NEWARK, NJ — The city of Newark is stepping up its efforts to support community-based public safety initiatives after city officials on Friday announced that $19 million will be invested for violence reduction strategies over the next three years.

The latest investment bolsters a number of actions the city has taken to enhance its public safety operations. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced that the city will soon issue a Request for Proposals (RFP), inviting community-based organizations that serve youth and adults in Newark to participate.

“Last year, we created the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery, which supports Newark at-risk youth, adults, and families who have been impacted by the criminal justice system, either as perpetrators or victims,” said Baraka. “The office works to break often-generational cycles that lead to violence, substance abuse, and crime, by giving participants insight into their own strengths and abilities to create legal paths to success. To continue this critical work, we are committed to investing funds to support community-based public safety projects that will also reduce and prevent violence in our city.”

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Earlier this year, a report conducted by the UCLA Social Justice Research Partnership, a cross-disciplinary research, evaluation and policy group, highlighted the Newark Community Street Team’s (NCST) effectiveness in the community.

In an effort to stymie violence that plagued Brick City communities shortly after taking office, Baraka founded NCST with a mission to implement an evidence-based, trauma-informed approach to violence reduction rather than relying on crime rate data as an indicator of public safety. The goal of the organization is to not only reduce crime with a community-led response, but to have systems in place that support the city’s most vulnerable residents.

The UCLA report found that the organization’s efforts to minimize crime in Newark through community-based initiatives effectively decreased crime while increasing community trust as well as public safety from March 2017 to January 2020.

“Communication and relationships between NCST and partner organizations as well as law enforcement and city services have improved over time, largely due to the strengthening of the NCST model and its implementation,” the report read.

Last month, NCST’s work in the community garnered notable attention again when New Jersey Policy Perspective, a nonpartisan organization that advocates economic, social and racial justice, released a report highlighting NCST as a model group for other towns statewide to reflect their public safety response teams after.

The NJPP report, “To Protect and Serve: Investing in Public Safety Beyond Policing,” offered policy recommendations to address racial disparities Black and brown individuals face during interventions with law enforcement. Part of addressing this issue, the report said, included investment in community-led crisis response alternatives like NCST.

“We have the solution here in the city of Newark, and we have the solution across the state of New Jersey. And that solution is to invest in community-led response,” NCST Deputy Director Solomon Middleton-Williams said during a video press conference in October to discuss the report’s findings.

Read the full article at TAPintoNewark.