Activist Leon Ford, outgoing Pittsburgh police Chief Schubert form nonprofit to improve police-youth relations

An unlikely friendship forged out of healing and the desire to help Pittsburgh led to the creation of a new nonprofit aimed at repairing and growing the relationship between police and the city’s young people.

The Hear Foundation, launched Wednesday, was co-founded by Leon Ford, an activist and police shooting survivor, and outgoing Pittsburgh police Chief Scott Schubert.

“I’ve learned from him. He’s learned from me. And we’re committed to getting this right,” Schubert said in announcing the foundation at the August Wilson Center in Downtown. “This is the truth of what happens when two people who probably shouldn’t be friends come together to make a difference.”

Schubert, 55, is a lifelong law enforcement officer. He’s spent nearly 30 years with the Pittsburgh police and has led the bureau since 2017. He is set to retire from that post next week.

Ford, 29, was shot five times during a traffic stop in 2012 when officers who pulled him over mistook him for a crime suspect with a similar name. The shooting left Ford paralyzed from the waist down. He has since become an activist and speaker.

“I had so much anger, so much frustration, so much hatred in my heart for police officers and also a lot of people who were in the comments,” Ford said.

He recalled how one of his Twitter tirades took aim at Schubert.

“I called Chief Schubert racist. I said he didn’t care about Black people and a whole bunch of other things,” he said.

A friend asked Ford if he had ever met the chief. He hadn’t.

“I remember those posts because I thought the same thing at the time. I said, ‘He doesn’t even know me,’” Schubert said. “And to be honest, I didn’t really know Leon.”

Both admit that their first meeting was clouded with suspicions about ulterior motives and agendas.

“I was a little bit standoffish but I was also open-minded because I wanted to get to know the chief, I wanted to understand policing in our communities,” Ford said. “I wanted to be part of that change. They always say we should be the change we want to see, and Chief Schubert, he showed up and he was honest.”

They found they agreed on many ideas and concepts. They disagreed on others.

“What we found through our conversations is we both love Pittsburgh. We both want to help,” Schubert said. “We know there are a lot of other people out there that want to help. They’re trying to do things, but they don’t have the resources or they don’t have the funding or the coordination to get it done.”

And so the Hear Foundation was born.

“What I saw from Leon was the peace that he had within himself to forgive, the peace he had within himself to understand and to help other people,” Schubert said. “That’s the first thing that really blew me away. I actually thought, ‘I wish I could find that peace that he has.’”

Schubert and Ford are co-chairs of the foundation, and Kamal Nigam, who founded the Google office in Pittsburgh, will be executive director.

“Many individuals and groups in our community are working hard to find solutions, but they’re too often working in isolation or lacking the resources, coordination and support to affect widespread change and healing,” Nigam said. “The Hear Foundation will fill those gaps and build on those efforts.”

Part of that work to fill in the gap and amplify existing efforts will come in the form of grants. Three projects, dubbed the Summer of Healing projects, will receive $75,000 in grants to help fund their initiatives.

One grant will help fund three youth summer camps in often underserved city neighborhoods: Voices Against Violence in the city’s southern neighborhoods, Hope for Tomorrow in the West End and Youth Enrichment Services in East Liberty.

Nigam said the project will embed community engagement officers from the bureau in the summer camp programs to talk with kids about reform, safety, and media portrayals of both police and young people. To further those discussions, five young adults will be hired to partner with officers during their camp visits.

The second grant will help to hire five high school students to develop a safety plan for Perry High School, which has endured its share of violence this school year. The students will work with a social worker and a nonprofit focused on violence prevention.

The third funding initiative will help the Center for Victims host 15 workshops in which more than 100 community leaders will be trained in the science and impact of trauma wrought by violence, abuse, chronic adversity, stress and social inequities.

“When we talk about our youth and what’s going on in our society, the Hear Foundation is the appropriate name because if we don’t hear the screams of what the youth have inherited, we can’t change the game,” said Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey. “In order to tackle this, we have to tackle it together.”