The acronym stands for Relentless Interruptors Serving Everyone, and its outreach specialists conduct hospital interventions, community workshops, and neighborhood engagement to reduce cycles of gun violence and trauma.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taxpayers have funded the RISE program to the tune of about $1.9 million annually since 2022, but most people don\u2019t know it exists until they find themselves in a situation where they need it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Commissioner Rodney Ellis came up with the idea of a violence interruption program when he was first elected to the court in 2016. He\u2019d seen successful models in California, Maryland and Illinois, and his team worked with experts at the University of Chicago and the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention<\/a> to come up with something that would work in Harris County.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ellis plans to ask his fellow court members in September to spend an additional $4.5 million on top of the $10.8 million already budgeted for community safety programs to expand the outreach and put the initiatives under the umbrella of a new county department dedicated solely to crime prevention. Albuquerque, Durham and Seattle have created departments to oversee similar initiatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n The funding dedicated to community safety programs represents about 1.5 percent of the county\u2019s total law enforcement budget and goes toward the RISE team, a separate domestic violence intervention program, and the Holistic Assistance Response Team, through which unarmed crisis intervention specialists and EMTs respond to mental health incidents without involving law enforcement.<\/p>\n The additional funds would allow RISE and HART members to expand into more communities and respond to gun violence incidents and mental health crises 24\/7.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor too long, our public safety systems have been structured to respond after harm has already occurred,\u201d Ellis says. \u201cBut if someone is experiencing a mental health crisis or a gun violence incident or is trying to escape abuse, responding after the fact simply is not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople can\u2019t be prosecuted out of poverty,\u201d he added. \u201cMental health and substance use can\u2019t be treated in a jail cell. Survivors deserve a path to safety before violence turns deadly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt Broke Something Inside of Me\u201d<\/p>\n Carrington, known as \u201cLC\u201d to his friends, sold a bag of dope for the first time in 1998 in South Park. He was 14 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was sitting on an air conditioning unit at the apartment complex, just chilling, and one of the dope fiends came up and asked if I got something for 50 [dollars],\u201d Carrington recalls. \u201cI was like, damn. He\u2019s got $50. How hard could it be?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you grow up in an underprivileged area, you see the glitz and the glamour, the big homie who\u2019s selling dope and he has the money, the car and the women. We just saw the fruits of it. When you don\u2019t have anything, it seems like a pretty easy choice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Shortly after Carrington\u2019s 18th birthday, he was sent to a Texas prison, and when he got out after 13 months, he went to the now-shuttered Crossroads charter school to finish his high school education.\u00a0<\/p>\n He stayed out of trouble for a while and got a partial college basketball scholarship to Jarvis Christian University but when he could no longer afford tuition, he went back to his mother\u2019s house in his old neighborhood and resumed selling drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2013, an apartment where Carrington lived with his 3-year-old twin boys was raided by the police.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was just sitting on the couch watching Martin,\u201d Carrington says. \u201cThere was one big loud knock and then they came on in. They did all this whooping and hollering, like \u2018Get on the ground!\u2019 They grabbed me and pulled me outside. They woke up the boys and they had me outside but the door was open and I could see my kids sitting on the couch inside.\u201d<\/p>\n Officers seized drugs, weapons and counterfeit money. \u201cThat moment broke something inside of me,\u201d Carrington says. \u201cI realized that if I went to prison, my kids wouldn\u2019t have anyone to take care of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrington\u2019s pro bono lawyer managed to get him out of a second prison sentence, and after Carrington served just nine days in the county jail, he committed to doing right by his kids \u2014 who are now 16 and still live with him full-time \u2014 and the mother who raised him.\u00a0<\/p>\n About two years ago, Carrington\u2019s former Crossroads basketball coach Russ Bessard called him up and said he had a job for him. Carrington was working in a warehouse at the time and was interested. He\u2019s been with RISE ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRuss knew that I had turned my life around and thought I could help other people do the same thing,\u201d Carrington says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Second Chances<\/p>\n The other programs in Ellis\u2019 community safety package \u2014 HART and domestic violence intervention \u2014 were also created in 2022 and have been generally met with positive reception even as debates continue over whether taxpayer funds should go toward social services.