Whether you're out there in the streets protesting police yelling A cab or driving a lifted truck with a thin blue line American flag waving off the side,

one thing we can all agree on is policing alone cannot prevent all the gun violence in this country.

Policing can't stop all the mass shootings, policing can't stop a guy from opening fire in a kid who he thinks is trying to steal his car,

and policing certainly can't stop all the gang violence we see in American cities. But maybe violence interruptors can help with at least that last one.

I think a really good example of how this work starts with a guy named Sorenzzo Strong. He goes by Fats.

He's a former gang member and drug dealer. He's working the same streets that he used to gang bang on that he used to sell drugs on.

Ahead on today explained 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.

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Today, today explain.

I am Patrick Smith. I'm a criminal justice reporter at WBEZ Chicago.

Let's hear about these violence interruptors. Where do you want to start the story that you're here to tell us?

I think I want to start with what this looks like when it's working. I think a really good example of how this work starts with a guy named Sorenzzo Strong. He goes by Fats.

Fats. How you doing, man?

You're having fun with that one.

Yeah, all right. He's a heavy sat guy as you might have guessed from the nickname. He's a former gang member and drug dealer.

Nowadays, he's left that life to be a violence interruptor or outreach worker. He's working the same streets that he used to gang bang on that he used to sell drugs on.

We're down at Rockwell. It used to be a project that has been torn down and repealed, but everybody still comes back down here and hang out.

So you heard him talking about Rockwell there. There were these huge towers. It's now been torn down, but the site where those towers used to stand, it's still the site of a lot of gang activity.

And that gang activity, it happens a lot around this park. It's got this very poetic name, park 574. The park sits right in the center where the towers used to be.

And when you go to that park, you know, it's a park in a neighborhood when you go to that park, there's this kind of uneasy piece.

And so, fast and his coworkers are there to maintain this piece. Like they're not there saying, hey, all these groups need to sink in by a together.

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