The public execution of George Floyd created a real inflection point in this country.
Never again will people see law enforcement as a single,
ubiquitous institution that's responsible for safety in our community.
You can't have one institution that's responsible for the safety of all people,
especially when you look at the historical dynamics in terms of race
and how systemic racism has played out in law enforcement.
It's now time for us to invest deeply
in community-based solutions as a complementary strategy to policing.
And so NCST and organizations like it
are the new models to address
public safety in our respective community.
So the Newark Community Street Team
is the city's community-based public safety initiative.
We don't see ourselves as an alternative to policing.
We are a complementary strategy to policing.
And we deploy a three-pronged strategy to address violence in the city.
Our first prong is our high-risk intervention team.
Second prong is our assertive outreach work.
And our third prong is our victims' advocacy.
These three systems work in coordination
with each other in order to address violence.
98% of our staff—and we employ a little over 80 folks here now—
are all residents of the communities in which they serve.
Newark is the largest city in the state of New Jersey,
A predominantly Black and brown city.
A third of the residents are extremely below the poverty line.
All of the kind of issues that come with that, that come with, you know,
these kind of social determinants that create the atmosphere
for violence and crime, is, you know, almost like a petri dish
that—it, it, it fosters this.
We could hire a thousand more cops.
The problem will still exist because we are
not dealing with the root of the problem or dealing with the issues themselves.
We are, like, really just treating it.
Just trying to treat crime and violence as a public health issue,
the same way we deal with COVID, or polio, or measles, or the mumps.
The same strategy where you— we, we are employing in Newark
to deal with violence and crime as a public health issue.
In 2014, when we launched our work, Newark had
After we launched our coordinated strategy, by 2019,
we cut that number in half, to
Now, one homicide is too many.
However,
it showed that our coordinated strategy was actually having impact in the city.
If a situation happens in the community where violence has taken place,
we'll get the alert either directly or through our 1-800 number.
Then we dispatch one of the local high-risk interventionists
that work that particular area and have a relationship base for that area.
They're dispatched along with a partner
that can assist them in that area.
They'll assess the situation.
They'll begin to engage using a relationship-based approach.
It's a process.
None of this is, like, 30 minutes or anything like that.
It's a process that we go through
because it's not like, ‘Yo, yo, yo, y’all just chill.’ You know?
And it's all over.
Some incidents takes a day, a week; some take months.
You know, some things we've been working on for years now.
And it's, it's all about de-escalation.
Every week, when there's a shooting that happens in the community,
our high-risk intervention team, our outreach workers,
and our victims' advocates do a community walk.
They go door to door, knocking, talking to residents, engaging them,
finding out if they have been triggered, you know, if they have some,
you know, traumatic experience based upon what happened in the neighborhood.
And we help them to complete their victims of crime application.
My theory of change is that if you better service victims
or survivors of violent crime,
then you prevent, you prevent retaliatory violence.
Our high-risk intervention team is made up of credible messengers.
This is ex-gang members, ex-convicts, returning citizens,
you know, folks who have the—their hand on the pulse of what's happening in the neighborhood.
Many of these folks used to be the folks that were the problem bringers.
But now they’re, they're the solution, you know, bringers to, to problems
in the neighborhood.
If I was given the opportunity and the support
that the NCST offers today, things would have been different
because I would have had
the kind of support that wouldn't have had landed me in prison.
There's so many things that, that tells,
you know, this community that we can't make it,
and it's, it's, it's not true.
If we can get more people involved
and just try to help and clean up this community—
not only this community, but all communities that's, that's struggling—
then we can start making real changes.
This whole public safety strategy
is real, and I think it's
just now people are beginning to see the merits of it.
You know, the White House has given money.
All these people are beginning to give money to things that
when I was talking about it in 2005, 2006,
we were getting ridiculed.
Everything we doing is just really
like, necessity is the mother of invention.
Like, we're not out here, like,
trying to be the first person to do this, the best at doing that.
We just working.
Yeah. Shit, man.
So I grew up in the Jordan Downs housing projects in Watts,
participated in what many social justice activists call the longest-running war
in the history of this country, which is urban street gang wars.
I witnessed things that no child should ever be subject to.
I lost family, and friends, and loved ones to this war.
And if we had community-based public safety
in our neighborhood at that time,
then maybe Ronzell wouldn’t have lost his life
when we were in junior high school.
Maybe Toby wouldn't have had to sell drugs and, and lose his life,
you know, hustling in another city.
Maybe Geo would still be here.
There is a conditioned response, you know, in the culture that I grew up in.
It's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
And that conditioned response has left us all blind and toothless
in the neighborhood.
And so this work is the foundation
of shifting the narrative around public safety in this country.
We got to bring all hands on deck
in terms of being able to make our community safe.