortsighted."

'They know I’m just trying to keep the violence down'

Aaron Blankenburg got to the Logan Square shopping center in south Lansing about the same time police did on Sunday morning.

It was shortly after 1 a.m. and five men had been shot in a gun violence episode that made headlines across Michigan.

Blankenburg started talking to the victims and their families, and anyone else still around. He needed to get a feel for what happened, he said. And quickly.

People know him so they’ll talk with him, he said, and they know he’s not working with police.

"They know I’m just trying to keep the violence down," Blankenburg said.

When he finds someone who might want to retaliate over a shooting, he tries to talk to them, to help them see past the anger and see what will happen if they resort to gun violence. He runs through all the scenarios. They kill someone. They go to prison for the rest of their life. Someone they shot at seeks retribution the following week and the cycle continues.

Blankenburg just tries to make them stop and think, as he describes it.

About the consequences and the people they’ll leave behind.

But he also knows that many of them are simply scared of getting shot themselves, scared to go to the park to play basketball. Scared of getting shot while going to the store with their parents.

He knows those fears well.

Blankenburg, 47, was a high school football player at Sexton High School before got into some trouble, which started with him getting shot and later involved selling drugs. In 2002, federal prosecutors indicted him on drug charges and he was sentenced to more than 9 years in prison. He was released in 2008, first to a halfway house in Grand Rapids before coming back to Lansing.

"As soon as I got home I started coaching football to do my community service hours," he said. "I had 500 hours. And shit, them hours turned into a lifetime."

So on Sunday, as much of Lansing was just waking up to news of yet another shooting, Blankenburg and others from Advance Peace were at the hospital.

More conversations were had with victims and their families and friends. Conversations to find out what might happen next and where.

While police were trying to build cases against the people behind the gunfire, Blankenburg was working to stop the next shooting.

Contact reporter Matt Mencarini at 517-377-1026 or mjmencarini@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattMencarini.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: How Advance Peace is working in Lansing to stop gun violence