DAYTON — A long-awaited program to fight back against gun violence is up and running in Dayton as a pilot program.
The city’s Violence Interruption Program is now active in the North Riverdale neighborhood, and leaders hope it can soon spread all across Dayton.
The program has been needed for a really long time, wanted and talked about for almost two years, and it’s finally here in a very limited fashion.
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The people working to make it successful believe the time spent to make it work right will make it successful across the city.
Curtis “P-NUT” Johnson is a member of Felons with a Future, restored citizens, the group Dayton is partnering with for outreach in the North Riverdale Violence Interruption pilot program.
He said, “All my guys went through training. It was very, very rigorous training.” He continued by saying, “So it is a lot of de-escalation. You got monitorship, you have ways of mediation as well.”
Johnson said his group did extensive training with Cure Violence Global. They sharpened up skills to help people seek violent alternatives, and they already have credibility.
Dayton City Commissioner Darius Beckham said, “They are relatable. They’ve had life experiences that would allow them to actually be trusted in these types of situations.”
Beckham worked on the program even before getting elected to the city commission. One event that really put the spotlight on the need for this program is a drive-by shooting on Home Avenue in June 2024, where two young people died, and bullets injured 5 more.
Another incident in February 2025 took a teen’s life and injured another; the person pulling the trigger was a juvenile.
“It’s time to grow it. It’s time to measure it. It’s time to ensure that we can actually have the impact that we want to have,” Beckham said,
“And the main thing is stopping the retaliation, stopping the spread of gun violence,” Johnson added.
The pilot program has been fully up and running for about six weeks. It’s scheduled for a year and then may spread across the city, though the city will likely need to seek funding partners at the state or federal level to help make it happen.
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