Donald Trump, urban violence and the struggle for Ten Point Coalition’s soul

The Rev. Charles Harrison is standing outside a vacant Double 8 Foods store when a man driving north on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street rolls down his window.

“Ten Point Coalition’s stealing money!” the man yells.

Harrison allows a brief smirk. “We’re stealing money, huh?” he says, brushing off a familiar criticism. He watches as the car turns left on West 29th Street and its tail lights fade into the night before shifting his attention toward a dozen or so Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition volunteers, who are arriving for a two-hour faith walk to discourage violence.

Harrison gathers everyone in a circle and prays for “the right words that we might say or we might encourage someone who may be traveling in the wrong direction … and give them hope that their lives may be better.”

About a half hour into the walk, one driver notices the yellow-vested faith walkers and taps four honks of approval. Less than a minute later, another driver honks twice. Soon, there’s a third horn. The sounds prompt waves and a few shouts from Ten Point’s volunteers.

The succession of derision and appreciation from passersby reflects the contradictions that emanate from Ten Point:

► It is a nonprofit organization that takes credit for reducing violence in a few neighborhoods, but it does not have widely accepted proof that its work is responsible for the improvements.

► The leadership consists of black, mostly Democratic ministers who have advanced their mission by linking arms with powerful Republicans in Indiana and Washington, D.C.

► At a time when criticism is mounting against Ten Point at home, it is being hailed nationally as a solution to urban violence.

Ten Point on Thursday took the latest step in its paradoxical rise to national prominence when its leaders, including Harrison, traveled to Washington, D.C., for meetings with officials from several federal agencies. The meetings came one week after Ten Point launched a new chapter in Gary, Ind.

Indianapolis is ground zero in a renewed movement of black churches taking back their neighborhoods from systemic violence, said Harrison, a co-founder of the local Ten Point and the Midwest regional director for the national organization.

For every person standing with Ten Point at press conferences, though, there is a critic who argues there is not enough evidence of success to justify giving more government funding to a group that already has received more than $800,000 from Indianapolis. Some go even further, arguing Ten Point has sold itself out to attract money and influence.

A comprehensive review

To assess Ten Point, IndyStar reviewed years of grant applications and budget documents submitted to the Central Indiana Community Foundation; receipts and invoices filed with the city of Indianapolis; federal 990 tax forms; and police crime data in the areas where Ten Point is most active.

What emerged was a complicated picture. The review found that Ten Point has failed to meet some of the basic expectations of a nonprofit organization while relying almost exclusively on taxpayer-backed funding. Criminal homicides and shootings declined in Ten Point areas, but it’s difficult to attribute that success solely to the organization.

As rival clergy and CICF raise questions about Ten Point’s effectiveness, the organization has gained support from law enforcement, neighborhood leaders and politicians who insist violence would be even worse in Indianapolis without Ten Point.

The work is personal for Harrison, who is a father of four, including a teenage son. Harrison lost a brother and nephew to violence.

The tantalizing prospect of fulfilling his life’s mission has brought Harrison to a distressing crossroad:

He can continue operating on a shoestring and reaching a few young black men in a couple neighborhoods, or he can pursue money from a white power structure, people who Harrison calls “gatekeepers,” and adapt to their corporate idyll.

“That’s where the tension is and struggle is for us as pastors, ’cause we know that with the success, with more money, more eyes are on us now,” Harrison said. “And we know that people are calling for (more structure). We know that people are calling for that. That’s what they want to see us become and we’re saying, ‘Man, but this has been successful as this church initiative and we don’t want to lose that.’

“If we become and we start looking like some of the other nonprofit organizations, then what becomes of this model?”

Crisis in Butler-Tarkington

In 2015, as Indianapolis started grappling with what would become the first of three consecutive years of record criminal homicides, Ted Feeney nervously waited to see if his Butler-Tarkington neighborhood would escape unscathed.

By August, the first two bodies fell in the same week. The next month, the third homicide came after a drive-by shooting sent bullets ripping through a home on Graceland Avenue.

