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A man who helped train violence interrupters in Indianapolis has been charged with intimidation, but he says he s the one who was threatened and was only trying to protect himself.
Shane Shepherd, founder of nonprofit youth outreach group B4U Fall, was contracted by the Indy Public Safety Foundation to train violence interrupters in December. Interrupters have connections in communities impacted by violence and leverage those connections to try to interrupt the cycle of crime. Shepherd founded the organization after serving time in federal prison on a weapons charge.
On May 12, a woman described as a community advocate told police Shepherd made threatening statements toward her for associating with people Shepherd said were trying to kill him, according to court documents. Those threats, the woman said, came in a Facebook Live video Shepherd posted May 7. That video has since been made private.
“It really speaks to the essence of the report right, it’s being transparent, it’s talking about those things,” Adams said.
“That’s a real issue when people say that, ‘Hey when I see the police behind me, I am scared,’ and I tell them I’m scared, too. I can understand their position, and I can understand their fear and we have to work to understand that people do have those fears and when they do, it’s not a bad thing,” said Adams.
In the video, Adams explains how some of those efforts are already underway through IMPD’s Officer-Involved Shooting Dashboard and the Citizen’s Police Complaint Office.