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Treatment center on Asher Avenue working to curb Little Rock violence

For the last two decades, the Quality Living Center has worked to help people gain a better lifestyle.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — On January 29, 2022, a one-year-old and guardian were shot outside of a food truck on Asher Avenue. 

Just a few feet away from where that shooting happened is a treatment facility that aims at helping people battling alcohol and substance abuse.

"We're right here in the heart of Little Rock. I mean we are the first building going into the Asher corridor," said Dino Davis, executive director for Quality Living Center.

Inside the facility, there is a group working toward a change.

One of those people is Amanda Garrett.

She works as a counselor in training and helps members kick the same habits she battled six years ago.

"One of the last times I went to jail, I told the public defender I needed help," said Garrett.

Getting well and giving back to the Little Rock community was a personal mission for her. 

"DHS showed up and took my daughter," Garrett described. "I had to completely hit my bottom."

Garrett now works as a counselor in training at the treatment center.

She and her coworker, Danny Moore, help people recovering from a substance or alcohol addiction leave their violent past and work toward a more productive lifestyle.

"The 12-step program is going to help them walk through life and seeing where the problems begin," Moore said.

He added that a lot of their clients are former prisoners who, instead of continuing the violence in the community, become a part of the center's family.

"We help them get IDs, jobs, birth certificates and whatever they need to help them transition and re-enter back into society," Moore said.

For 20 years, the treatment center's executive director Dino Davis has had a front row seat to the crime happening right outside his office.

He believes drugs and alcohol are, in some way, connected to most of the violence in the city. 

"Drugs and alcohol is always going to be directly or indirectly a part of the reason that a situation happens," Davis said. 

He believes with each person who walks through the doors, the chance for a better life and safer city increases.

"Our job is to come in and try to help them with the healing process," Davis said.

In September 2020, the City of Little Rock announced plans to revitalize Asher Avenue. 

Davis hopes the city will work with him to get more funding to improve things around the treatment center.  

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