YSO Staff Member Indicted as Gang Leader

A Chicago social services agency faces a nightmare scenario after learning that one of its star staff members has been accused of being a gang leader.  Marty Murff's job was being a "violence interrupter."  As he explained in a now-deleted blog post (available via the Wayback machine here), “Violence interrupters are the first ones. They are like the firefighters, they are on the front lines.They are out on the streets, they hear what’s going on [in the community] and they do a lot of mediations.”

It's impossible to know whether the charges are valid, or what the agency could have done differently to avoid this problem.  According to news reports, Murff served prison time for murder, raising the question of whether his criminal record should have disqualified him. For his role in violence prevention, however, there is a strong argument that people from the community with a known history have the most credibility in dealing with community disputes.

If an organization decides that criminal records don't necessarily disqualify staff or volunteers, then they must be much more strict about the only other fallback position -- enforcing behavior guidelines. Trust is important, but in these situations, verification is even more important.  Supervisors need granular detail about what their staff and volunteers are doing away from the program, especially if the adults are interacting with children.

As I said, it is impossible to know what standards the agency had or how it could have avoided finding itself in this situation.  All that other youth organizations can do is take a very close look at our own policies, including supervision, to try to avoid finding ourselves in the same spotlight.