HOUSTON – The bullet holes are still visible on the walls of a gas station convenience store on Ella Boulevard in north Harris County.
For Jarmane Parker, they’re part of the reason he keeps coming back.
“I was once them,” Jarmane Parker said.
Parker is a supervisor with RISE, or Relentless Interrupters Serving Everyone, a Harris County Public Health program that uses people with lived experience to connect with residents at high risk of becoming involved in gun violence.
They don’t carry badges or guns. Instead, Harris County’s RISE outreach workers say one of their most important tools is their own past.
KPRC 2 rode along with Parker and other members of the RISE team through north Harris County to see how the program works as county leaders consider putting millions more toward community-based public safety programs.
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis is pushing for an additional $4.5 million for community safety efforts, including RISE, the Holistic Assistance Response Team, and domestic violence prevention.
Of that request, $600,000 would go toward expanding RISE.
“Four years looking at the data, it works,” Ellis said. “It’s time to keep it.”
‘We were once those people’
For Parker, the work is personal.
He said two of his friends, D’vonte Walker and Derrick Smith, were ambushed and shot 75 times at a gas station in January 2023.
“Personally, this is how I came to the program,” Parker said.
He said he was introduced to violence prevention workers at their funeral.
Parker, who is originally from New Orleans and has lived in Houston for more than two decades, said he grew up surrounded by violence and eventually became involved in that lifestyle himself.
For years, Parker said violence became normal.
“All I know is what I was taught,” Parker said. “Somebody shoot you, you shoot them back. Somebody hurt you, you hit them back.”
But after his two friends were killed, Parker said he was forced to make a different decision.
He was raising children and said he could no longer respond to violence the way he might have when he was younger.
Now, Parker uses those experiences to try to convince others to make that same choice.
“We just gotta change the social norms that violence is okay,” Parker said.
That lived experience is a central part of the RISE model. The outreach workers describe themselves as “credible messengers” — people who understand the communities and people they are trying to reach because many have experienced violence, incarceration or life on the streets themselves.
Outreach worker Matthew Baptiste said that is what separates their approach from many traditional programs.
“At one point in time we were the problem,” Baptiste said. “At one point we were in the streets. At one point in time we was doing exactly what they were doing.”
A ride through a neighborhood marked by gun violence
During KPRC 2’s ride-along, we stopped by a gas station convenience store that’s been hit with repeated gun violence.
Marcus McDade, another member of the RISE team, experienced it firsthand.
“I got shot here,” McDade said.
McDade said he was wounded during a drive-by shooting in November 2017.
“It was just a drive-by going wrong,” McDade said.
He said the shooting happened before RISE existed.
“If the program was here, I think it would have prevented a lot of things that had happened,” McDade said.
McDade said he eventually began seeing RISE workers in their purple shirts around the neighborhood and started asking questions.
He told the workers he wanted to change his life and eventually became part of the team himself.
“Look at me now with a purple shirt on, making a change in the community,” McDade said.
Parker said that transformation is an example of what the team hopes to accomplish through what he calls “relentless engagement.”
“You can’t just go and talk to somebody and think one time that they’re gonna change their life off of your good words,” Parker said.
The work does not only happen on the streets.
RISE also has a hospital-based component designed to reach victims of violence during the hours immediately after they are shot, stabbed or assaulted.
Andrea Alexander said she responds to the hospital and meets patients at their bedside, while also talking with family members who may be angry, scared or already considering retaliation.
“I meet the patient at the bedside to make sure no retaliation is being planned,” Alexander said.
The goal is to intervene during a critical window and then connect the person with services that could help prevent another violent encounter.
Violence prevention goes beyond shootings
Parker said much of the team’s work involves addressing the circumstances that can contribute to violence in the first place.
RISE workers connect residents with jobs, housing, food, clothing, identification documents, health care and behavioral health services.
Parker said financial instability can push some people back toward the same activities that previously landed them in jail.
“When you don’t have a sustainable wage, only time you remember having this money is when you was on the block,” Parker said.
The team tries to connect people with employers willing to hire those with criminal records and helps residents navigate other barriers to stability.
Parker said workers have helped people find jobs, temporary housing and eventually apartments.
“All you have to do is get these people opportunity,” Parker said.
The program is intended to complement law enforcement, not replace it.
“We’re not taking over. We’re not doing their job,” Parker said. “We’re just doing our part.”
What does the county say the program has accomplished?
Parker said the team has recorded 187 “stoppages of violence” over four years.
He also pointed to a 38% reduction in violence in the 77090 ZIP code since 2023, but emphasized that RISE cannot take sole credit for changes in crime.
“We’re not saying us,” Parker said, crediting the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and other organizations. “It’s a collective.”
Harris County has also reported more than 13,000 RISE community engagements since the program began.
Parker said one of his goals is to expand the program farther into the Greenspoint area, which would require additional workers and resources.
“Once we get funded some more and we can hire some more guys and we could train them up, it’ll be more lives saved,” Parker said.
The $4.5 million funding push
The push comes as Harris County leaders are debating how to fund programs while facing significant budget challenges.
Ellis is asking the county for an additional $4.5 million for community safety strategies.
The proposal calls for $600,000 for RISE, $1.4 million for HART, $1 million for domestic violence prevention and response, and $1.5 million to establish a Community Safety Department that would bring the efforts under one umbrella.
Ellis said the investment is small compared with what Harris County spends on traditional law enforcement and incarceration.
“That’s about 1.5 percent of our total law enforcement budget for public safety,” Ellis said.
He argues prevention could also save taxpayers money.
“It’s about $105 a day for somebody who is incarcerated,” Ellis said. “This is a heck of a lot cheaper if you can solve their problems than putting them in the jail.”
Ellis also said preventing one shooting saves an estimated $273,000.
For Parker, the argument for more funding comes down to what he sees every day on the streets.
He wants RISE to reach more neighborhoods and hire more people who have the credibility to walk into situations where others may not be able to get through.
His own strategy remains simple.
“I was once them,” Parker said.
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