Demetrius McDowell was 14 when he started selling drugs.
The only child of a single mother, McDowell had avoided criminal activity up to that point while growing up in the Sheppard Square public housing complex.
But after his mom began caring for two young cousins, McDowell was able to slip in with the wrong crowd, enticed by promises of money and respect.
“One summer is all it took,” he said, “and I was hooked.”
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By 15, McDowell was charged with possessing a gun on school property. By 18, he was found guilty of robbery and cocaine possession, spending the next four years in prison.
By his 30s, he’d built up a lengthy criminal record — but he was also pulling in six figures a year through trafficking, enough to buy two houses and whatever else he wanted.
Then, at 35, something inside McDowell clicked. He no longer wanted to risk his life every day, always scared of being robbed by the next dealer or picked up by police.
He quit the life, cold turkey.
Now, McDowell is putting everything he learned on the streets into a nonprofit he founded that seeks to change kids’ trajectories through mentorship.
Called Bosses Not Bangers, the nonprofit uses basketball games to draw kids in, then connects them with resources to become entrepreneurs, learn job skills and generally stay out of trouble.
“With that influence and respect from running the streets, my change has been accepted by my former peers,” McDowell said. “… It makes it easy for me to go in these neighborhoods that most programs can’t.”
McDowell first began working with youth through Louisville’s Cure Violence program, which trained community “interrupters” to intervene in arguments that could become violent.
The program was defunded in 2019 but was revived in late 2021 in response to a record year of homicides.
While the program was on hiatus, McDowell tried his hand at becoming an entrepreneur, himself, opening a corner store in the Portland neighborhood.
There, he met a group of kids who thought the business must be a front.
“You’re selling dope out the back, we know what it is,” McDowell said, mimicking them.
He challenged the youth to hang around the store. “If you see me sell anything or you look at something that’s not right, I’ll give you $500,” he told them.
“It became a hangout. Then it became me chastising when I saw them doing something wrong. … I turned into Mr. Meech. I just accepted it.”
Soon after, McDowell took a job working the front desk at the Chestnut Street Family YMCA in Russell.
The kids followed. His co-workers began to notice.
“They really look up to him,” said Freddie Brown, a district executive director at the Y. “He connects with them on a different level.”
Brown offered McDowell a contract to run Bosses Not Bangers programming out of the facility. And the nonprofit took off.
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Now, dozens of youth from the area come to the Y’s gym to play basketball three days each week. Derrick Miller, a well-known youth basketball coach and reformed drug dealer, uses the time to instill discipline in the kids, while McDowell speaks with their parents about what they need and how he can help.
McDowell has connected some teens with jobs at small businesses. He’s introduced them to different careers they can pursue upon graduation. And he’s set up financial literacy classes for single mothers.
Currently, he’s working to introduce a 13-year-old who makes Kool-Aid pies with a chef friend he knows.
“I feel like sometimes he tries to tackle too much,” Brown said. But it’s because McDowell is so compassionate for the youth in Russell and other under-resourced communities. “They need someone that understands it, that gets it, that says ‘I understand why you feel the need to go that way, but let me show you a better way.'”
Miller, who’s coached D’Angelo Russell and Kelan Martin, two professional basketball players, said he’s thankful to have met McDowell and joined Bosses Not Bangers.
The pair have already experienced pain in the loss of Allen Wilson, a 13-year-old who was shot and killed in July. But as long as they can help the kids in their program “just for a moment, almost just save them just for that day,” it’s worth it, Miller said.
With the number of homicides already surpassing 100 this year, McDowell said he hopes to see the city invest more in programs that come from within the most affected neighborhoods.
“People can design programs from classrooms and statistics and data all day long,” he said, “but if you don’t have the experience from those neighborhoods, it’s not going to work.”
Donate to Bosses Not Bangers on CashApp: $bossoverbang.
Reach reporter Bailey Loosemore at bl********@co*************.com, 502-582-4646 or on Twitter @bloosemore. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: https://www.courier-journal.com/baileyl.
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