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WBEZ Chicago's Patrick Smith spent a year reporting on Fats and his co-workers trying to figure out if violence interruptors can scale up enough to make a difference. The former gang member now works as an outreach worker in the same streets that he used to gang bang on. He explains what it looks like when this work is working, how they maintain order between different groups of people who are fighting over drugs or guns.

Policymakers across the country are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on “violence interruptor” programs to try to stop shootings before they happen. WBEZ’s Patrick Smith spent a year with some Chicago-based interruptors for the podcast “Motive.”

This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.

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