<\/p>\n HART\u2019s lead case manager Deja Griffin says the specialists on her team are able to build trust with people suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues because they pull up in purple and gray vehicles, rather than black and white cop cars.<\/p>\n RISE isn\u2019t as well-known in Harris County, but Ellis says it\u2019s every bit as necessary and effective as HART. The outreach specialists like Carrington have prevented at least 186 acts of violence through their hospital visits and work with youth and young adults at barbershops, after-school programs and community centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n They also connect young people to job training and help them get a state ID if they don\u2019t have a driver\u2019s license \u201cso they can get a job and get out of the streets,\u201d Carrington says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI know from my own experience that if you hand somebody a way to put a gun down and a real chance at supporting themselves and their family, they\u2019re going to take it,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m grateful for my second chance, and I know that RISE means there can be more stories like mine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of the specialists have a criminal history and do outreach in the neighborhoods they grew up in. \u201cWe come from the community. We know a lot of the people who have been shot or the shooters themselves, and if we don\u2019t know them personally, I\u2019m pretty sure we know one of their family members personally,\u201d Carrington says.\u00a0<\/p>\n A kid who\u2019s starting to get into fights at school or is drawn to the gang life is more inclined to listen to a RISE team member than a pastor or parent, the outreach specialists agree, recalling a 15-year-old who met Carrington when school administrators asked the RISE team to step in.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe moment I looked at him, I saw myself in him,\u201d Carrington says. \u201cHe\u2019d been getting into fights and got caught with a gun on campus. He was about to end up in the juvenile detention center.\u201d<\/p>\n The teen told Carrington he loves guns and carries one for protection. \u201cWe told him straight up that we\u2019ve been exactly where he\u2019s been and if he continues down that road, we know exactly what is going to happen to him,\u201d Carrington says. \u201cWe asked if we could pray with him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The young man told the RISE members he\u2019d never prayed before. Carrington says, \u201cI knew then that the situation he was in, it wasn\u2019t his fault. He didn\u2019t have anybody in his household. We became his village.\u201d<\/p>\n The boy is now living with his father, attending a new school and staying out of trouble.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carrington never had a close relationship with his own father, who split from his mom when Carrington was 3 years old, but he considered his mother a best friend, even while he was hustling. She died a little over a year ago and he wears a small necklace with her picture close to his heart. He says he likes to think that he\u2019s honoring her by the work he does with RISE.\u00a0<\/p>\n In every neighborhood where RISE operates, gun homicides have fallen faster than in Houston as a whole. In Cypress Station, family violence crimes are down 48 percent and aggravated robberies dropped 34 percent since 2023. The two RISE teams \u2014 one designated for the south side and one for the north side \u2014 have made more than 30,000 connections in the Houston and Harris County neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.<\/p>\n RISE members have also made more than 2,300 hospital visits to survivors of gunshots, stabbings and assaults. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot cheaper to have someone like me sit with a person in crisis than it is to arrest or prosecute them,\u201d Carrington says.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Ellis goes before commissioners court during a budget amendment hearing on September 8, he\u2019s likely to tell his colleagues that the community safety programs save lives. They also save time by freeing up law enforcement and EMS, and they save taxpayer dollars by reducing reliance on jails, courts and emergency rooms, Ellis says.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Larry-Carrington.jpg\")
Larry Carrington used to sell drugs in Houston\u2019s South Park neighborhood. Now he helps others find a better way of life. Credit: Office of Commissioner Rodney Ellis<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Larry-and-Russ.jpeg\")
Larry Carrington, left, and Russ Bessard work for the south side RISE team out of Sunnyside Park. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/RISE-team-members.jpeg\")
The RISE team\u2019s \u201ccredible messengers\u201d teach kids that there\u2019s more to life than gangs and drugs. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\n