Eliyahu Gasson | editor-in-chief

When Leon Ford talks about his mission for Pittsburgh, he begins with a simple idea — people thrive when they feel safe.

“My goal at the moment here in Pittsburgh is to help make Pittsburgh a more prosperous city for everyone. And one way I envision doing that is by increasing public safety,” he said.

Ford survived being shot five times by a police officer in 2012 during a traffic stop in Pittsburgh’s Highland Park neighborhood at the age of 19. The event left him paralyzed.

He has spent nearly a decade since then working at the intersection of community advocacy, youth mentoring and fostering dialogue between police and communities. His approach, he said, is rooted in personal, emotional and civic healing.

“It was probably 10 times or more challenging to heal mentally and emotionally; even spiritually I would say,” Ford said. “I was depressed, I was angry, I was sad. I was so frustrated and confused for years.”

Ford credits a wide range of communities for helping him rebuild his life: The Nation of Islam, the Quakers, local activists and educators, including Duquesne sociology professor Norman Conti and Deanna Fracul, director of community-engaged learning and partnerships.

Ford said their support shaped what he calls his lifelong philosophy of being a student of all religions, but a practitioner of love, a lesson he first learned from his grandfather.

Forgiveness can be complicated, Ford said.

“It depends on what day you ask me. I have days where I’m on fire and I’m feeling great and … and I’m all about love and forgiveness. And then some days I wake up and my body is in pain,” Ford said.  

“What I’m able to do is bring my mind back into the present moment and have a deep sense of gratitude, and then that anger slowly fades away.”

A decade of partnership with Duquesne

Ford’s connection to Duquesne spans roughly 10 years and began when he created The Voices Project, a youth mentoring group he first ran out of public libraries and businesses around Pittsburgh.

Fracul, who was a doctoral student at Duquesne at the time, invited Ford to bring the Voices Project to the university in 2016.

For roughly a year and a half, the project met every other week. Ford brought young people that he was mentoring, as well as other friends and mentors, and Fracul would bring faculty and community partners — including police — to their meetings.

The program encouraged students to write, speak publicly and find confidence in their own voices. One student, Fracul recalled, wrote a letter to his school board protesting a ban on hoodies — a moment she documented in her dissertation about democratic engagement and community partnerships.

Conti’s relationship with Ford deepened around the same time. After hearing about Ford’s work, he invited him to take his Police in Society class. Ford accepted.

“To have a survivor of a police shooting in a course on police in society was the best Police in Society course I could ever teach because he was registered as a student but he really co-taught the course with me,” Conti said.

Over time, Ford became intertwined with both Conti’s and Fracul’s lives. Each described him as family.

“I think of Leon as a nephew, really,” Conti said. “I just love him so much beyond the work … I’m good at my job, but Leon is potentially a historical figure.”

Building safety through relationships

Ford’s current work centers on what he describes as “increasing public safety” by connecting communities that rarely speak directly with each other. He mediates conflicts between church leaders, activists, violence-prevention workers and neighborhood groups. He also maintains relationships with police officers across the country, focusing particularly on new recruits.

“A lot of people focus on policy, and I do believe that’s important. But they overlook the relationship,” Ford said. “I think when communities who have been marginalized and who have felt oppressed by law enforcement, that when they have relationships with law enforcement, a lot of things change.”

Ford co-runs Bridging the Badge, a program that partners with Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood. The program encourages students — including Black and brown youth from marginalized neighborhoods — to pursue public safety careers. Participants travel to conferences held by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, meet with public safety leaders and learn about policing from inside the profession.

Over time, Ford hopes, the program will reshape Pittsburgh’s workforce and economy.

“They will have careers where they can feed their families. And fast-forward, when they’re 50 years old, they’ll have pensions, they’ll own their own home,” he said. “That completely changes the trajectory of their lives, but also changes the economic infrastructure in Pittsburgh, for their community.”

Still, Ford cautions that diversity alone does not guarantee equitable policing.

“It is irresponsible of me to say that just simply getting Black and brown people into law enforcement is gonna change things, right? Because we’ve seen Black and brown people all over the country who are police officers hurt people,” he said.

That shift, he argues, requires teaching officers to move away from fear-based policing.

“When police officers are told ‘You have to make it home, you have to make it home,’ it puts fear in them,” he said. “True safety comes from feeling safe and not having fear.” 

Ford’s long-term vision for Pittsburgh is both local and national. With more than 18,000 police departments in the United States, according to the Department of Justice, he sees Pittsburgh as a pilot city for transforming public safety from the ground up.

“History is history,” he said. “We can’t change history, but we can change the future. And we’re only able to change the future when we’re involved and our position is determined by our ability to educate ourselves and to have a vision for the world that we want to live in.”

Eliyahu Gasson can be reached at gassone@duq.edu