He left gang life behind. Now Curtis Toler helps others find peace.

On a Monday morning in mid-June, Curtis Toler receives intel about an assassination plot. It’s a tip that a street gang plans to shoot an eighth grader at his graduation ceremony in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood. 

Mr. Toler, the director of outreach at Chicago CRED, a nonprofit whose mission is to reduce gun violence, immediately calls several colleagues. Mondays are usually a day off for his crew. It’s the weekends that they’re busiest – especially in summertime. That’s when gang-related shootings undergo a seasonal spike. 

Sitting in a Chicago CRED office space, Mr. Toler holds up his phone to show what his email inbox looks like.

“You see this?” he says. “This is throughout the city. Person shot. Person shot. Person shot. Person shot. Person shot. Deceased. This is daily.”  

As of late September, 2,652 people have been shot in Chicago this year – 457 fatally, according to the city’s official count.

Mr. Toler oversees young men and women who have relationships with the gangs that Chicago CRED is trying to wean from violence. Its ambitious goal is to reduce gun violence by 20% each year. They endeavor to identify not only who’s most at risk of getting shot, but also who is most likely to pull the trigger. Mr. Toler used to be in the latter category. He was once a leader of one of Chicago’s most feared street gangs. Now he risks his own life to persuade others to come over to the side of peace. 

“This is part of his atonement, if you will, for his past,” says the Rev. Michael Pfleger, founder of Chicago’s basketball peace league in which rival gang members play each other on courts. “To be able to identify with them and to care about them, you can’t come in [with] a dictating-like way, or a condemning way, or a judgment way. You got to come in meeting them where they’re at and help to move them to another place of peace.”

“You have to work on the shooters.”

Mr. Toler keeps an eye on his phone for updates from the graduation ceremony. His resting expression is serious and studious. Yet he’s quick to laugh and crack jokes. Today, Mr. Toler is wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “pray” in rainbow letters. A devout Muslim, he wholeheartedly believes that prayer works. But, he adds, prayer without work is dead. 

When Chicago CRED launched in 2016, Mr. Toler was one of its first employees. (The acronym stands for Create Real Economic Destiny.) Former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan co-founded the nonprofit following an epiphany: “If you want to stop shooting, you have to work on the shooters.”

How? Provide them with other alternatives to crime. It starts with one-on-one recruitment. 

Once individuals sign onto the CRED program, they receive a stipend. The support system also includes trauma therapists, life coaches, and job coaches. Chicago CRED participants spend at least a year in the program before they’re connected with potential employers in construction, culinary services, manufacturing, and law firms. 

When Wesley Addison enrolled in CRED, it helped him get his high school diploma. 

“I want to influence my kids to get their high school diploma,” says Mr. Addison, who’s in his mid-20s and had been incarcerated until fairly recently. “I want my children to own businesses. And not make the same mistakes I made or take the same road I took.”

As Mr. Addison attests, CRED’s life coaches will pick up the phone whether it’s 11 in the morning or 11 at night. 

“I’m not used to someone really caring,” says Mr. Addison, who describes a 180 degree change since enrolling in CRED. “Crazy as it sounds, I was breathing better.”

The other major component of CRED’s work is peacekeeping. Like trying to prevent a massacre at a graduation ceremony.

Learning to love

The first time Mr. Toler got shot, he was 12 years old. He’s been shot on four other occasions. 

Asked what it’s like to be shot, Mr. Toler responds, “Other than it hurts?” He erupts in a belly-deep laugh that rolls for several seconds. “That’s how I think that I’m able to relate to some of the young men and women who go through it.”

He also knows firsthand the reasons why so many youths join gangs. (CRED prefers to call them “street organizations.”) As the oldest sibling born to a single mother, Mr. Toler yearned for connection. When Mr. Toler was 17, his abusive stepfather murdered his mother. Rage consumed Mr. Toler. His propensity for unpredictable outbursts of violence propelled him to a top leadership position in his gang. 

But Mr. Toler, who’d served two stints in prison, realized that if he continued with gang life, he would either be killed or be incarcerated at length. He wanted to be a role model for his young son. So he extricated himself and resisted alluring temptations to return. 

“Once you feel love, then you have the ability to love others,” he says. “Once being a father and a husband took the place of, and felt a lot better than, being a gang leader, it was an easy transition, right? You know, because you have to replace something with something else.”

Mr. Toler says that his gang persona was his “imposter,” not his true self. That’s helped him develop a technique for dealing with formidable gang members on the streets. He imagines what they might have been like when they were 5 years old – the age of his own grandson. 

“If we could see the child in everyone, then it becomes a lot easier to work with them,” says Mr. Toler. “Because I’m not seeing this hard guy with tattoos all over his face, even though I’m working from a nonjudgmental zone. But I’m seeing this young, fragile human being. ... Whatever circumstances or conditions cause them to be the way that they are now, they weren’t always like that. And if they weren’t always like that, then there’s a great possibility of them changing.”

Mr. Duncan, CRED’s co-founder, says that one of Mr. Toler’s best qualities is that he’s very humble; he’s able to build relationships on the street by truly listening to people.

Welcoming every win – however small

At midday, Mr. Toler’s phone rings with an update from the graduation ceremony. The outreach team, stationed at the school, had been in communication with four different groups in a bid to avert violence. The ceremony had been completely peaceful.

“We got to get the wins where we can take them,” Mr. Toler cheerfully tells his associate.

Within seconds of hanging up, Mr. Toler’s phone rings again. His expression sags. A few minutes ago, there’d been a shooting at a different school graduation in another neighborhood. The victim is in critical condition.

Later, when asked about the overall trend in the city’s homicides, Mr. Toler responds, “I’m very optimistic because as bad as it is, it is not as bad as it was in the last two years.”

Gun violence in Chicago, while still very high, is down in 2022. In mid-June, Chicago CRED celebrated a peace treaty between two deadly gangs. 

“I really believe we’re going in the right direction,” says Mr. Toler. “I’m also a praying man, right? So, yeah, I just really stay hopeful. Because if we don’t have any hope, then what’s the use of doing the work?”