Ajay Benton used to run with boys from the South Side. Now he’s on the street trying to bring peace to gang neighborhoods.

PROVIDENCE — André “Ajay” Benton looked out the window of the third floor of St. Michael’s rectory on the city’s South Side and pointed to the yellow apartment house where he was arrested about eight years ago.

At the time, Benton was peddling crack cocaine and marijuana and earning about $1,500 a week. He was arrested after he planned on meeting a “custy” and selling her a few vials of crack. His plans were sidetracked when the police showed up and he led them on a high-speed chase that ended in his arrest.

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Two years later, Benton was arrested again on drug charges and sent to the Adult Correctional Institutions in 2001 for a year.

Today, Benton, 28, is a streetworker program manager for The Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence — a nonprofit agency with offices in St. Michael’s rectory. He works to quell gang violence and keep kids off the same streets that he ran as a young man.

Benton was never formally part of a gang, but he ran with the boys from the South Side who have had a long feud with youths from the East Side’s Mount Hope neighborhood. He guessed that at least seven of his friends were murdered in the ’90s, including Jamal Bailey and Malik O’Connor.

Benton, who speaks softly, said that he was more into the street life than his friends who lost their lives.

“You wouldn’t expect them to be gone,” he said. “I had been shot at, but I’ve never been shot. I don’t understand why I’m still here.”

Benton grew up in a prominent South Side family. His grandmother, “Ma” Benton, ran a small restaurant on Broad Street; his uncle, Roosevelt Benton, ran the Training School for Boys in Cranston; and his older brother, Jamie Benton, starred in basketball at Boston College.

Ajay Benton also played basketball and attended Hope High School. After graduating from the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, he turned to dealing drugs and the fast life of “having money, having fun.”

The stint in prison got Benton thinking about changing his life. After his release, he worked for a window installation company and Lowe’s, the home improvement store chain. He lost his job and returned to the drug-dealing for a few months.

Still, Benton found time to help kids at the Boys & Girls Club in South Providence. He played basketball with the youngsters and helped them with homework. He also intervened and resolved disputes in the gym.

Roosevelt Benton, his uncle, persuaded him to take a job at The Institute For The Study and Practice Of Nonviolence. In the summer of 2003, he began his new career: streetworker for the nonviolence agency.

“I knew all the beefs and all the conflicts,” Benton said. “I knew who was shooting who.”

Benton and other streetworkers arrive at murder scenes and hospital emergency rooms to speak to victims and their families. They try to get to the root of the problem and sift things out before more bloodshed follows. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

The streetworkers aggressively “go after” the gang members in the West End. They target kids and try to figure out why they turned to the gang. They make sure the kids go to school and they try to find out what’s going on at home.

If a boy or girl exhibits a flare for drawing, the streetworkers try to get him into an after-school art program.

Benton said many of the youths are hungry and their parents are never home. Others are angry about their fathers walking out on the family. The streetworkers spend time with the kids and take them out to dinner or a movie.

“Some kids have never been to the Olive Garden or Applebee’s,” he said.

Benton said the key to keeping kids from gangs is to find them constructive alternatives. Without hope, impressionable youths turn to the neighborhood street gang.