Image above: Memphis Allies Managing Director of Operations Carl Davis and Executive Director Susan Deason pose for a portrait in the recreation area of the facility in Memphis, Tenn., on September 3, 2025. Chris Day/The Commercial Appeal

Lucas Finton, Memphis Commercial Appeal – Updated Nov. 26, 2025

Louis walked into Memphis Allies for the first time in early 2025. He wasn’t there by choice, but rather a court order.

Just after he turned 18, Louis was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated robbery and possession of a firearm.

“I had no idea who they were or what they did,” Louis told a reporter with The Commercial Appeal about that first day.

His story is similar to many Memphians whose lives intersect with the criminal justice system. He was raised by his mother in a single-parent household. He had multiple siblings, but most had different fathers.

“I just got into the streets very early. I’m also the middle child, too, so no attention,” he said. “I was just seeking attention, seeking love, so I just veered off to the streets.”

Memphis Allies is an organization, under the nonprofit umbrella of Youth Villages, specializing in gun violence intervention. It is funded primarily through public grants and private donations. Its flagship program brings people involved in violent crime off the streets, layering therapy and life coaching to restructure someone’s path in life.

Through processing trauma established from an early age, the organization hopes to provide coping mechanisms, career training and further education. When it works — and their internal data indicates it does, with 91% of nearly 800 participants over the last three years not receiving a new firearms charge while in the program — people who may have returned to a life of crime leave the program with a better career outlook.

The program is rigorous, with therapists and life coaches having regular contact with participants. It can also come with risks to participants because sometimes the life they’re trying to leave behind can sometimes chase them down.

In early April this year, police said multiple gunmen fired shots at participants as they left a Memphis Allies meeting. Six people were shot, and one participant was killed.

To protect him from similar potential threats, Louis is a pseudonym used by The CA in the court of this story to protect his identity.

Memphis Allies was founded in 2022 as a frontline intervention group.

In essence, the organization has three levels of service. Outreach specialists are on the street to mediate disputes, but they also funnel potential participants into the program. Life coaches have daily contact with participants and help them find a new path in life. The third group is clinical therapists, who help participants develop coping mechanisms and unpack trauma.

It also partners with many of Memphis’ other intervention organizations to amplify their reach.

As it was being organized, Executive Director Susan Deason said one statistic stood out to her: For every shooting in the United States, there are an average of four more that happen in retaliation. It is in that space, she said, Memphis Allies tries to operate.

To break that cycle, Memphis Allies has its SWITCH programs, one for adults and another for minors.

“Gun violence is a serious problem,” said Deason. “We’re most focused on retaliatory gun violence. Part of the challenge in serving only one age group is there’s not really a defined line between who is engaging in that retaliatory violence. So we need to have the flexibility to be able to serve both young people and adults, depending on who they’re running with, who they’re having conflicts with.”

Aside from the number of participants who are or are not arrested on a new criminal case after joining the program, Deason said it can be difficult to quantify the impact Memphis Allies has had. Part of the difficulty comes from just how many factors weigh into crime in Memphis.

But, she said, a falling crime rate — specifically with murders and attempted murders — shows the organization’s efforts don’t worsen crime. They also lean on participants telling their stories of rehabilitation, or the times when an outreach specialist mediated a situation that could have turned into a shooting, to show their impact.

“Put very simply, we’re here to stop the next shooting,” Deason said.

Participants sometimes were part of local gangs or involved in some aspect of crime in Memphis. Louis is a participant of SWITCH, among the 1,230 people served by the program since it launched in 2022.

“When I got in the program, they welcomed me in and everything felt like home from the start,” Louis said, adding the love and attention he sought was something he found in Memphis Allies, but it differed slightly.

Instead of people coming into his life to tell him what to do, he said staff at Memphis Allies would “walk with you on your journey.”

“Whatever career you wanted, or whatever you want to do in life, they’re with you and they’re going to walk every step with you,” Louis said. “It’d been a time they met me at the DMV so I can get my license, they done met me to go get birth certificates, classes, they’re there every step.”

A large part of that contact comes from Memphis Allies’ life coaches. Carl Davis, the managing director of operations, said life coaches come from similar backgrounds to the participants in the nonprofit’s programs.

“Not only do they meet with them weekly to discuss the life plan, but they also have contact with them daily,” Davis said. “So, it’s a daily contact with a life coach because it’s not just, ‘I’m going to check on you every once in a while,’ type deal. You can’t be a life coach and don’t do life with these people.”

‘Like mother and father,’ therapy and life coaching spur healing

Life coaching works hand-in-hand with therapy, according to Tatianna Hadder, a clinical specialist who works with Memphis Allies.

“It’s like mother and father,” Hadder said. “Our two entities are neck and neck. There’s no big you, big I. Everyone is being treated the same as far as what we do together. We know that we’re more powerful together than apart. We help each other see the bigger picture. The things that (the life coaches) do with the guys and the things that we do with the guys are two totally different things, but they both come together and they make a much bigger impact.”

