As Lake County’s Gun Violence Prevention Initiative — created in the wake of the 2022 Highland Park July 4 parade shooting that shocked the region — enters its fifth year in 2026, it is moving to solidify its funding and create long-term programs.
The initiative is part of a growing trend of community violence interruption models across the country, and the field has seen growing professionalization as it gains acceptance.
On the ground, the GVPI is most visible through the Lake County Peacemakers, an initiative made up of a team of just over a dozen “credible messengers” — trained staff with ties to the community and area.
Tierra Lemon, director of the GVPI, said reliability is key for these messengers. That means a hyper-local approach with people who know the community and can connect with residents, often having overcome similar challenges to those they work with, she said.
“If there’s a youth who may be at high-risk, if the team doesn’t know them specifically, they may know their aunt, they may know their uncle,” Lemon said.
According to the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office, about $1 million goes through the Waukegan Township to the Peacemakers program.
Peacemakers is led by Shawn Lewis, who has nearly 15 years of experience in the field of violence interruption. He previously worked with what was formerly known as CeaseFire in Chicago, now called Cure Violence.
Lewis trained with Gary Slutkin, a former professor of epidemiology and global health at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, who founded Cure Violence and was a pioneering voice in the approach of treating violence and crime like an infectious disease.
Lewis views violence as a learned behavior, and said Peacemakers’ work in Lake County is to try and change the mindset of those committing crimes and shootings. Their goal is to get the most high-risk individuals to further their education, gain employment, and step out of cycles of violence.
High-risk individuals might be those just out of jail or living in a bad area, Lewis said. They sign up for the Peacemaker’s program and are given a tailored 90-day risk-reduction plan.
“We ask them, ‘What do you want to do?’” Lewis said. “After that 90 days, we try to take them from a high-risk to a low-risk.”
Credible messengers aren’t just connecting people to training programs, however. They also work to actively diffuse tension before and after incidents of gun violence, and have stepped into more than 50 conflict incidents over the years, Lewis said.
“We’re hoping to get guns out of people’s hands,” he said. “We want everybody to get home at the end of the night to their kids, to their family.”
For now, at least, the Peacemakers are operating in three Lake County cities — North Chicago, Waukegan and Zion. Lewis is from North Chicago and Waukegan himself, and said the work is personal.
“I love that it’s getting safer for my mom to walk into Walmart,” he said. “My kids ride their bikes up and down the streets, and go to the park without me having to hold their hand.”
The three communities have seen decreases in firearm homicides and non-fatal firearm injuries since peaking in 2022, which saw 23 fatal and 102 non-fatal shootings. In 2024, there were nine firearm homicides and 38 non-fatal shootings. Homicide data comes from the Lake County Coroner’s Office, and shooting data comes from law enforcement, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said.
While correlation isn’t causation, Rinehart said, “Gun violence is down everywhere these programs are.
“The jurisdictions and physical areas that use these programs to talk with kids, and get into their decision-making process before something bad happens, are seeing much larger decreases in gun violence than the areas that don’t have it,” he said.
County Board member Paul Frank said he’s convinced; the data shows violent crime is down.
“I’ve seen data that demonstrates the value,” Frank said. “Efforts to reduce crime and violent crime are multi-factored; this is one part of it.”
The programs have also enjoyed support from local law enforcement and city leadership, Rinehart said.
But while law enforcement and Peacemakers have shared goals — and what Rinehart, Lewis and Lemon described as a “professional understanding” — credible messengers do not report to police. And while they collaborate with the State’s Attorney’s Office, Peacemakers are employed through Waukegan Township. Those minor distinctions have critical implications for Peacemakers’ on-the-ground credibility.
The two play different roles, they explained, with the Peacemakers able to potentially de-escalate incidents before they occur, or help diffuse tensions after incidents using personal connections and discussions.
Growing trend
Dallas Wright is the assistant director of communications with the Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science at Northwestern University. Launched in 2018, the center researches community violence interruption.
While the approach has gone by various names, fundamentally, such programs utilize hyper-local, credible messengers with direct ties to the community, Wright said.
These programs have historically faced funding challenges, Wright said. And according to Steve Spagnolo, Lake County chief of government relations and external affairs, inconsistent funding can be devastating, with violence shooting up after the money dries up.
“Studies have shown it takes five years to get back to the place where the violence was previously,” Spagnolo said.
But things have begun to change, Wright said, with a switch from private or grant funding to public money. Lake County, which recently shifted the GVPI to county funding, is an example of a broader shift that goes back to the pandemic, when the American Rescue Plan Act money pushed millions of federal dollars into similar initiatives across the country.
And as money stabilizes, the field has begun to innovate, seeing increased standardization and professionalization, Wright said. Stable funding reduces existential threats to programs, meaning more multi-year evaluations.
Wright said the field has also matured, with people beginning to progress vertically through organizations and assuming leadership roles. There’s been a growing acceptance and recognition of community violence interruption.
But while preventing violence is the end goal for such programs, he said the work can involve various services, from education and employment to housing.
Lemon said Lake County’s initiative is an overarching umbrella of efforts to reduce gun violence. Beyond Peacemakers, they work in youth engagement, resource ecosystem, intervention, restorative justice, victim services and firearm risk reduction — all aspects highlighted by the GVPI to help address root causes of gun violence.
It includes work such as the State’s Attorney Office’s diversion programs, where first-time gun possessors — not shooters — can go through a 9-12 month treatment to potentially have the charge dismissed. Twenty-three people have taken part in 2025, Rinehart said.
Lemon said they’ve also held various town halls to spread awareness, but also keep in touch with the ever-changing perceptions and concerns of community members.
For Lewis, they’ve done good work.
“We’ve stopped a lot of shootings and killings on the front end,” he said. “We’ve gotten some people in our program into school … got some pretty good jobs. We changed a lot of people’s lives.”
