--- title: An End to the Bleeding date: 2023-05-24T10:30:00-04:00 author: University of Maryland canonical_url: "https://terp.umd.edu/an-end-to-the-bleeding" section: Articles --- # An End to the Bleeding *May 24, 2023* — by [Sala Levin ’10](/authors/sala-levin-10) - *Photos by John T. Consoli* > The mayor of Knoxville, Tenn., picked up a UMD researcher’s book on preventing gun violence. The resulting partnership could be a model for how cities can create safer streets. *An End to the Bleeding hero image* **ONE EVENING IN FEBRUARY 2021,** Janaria Muhammad stepped out of her house in Knoxville, Tenn., to meet friends at her favorite restaurant, Kings and Wings. Recently turned 15, Nana, as everyone called her, was a perpetual source of energy for those around her. She reminded her brothers to keep their grades up, helped her dad navigate new technology so much that he teased she was his secretary, shimmied with the dance team at Austin-East High School, and babysat neighborhood kids and cut hair for pocket money. “She was like the sun,” her father, Lawrence Muhammad, told The Washington Post. “When you saw her, you lit up.” That night, Nana didn’t make it past her yard on Selma Avenue before the darkness got her: She was hit twice by a drive-by shooter. Her father rushed outside and held her as she died—the third of five Austin-East students lost to gun violence before the end of spring. To mark the second anniversary of Nana’s murder, dozens gathered outside the squat brick building that houses East Knoxville’s YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Center, where she regularly came after school to do homework, play basketball and snap pictures with friends. Friends and relatives, along with community members and leaders, clutched purple balloons—the color she’d chosen for her bedroom—under a gray, oatmeal-textured sky. Her parents spoke to news cameras, pleading again for help finding her still-unidentified killer. “If we don’t get justice in this life, we know that we will get justice in the next,” said Jacquelinne Muhammad, Nana’s mother. *cover of "Bleeding Out" by Thomas Abt* --- **KNOXVILLE POLICE OFFICER** Conner Wiesenberg has the kind of “how’s your dad doing?” familiarity with neighborhood regulars that Abt prizes, because it opens doors for peaceful solutions to problems that could escalate to bullets flying. He graduated from Knoxville Central High, and played on its basketball team with kids from Lonsdale, a neighborhood that experienced violence then, too. “It would not be uncommon for us to be on a traffic stop and somebody rolls by, calls my name out, it’s somebody that I know,” he says. *police officers look at writing on sidewalk — Knoxville police officers Andrell Cummings (left) and Conner Wiesenberg look at a memorial to a resident killed last year.* *Thomas Abt gives lecture — The police department in Knoxville is incorporating violence reduction methods presented by UMD’s Thomas Abt (above). (Photo by Elliott Lee Masouredis)* > The mission is very simple. We want to save lives by stopping violence, using science.” — Thomas Abt, University of Maryland associate research professor Finally, fairness—or legitimacy—is the linchpin in assuring that these interventions work according to plan. The impact of laws must be “felt equally across social groups,” Abt writes; they must be enforced “according to widely accepted values, including transparency, impartiality, proportionality and equality.” These concepts and conclusions from the data led Abt and his team to make a number of recommendations to the city in fall 2022. A few months later, the city is “under construction with a new way of policing,” Knoxville Deputy Police Chief Tony Willis says. “What we want is our officers to get a call, and it’s no longer 12 Cherry Street. It’s the Smith house.” --- **BORN AND RAISED** in Cambridge, Mass., Abt was exposed early to the idea of using data to address social problems by his father, Clark Abt, an MIT-trained researcher whose social science think tank, Abt Associates, takes on issues like public health, education and economic mobility. Abt’s interest in violence reduction was fueled by his own close-to-home shock. In 1999, while attending Georgetown University Law Center, he taught a class at a local high school. One student “sat in the back, was extremely disconnected, often slept through major portions of class,” he recalls. Gradually, as Abt worked to engage him, he became more responsive. One of Abt’s mentees from the program later asked if he’d heard about the kid in the back of the class: He’d been murdered. Years later, as he began writing “Bleeding Out,” Abt