How Much Does Being a Violence Interrupter Pay?

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The people that I've shadowed, the salaries range from like $25,000 to $40,000 a year. That is more than the median income in the impoverished neighborhoods that they work in. It is significantly less than what a Chicago police officer would make. And neither is the job security. Some of them, they're on salary and they feel like they're at least set for a couple of years. Many of these workers are on contracts that are like month to month or every few months.

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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