Anyone who is pessimistic about the chances of grappling successfully with the spike in violent crime in the past year might take comfort from the experience of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city.

Long a textbook example of how violence, race and policing intersect, Newark has experienced a 50 percent decrease in homicides since 1990.

Some of Newark’s good fortune can be traced to the impact of the federal consent decree initiated in 2016 on the city’s police. For example, there were no police-involved shootings in the city in 2020. But a new report published Thursday, says a partnership between the police and community is a central reason for the development of a new “public safety ecosystem” that that it calls a model for other troubled jurisdictions.

The report, sponsored by Equal Justice USA (EJUSA), the Newark Community Street Team (NCST), and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka,  describes how over the past eight years, the city’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery, reinforced by “trust-building initiatives” between police and community residents” have created a public safety ecosystem” that has driven down crime.

A key element of the strategy: the city has allocated five percent of the city’s public safety budget to community-based initiatives—a model that supporters say can be applied to other jurisdictions.

Will Simpson, Director of Violence Reduction Initiatives at EJUSA, was one of the report’s interviewees. In a recent chat with The Crime Report’s Audrey Nielsen, Simpson discussed the report, and the lessons that other cities might draw from the Newark initiative.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

THE CRIME REPORT: The report presents some of Newark’s history through significant moments, ranging from the Newark Uprising in 1967 to the protests over the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. How did the events over this multi-decade period shape reform in the city?

WILL SIMPSON: This [reform] was the work of generations The Newark Uprising in 1967 gave us a rallying point to say, “Hey, this is a space where harm really happened.” There was a call for authentic healing, for community. And that began to really reframe what safety looked like, who was responsible for safety, and what safety could be for the Black and brown residents here in the city.

The election of Mayor Ras Baraka (in 2014) is one of those really critical points that we can’t skip over in telling the story. [Editor’s Note: Baraka was re-elected to a third term this year.] He came from a line of organizers and activists on the national, international and local stage, with his father [playwright and poet Amiri Baraka] always being at the forefront of the community activism around violence and around equity on multiple fronts here in the city of Newark.

When he was elected, it was an empowering moment for the community. We finally saw a leader at the helm of this city that came from the same places where most of the community members came from, that had been out on the streets.

He was one of the folks that helped to lead Newark Anti-Violence Coalition. His experience and his leadership as an educator. When he ran for mayor, they had this mantra: “When I become mayor, we become Mayor.” It’s a little tongue in cheek, but at the same time there’s some authenticity to it. Folks saw themselves in Mayor Baraka. I think what Mayor Baraka did was begin to re-center community in all the systems that the government has influence over.

What stands out most is the public safety space, because for so long, community just wasn’t centered in that conversation; it was all about law enforcement, or it was all about police budgets and how many folks we lock up. Instead Mayor Baraka came in and said, “Hey, there are other ways of doing public safety. What does it look like to address the wellbeing of our community? ” With that vision of leadership, he began to pull strategies from other places and to approach public safety from a community lens, not a law enforcement lens.

TCR: Can you tell us about the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery (OVP) and the work that office is doing in Newark?

SIMPSON: After George Floyd, there was a groundswell of support for investing in community in terms of public safety. Some people framed it as “defund the police;” others framed it as reinvesting in community.

Here in the city of Newark, there was a shift driven by the community. There was an organizing campaign that happened to get the city council to actually vote to move 5 percent of the public safety budget to the development of the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery. That happened at the end of 2020 and 2021, in the midst of the pandemic.

Lakeesha Eure [director of the OVP] has done a phenomenal job. She’s got a whole team in place that had been building out a strategy from the city side to support community organizations and the development of their own community based public safety strategies.

Whether that’s through funding, helping organizations to actually learn and do the work of public safety. At the same time they were building their own interventions at the Office of Violence Prevention as well. One of the first big things they did was the Safe Summer Initiative, where they were actually able to identify a sense of young community members that were most at risk for being a victim or perpetrator of violence and create learning opportunities for them.

TCR: And looking at Newark’s history, OVP’s location is notable too, right?

SIMPSON: It opened at the precinct right where the 1967 rebellion really sparked off . That actually says a lot about the city shift, right? We’re reframing public safety and really embracing community at the center. I think it’s also important to know that the Office of Violence Prevention, while it has that location, they’ve got satellite offices all over. It’s just important to note that it’s not just one place. We know that harm happens all over. And I think the city’s approach to the Office of Violence Prevention is to be where the harm is happening. So we can actually inject healing where it’s needed the most.

TCR: Is there a major takeaway from how Newark has addressed mistrust and building cooperation between community and law enforcement?

SIMPSON: It really starts with this commitment to doing things better. There’s got to be a culture of participation from both community and our systems actors, right? Whether they be municipal government or folks from law enforcement, folks need to be committed and understand that this isn’t short-term solutions for really easy problems, right?

These are long-term solutions for complex challenges that the community has faced for generations. And this work isn’t going to happen overnight, but we need people in conversation at the table doing the work together.

We need to invest in a way that really supports the long-term growth of these initiatives. This is a whole new public safety economy that’s being re-centered on community and that takes time. The same way that for a long time we’ve invested in law enforcement and didn’t always see the impact in terms of reduction of violence or homicides, you need to have that same level of grace for community organizations as they endeavor in this work.

The first year this work happened, we didn’t necessarily see an overwhelming success but we stayed in the work. We stayed committed to the work and then we got to that point where we saw those double digit reductions.

That community level impact that we’re actually seeing in Newark, I think any community around the country can see when they take this holistic approach to reducing violence.

TCR: What do you think other cities working to reform and build public safety with their community members can learn from Newark?

Simpson: One, the community are the experts. That communities have the solutions to create safety and increase healing, for themselves, for their families, for their communities. I think there’s an acknowledgement that when we honor that, as a city, as a system, as actors, we see effective strategies being developed. High-risk intervention works, right? Hospital-based violence intervention works, right? Working with our young people works — it leads to a reduction of violence and crime.

This work is grossly underfunded. I look at what high-risk interventionists get paid and it’s not nearly what it needs to be. We’re asking folks to do some of the hardest work and giving them very minimal resources to do it.

And so if we know that the work actually has an impact, then we also need to be investing in it. Communities around the country need to be investing in the strategies that (1) are proven, because we’ve got the metrics, and (2) are embracing their local communities—strategies that embrace those who may have harmed community in the past, but now have likely turned a new leaf and actually want to help heal the community that they may have harmed.

Lastly, I think about where we are in the conversation around gun violence in our country today. These terrible shootings that we’ve seen in Buffalo, or Uvalde, or you name the city. If we’re really looking at reducing gun violence in our country, it’s not just the gun reform conversation. That is critically important — when you look around the country and you see where the most gun violence exists it’s in places that have some of the loosest gun laws, but gun violence doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

With that same energy, we need to be investing in these communities where gun violence happens, right? That same energy we’re using in DC for March For Our Lives, we should be using to support and push investment into community-based solutions around reducing gun violence, because we know they work.

We’ve seen a 50 percent reduction [in homicides in Newark since 1990]. We’ve got to have that same fervor in supporting investment for predominantly Black and Brown communities where violence is happening, investment in the people that have the credibility, have the strategies and have the track record of reducing violence in their local towns.

Audrey Nielsen is a TCR Justice Reporting intern.