Feeney, then the president of the neighborhood association, and his family were driving from an Indy Eleven soccer game to their home four blocks away from the shooting. Red and blue emegency lights  flashed across the sky.

Feeney saw men and women in neon Ten Point Coalition vests bringing calm to a hectic crime scene and consoling neighbors wracked with grief. At that time, Feeney knew very little about the group.

"I knew they were in the most dangerous neighborhoods in Indy," Feeney said. "But then there was that realization: Hey, they're in my neighborhood now. We have a very big problem."

A problem so unchecked that children were caught in the crossfire. One of the drive-by bullets fatally struck 10-year-old Deshaun Swanson.

Even as an outcry rippled across Indianapolis, the violence swelled in Butler-Tarkington. A teenager died the next month. Two more residents died outside the neighborhood borders.

"I felt very much that my neighborhood was under attack," said Feeney, who has since moved out of the area. "My city was under attack."

Neighborhood leaders called for a public safety emergency meeting. Ten Point answered the call.

The Indianapolis Ten Point model

Ten Point occasionally hosts job fairs for ex-felons and organizes daytime marches to raise awareness around an unsolved homicide.

Nightly patrols form the core of Ten Point's mission. Small groups of people walk neighborhood streets a couple hours for four nights a week. Ten Point refers to the walkers as volunteers, but they receive stipends of $8 to $12 per hour.

The walkers are mostly members of the neighborhood, many who may have once contributed to the violence but have since sought redemption. Harrison said the OGs, or original gangsters, add credibility to the message that Ten Point brings.

It's not a group of preachers and church-goers handing out pamphlets and preaching the word of God. It's people of faith and it's OGs; often, they're one in the same.

The OGs build relationships with people most likely to become victims or perpetrators of violence, Harrison said.

When the patrols began in Butler-Tarkington, for example, the OGs learned of a brewing war between two gangs that had caused much of the recent bloodshed, including, they believed, Deshaun's killing.

Ten Point convinced the gangs' leaders to gather for a meeting. There, they agreed to a truce, according to an account provided by Harrison and confirmed by law enforcement sources. 

The group also comforted and guided witnesses who were afraid to talk to police.

For years, Ten Point reached into different neighborhoods, including the area of 42nd Street and North Post Road, which is still considered by police to be a hot spot for crime.

But by 2016, after expansions and contractions caused by inconsistent funding levels, Ten Point had settled into Butler-Tarkington and the other neighborhoods in the 46208 ZIP code.

The number of criminal homicides and non-fatal shootings declined in the area in 2016 and 2017, according to an IndyStar analysis of crime data. IndyStar examined data associated with IMPD's beats and zones in the area, which largely encompass 46208 but also stretch outside of the borders.

For Harrison and Ten Point's supporters, that's enough to prove that Ten Point is making a difference. It also earned Ten Point a community award issued by the FBI.

For others, ranging from government officials to public critics, the data is less clear.

The level of violence declined to an amount seen in the years preceding 2015. Perhaps 2015 simply served as a particularly bad year that would have leveled off without Ten Point's help.

Law enforcement also poured resources into the area. Federal authorities filed two sweeping drug cases, and IMPD launched three focused beats to reduce crime.

"As a police chief, it would be great for me to say it was all us. But I don't think that that's what happened," IMPD Chief Bryan Roach said.

He credits Ten Point and other anti-violence groups for working alongside IMPD.

Still, Roach said he couldn't definitively say whether Ten Point's model was any more or less impactful than other nonprofits in town. He's hoping an academic partner can provide more metrics.

Harrison often bristles at such doubt. If success in 46208 belongs to law enforcement, Harrison asked, then why did the rest of Indianapolis see record numbers of criminal homicides in 2016 and 2017?

"What did you do in these areas that you didn't do in the rest of the city?" Harrison asked.

Black Democrats, Republican support

In some ways, the era of President Donald Trump is an odd moment for Ten Point to be on the verge of a national expansion.

