Catholic Charities' Safe Streets Marks 10 Years in Sandtown, Leaders Credit Mediation and Jobs

Nicole Warren remembers when Safe Streets workers had to push their way into Sandtown-Winchester. Ten years later, she says, people come to them.

"We used to go out there and force it on them," said Greg Marshburn, Safe Streets at Catholic Charities Program Director. "We don't have to do that now. Someone is always ringing the bell. Somebody is always coming around here."

Catholic Charities' Safe Streets site in Sandtown-Winchester marked its 10th anniversary in mid-March, and leaders used the milestone to point to a concrete shift: the program mediated 91 potentially violent conflicts in 2025 alone, according to the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. That sustained presence, they argue, has contributed to Baltimore recording its fewest homicides in about 50 years in 2025. As of Wednesday, March 18, the city had logged 24 homicides in 2026, compared with 29 at the same point last year.

Warren, the site director, said the numbers reflect her team's daily grind. "To see that happen, that means someone is working, and the somewhere is my team," she said. "If we keep providing the resources, if we keep showing up, they can go even lower."

Beyond mediation, the site connects Sandtown residents to housing support, behavioral health care, and job training through its Catholic Charities partnership. Marshburn described those wraparound services as inseparable from the violence-prevention mission. "The main things that you need to be onboarded to a job," he said, citing food and housing as equally essential. "We're trying to take all hoods back to neighborhoods, back to communities where people feel safe living."

One measure of that shift is visible in who is now doing the work. Warren has spent a decade mentoring a next generation of violence interrupters, including Davon Crawford, who grew up in the same Sandtown streets the program now patrols. "It definitely changed, because violence was very high when I was growing up, and we didn't have the resources that we have now," Crawford said. "I go home with a smile every day that I'm out here changing lives."

Arnetta Shelton, Chief of Community Violence Intervention for MONSE, credited the program's reliance on people from within the neighborhood as its central asset. "The work that we're seeing in Sandtown is transformative. I think that what we have and what we build on is the credible messenger. Seeing the people that are from this community investing and co-producing public safety is critical. They're game changers," she said. Shelton added that the office is now focused on what comes next. "Right now, we're in the phase of analyzing, what does it look like and where do we need to go next? A part of that analysis is the data."

Community member Des'mon Simmons, who has watched the program operate in the neighborhood, offered a simpler verdict. "You can tell that there has been violence prevented. So, they've done a good job with spreading the word that they're around."

Shelton confirmed that Sandtown-specific data shows measurable progress. "Specifically for the Sandtown community, we're seeing reductions," she said. "We're seeing people connected to more resources." The next phase of Safe Streets' work in the neighborhood will be shaped by that data analysis, with leaders signaling that a decade in, the program is building momentum rather than winding down.