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Two years after shutting down Bull City United following the arrests of several employees, Durham may bring back violence interrupters to fight the city’s gun violence.
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This week, city and county officials released final recommendations from a three-day “Summit on Saving Lives” in June. A working group tasked with finding solutionswants to reduce homicides, nonfatal shootings and shooting-related hospitalizations by 10% each year.
The recommendations reflect a “commitment to reducing gun violence in the Bull City,” Mayor Leo Williams said in a statement, and will require “total collaboration across local governments, organizations already doing this critical work, and our residents.”
As of Aug. 1, there had been 329 shooting incidents in Durham this year with 116 people shot. Thirteen of the shootings had been fatal, according to the Durham Police Department.
The working group, made up of 30 community leaders, leaned on data that showed Durham’s most serious violence is concentrated among a small group of people, often connected to groups or gangs.
Data collected from 2021 to 2025 by researchers from California’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab showed that about 90% of homicides in Durham were gun homicides and nearly 80% of all homicides involved gang members as victims, suspects or both.
Researchers estimated gang and group membership in Durham at about 430 to 685 people, which is about 0.2% of the city’s population. The report also found that adults 18 to 34 drive the majority of violence in Durham. Victims and suspects in homicides during that four-year period were mostly male and Black, and about 30 years old.
Between January and May, the working group held over 15 community listening sessions where residents urged local leaders to focus on those at highest risk, lead with services over enforcement and coordinate existing programs more effectively.
The working group unanimously endorsed five strategies:
The group recommends a focused deterrence initiative that would identify the people and groups at the highest risk of being involved in shootings. Then, offer services and support while making clear that violence will bring immediate consequences.
The approach is based on what national experts called “focus, balance and fairness,” with fairness defined as involving impacted residents throughout policymaking.
The report calls for Durham to reinvest in community-based street outreach, a recommendation likely to reignite debate over the violence interrupter programs that use credible messengers to mediate conflicts and steer people away from shootings.
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In 2024, Durham County shut down the anti-violence program Bull City United, after it was launched in 2016. The program hired people with past criminal records to as violence interrupters in high-risk neighborhoods, but several employees were arrested on gun, drug, and murder-accessory charges. The shutdown cut 14 jobs and six contractor positions and left a gap in the city and county’s plan to address gun violence.
New violence interrupter programs, the working group said, must come with “strong safeguards to ensure proper management with oversight.”
The recommendations call for piloting partnerships in the highest-risk areas where violence is concentrated, bringing together residents, faith and civic groups, government agencies, law enforcement and others to improve the physical and social conditions that fuel violence.
The group recommends using trauma-informed cognitive behavior techniques across the first three strategies, training residents, service providers, outreach workers and law enforcement personnel to promote healing and support change in thinking and behavior.
While data points to adult violence, the working group wants leaders to convene a youth summit on saving lives to develop recommendations tailored to children and adolescents.
The report calls for more coordination to address what residents have described as hundreds of programs working in parallel.
This means at least two full-time positions in the city or county to oversee implementation of the first four strategies, including one role that reports to senior leadership. Also, a newly formed advisory board will meet monthly to review progress and track performance.
Mike Lee, the chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners, said the recommendations “reflect exactly what we have heard from residents,” which is a call for better coordination and deeper partnerships.
The recommendations are expected to be presented to the Durham City Council at its Aug. 20 meeting and to the Durham County commissioners at its Sept. 8 meeting.
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This story was originally published August 6, 2026 at 12:45 PM.