Trump’s most fervent positions, such as building a border wall and imposing tariffs on foreign imports, tend to be responses to the concerns of rural — and generally white — voters. Trump’s reference to “American carnage” in his inaugural address and subsequent statements about urban violence have taken the policy form of stricter sentencing guidelines and other traditionally tough-on-crime measures.

Ten Point, meanwhile, is focused on rehabilitating black men who have committed violent crimes — including some who have killed and might have faced longer prison sentences in a different political climate — and dissuading other young men from going down that path.

The organization's board consists of 12 black clergy members who represent churches across Indianapolis. There were no Trump supporters among the four members of Ten Point’s leadership team who met with IndyStar last fall for a 90-minute discussion.

“Most of us are Democrats,” Harrison said. “Ninety-nine percent of us are Democrats.”

Yet, Ten Point finds most of its political support on the other side of the aisle. Republican politicians for the past decade have offered money and praise, putting the organization in a unique position to benefit from Trump’s ascent to the White House.

Indianapolis Ten Point launched in 1999. For the first 10 years, it operated as an extension of the churches whose pastors founded it.

Between 2009 and 2010, in Republican Mayor Greg Ballard’s early years in office, Ten Point received $294,000 in funding from city grants. That accounted for nearly 90 percent of its budget, according to IndyStar archives and a review of federal 990 tax forms. Indianapolis since 2009 has given Ten Point at least $844,000.

City funding began in the form of crime prevention grants that were administered through the Indianapolis Parks Foundation. The Ballard administration in 2012 gave Ten Point a more exclusive arrangement, signing a contract that paid the organization $100,000 a year, according to documents released to IndyStar.

City records do not explain in detail what was required of Ten Point in exchange for the money, but Harrison said the work included conflict mediation, both at crime scenes and among rival gang leaders.

That deal lasted for four years, including two — 2013 and 2014 — in which Ten Point also received crime prevention grants. Public money typically accounted for between 75 and 95 percent of Ten Point’s budget in those years.

Ten Point was popular among Ballard’s public safety officers and was happy to receive funding no matter the source.

“We’re gonna work with whoever’s in the seat, ’cause for us, it’s about bringing down the homicides and we’ll work with whoever we need to work with,” Ten Point board member Charles Ellis said.

Mike Pence, Curtis Hill plug funding hole

If politics were relegated to the background when Ten Point received six-figure contracts under Ballard, though, Harrison brought it to the forefront in 2015 when he considered mounting an independent run for mayor against Democrat Joe Hogsett.

Harrison stayed out of the race and said he voted for Hogsett. But Harrison’s flirtation with a mayoral run set the tone for Ten Point’s relationship with the city to be viewed through a political lens. Hogsett took office in January 2016 and discontinued Ten Point’s contract.

“On day one, the first thing the city did when the Hogsett administration took office was to cut our funding off,” Harrison said.

Ellis added: “They see (Harrison) as a threat and as a clear and present danger of what he might do because of the influence that he has in the city. Some of this, too, is, I just think it’s retribution in their minds.”

Hogsett administration officials denied those characterizations, noting the mayor has annually increased the city’s crime prevention grant program to $2.5 million in 2018. But, to qualify, nonprofit organizations must apply through the Central Indiana Community Foundation, a third-party organization that administers the grants.

Ten Point had been the only crime prevention nonprofit receiving direct funding from the city.

“We want to make sure that we’re fair and honest across the board with every organization,” said the Rev. David Hampton, the deputy mayor of neighborhood engagement under Hogsett. “Everybody has the same opportunity with the same level of matrix and the same accountability that we expect.”

Hampton’s role in the Hogsett administration might have exacerbated some of the tensions among Ten Point and its supporters. Hampton is pastor of Light of the World Christian Church and a member of Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis, a coalition of black ministers that has been critical of Ten Point.

Hampton said ending Ten Point’s contract with the city had nothing to do with politics or personal conflicts.

“There was never any animosity,” Hampton said. “I think that was all perceived.”