The therapy aspect can be difficult at times, with Hadder saying there is sometimes “resistance” until a shift happens.

“As a clinical specialist, the first thing they think of is the stigma of mental health and therapy. ‘Ugh, therapy!’” Hadder said.

Sitting next to Hadder was Andre “Dre” Davis, a life coach. As he talked about his role with Memphis Allies, he consistently circled back to the encouragement aspect of his job, but also how life coaching can sometimes be as simple as listening.

“There is this walking alongside. Like, ‘We’re in this together,’” Davis said. “There’s this chance that we can learn from each other. Because you’ve gone through some things that I may not have experienced, but if I can understand what you’ve been through, I can help.”

Though each participant’s healing journey is different, with unique ebbs and flows, both Hadder and Davis said the pattern boils down to therapy showing each participant the path to a better life and life coaches helping put that plan into action.

“I tell my guys all the time, ‘Your body can’t go where your mind hasn’t been,’” Davis said.

But Memphis Allies is not just a space where the “hard work” of therapy and life planning happens. It also offers recreational time for participants. There’s a basketball court. The organization offers boxing lessons. There are video games and movies to watch.

“It’s nothing you can get out of those things but happiness, joyfulness,” Louis said. “Playing basketball, hobbies, boxing, and teaching social skills, too, because you’re engaging with other people out there.”

“It’s also about making therapy fun, too, making it interactive for them,” Hadder said. “I don’t want to just sit across from them, asking, ‘So what’s going on? What’s that like?’”

The ebbs and flows of a lifestyle change

The path for participants is rarely easy. Louis described his adjustment period as a simple decision, but Davis said many times life has a way of pulling participants back into a life of crime.

Davis described one participant who got out of jail the same day as his cousin, but the cousin didn’t come to Memphis Allies.

“He becomes our participant. He gets a job. Then he lost his job, but he lost the job because the company he was with lost the contract. So now it’s like, ‘I need money. What am I going to do?’” Davis recalled.

The participant’s cousin reached out to him and said he had a gig that would pay well, but it wasn’t legal.

“This is where the mental and all this comes in,” Davis said. “I’m like, ‘You don’t want to go back there. Remember, you don’t want to go back to a halfway house. You don’t want to go back to jail because you’ll probably end up there.’ It’s that time in between where you have to tell them it’ll be OK.”

Part of the therapy work done by Hadder and other specialists at Memphis Allies deals with setting up what she called a “safety plan.” These plans are in place for intense situations and triggers, helping participants regulate their emotions when tensions are high.

“The guys that are on my caseload, they live in high-risk environments,” Hadder said. “So they’re constant in that they have the fight, flight and freeze phase. That cycle, that stress that’s in your body that you feel when you’re in danger, that’s that stress response… It’s like a signal, basically saying, ‘I need to either get out of here or I need to do something about it because somebody’s going to do something to me.’”

Hadder said the safety plan helps participants pause and find a nonviolent exit to those high-risk and high-stress situations.

Davis said his participant kept working with Memphis Allies and didn’t take his cousin up on the offer. On the same day the participant got a new job, Davis said the cousin was arrested. The “job” the participant’s cousin was offering was actually a police sting operation.

“One by one, piece by piece, we do the work to make sure you don’t even want to go back to what you had,” Davis said. “You’re not broken. All of us have some cards in our hand.”

‘A different kind of pressure’

Louis said this program left him with tools to step away from those situations and think, adding he’s more mindful about his actions.

Now equipped to raise a family of his own, Louis’ days start with praying alongside his kids, taking them to school, going to work, and talking with his therapist and life coach every day.

“My life has been smooth,” he said.

But he was not alone in coming to Memphis Allies. When he joined the program, he said he brought along his peers. Hader said oftentimes participants will bring their friends, who are in similar situations.

But that doesn’t always happen, Deason said.

“For the guys who have to leave somebody behind, or their group is still doing all that stuff and the participant is having to behave differently, I don’t say it’s harder, but it’s a different kind of pressure,” Deason said.

In Louis’ case, he said he has “major influence over my peers,” which made bringing them into the program easier.

“If you do something for so long — I don’t care what you do — you know, you’re going to get tired of it and you’re going to want change,” Louis said. “It wasn’t hard at all. They seen me do the steps and me and my friends are real close, so we never wanted to outgrow each other. So we all had the same principles and morals and wanted to do the same thing. So we all changed. It was no arguing or ‘I feel this way,’ or ‘We agree to disagree.’ It was, ‘OK, this is what you want to do? We with you.’”

In the short term, everyone at Memphis Allies said there is a sense of trickle-down to the rest of the community. As more participants find ways to build a life without needing to turn to crime, other people in their neighborhoods are seeing that and want to follow suit.

And, in the long term, just like those who helped him find a new path, Louis said he wants to become part of the next generation of intervention specialists.

“I plan on being next to these guys one day,” Louis said, gesturing toward Dre Davis and Hadder, “helping change lives, give my testimonies to younger people to make them change up their route or go a different way.”

Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, and followed on X @LucasFinton.

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