In one sense, Port City United’s origin story is the August 2021 shooting at New Hanover High School, which sent one student to the hospital and another to prison.
Gun violence wasn’t new and had hit parts of the Black community particularly hard over the years. But the New Hanover shooting was different, in part because of the sheer number of people affected, with a multi-school evacuation that left staff, students, and parents shaken. Within a week, spurred by scared and angry affluent white parents, the former county board of commissioners chair Julia Olson-Boseman broke out a $350-million checkbook and told staff to get to work.
Still under public pressure, the county cobbled together a plan based on the Cure Violence Global model. Specifically, it used Durham’s Bull City United as a template and staffed up by poaching employees from TRU Colors’ violence interruption program. The for-profit brewery’s social mission was based on hiring active gang members, almost exclusively Black men, in the hope of leveraging their street cred and leadership skills to reduce gun violence, primarily in Wilmington’s lower-income Black communities.
George Taylor, founder of the TRU Colors brewery and an affluent white resident, didn’t mince words when he said the impact on white students was the only thing that made the New Hanover shooting different. “I talked to people in the ’hood, and they’re like, ‘Are you kidding me? This shit has been going on for decades.’”
The plan had its challenges, like translating Taylor’s move-fast-and-break-stuff philosophy to the buttoned-up cubicles of county government.
There was also the issue of the county hiring active gang members. While it’s not illegal to be in a gang, law enforcement, including Sheriff Ed McMahon and District Attorney Ben David, were both critical of the idea. And, notably, many Cure Violence programs rely on a deeper bench.
“It’s not always someone who necessarily was in a gang before, sometimes it’s a football coach from the neighborhood that knows everybody, sometimes it’s the mother of someone,” Brent Decker, chief program officer for Cure Violence, told WHQR in 2022.
Over the next two years, some public and political sentiment turned against Port City United. At first, against the “mediation and outreach” program, formerly known as violence interrupters, but eventually against the entire department.
“PCU is a dangerous liability that needs to be shut down,” Republican Commissioner Dane Scalise said in early May after a second PCU employee was arrested on serious felony charges.
Neither employee has had their day in court, although both were promptly fired. And lost in the death spiral of bad press and the county’s self-imposed budget austerity, was the good work PCU was doing–and any hope of letting that work gain traction and develop appreciable results.
For the county’s conservative commissioners, most notably Scalise, PCU had to go. So much the better if the county could save close to $3 million annually in the bargain.
While the county’s budget won’t get a formal vote until June 17, the county told PCU’s 43 employees this week that the gig would be up at the end of the month. Some might find new positions at the county, which a spokesperson said is working to find them “priority placement in current job opportunities where interests and skills align.”
So, now what?
It’s worth reiterating that, however shocking the New Hanover shooting was, it was not an isolated incident. What was unique was the reaction.
“We have cried about the violence in our community a long time. And not before this happened, did anyone say, hey, ‘Let’s put $100 or $200 million into preventing this from happening,’” Frankie Roberts, a respected community leader, recently said.
Roberts added he was glad affluent residents called for action, but said, “It shouldn’t have taken a shooting where other ethnic groups were in close proximity to create this whirlwind of resources.”
Roberts is a Wilmington native who runs LINC, which helps people reenter society after incarceration. As a member of the Black community, he’s seen the violence for decades, longer than most people currently involved in the debate over what to do about it. He agreed that PCU was probably put together too quickly, but also argued that it was shut down too quickly.
Two years is not a long time to move the needle on an issue as complicated and multi-faceted as community violence. The underlying factors of trauma and poverty could well take generations to address. And, yes, violence involves personal responsibility, too. But that change can’t happen overnight.
There have been dozens of shootings since August 2021. None have sparked the level of fear and outrage as the one at New Hanover High School. Certainly, none have unlocked the same “whirlwind of resources,” as Roberts put it. There’s plenty you could say about that, and plenty that says about our community.
PCU is finished. What would it take for the county–or the city, or the endowment–to try something else? It’s a discomforting question.
–Benjamin Schachtman
Catch up on an audio conversation on last week’s edition of The Dive here, or contact us with story ideas and feedback at wilmington@theassemblync.com.
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Around the Region
Back in the Closet: New Hanover County Schools shared, then deleted, a social media post celebrating Pride Month. The district told WHQR it removed the post to adhere to its recently passed policies.
Dawson’s Dad: The creator of Dawson’s Creek is set to return to Wilmington to film a new series, Port City Daily reports.
Wildcats Overlooked: Parents and alumni told WHQR that New Hanover High School hasn’t received as much capital investment as other schools. The aging downtown facilities have structural issues but funds to fix and enhance them are hard to come by.
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