Ten Point’s relationship with the Hogsett administration has improved in recent months. Since becoming mayor, Hogsett has spoken at Ten Point's annual fundraiser, visited Harrison's church and met with Harrison for lunch at a Red Lobster. After criticizing Hogsett in previous conversations with IndyStar, Harrison recently struck a conciliatory tone when discussing the mayor’s decision to hire a director of community violence reduction and peacekeepers, who likely will perform work similar to Ten Point.

“If that’s what the mayor wants to do, the mayor has to answer to the public about the violence in the city, not me,” Harrison said. “So, if that’s the direction he wants to go, then certainly we will be supportive of that.”

Although Hogsett’s election cut off a direct funding stream for Ten Point, the group remained popular among Republican elected officials. Butler-Tarkington leaders celebrated Ten Point’s work, crediting the group with helping the neighborhood go one year and then two years without a homicide. As Butler-Tarkington became a symbol of success, Ten Point’s profile increased, making Harrison and Ellis go-to voices for media covering the city’s violence.

State officials took notice.

As speculation swirled in July 2016 that Trump was considering selecting Pence as his running mate, the Indiana governor joined Ten Point on a walk through troubled neighborhoods. Pence made no promise of state money, but foreshadowed future opportunities.

“I think this is a model program where people have really poured themselves into the lives of these communities and made real change,” Pence said at the time. “My hope is that as more and more people around the state and around the country learn about this program, it will inspire more programs just like it.”

A little more than a year later, Pence returned as vice president to host a $250-a-plate fundraiser which, Harrison said, generated more than $100,000. During the same week, Indiana’s Republican attorney general, Curtis Hill, announced his office would provide $500,000 in seed money to expand Ten Point’s model to other cities in Indiana. Soon, Harrison hinted discussions were underway with Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, for some type of relationship with the federal government.

Questions about financial oversight

As Harrison pitches Ten Point's model to state and federal officials, there is disagreement over whether Ten Point has been effective in Indianapolis or even demonstrated that it is a sustainable 501(c)(3) organization.

Ten Point defends its work by citing a simple formula as proof that it is making Indianapolis safer.

“How we evaluate success is the reduction of nonfatal shootings and homicides,” Harrison said. “So, in the area where we work in, if we have 10 homicides in the neighborhood, our goal is to reduce that 10 the next year. So, if we reduce it to eight, it’s a reduction.”

As far as Ten Point is concerned, the drop in homicides in Butler-Tarkington after 2015 is all anyone needs to know. Proponents point to similar parameters. Hill, the state attorney general funding an expansion into the east side and Gary, told IndyStar he defines Ten Point’s success based on the homicide trends in the group’s neighborhoods relative to the rest of the city.

“Ten Point’s objective is to save lives,” Hill said. “So, if you look at the neighborhoods in which it’s operating over the last two years and compare that to the lives that have been lost across the rest of the city, or in some of the hot spots in the city, clearly we’re seeing that the violence is down. That’s a good thing.”

But others who have examined Ten Point reject its assertion that neighborhood homicide statistics tell the whole story.

Perhaps no organization has spent more time evaluating Ten Point than the Central Indiana Community Foundation. Ballard and the City-County Council in 2013 moved Indianapolis’ crime prevention grant program to CICF in order to strip politics from the award process. CICF reviews nonprofits, including Ten Point, based on several criteria, including program capacity, financial management and whether they use data to track their interactions with people in the community.

CICF awarded Ten Point $50,000 in city-funded crime prevention grants in both 2013 and 2014, but then started rejecting its applications.

A 2016 denial letter provided to IndyStar said "CICF staff is concerned with sustainability of the organization” because of Ten Point’s lack of outside funding. A 2017 denial letter said Ten Point’s application “was not competitive,” adding the organization “has demonstrated a difficulty with tracking and measuring individual performance outcomes. CICF staff is not confident that (the) organization will have the capacity to report on outcomes.”

Ten Point’s applications lacked evidence that the organization is helping the people it claims to serve, according to CICF.