searched unsuccessfully for details. “I contacted the homeroom teacher. He was like, ‘Thomas, I can’t tell you how many students I’ve lost. There’s just no way I could possibly pick this one out among all the others.’” Abt went on to examine this problem of violence from the perspective of a teacher, a prosecutor, a government official and an academic. After law school, he worked as an assistant district attorney in New York County, followed by time at a law firm and as voter program director for the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. Post-election, Abt joined the Department of Justice as chief of staff to Assistant Attorney General Laurie O. Robinson, who prioritized “bringing sound science and reliable data into the criminal justice decision-making process,” he says. > What we want is our officers to get a call, and it’s no longer 12 Cherry Street. It’s the Smith house.” — Tony Willis, Knoxville deputy police chief Robinson calls Abt “somebody who can cross those lines and bring important knowledge from research into the world of hard decisions on the practical side.” He would demonstrate that as New York’s deputy secretary for public safety, where he initiated the Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) program, and later in a five-year fellowship at Harvard, when he wrote “Bleeding Out.” Critics like Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, say Abt’s philosophy takes a fast-action approach to problems with deep roots, potentially neglecting “people who talk about fundamental causes and long-term solutions,” he told *The Atlantic* in 2019. Abt agrees systemic approaches like reducing poverty, improving education and creating job opportunities are all essential, but says that unlike preventing shootings—“as a matter of practical reality, those things are not achievable in the near future.” Two things primarily separate the VRC from other centers focused on gun violence: its all-hands approach, which incorporates a spectrum of ideas on enforcement and prevention; and its work with elected leaders and grassroots activists at no cost to implement new methods and ideas. Abt is “uniquely qualified to help lead this effort and also to coordinate other initiatives at the university that are centered around violence research,” says Rod K. Brunson, interim chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and senior policy adviser to the VRC. He is “one of the thought leaders in this space.” --- **DOWN SECLUDED** Adcock Avenue in Knoxville, Wiesenberg points out a low-slung house where he used to drop off basketball buddies after school. In April 2020, Anthony Sanford, one of them, was killed here, shot in the back in what appeared to start as a drug deal. *Knoxville police officer* *Denzel Grant leads Turn Up Knox — Denzel Grant leads Turn Up Knox, a program to keep kids and adults from violence. Such organizations are critical to reducing violence, says Abt.* “I always had the passion for (community work) ever since,” says Grant, who was in elementary school at the time. “I’ve just been doing it ever since.” Grant has made unexpected connections. “We have become pretty good friends,” says Deputy Police Chief Willis, “and I would not have bet one dime on that occurring.” But Grant has become “a powerful partner” in helping police de-escalate potentially volatile situations. Knoxville native LaKenya Middlebrook is responsible for ensuring these disparate elements cohere. In 2021, the mayor appointed Middlebrook director of community safety, a role in which she links citizens, law enforcement, civilian oversight committees and school districts to implement Abt’s recommendations. Gun violence is “an issue that is so front-of-mind and so deeply personal for so many folks in our community that people want to help,” says Middlebrook. “They want to be a part, they want to figure out what role they can play, they are really open to thinking about how we can do things a little differently.” Much of Turn Up Knox’s youth programming takes place at the YWCA. At the ceremony commemorating Nana Muhammad’s death, Grant, Middlebrook and others held their balloons as Nana’s father, Lawrence, talked about his daughter. “She’s that tree where all the seeds fall off and other plants grow,” he said. Afterward, those gathered released their balloons and watched them soar, far beyond where any tree could snag them. **TERP** --- ## UMD Researchers Lead 120 Initiative on Gun Violence Reduction *Joseph Richardson Jr. headshot* *Rod K. Brunson headshot* **Issue:** [Spring 2023](https://terp.umd.edu/editions/spring-2023) **Types:** [Features](https://terp.umd.edu/category/features)