BOSTON, Mass. — Oklahoma City artist and violence prevention leader Jabee brought his community-based approach to public safety to Gillette Stadium this week, joining hundreds of frontline workers focused on preventing violence before it happens.
Jabee, who serves as executive director of LiveFree Oklahoma, was among the featured voices at UTEC’s 2026 New England Streetworker Conference. Organizers said the sold-out gathering brought together more than 400 streetworkers, outreach professionals, public health leaders and advocates representing nearly 120 organizations.
For Jabee, the work is personal.
“My purpose has been to help people find their vision, help people find their hope, and community is a strategy,” Jabee told attendees. “Everything I do, I do in my community. Because I know, had somebody not intervened with me that night, I would have been gone.”
His message reflected the conference’s theme, “Community is the Strategy.” It also connected violence prevention work underway in Oklahoma City with a broader network of practitioners trying to reach people before conflicts become deadly.
Jabee connects Oklahoma City to a growing violence prevention field
A three-time Emmy Award-winning musician, educator and community activist, Jabee has expanded his work beyond music into violence prevention, youth opportunities, arts and economic development.
At LiveFree Oklahoma, that work includes community-based efforts to reduce gun violence and incarceration. The organization trains “PeaceMakers,” trusted community members who work to de-escalate conflicts and connect residents with services.
That model shares principles with community violence intervention programs operating across the country.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes street outreach as one approach communities use to prevent violence. Outreach workers typically build relationships with people at elevated risk of becoming involved in violence, mediate conflicts and connect residents with services.
Research has produced varying results depending on the program and community. Studies have associated some street outreach programs with reductions in shootings and homicides, while others have found limited or mixed effects.
That makes implementation, training, community trust and access to resources important parts of the conversation about whether programs succeed.
For Jabee, however, intervention is more than a policy concept. His remarks emphasized what can happen when someone reaches a person at a critical moment.
“Had somebody not intervened with me that night,” he said, “I would have been gone.”
Streetworkers share strategies across state lines
UTEC’s conference brought Jabee into a gathering centered on people doing that intervention work every day.
Streetworkers can mediate conflicts, respond after shootings, support people returning from incarceration and connect young people and families with resources. Their effectiveness often depends on relationships with people whom government agencies and traditional institutions may struggle to reach.
“For decades, community-based organizations and violence intervention professionals have been doing this work on the front lines, building relationships, interrupting cycles of violence, and creating pathways and opportunity,” said Nichelle Sadler, executive director of UTEC’s Training Center for Excellence.
Sadler said the conference also recognizes frontline workers as partners in creating safer communities.
UTEC began convening streetworkers more than a decade ago, when street outreach had less recognition as a formal violence prevention strategy.
This year’s sessions addressed conflict mediation and de-escalation, restorative justice, reentry, community healing, case planning, staff wellness and burnout.
Timmeka Perkins, a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, delivered the conference keynote and focused part of her remarks on the people behind the work.
“I have such a deep respect for the work that everybody in here does, the work of the front line. I see y’all. I admire y’all. I look at y’all as heroes, but I also see the human in you,” Perkins said.
“Young people are looking for their credible messengers to help them navigate the next part of their life.”
Measuring violence that never happens
One challenge facing community violence intervention programs is demonstrating the impact of an intervention that prevents something from happening.
Glenn Daly, a Massachusetts official who addressed the conference, pointed to that difficulty.
“We don’t do a good job at collecting what doesn’t happen — when it isn’t a homicide, when it isn’t an assault, when an ambulance doesn’t come, and when a family or friend doesn’t grieve,” Daly said. “You’re doing that work every day.”
Boston provides some context for the discussion.
The city recorded 53 shooting incidents through July 19, according to figures reported by The Boston Globe. That matched the same period in 2025 but remained below the five-year average of 68. Homicides had fallen more sharply.
Those statistics alone cannot prove that community violence intervention caused the decline. Research shows that street outreach programs can produce significantly different results across communities.
Still, practitioners argue that conventional crime statistics often fail to capture successful interventions, a point Daly made at the conference.
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Building a network beyond Gillette Stadium
Jabee and other participants also used the conference to exchange strategies across cities.
Violence prevention remains deeply local. The relationships that allow a streetworker to mediate a dispute in Boston cannot simply be transferred to Oklahoma City.
But practitioners across cities confront similar questions: How do you reach someone before they retaliate? How do you gain trust? What happens after a shooting? How do workers repeatedly exposed to trauma protect their own well-being?
Angel “Ace” Vasquez, a Lawrence streetworker manager with UTEC, said those relationships among practitioners matter.
“I’ve been a streetworker for 12 years, and I always learn something new,” Vasquez said. “When we come together as streetworkers, it’s not only in trainings. It’s talking with each other, having each other’s backs and making sure we’re doing check-ins with each other. That’s community for us.”
For Jabee, that idea brought the conference back to the same principle shaping his work in Oklahoma City.
Community, he told the gathering, is not simply where the work happens. It is the strategy.