“What I’ve been telling Ten Point is, ‘How do I know you specifically, that your input, produced the direct outcomes?” said Alicia Collins, the director of community collaborations for CICF. “If I don’t have anything on paper, it didn’t happen.”

CICF each year awards crime prevention grants to dozens of organizations for a wide range of programs. In 2016, for instance, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana received $30,000 to conduct a youth mentoring program in an IMPD focus area and Flanner House received $35,000 for a program that seeks to reduce recidivism.

Harrison, though, said those organizations have an advantage in CICF’s application process because their programs have a more transactional nature with participants.

“That’s not what we do. We’re not a mentoring organization,” Harrison said. “And that’s what we said. Our role is to keep peace on the streets. That’s been our conflict with (CICF). I don’t track June Bug and Little Pookie and Big Charles.”

Collins acknowledged Ten Point’s program of giving stipends to volunteers and sending them out on faith walks is unique.

The City-County Council last year sought to fill in the funding gap between large nonprofits and neighborhood groups when it approved an additional $400,000 in crime prevention grants specifically for organizations that perform street outreach. Ten Point, which was one of 10 recipients, received $50,000.

Even among that group, though, Collins said other organizations have had more success with supplying data. She cited Stop the Violence, another nonprofit that holds faith walks.

“The other organizations, they just do the work,” Collins said. “And I’m not even sure if you would know those organizations, the other nine that are in this space. They do the work. They don’t make the noise or sound the alarm that Ten Point does.”

Ten Point’s difficulties in providing detailed information also extend at times to its tax forms. Beth Gazley, director of the master’s program in public affairs for Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, reviewed Ten Point’s tax forms for IndyStar and found what she considered to be a few red flags.

Among the biggest problems, Gazley said, is that Ten Point’s forms are filled out by the same person who also completes tax forms for Harrison’s church, Barnes United Methodist Church. Ten Point has witnessed little board turnover, lacks a formal conflict of interest policy and has not commissioned an external audit in years — all indications of a lack of financial oversight.

"I’m surprised the foundation’s giving them any money without an external audit," Gazley said. “In my years of fundraising, I can’t recall a single institutional donor that would give us money without seeing the external audit first."

Gazley also pointed to other minor flaws in the forms, such as some years in which the group failed to calculate its public support percentage, as required by the Internal Revenue Service. Such missteps amount to someone simply not paying attention to the details, she said, which raises another red flag for potential donors.

Harrison said Ten Point is now in the middle of an external audit, in part because it has a recently created executive director position that was paid for by a $50,000 capacity-building grant from CICF that was separate from the city’s crime prevention money.

Harrison also acknowledged Ten Point isn’t as polished as other nonprofits.

“We saw this initially when we started in 1999 as an extension of our ministries. We really didn’t want to get into the nonprofit,” Harrison said. “This is what the church was doing and we didn’t want to look like Big Brothers and Big Sisters because, you know, this is church-driven. This is the black church-driven initiative to try to curb the pattern of violence.”

Another, perhaps less satisfying, view is that anyone searching homicide statistics and tax forms for insight into the Ten Point model will come up empty.

The Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition is based on a Boston organization that formed in the 1990s as a response to violent crime. The number of homicides in Boston dropped from 152 in 1990 to 31 in 1999.

The Boston Ten Point Coalition received national praise for what was dubbed the Boston Miracle. The original Ten Point provided a link between neighborhoods and police, building trust and contributing to a sharp decline in complaints about law enforcement, said Harvard University professor Christopher Winship.

Winship has studied the Boston Ten Point Coalition and written several academic papers on its work. The group’s greatest contribution, he said, was creating what Winship calls an "umbrella of legitimacy" for the Boston Police Department.

“The police department became accountable to Ten Point and Ten Point was fair with them,” Winship said. “When they did the right thing, they got their support and when they didn’t, they got criticized.”

The result, he said, was an improvement in the relationship between Boston police and neighborhoods. While Boston’s homicides plummeted, Winship said, it’s impossible to link that statistic to Ten Point. It also might be unnecessary.

