Leon Ford was 19 years old when a Pittsburgh police officer fired five shots into him during a traffic stop in the city's Highland Park neighborhood, leaving him paralyzed in his lower body. Fourteen years later, Ford is the president and CEO of a nonprofit that trains Pittsburgh youth to become the police officers, paramedics, and firefighters of tomorrow, and he says forgiving the man who shot him is what made that work possible.
The November 11, 2012 shooting happened after officers mistook Ford for a wanted gang member during the stop, according to the Jones Day account of the case. Officer David Derbish entered Ford's vehicle and, following a sudden struggle, fired five rounds into him. As reported by WPXI, Ford has said his progress since the shooting stems directly from his ability to forgive the officer involved.
That case wound through the courts for years. A 2017 federal trial ended in a deadlocked jury on the question of Derbish's liability, and in January 2018 the city agreed to pay Ford $5.5 million to settle his federal civil rights lawsuit, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Rather than walk away from law enforcement altogether, Ford channeled the settlement and his own story into an institution built to change how police and communities relate to each other.
From Settlement to Institution
Ford co-founded The HEAR Foundation in 2022 alongside Scott Schubert, then chief of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, per WPXI's reporting. The nonprofit describes its mission as bridging the gap between police and community, and it has since grown a workforce development arm called Bridging the Badge that creates pipelines for inner-city youth to enter public safety careers in law enforcement, EMS and fire services.
That program now operates as a full-scale Career and Technical Education pipeline embedded within Pittsburgh Public Schools and based at Westinghouse High School, according to The HEAR Foundation, with students bused in daily from across the district to train for careers as officers, paramedics and firefighters. The foundation has said it wants that model to become a template other cities can adopt.
Why the Pipeline Matters Now
The push for homegrown recruits reflects a staffing and representation problem Ford has described in stark terms. In an August 2025 publication, he noted that Pittsburgh's uniformed police force had shrunk from its historical norm of about 900 officers to roughly 750, even as Black officers made up only about 12% of the department in a city where Black residents account for 23% of the population, according to PublicSource.
The foundation's approach has drawn national attention. It won the McNulty Catalyst Prize from the McNulty Foundation in 2023 for its model of building one-on-one relationships between officers and community members, a recognition the organization highlights on its own staff page. Ford has also expanded his advocacy well beyond Pittsburgh: in 2024, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro appointed him to the state's Citizen Law Enforcement Advisory and Review Commission to help shape statewide police accountability policy.
A Board Connection to the Chief's Office
The foundation's reach extends directly into the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police's top ranks. In February 2025, Mayor Ed Gainey nominated Ragland for permanent chief, citing his commitment to relationship-based policing, and Ragland had previously served as co-chair of The HEAR Foundation's board. It is a tangible sign of how deeply Ford's organization has embedded itself in the city's public safety leadership since Schubert's early involvement.
Ford has also built a public profile as an author, publishing the memoir “An Unspeakable Hope: Brutality, Forgiveness, and Building a Better Future for My Son” through Atria Books in May 2023, chronicling his recovery and his philosophy of community reconciliation. Since its 2022 founding, the foundation has distributed impact grants of up to $40,000 each to grassroots organizations working in gun violence prevention, trauma resilience and workforce development.
A Play to Fund Grassroots Peacekeepers
Ford has now turned his own story into theater. A new two-person drama titled “The Weight of Forgiveness,” written by Ford and directed by Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company founder Mark Clayton Southers, will be performed September 16 at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center as a fundraiser for the foundation and its programs, according to The HEAR Foundation.
Proceeds from the performance will fund the foundation's new Community Safety Innovation Fund, which is designed to grant $10,000 directly to grassroots leaders working across Pittsburgh's police zones. It is a structure that mirrors the foundation's broader strategy: pairing Ford's message of personal forgiveness with concrete dollars and infrastructure aimed at the systemic staffing and trust problems he has spent years documenting.
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