These ex-convicts are the city's peacemakers

Pete Mingo leans against the Ford Bronco with his arms folded across his chest. He watches.

Ali-Rashid Abdullah and Steven Sherman blend into the crowd that has spilled out of the church on McPherson Avenue just south of Warsaw Avenue in East Price Hill.

Another black man dead. Another homicide investigation. Another funeral.

The killer has yet to be caught – even though many in the crowd know the name of the triggerman and his gang affiliation.

Cincinnati police officers cruise down McPherson every so often. They watch, too.

It's best, Abdullah says, if the police stay at a distance. There's an edge of hostility in the air.

No need to stir this stew.

It's Mingo and Abdullah and Sherman who have stock outside the church on this overcast day. The former convicts – an armed robber, a murderer and a drug dealer – are here working as three of Cincinnati's 10 Human Relations Commission outreach workers.

These are the city's peacemakers.

'The voice of sanity'

If you've watched the evening news, you've likely seen them, too. They are called to nearly every shooting, homicide or escalation of violence in the city. City leaders have sought their counsel and help over the years to keep a lid on police-community angst. They get paid for their work, but it's really a calling.

Born out of the riots in 2001, the group has been titled many things. There have been studies and reports and too many news stories to count. But the mission of these nine men – plus one woman – has remained constant: Quell the violence, keep people alive.

They were the Black Lives Matter advocates before Black Lives Matter became a thing. They haven't carried signs, traveled from city-to-city to protest, staged sit-ins or crafted witty chants.

Instead, they answer calls for help regardless if a gangster or a city official is on the other end of the line. Regardless of the time. They've buried sons, uncles, cousins and brothers. They've visited friends and families in prison. And, while they work as a sort of bridge between cops and criminals, they don't do anybody's bidding.

"We have become the voice of reason," says Mingo, who is also the pastor at Christ Temple Baptist Church in Evanston, "The voice of sanity.''

The PTDS of life on the streets

That irony is not lost on this group, many of whom lived lives most would call nuts.

• Mingo, 66, committed 27 armed robberies in less than a year, and those were only the ones authorities could pin on him, he says: "I was off the hook."  He was convicted of seven of those back in the 1970s and served several years in prison before an assistant warden asked for him to be paroled. "It's not often somebody gives you your life back,'' says Mingo, who went into ministering not long after his release.
• Abdullah, 67, served nearly 21 years in prison for murder and armed robbery convictions in the early 1970s. It was his first adult conviction. "I participated in a robbery that went wrong. It all falls on me,'' he says. "I carry the burden. Old-school street code 101.''
• Sherman, who now owns five businesses, says he once dealt drugs for years, making tens of thousands of dollars each month. He didn't use drugs. He didn't have to: "I was addicted to money.''

Another witnessed his stepfather shoot and kill his heroin-addicted father. There's a forger, a bad-check writer and a couple drug addicts in the group. Others have been homeless; they are all likely suffering from PTSD, given the violence they've seen or experienced.

It is precisely those pasts that give them credibility with the "knuckleheads" on the street now.

"I am that road map,'' says Britton 'Pete' Carter, 59, a former convict, recovering addict and, these days, a playwright. "They ask us: 'How do I wake up tomorrow with no job, drug and family problems and court issues?'" How do we expect them to come off the block and put down the gun ... and replace it with what?

"The answer is 'look at us,'" Carter says. "We are the book. We are the literature."

Hundreds of funerals

And while these 10 individuals don't agree on everything, there's no belly-aching, boohooing or blaming around this table about racial inequalities, socioeconomic disparities or the mass incarceration of young, black men.

There's too much work to be done.

The phones don't stop ringing, buzzing and beeping. There are client meetings. A training session to get to.

And while the goal is to stop the killing and to stave off violence, these guys are realists.

Mingo has attended 494 funerals since 2003 – that's 38 a year if you're keeping score, or one roughly every 10 days for 13 years.

He has ministered at 39 and offered remarks at 153.

And he knows there will be another.

"Change comes when change comes," he says.

Chris Graves is the Enquirer's local columnist. Her columns generally appear in print on Wednesday and Sunday. Contact her at cgraves@enquirer or at Twitter @chrisgraves.