“Part of the issue is, is it the right question? Is our only goal to reduce crime or do we want to have good community-police relations?” Winship said. “It’s always easy to measure homicide rates and a lot harder to measure good community relations.”

Harrison responds to criticism

Suspicion weighs on Harrison. He hears the questions from reporters, foundations, city officials, other black clergy — even the guy driving up Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street and shouting out his window. Questions about how Ten Point handles its money, why it doesn’t have more data to demonstrate results and why it looks so much like what it is: an organization run by unpaid ministers who volunteer in their free time.

“We feel like we have to go through the gatekeepers when it comes to the resources,” Harrison said in an April interview. “Nobody knows better about how to address the violence problem than the people who live in these neighborhoods. And why not empower people in these neighborhoods that have a better sense of how we should address the problem? Why are we not empowering these people to fix the problems in their own neighborhood rather than someone having their model and saying, ‘In order for you to get resources, you gotta do A, B, C and D?’”

Yet, Ten Point for months has been courting some of the highest-level gatekeepers: Pence, Sessions and other Trump cabinet secretaries. Ten Point is pursuing a strategy that will invite even more scrutiny — including from other black churches.

Sessions’ visit to Indianapolis in November provoked some of the sharpest criticism yet. The Rev. David W. Greene Sr., president of Concerned Clergy, organized a press conference the morning of Sessions’ visit and said what black leaders across Indianapolis were thinking.

“Mr. Sessions’ visit to Indianapolis should be viewed for what it is: a photo op, an opportunity to solicit federal dollars to support a program (Ten Point) that has yet to provide any empirical data that its efforts have diminished crime in our community,” Greene said.

The Rev. Eugene Rivers, a co-founder of the original Boston Ten Point Coalition and executive director of the National Ten Point Training Institute, dismissed people who criticized Ten Point over its meeting with Sessions, telling IndyStar “those people need to get a life.”

“Listen,” Rivers said, “too many black people who don’t have good jobs or things to do throw racism around like rice at a wedding. That doesn’t help anything.”

Rivers’ defense reveals one reason why the organization’s message might appeal to Republicans. At a time when many left-leaning activist groups, such as Black Lives Matter, are arguing that public policies contribute to violence against African-Americans, Ten Point leaders are calling out the violence while using politically charged terms, such as "black-on-black violence."

Winship, the Harvard professor who has studied Rivers’ original Ten Point Coalition, said Ten Point has a history of pursuing relationships with whoever happens to be in power. In Boston, that means Democrats. In Indiana, it happens to be Republicans. There is no apparent partisanship, he said.

“Why talk to Sessions and Pence? Well, because that’s who’s in charge of Washington these days,” Winship said. “It is a dangerous game and, yes, you’re going to end up making enemies by being willing to talk to somebody else’s enemies. But it’s important to understand they are not in the business of doing policy.”

Ten Point is in the business of growing — an ambition that is creating tension for Harrison, who thinks his organization can save more lives in more cities, yet also resents the hoops he must jump through to reach those young black men out on the streets.

When Harrison isn’t defending himself against his fellow black ministers, who accuse him of aiding racists, he’s navigating a system that he considers to be racist. Ten Point plays by the rules of the white power structure because those are the rules. If that makes him a sellout, then he’s selling out to prevent gun violence from claiming more victims.

That doesn’t mean he feels good about it. The meetings, the grant applications, the audit, the tax forms — these are constant reminders to Harrison that it’s not enough for black ministers to go out and do what they consider to be good work. They also have to become something they’re not — something they’re not sure they want to be.

“It’s white people telling black people how to fix the problems in our community and they control the resources. So, we’ve got to fit the white model in order to get the resources to be validated,” Harrison said.

He pounds his fist on the table to emphasize each syllable. His eyes redden.

“Or, the other thing is,” Harrison adds, more softly, “you don’t trust us with the money.”

Stephanie Wang contributed to this story.

Call IndyStar reporter James Briggs at (317) 444-6307. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesEBriggs.

Call IndyStar reporter Ryan Martin at (317) 444-6294. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @ryanmartin.