No badges. No guns. Can violence interrupters help Minneapolis?

A group of 20 men and women huddled outside a convenience store as steam rose from their paper coffee cups and the evening temperature dipped toward freezing. They greeted the occasional customer as they stood watch over the parking lot and nearby area, seeking to avert potential bloodshed without the aid of badges and guns.

Known as violence interrupters, the team stops by the store six nights a week during a five-hour “patrol” of Lake Street, a busy commercial and cultural corridor in south Minneapolis. Their approach to deterring conflict relies on quick thinking, calm persuasion, and a credibility that derives, in part, from who they aren’t.

“If we looked and acted like cops, people would right away blow us off,” says Muhammad Abdul-Ahad, the team’s leader and a longtime street outreach worker. The differences extend to uniforms. He opened his jacket to reveal a bright orange T-shirt bearing an outline of the city’s skyline above the word “MinneapolUS,” a one-word synopsis of the team’s ethos.

“We can relate to people because we live here, too,” he says. “We listen to them, and from showing them that empathy, they’re willing to listen to us.”

Minneapolis has endured a spike in homicides, shootings, and other violent crimes since police killed George Floyd last May. The video of Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for nine

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