By Hudson Crozier
Several “criminal justice reformers” and “violence prevention” advocates racked up violent charges in 2025 after promoting what were considered innovative, compassionate responses to crime in liberal cities.
Four such activists are charged with murder or assault in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Flint, Michigan, and Chicago, while another in Rochester, New York, is serving two years in prison for assaulting a police officer in January, according to multiple reports and court records. The five men’s so-called violence prevention tasks often involved street outreach or nonprofit work in Democrat-controlled areas affected by high crime rates. All five had run-ins with law enforcement before their latest charges.
Sheldon Johnson, an activist who promoted more lenient treatment of criminals, was charged with murder in New York City “after cops found a dismembered body” and caught him “on surveillance video disguised in a blond wig at the scene of the crime,” reports the New York Post. He had previously served time in prison for a series of robberies, before going on to promote “criminal justice reform” after his release.
‘Peacekeepers’
Kellen McMiller was arrested in September in Chicago for a deadly burglary days after posing in a picture next to Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker at an event, CWB Chicago reported. McMiller, already wanted by authorities in four states, robbed a Louis Vuitton store on Sept. 11 and crashed a car into another driver while fleeing the scene, killing him, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. McMiller and his six accomplices face murder and theft charges. McMiller’s court date was postponed until he could be released from a hospital, the state’s attorney’s office said. (RELATED: How Blue City Ex-Felon Given ‘Clean Slate’ Rose To Political Power — Before Getting Arrested)
Pritzker’s event celebrated McMiller and others in the governor’s Peacekeepers program who try to stop violence in the streets.
“It’s folks like these that we need more of doing the hard work of community violence prevention, not troops on the ground to undermine efforts fighting crime,” Pritzker said in an X post about the event, referring to President Donald Trump’s plans to send the National Guard to Chicago. Such on-the-ground prevention efforts are an antidote to “failed criminal justice policies” and “overincarceration,” Pritzker’s administration claimed in August.
Metropolitan Peace Initiatives (MPI), one of the private groups leading the Peacekeepers, said it would reevaluate its vetting process after McMiller’s latest arrest, WBEZ Chicago reported.
“I think it’s just an opportunity for us to get better at what we do and continue to strengthen our protocols and standards,” MPI Executive Director Vaughn Bryant told the outlet.
‘Violence Interrupter’
The Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office highlighted Cotey Wynn, a D.C. native, on its website in 2020 as a symbol of second chances via its Cure the Streets program. Wynn became a full-time “violence interrupter” for D.C.’s neighborhoods after serving ten years in prison for what he called “wrong” choices, the website says.
Wynn now stands accused of helping a gunman plan a 31-year-old’s murder at a D.C. smoking lounge in a September 2023 shooting that injured three others, court documents show. Wynn was allegedly seen on surveillance video surveying victims’ dead bodies and signaling the gunman to leave. A court is holding Wynn in custody without bail.
Defense attorney Brian McDaniel, who claims the police’s evidence is circumstantial, did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
“He’s smoking that hookah. He’s not trying to kill anyone,” McDaniel said in court about the surveillance footage in June, D.C. Witness reported. “He’s just smoking that hookah, and drinking, and occasionally talking to a young lady.”
Wynn was charged with a different murder in December 2020, but a judge dismissed it over insufficient evidence, court records show.
Former criminals with “genuine remorse” make fine employees for the attorney general’s office and volunteers for Cure the Streets, Democratic Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb argued in June 2023 testimony to D.C.’s city council. “Keeping them locked up in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, often thousands of miles away from their families and friends, will not make us safer or stronger,” Schwalb said.
