Shared ownership of community safety.
Our Community Safety Councils are the heart and soul of the work we do. The interdisciplinary groups made up of civil leaders, government officials, and police are designed to identify and address the most pressing safety concerns in their community.
We aim to discover what it will take to bring transformation to American policing. Our belief is that a community must be inclusive of the police if shared ownership of public safety is to be achieved. Our team takes communities through an extensive parallel journey of Police Training and facilitated Community Safety Councils where citizens, government leaders, and police work together to begin solving key public safety issues in their city. This three-year program is designed to capture the data necessary to discover the most promising pathway to a standard of community safety that produces trustworthy, predictable, and human-dignified policing.
PILOT PROGRAM
MISSION STATEMENT
Our mission is to foster sustained collaboration and shared ownership of public safety by engaging communities and government leaders in discovering and implementing the most promising practices for peace officers and community-aligned policing.
VISION STATEMENT
To reimagine and actualize community/public safety to reflect the interests, participation, and ownership of the entire community, including all residents and peace officers.
GOAL
To facilitate the transformational redevelopment of policing services in U.S. communities through five interdependent pillar frameworks – law and policy; accountability; standards, education, and training; leadership development; and community engagement and education.
PROGRAM PROGRESS
In November of 2023, we launched our pilot in Alexandria, Virginia. Our team spent more than 1,500 hours in research and assessment to provide a research-informed approach to our community efforts. The facilitated curriculum was designed by restorative justice and peace-building practitioners as well as retired police executives. It follows a systems practice to guide members through a discovery phase that addresses root issues rather than symptoms of existing community safety concerns.
SUCCESS IN YEAR ONE
1. Completed 7 comprehensive systems maps all centered around major public safety issues.
2. Within 6 months, achieved consensus on public safety issue to address.
3. Increased understanding of lived experiences among diverse membership related to public safety through neighborhood site visits, trust building exercises, and restorative facilitation.
Over the next six months, this Council will be in a continued discovery phase that moves from analysis to ideation on the program roadmap below:
