Antoine Burton was extremely revered in his Baltimore neighborhood, even earlier than he turned what is called a violence interrupter – a job during which he mediated quite a few conflicts and linked individuals with sources to handle what are sometimes the root causes of violence.
He got here strongly really useful to Safe Streets, a community-led violence interruption program for the metropolis, as somebody who had the credibility amongst his friends to steer these at the highest danger of involvement in violence, similar to he as soon as was, towards a greater path, mentioned a metropolis official who oversees the municipally-funded program.
But final week, Burton was accused of being on the different facet of the violence he labored so arduous to stop. He was arrested on first-degree tried homicide and gun fees in reference to capturing one other man – who’s in steady situation – whereas being prohibited from possessing a firearm as a result of previous convictions, police mentioned.
Burton was ordered to be held with out bond the following day and has a preliminary listening to scheduled on July 8, courtroom data present
He was a part of a workforce that has been credited with contributing to Baltimore’s historic declines in violent crime lately and the lowest variety of homicides recorded in practically 50 years in 2025, city data shows.
There had been no purple flags main as much as the alleged capturing that indicated he was susceptible to doable violence, which each shocked and devastated metropolis officers and neighborhood members who labored with him intently, they advised NCS.
But his case underscores the delicate balancing act of being a “credible messenger”: somebody who’s deeply rooted in the communities they serve, whose job is to intervene in risky and typically harmful conditions to cut back violence. Drawing on shared life experiences to construct belief with these susceptible to violence, many staff like Burton navigate a skinny line between dealing with circumstances that might set off previous traumas and sustaining their very own stability, mentioned metropolis officers and neighborhood leaders.
The accusations in opposition to Burton have raised questions on his legal background and the vetting course of metropolis officers use earlier than hiring somebody for Safe Streets. The initiative has confronted criticism for not disclosing the identities of its staff, together with from metropolis officers like the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City Ivan Bates who has scrutinized the “lack of transparency” round the program.
The mayor and the director of his workplace that oversees the program, nevertheless, say the case is an outlier and doesn’t symbolize a program that’s confirmed to be efficient in decreasing violent crime. Still, the incident could also be a setback to the status of Safe Streets by seemingly confirming misconceived notions that every one staff are susceptible to being accused of a violent incident.
NCS has reached out to the public defender’s workplace for touch upon Burton’s behalf.
How violence interrupters balance restoration and triggers
Sean “Weezy” Wees, who’s the director of a Safe Streets website in the south Baltimore neighborhood of Brooklyn, is aware of firsthand the psychological battle violence interrupters face every single day they go into the area.
They by no means understand how an individual will react when approaching them in the center of a battle. Not everybody goes to wish to hear when feelings attain a boiling level, and violence interrupters must “be able to accept and tolerate disrespect,” he mentioned.
“That’s where the work comes in. That could be triggering for you because you used to be a man that didn’t tolerate no disrespect from nobody,” he mentioned of violence interrupters. “We have to be able to engage and have a rapport with the type of guys that I used to be myself.”
In the early 2000s, Wees was on the different facet of the violence he now works to stop.
“I was one of the same ones carrying guns, selling dope, doing everything under the sun in the Brooklyn community, basically tearing it down through violence and drug abuse and things of that nature,” he mentioned.
It wasn’t till his little brother was killed by gun violence in 2015 that Wees realized he wouldn’t want that ache on his worst enemy, he mentioned. When he was employed by Safe Streets in 2019, Wees had been on his restoration path for just a few years and was already mediating conflicts in his neighborhood, he mentioned.
Wees says he had an excellent relationship with Burton, and he couldn’t speculate what was going via his thoughts at the time of the alleged capturing, however he emphasised “he’s human, and not everybody knows how to channel or tune down once you get to 10.”
It’s crucial, Wees mentioned, for violence interrupters to know their very own limits, to have their retailers and time for reflection, and to lean on their workforce after they get triggered.
Part of that entails assembly with their website psychologist, profiting from different psychological well being sources supplied from the metropolis and being trustworthy about their psychological state earlier than beginning a shift, Wees mentioned.
One of these psychologists is Deidre McClellan, who supplies therapeutic help for all Safe Streets staff, together with Burton. When she heard about Burton’s arrest, she considered what number of workers members are sometimes anticipated to hold the ache of the whole neighborhood whereas attempting to avoid wasting lives.
That was a part of Burton’s battle, she mentioned, as he was one in all the staff who’re continually uncovered to grief, trauma and crises whereas “simultaneously trying to heal from and remove himself from the trauma that he’s experienced.”
McClellan, who works for the Catholic Charities supplier that helps function the program, visits every website biweekly to spend time with each employee to provide them the area to speak about their psychological and behavioral well being, she says.
The incident reminded McClellan of what she teaches them about trauma: It has layers, and sure behaviors could be rooted in grief, violence, trauma, abandonment, poverty and incarceration, she mentioned.
“It also reminded me that healing is a journey, but it’s not a destination that we reach,” McClellan mentioned.
Safe Streets was based in 2007 and was later adopted as the metropolis’s flagship gun violence prevention initiative in 2022 below the mayor’s revived Group Violence Reduction Strategy effort, which goals to curb gun violence via a collaboration between legislation enforcement, social companies and neighborhood members.
Baltimore isn’t the solely metropolis that has gone past the typical arrest-and-prosecution course of to struggle violent crime. Other main cities like Detroit, San Antonio and New York have additionally invested in similar community-based initiatives that contain social companies and intervention by trusted neighborhood members.
Just like all Safe Streets workers, Burton underwent an intensive vetting earlier than he was employed, mentioned Stefanie Mavronis, the director of the mayor’s workplace of neighborhood security and engagement, which oversees Safe Streets.
It turned obvious via his vetting and his early days on the job that Burton had a pure expertise for battle mediation and a ardour for connecting with younger individuals in his neighborhood, Mavronis mentioned.
Not all Safe Streets staff have a legal report, however some do, and the hiring course of takes that under consideration when onboarding individuals who can leverage their previous to work with these susceptible to taking place the same path, she mentioned.
Burton had been convicted of theft with a harmful and lethal weapon, escape from confinement, tried second-degree homicide, first-degree assault and drug-related offenses in circumstances from the Nineteen Nineties and 2002, courtroom data present.
In 2020, he was federally indicted and later pleaded responsible to fees of possessing a firearm regardless of being prohibited from doing so as a result of these prior convictions, courtroom data present.
After the incident on June 7, Burton was recognized as a suspect from surveillance footage from the gasoline station the place the capturing passed off, the possible trigger affidavit says. When officers approached him, they recovered a handgun outfitted with {a magazine} containing a number of cartridges, it says.
Burton admitted to detectives he had an altercation at the retailer with the sufferer — whose title was redacted in the affidavit — and “also advised that the firearm that was recovered was the same one that he used,” the doc says.
All candidates endure a deep background examine by the Baltimore Police Department, Mavronis mentioned. The police division referred NCS again to the mayor’s workplace for additional questions on the vetting course of.
Disqualifying components for Safe Street staff embrace a historical past of arson, rape or crimes involving kids; energetic warrants, probation or parole violations; or any patterns of legal conduct that counsel the particular person is an energetic danger to public security, Mavronis mentioned. There’s additionally consideration to how lengthy it’s been since incarceration or prior convictions, she added.
Job candidates should cross an interview panel that consists of workers from the mayor’s workplace of neighborhood security and engagement, one in all the program’s directors, police and a minimum of one neighborhood member who they’d serve, Mavronis mentioned.
Those who’re employed then endure month-to-month background checks, she mentioned.
Ultimately, the solely individuals who can do the job successfully “are the main group that is susceptible to relapse, be it relapse on drugs, relapse to street life, or relapse to behaviors that were prior to gainful employment,” mentioned Ray Kelly, a neighborhood policing skilled who sits on the state fee on police coaching and requirements.
Ideal candidates are “dedicated to charting a new course for their lives and encouraging others to find another path too,” Mavronis mentioned.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott mentioned in an announcement he was “furious” about Burton’s alleged actions, saying he “failed to live up to our standards for frontline community violence intervention staff.”
The accusations in opposition to Burton are “fundamentally incompatible” to the mission of Safe Streets, and there hasn’t been a previous case of a workers member accused of capturing one other particular person, Mavronis mentioned.
There have, nevertheless, been just a few cases the place Safe Streets staff had been arrested on weapons fees after they’d left the job, Mavronis mentioned, and a minimum of one involving an active employee who was arrested on medicine fees.
City leaders proceed to double down on analysis that has proven the program’s effectiveness. A recent study from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions discovered the program is related to a 42% discount in homicides involving individuals from age 15 to 24 and a 21% discount in youth nonfatal shootings in neighborhoods from 2007 to 2023.
Despite the constructive impression of applications like Safe Streets, some in the neighborhood and metropolis authorities have voiced criticisms.
The metropolis state’s lawyer minimize ties with the mayor’s workplace of neighborhood security and engagement in December, whereas criticizing the workplace for not disclosing the identities of Safe Streets staff and alleging there isn’t a oversight for the funding and operational spending of the program, in line with his letter to the mayor at the time.
“The veil of secrecy that surrounds this program is widely known and continues to keep the public, my prosecutors, and the city government from truly understanding the exact nature of the work being provided by these ‘violence interrupters,’” Bates mentioned in the letter.
Bates declined to touch upon the case when contacted by NCS as a result of he’s prosecuting Burton in the alleged capturing.
The mayor’s workplace of neighborhood security and engagement mentioned it supplies “strong fiscal oversight and accounting of how public dollars connected to the program are spent.”
Mayor Scott has in previous statements defended preserving the identities of the staff secret, saying revealing them would compromise their security whereas doing an inherently harmful job, in line with NCS affiliate WBFF.
There’s at all times pushback with regards to investing in “unorthodox methods of violence interruption,” particularly when these funds can be directed towards traditionally disinvested communities, mentioned Kelly.
While belief in the program could also be broken as a result of the case in opposition to one in all their colleagues, the workers in current days has solely intensified their presence in communities, Mavronis mentioned.
Ultimately, the workers who “put their lives on the line every day” should take care of the fallout, she mentioned.
Every workers member throughout 10 websites got here collectively a day after Burton’s arrest to share their ideas and emotions, she mentioned. What turned clear was that they need much more entry to psychological well being help, and they’re doubling down on their efforts to examine in with one another, Mavronis mentioned.
The Belvedere neighborhood website the place Burton labored has been hardest hit, in line with Wees. “He’s part of a brotherhood; your team is your team… You’re used to seeing them every day,” he added.
When he spoke along with his fellow website administrators this week, Wees relayed the similar message: “Man, it’s just time to go harder.”
“If the community or the public have any doubt in the work we’re doing, it’s time for us to show them why they shouldn’t doubt us,” Wees mentioned. “You can’t break down a whole organization that’s built around community violence just because of one person’s actions.”
“You never know what that person was going through that day; you never know what that person was going through that week or that month. So, as a human being, who are you to judge?”