‘Harm/De-escalation Tactics’
Philadelphia police arrested Sergio Hyland in April for allegedly shooting his girlfriend, a mother of two, in the head and dumping her body under an overpass, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The self-described “hood abolitionist” had a website advertising speaking engagements, legal consultations and “Violence Reduction/Prevention” services that involve “Harm/De-escalation Tactics,” an archived webpage shows. (RELATED: Leaders Of Activist Group Opposing Trump’s DC Crime Crackdown Have Criminal Records)
Hyland served prison time for murder before emerging as a prison abolition activist. He credited grassroots organizers like himself, not police, with driving down shootings in Philadelphia, according to a February article by the nonprofit Resolve Philly that promoted his approach.
The activist’s attorney, Shaka Johnson, told a court in June that there was no solid evidence against Hyland after prosecutors presented phone records, witness testimony, surveillance footage of Hyland near the scene and phone calls where he mentioned possibly going back behind bars, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
“There’s no question that Mr. Hyland is a returning citizen from a previous incarceration who has amended his behavior tremendously and turned his life around,” Johnson reportedly said after a hearing. Johnson did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Hyland endorsed far-left Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s reelection campaign before his April arrest, the DCNF previously reported.
‘Pathways To Peace’
Anthony Hall formerly ran Rochester’s Pathways to Peace program, which the local Police Accountability Board touted in 2020 as one of the city’s “alternatives to traditional policing.” He stepped down in 2023 to lead the Community Resource Collaborative (CRC), a nonprofit that received taxpayer funding to help prevent crime and recidivism in Rochester. However, Hall was locked up in January for shoving a cop so hard it caused an upper-body fracture while police were responding to a domestic dispute, WXXI News reported.
Hall was reportedly sentenced to two years in prison in April — not just for the assault, but also for defrauding a nonprofit between December 2018 and September 2019 while he spearheaded Pathways to Peace. Separately, a probe by Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office found that CRC hoarded federal funds for staffers’ personal expenses, paying $20,000 to Hall. A court ordered the nonprofit to dissolve days after Hall’s January arrest.
‘Clean Slate’
Leon El-Alamin, a Flint city councilman, founded the nonprofit Money, Attitude, Direction and Education (MADE) Institute in Michigan to help ex-inmates like himself find a better life “through workforce development, social advocacy, urban farming, training and research, and violence prevention,” its website says. He previously served seven years behind bars for drugs and weapon crimes, but Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer passed a “clean slate” program in 2020 that expunged his record, according to Mid-Michigan Now.
Prosecutors charged El-Alamin with domestic violence and assault in July for allegedly brutalizing an ex-girlfriend in a neighboring city. A court released him on bond that month with a GPS monitor and no-contact order.
“These recent allegations are both false and deeply disheartening, but I remain confident in the truth and in the legal process,” El-Alamin said in July. “My legal team is actively handling the matter, and I fully intend to clear my name and win this case.”
El-Alamin criticized “Mass Incarceration” in a 2024 social media post prior to his most recent arrest.
‘Criminal Justice Reform’
Since the death of George Floyd, there has been an explosion in the number of “criminal justice reform” groups, many of which support abolishing prisons and the police. Taxpayers and big foundations support many of these groups.
As Swann Marcus observes, “There are state funded police abolitionist nonprofits with sex criminals and convicted murderers on the board and unsurprisingly they often go on to offend again. There’s an NGO called Freedom Project in Seattle that had a convicted murderer staff member commit another murder.” “When I say “staff member” I mean he was hired for an executive position like 8 months after getting out of prison for homicide. Their current Operations Director, Aretha Sconiers, “went to prison in 2001 for kicking her 3 year old daughter to death.”
A criminal justice reformer who helped pass legislation to release inmates early was later arrested for “beating his wife on numerous occasions and inflicting injuries that required treatment at a hospital,” reported the National Law Journal. He was the “poster child” for early releases of inmates, having gone from being an imprisoned bank robber, to later becoming a prominent law professor. “He played a role in the passage of the landmark criminal justice reform bill known as the First Step Act.” He allegedly broke his wife’s finger and tooth. “I received bruises all over my body,” his wife said in an affidavit.
