Camden officials say this program helped decrease violence in the city. After Trump’s DOJ cuts, it abruptly ceased operations.

A violence intervention program that Camden officials say has helped decrease crime in the city abruptly ceased operations and laid off seven staffers after President Donald Trump’s administration pulled roughly $2 million in federal grants.

Cure4Camden, a violence intervention program that launched in 2014 as part of the city’s overhaul of its public safety system, stopped its street outreach and early intervention initiatives as a result of the U.S. Department of Justice cut.

“We were notified on the evening of April 22 that the last day of funding would be April 22,” Anna Payanzo Cotton, chief operating officer at Center For Family Services, the nonprofit that oversees Cure4Camden, said in an interview. She said the Justice Department told the organization that “the funding was no longer aligned with the priorities of the administration.”

The program is unlike traditional anti-violence programs in that it employs trusted community members to intervene in conflicts, support victims of violence, and try to prevent retribution.

Stanley Winrow, 40, was a violence intervention specialist for Cure4Camden who worked with individuals at high risk for gun violence. He recruited and mentored people who were selling drugs, carrying guns, or had prior violent charges.

Until he was laid off on April 22, Winrow had a caseload of 17 people he worked with to take the steps they needed to get off the streets, whether it was finding an apartment, applying for a job, or talking them off the edge in the middle of the night.

“I was on the streets for 25 years,” he said in an interview. “I sold drugs and been to jail and all the different things they’re going through. That’s what made the program so successful, because they know I literally come from what they come from.”

Cure4Camden had been awarded $3 million in DOJ funds in two separate grants: a nearly $1 million four-year grant awarded in October 2021 and a $2 million grant for fiscal year 2024 meant to last three years. The group had already used more than 75% of the older grant, but it lost the majority — or about 85% — of the more recent award, according to Payanzo Cotton.

Winrow said three of the people he worked with told him within days of the federal funding cut that they would return to dealing drugs. Another, Winrow said, told him he would start robbing people. Winrow said he continues to talk to them daily.

“They almost feel like they’re getting back at the system for betraying us by going out and doing the opposite of what the program was like,” he said. “I‘m trying to change that mindset.”

Center For Family Services, the nonprofit that oversees Cure4Camden, is trying to find job placements for Winrow and his former coworkers elsewhere in the organization. Winrow said he is thankful he may not be completely jobless, but he started working at the organization specifically for this purpose.

“I feel like I was a hindrance to the community for so long, it’s only right that I give back,” he said. “And by me giving back, I‘m grabbing guys that was once like me by the bootstraps and I‘m making them model citizens in the community.”

The nonprofit’s leaders are accustomed to seeking out funding streams, but they had no way to plan this time, Payanzo Cotton said. They’re now scrambling to find a funding source to resume its programs.

“We typically would be notified that a grant would not be renewed or continued and have until the end of that grant cycle to plan, but we were not given that opportunity with this,” Payanzo Cotton said.

The group will pursue the DOJ’s appeal process, but they also know that “a number of other local law enforcement agencies and nonprofit organizations that do similar work across the country received termination notices at the same time,” Payanzo Cotton said.

Along with spending time in communities to directly intervene in potential violence, staff had been assisting a total of 46 direct participants — including 29 youth — with a range of issues from advocating for them in court to helping them get a job. The program also helped with conflict resolution and bullying at local high schools.

“They don‘t have that after-school point person that’s going to just make sure that they’re in a safe place. … They don‘t have that person who they can kind of bounce decision making off of,” Payanzo Cotton said. “That’s been pulled out from under these participants.”

Payanzo Cotton said the nonprofit is trying to connect its regular participants with other services.

Cure4Camden’s hospital violence intervention services at Cooper Hospital are funded by the state and will continue to operate.

Losing Cure4Camden’s programs will “come at a cost” and ultimately put more of an onus on local police, said Dan Keashen, a spokesperson for Camden County.

Cure4Camden helped ”to build bridges ... get better informed about what’s happening within certain pockets of certain neighborhoods,” he said. Shooting homicides in the city were down 46% and aggravated assault was down 21% in 2024 compared with 2014 — the year Cure4Camden launched as part of a larger policing overhaul in the city.

Cure violence programs stem from violence interruption methods that originated in Chicago. A 2017 Temple University study of a Philadelphia-based cure violence program found that it reduced shootings by 30% in targeted zones in North Philadelphia. That program also struggled with funding after not getting a grant renewed with the city and the U.S. Justice Department after former President Barack Obama left office.

Camden County Commissioners Director Lou Cappelli Jr. said Cure4Camden has helped reduce violent crime in the county as a result of its impacts on the city. He fears that violence will soon go in the opposite direction.

“This is like a safety net that’s being removed from the city of Camden,” he said. “A lot of these kids are coming from families of poverty, and if we don‘t provide this help, they’re not getting any help.”

Cappelli’s message to the Trump administration:

“You’re going to cripple our efforts to reduce crimes committed by young people in Camden City,” he said. “Cutting off these funds will actually promote crime rather than hinder crime.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Camden officials spoke about the funding cuts at a 10 a.m. news conference Wednesday before activists and supporters of the program marched in a “peace walk.”