NEW HANOVER COUNTY — A half-dozen public speakers attended the commissioners’ meeting Monday to compel the New Hanover County board against dissolving Port City United in full.
READ MORE: NHC proposed budget defunds PCU, suggests moving employees to other departments
Tammie Hall, who works in violence intervention for Novant Health, said she hasn’t been able to secure a lot of alliances in her field of work. She championed Port City United for the help provided since she arrived in the area from New York and Detroit, where she has been involved in violence intervention before.
“I don’t have a lot of funding at the hospital level to assist the individuals that come in and to give them some different options on what to do — that’s where Port City comes in,” Hall said. “They have been phenomenal with finding financial resources in relocating and housing assistance and mental health and food.”
County manager Chris Coudriet presented the board last week its $543 million budget, which includes doing away with Port City United’s $2.9 million allocation in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Its defunding comes on the heels of multiple arrests in recent months of PCU employees from its outreach and mediation team. Some were “violence interrupters” — also gang-member adjacent — who would go into underserved communities and help deflect volatile situations that could turn into gunplay.
“I’m not going to sit up here and act obtuse to some of the negative things that have come out of the agency, and I do feel like those things need to be handled accordingly,” Hall said. “But to dissolve the entire agency, I don’t think that is what’s needed. Coming from somewhere else and being here, I can let you know violence won’t stop here.”
Her comments were backed by coworker Bryan Farland, also with Novant. He noted the adage “it takes a village” to provide safety and resources for all area children and parents.
Frankie Roberts, founder of LINC — one of three nonprofits that helps fund some of the 21 community resource coordinators that send people into schools on behalf of Port City United to help children — also stood up for the agency. LINC works in facilitating resources for recently incarcerated people, helping with jobs, housing and restarting their lives, with the goal to reduce recidivism rates.
Roberts noted when the school shooting happened at New Hanover High School in 2021 — prompting commissioners to consider dipping into the $350 million from the hospital sale to start an anti-violence program — the county was “quick to open the checkbook.” This came at the behest of a great deal of parents — white and affluent — speaking out loudly about the threat of violence it brought to their children’s lives.
Swift action was taken by commissioners, judges, law enforcement, nonprofits, and the county government devising the plan for Port City United in less than a year. It’s based off Chicago’s Cure Violence model and has been successful in areas like Durham, North Carolina.
“Myself and others in the community had been talking about that kind of violence for a long time,” Roberts told commissioners Monday. “Never had we executed that kind of money to come to the aid of folks in our communities.”
The county committed to almost $40 million over four years and spent $10 million to date.
Roberts said the work of PCU — which also had a 24/7 call center to connect the community to resources — has been validated in its infant two years. In recent months, some commissioners have called PCU’s work anecdotal and requested hard stats on showing how it brings down crime — data that isn’t necessarily collected on incidents that could have happened.
This was a point driven home by Carlos Braxton, a U.S. Air Force veteran and local realtor. He said he believed the work PCU does saves lives.
“And it’s hard to quantify that: when people don’t bring the gun to school, when they don’t shoot, when they don’t stab and when they don’t act out,” Braxton said.
PCU’S mediation and outreach team has had 52 team interventions, all conflicts that were at immediate risk of violent actions, as reported in April. Over the same time period, the team has opened up 1,741 cases, up from 1,125 they did during the 12 months of last year.
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater because two people made some poor decisions — because nobody wants to be reminded of their poor decisions,” Roberts said.
He was speaking about mediation and outreach supervisor Stephen Barnett, charged with accessory to attempted murder in March while helping a teenager flee a crime while on the job, and Courtney McNeil was terminated in May after being arrested on 16 drug charges and a firearm charge. Both employees had gang affiliations.
Despite as much, Ashley Crane, former PCU intern, said there are people putting in hard work everyday that aren’t being recognized. She called the workers compassionate, often carrying caseloads of 30 to 40 kids through the community resource coordinator program.
“It is an eye-opening experience to realize change cannot flip the hardships within our county and community overnight sometimes,” she said.
Demond Wells, a community worker and peer support specialist with LINC and UNC School of Medicine, said the people closest to the solutions help most since they’re often face-to-face with the problems first. Wells said he has aided in transporting people to doctor’s appointments and job interviews and often goes into Wilmington Housing Authority neighborhoods like Creekwood and Houston Moore to interact with kids and families, building connections through on-the-ground work.
“There are social determinants of health, lack of proper food, lack of medical attention, lack of mental health attention, and these are what [PCU] provide in wraparound services,” he said.
Wells added he was jailed for 15 years for second-degree murder but found a second chance seven years ago upon exiting incarceration. He used his platform as proof that with proper support, second chances happen, but he also wants to show kids and families the importance of education and good decision-making.
He used a sports stadium analogy to implore commissioners to think twice and vote against the budget to defund PCU — though county employees for PCU have already been informed their positions and the department will end in June, as the next fiscal year budget, upon commissioner approval, begins July 1.
“There’s a skybox, a sideline and a middle,” Wells said. “Right now, we’re sitting in the skybox because we’re looking down and if we sit in the middle or on the sideline, we will see things that we can’t see while we’re up.”
Braxton spoke to the demise of the program being rooted in systemic racism. As an example, he used excess drug addiction and how different people are treated in receiving help.
“White America was outraged with the drugs and pill-popping,” he said. “You know, they went from being criminals and drug addicts to nice people who just needed a little bit of help. And we spent millions and millions of dollars to help those drug addicts. When Black people had a problem with drugs, you know what the answer was? We all know: prison sentences. When we have the proper community support and the community outrage behind a problem, we can work wonders and we do great things. PCU was that great thing.”
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