By Caitlin Johnson
Around five years ago, Hank Davis decided he needed to make a change.
Davis founded ICONS (Individuals Collectively Overcoming Negative Situations) more than 20 years ago. ICONS works with young people — particularly teenage boys and young men — in some of Cleveland’s most under-resourced neighborhoods. Originally, the focus of Davis’s work was serving as a “violence interrupter.” He would rush to the scene after a fight or a shooting to deescalate the situation.
Davis understands young people who are caught up in gangs and violence. He was once like them, and spent 12 years in prison to prove it. His experience shows that people can change, grow, and make better choices. Still, despite Davis's best efforts, many of the teenagers and young adults he tried to reach back then returned to violence.
“I started focusing more on 4th graders and 5th graders instead of high schoolers,” he said. “Today, you’ll see less of me running to the scene of a shooting. You might see us at a hospital because they might have a little brother or little sister. I’m still a violence interrupter, but I interrupt violence by getting ahead of it. Prevention is the key.”
Davis said he realized that younger boys are often more open to guidance. He began to expand ICONS’ focus and launched a mentorship program at Hannah Gibbons Elementary School in Collinwood. Today, Davis and other ICONS mentors visit the school two to three days a week to work with 12 to 15 boys identified as high-risk by the principal. ICONS mentors provide guidance and have weekly calls with parents. They collect the boys’ report cards and track grades, absenteeism, and suspensions.
Most of the students who came through the 2018-2019 program have graduated from high school. Several are in college or working in the trades. The program has been so successful that ICONS recently received $45,000 from the Neighborhood Safety Fund created by Mayor Justin Bibb with $10 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars. Administered by the Cleveland Foundation, the fund supports community-based organizations doing the often under-funded, yet critical work to address the root causes of crime, such as poverty and trauma. Davis says the money from the Mayor’s Neighborhood Safety Fund will help ICONS sustain their Hannah Gibbons program and expand to other schools.
“The Safety Fund was created to support programs that build safe communities from the ground up,” said Mayor Bibb. “By showing love, care, and leadership to boys who have been through incredible trauma, that’s exactly what Hank Davis and ICONS are doing. They prevent violence before it happens so our youth grow up to realize their full potential.”
Davis and other ICONS mentors provide additional adult support for their CMSD partners. In Hannah Gibbons they have classroom space for conflict mediation and life skills instruction. As he walked the school halls in January, Davis greeted students and staff, and popped into classrooms to check on kids he worries about. Teachers pulled him aside to quietly discuss a student having a tough time. One boy, whose father was murdered, joined Davis for part of his rounds. Davis said most of the students he works with have had a family member killed by gun violence. That is why he makes no secret of his past. He wears a badge with a photo of his old street name “Hank Capone” and the different prison riots he witnessed while incarcerated.
“I wear this to let the kids know, just because you come from a certain neighborhood, you come from a certain environment, that does not make you have to be that environment,” Davis said. “When the kids see this, they relate to me. I can tell them how we started gangs in the city, how we sold drugs in the city …and how I overcame that.”
Amanda Hoy, who teaches 6th through 8th grade science at Hannah Gibbons, said that Davis communicates with kids in ways that teachers often cannot.
“He’s able to talk to them and help us with a situation or enlighten us when the kids may not want to be as honest about what’s going on in their home lives as we would like them to be,” she said. “He is a great tool that I can use to just build that better relationship with some of my boys, especially.”
ICONS also offers the boys a host of opportunities. The boys who are old enough are connected to paying summer jobs with Davis’s landscaping company where they gain exposure to the world of business. They go camping and bowling. ICONS takes the boys on trips to college campuses to give them a sense of what could be possible for them.
“The kids don’t feel like they have been targeted as the bad kids,” Mrs. Davis said. “They see it as a benefit. We have [other] kids asking us, ‘when can we come with ICONS?’”
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Caitlin Johnson is a former journalist who is working with Neighbors for Bibb to tell some of Cleveland's success stories.
