newark's community-based approach to

violence intervention over the last

eight years has led to a significant

decline in serious crime that's

according to a new report and while in

the past couple of years during the

pandemic the prevalence of some crimes

has gone up across the country the

report found that increases were less

pronounced in newark than in many other

cities city leaders and advocates say

the bond between the newark's long-term

community activist groups and government

offices are cited as reasons for the

progress melissa rose cooper explains

how newark is trying to share its model

around new jersey as part of our ongoing

series chasing the dream focusing on

justice poverty and economic opportunity

as a person who worked in the system as

a prosecutor for more than a decade i

worked as a ta provider trying to change

the system from the outside i've been a

policy advisor in the white house at

maine justice and

what i've learned in my time is that the

answers to violence don't exist in the

system instead jamila hodge executive

director for equal justice usa says the

solution lies right here in the

community according to hodge when a

violent crime happens the system takes

steps to punish the offender without

tackling the roots of the problem it's

never to address what actually made the

person make the decision what the actual

drivers of violence are

we think about what drives violence we

know that poverty is a driver of

violence we know that trauma is a driver

of violence and the system is just not

equipped to handle those drivers in fact

what it does is exacerbate them it makes

them worse so haj and other leaders are

trying to create better ways to make

communities safer collaborating their

efforts in a new report the future of

public safety exploring the power and

possibility of newark's reimagined

public safety ecosystem traditionally

we used to think that law enforcement

was the totality of safety in our

respective communities but i think the

public execution of george floyd created

a real inflection point in this country

for us to really consider

that when we talk about reimagining

public safety it's not just about

de-escalation strategies and more

investment into you know body-worn

cameras and stuff law enforcement but

that also is a significant investment in

community-based infrastructure

investments in the community like

connecting people with trauma recovery

services and establishing hospital

intervention programs that have helped

newark drastically reduce crime and

violence in recent years according to

the report just before the pandemic the

city recorded a historic low in murders

with a 51 percent decrease since 2015.

in 2020 crime was down 70 in comparison

to the year 2000 and even though the

city has seen an uptick in crime during

the pandemic the increase has still been

relatively low compared to other parts

of the country newark has built a

comprehensive strategy right i think

most not most but a lot of credit really

goes to mayor baraka in his vision for a

city where his community is at the

center and what we've been able to do is

really bring people together to really

coordinate strategy build collective

responses and work together to actually

make sure that the healing that we want

to see happen in community is happening

for those that have been harmed the most

newark's community-based approach to

addressing violence over the years has

been catching the attention of other

cities across the country dealing with

their own issues with crime it's proof

to leaders here that what they've been

doing here in the city works i'm also

happy that the public safety the law

enforcement in the city has also been

willing you know uh you know just just

like law enforcement is just like

community everybody in law enforcement

has not completely bought into this but

i'm gonna tell you

uh

most uh

people that we're dealing with the

direction that this thing is going in

that the speed that is going in the law

enforcement in this city sees what we're

doing as an integral and important part

of making sure that violence is reduced

in my many years of practice i never had

an accused who committed a violent crime

who themselves hadn't been traumatized

at some point before so if we can serve

survivors and meet them at the point

when trauma help happens and help them

heal what we do is prevent that trauma

from manifesting in harmful ways later

steps these leaders say they're

determined to take to make sure

communities around new jersey are safe

for everyone for nj spotlight news i'm

melissa rose cooper major funding for

chasing the dream is provided by the jpb

foundation with additional funding from

the peter g peterson and joan ganz

cooney fund

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