CT Violence Intervention and Prevention
Connecticut Violence Intervention and Prevention (CTVIP) is a group of trusted, trained community members that disrupt, prevent, and stop the spread of violence which results in trauma through crisis intervention and proactive relationships with the highest-risk youths and the institutions that impact their lives in the Greater New Haven area.
“I see a lot of me in them. And I always tell these young kids all the time, I am you. I came from where you came from.”
Tyrone “Tiger” Whittaker grew up in New Haven where he found himself on the wrong path as a teenager. “I share with [young people on my caseload] my past experiences. I went to prison when I was 17 years old, and I was 47 when I came home. Let’s do a math question. How many years did I serve in prison? And you could see the young kid’s eyes get big.” Tiger leverages his story as a credible messenger with young people at CTVIP to build trusting relationships that help pull them away from violence.
As he puts it, “Being a credible messenger is someone who has both the trust of the community and the capacity to influence positive change.” Tiger connects with the highest-risk youth in the Elm City, helping them to recognize their trauma, understand its impact on their decisions, and break cycles of violence.
He says, “It’s a process of earning the trust of a young individual that can take maybe a year, or it could take two years…you gotta be reliable, you gotta be able to advocate for this young man and show him that you’re going to fight for his survival.” And then, Tiger says, a young person will start to open up.
Tiger remembers working with a young man who was referred to him because he was stealing cars and rebelling in school. “When we first started working together, he stole another car. I went to court with him, and we had a conversation. I let him know that this gotta be it. You gotta change your life or you get into an age where it’s not gonna be juvenile no more, it’s gonna be prison. And then, within 6 months, this young man’s grades began to change.” Now, that young man is on a path to self-sufficiency. He graduated from high school, secured a full-time job, and is taking classes at Gateway Community College. And he still checks in with Tiger regularly.
As Tiger reflects on his life and the lives of the young people he’s impacted, he says, “You can start out one way, but at the end of the day, we want to get you to the point where you can strive and be successful without worrying about being in the school-to-prison pipeline.”