By Ashley Benkarski
NASHVILLE, TN — Gideon’s Army has been on the ground in North Nashville, deploying violence interrupters in parts of the city saturated by poverty and violent activity. But that’s not all they’ve done.
They’ve also been doing crucial work within schools, such as Pearl Cohn Magnet High School, where they implemented restorative anti-violence programs in 2016 and were on the ground after the devastating 2020 tornado and subsequent Covid-19 pandemic, helping residents with shelter, food, and other necessities.
Gideon’s Army founder and CEO Rasheedat Fetuga is proud of what the group has accomplished. Born out of heartbreak from the loss of a young student and a realization by Fetuga that, with help, she could do something more than just react after violence shakes a community, Gideon’s Army began by bringing Cure Violence to Nashville for an assessment.
“We got funding and expanded into the community in 2019,” she said.
The group operates on the Community-Based Violence Interruption Model, a strategy focused on violence and harm reduction in communities through the public health lens of disease control and methods of behavioral change, its mission states.
A few years back, Gideon’s Army gained good and bad attention when they produced the Driving While Black Report that laid bare “racialized outcomes” plaguing Nashvillians of color at the hands of MNPD personnel.
Volunteers and members of Gideon’s Army have also been there for victims of violence of all ages, offering support and solidarity in the aftermath of experiences many of us could never imagine and doing work in the hopes of preventing them in the first place.
They’ve thrown a graduation and housed and cared for a gunshot victim who couldn’t walk across her school’s stage with her classmates. They’ve held a funeral with a tiny casket and a carriage for a toddler who lost her life far too soon. They’ve laughed, cried, celebrated, and mourned with families in Music City.
But much of these good works have come into question lately, as News Channel 5’s Phil Williams has made the organization one of the subjects of his investigative series. Williams has reported that Gideon’s Army has mishandled funds and is largely deceiving the public and city officials about the results of its work. His reporting has also insinuated that Gideon’s Army has overstated the scope of its efforts and effectiveness in Pearl Cohn High School and other parts of the North Nashville community.
The NC5 coverage hit hard over the course of a year, and Fetuga is refuting much of the reporting, which she said didn’t begin until the organization was set to receive Metro funding. His posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, don’t reflect that the group did not ask for this funding but were recommended for $1 million by Councilmember Sharon Hurt. Hurt did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.
When Metro was deciding whether or not to grant Gideon’s Army $1 million in funding, Williams’s posts insinuated that Gideon’s Army had already received and mismanaged funding through the phrase “an additional $1 million” when they hadn’t gotten funding before. It’s statements like this that are cause for concern, and it’s exceedingly concerning when they are coming from a trusted source.
For example, Williams’s reporting uses “shots-fired” calls as a metric for reporting crime as evidence to assert that Gideon’s Army was manipulating crime data to overstate their effectiveness. When asked if MNPD uses shots-fired calls as a metric in its reporting of crime statistics, MNPD spokesman Don Aaron replied, “Not really,” adding that they do “capture gunshot information” with weekly reports “as a management tool to combat crime.” The reasons for shots-fired calls are varied and don’t accurately reflect gun violence statistics.
Williams reported that Fetuga’s claim there hadn’t been violence in 10 months at Cumberland View was untrue and that she either could not or would not answer his queries, using the word “shootings” in confluence with “shoot-outs” or “shots fired.” While the two terms appear synonymous, they are not. A shooting is defined by injury or death involving gunfire. A shoot-out is a gunfight. Fetuga wasn’t claiming that there had been absolutely no shots fired, just that no one had been hit by gunfire in that period of time. The wording of her response is reasonable, given her proximity to the work.
It’s unfair to use that statistic against Gideon’s Army when MNPD doesn’t use it to determine higher or lower levels of crime. It’s also unfair to skim over the fact that violent crime spiked across the nation as COVID-19 lockdowns eased.
Violent crime overall in the community has gone down. But the reporting leads one to believe that Rasheedat Fetuga is being dishonest about her organization’s efforts in violence reduction in North Nashville and, especially, the Cumberland View community.
And it isn’t to say Gideon’s Army is single-handedly responsible for the reduction across the board; time will bear out that information. But their impact can’t be single-handedly dismissed, either. He may not be technically wrong in his reporting, but he’s being selective with the facts. The work Gideon’s Army has done and continues to do is complex and dangerous by its very nature, but it is also work that has compassion at its core.
Rather than point fingers at Cleveland Shaw or Charles Brooks for their alleged crimes and assume that Gideon’s Army is therefore bad, perhaps we the public should adopt some compassion ourselves. These men are complex human beings in a complicated and violent environment, and it’s important to understand the underlying issues that contribute to crime and why some people find it hard to extract themselves from. But Shaw and Brooks are people, too, and their alleged actions should not define them nor Gideon’s Army.
When Nashville Scene reporter Eli Motycka published a piece that criticized the coverage of Gideon’s Army, Williams fired off a slew of posts on the social media platform criticizing Motycka’s “clumsy understanding of his reporting,” a dig at Motycka’s work, referencing a line he wrote: “When applied to a small nonprofit experimenting with alternatives to policing in an attempt to end violence, Williams’ desire for a juicy angle comes off to some as a clumsy misunderstanding of Gideon’s Army and its mission, burying North Nashville’s existing anti-violence efforts just as the city was turning its attention to policing alternatives.”
Motycka also linked to video of Williams with cameraman in tow, pulling up near Fetuga, who had children in her car, and producing a microphone as they sat parked in a space outside a salon. It’s the same behavior he employs when investigating public and elected figures who have refused to provide answers to honest attempts at gathering information.
But Fetuga had given Williams an hour of her time for an interview, which was aired, and he had her contact information—text messages and emails between Fetuga and Williams show repeated instances of the former providing requested information on multiple occasions.
Speaking of anti-violence efforts, per a press release in early October, Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s Office of Community Safety has just received nearly $2 million from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance to develop its “first ‘Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative’ (‘CVIPI’).” That office is also planning to hire and train “‘Credible Messengers’ with lived experiences in overcoming violence.”
That may comfort some, but it could also be another in a series of blows to Fetuga’s organization over the last year. Perhaps the Mayor’s office should include Gideon’s Army as a part of the CVIPI, allowing the group to continue their work while being subject to the same oversight the NC5 coverage reports Gideon’s Army lacked.
When reached for comment, Williams stood by his reporting. “Our stories regarding Gideon’s Army were thoroughly researched, numerous community leaders were interviewed regarding their concerns about the organization, and each story contains extensive documentation. Those stories speak for themselves,” he wrote via email.
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