The survival of Black communities necessitates that we make law enforcement less deadly. The emancipation of Black communities from interlocking systems of oppression necessitates a reconstruction of the concept of safety. Redesigning public safety requires rejecting the racist and biased institutions that have not only failed Black communities but have also contributed to the violence enacted against them. This means that our vision cannot be myopically focused on policing; it must address everything that precipitates a police encounter and be accountable for everything that happens after.

In doing this work with vulnerable communities across the nation, the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) believes the “new normal” for our public safety must prioritize four interconnected themes:

1. Meaningful engagement with Black and other vulnerable communities to understand the drivers of inequalities.
2. Redefining the role of public safety to include community health and economic well-being.
3. Redesigning a government response model that produces more equitable outcomes and proactively centers the needs of Black and other vulnerable communities.
4. Creating the collaborative systems Black and other vulnerable communities deserve while reconstructing existing systems to improve qualities of life and collective optimism for life longevity.

First, the new normal for public safety necessitates meaningful engagement with Black and other vulnerable communities to understand the drivers of inequalities. Groups that are the most impacted by law enforcement (e.g. Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Indigenous, houseless, etc.) are often the hardest to reach and the least willing to participate due to their circumstances and/or legitimate mistrust in public institutions. CPE and the City of Ithaca’s collaborative “Reimagining Public Safety'' community input effort was largely successful in overcoming skepticism and increasing participation by deploying a variety of response options, meeting vulnerable communities where they were, and conducting in-person interviews for those without internet access. The findings emphasize how race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, and other characteristics intersect within Black communities in ways that require different needs from public services.

Second, public safety must be redefined to include community health and economic well-being, which shifts the conversation away from punitive measures toward life-affirming interventions. Punitive responses often underestimate or ignore entirely the emotional and psychological damages caused by aggressive policing tactics aimed at crime prevention (Bandes et. al 2019.) A health and well-being framework refocuses on factors of  state neglect of  vulnerable populations and divestment from programs that can support such populations. These factors can lead to an increase in contact between marginalized groups and the criminal legal systems in ways that contribute to suffering and reproduce cycles of poverty.

There is a critical need for non-penal solutions to calls for service that involve otherwise non-criminal, health-based crises. One alternative is the creation of unarmed mental health first responders trained to treat and support populations experiencing mental health crises rather than to arrest them. Further, CPE has learned that narrowing the scope of policing to exclude crises to which police are not adequately equipped to respond has the potential to reduce officers’ exposures to traumas, thus improving their well-being. By acknowledging the ways that officers’ increased well-being is tethered to the well-being of the communities they police, officer wellness is brought into alignment with efforts to redesign public safety. CPE supports public safety solutions that uplift vulnerable communities’ right to self-definition, account for the mutuality of officers’ and communities’ wellness, and invest in non-repressive solutions to crime and violence, such as improved systems of education, healthcare, housing, and employment.

Third, CPE supports an approach to public safety driven by innovative government response models that produce more equitable outcomes and proactively center the needs of Black and other vulnerable communities. CPE’s work in Ithaca illustrates one such possibility for change. An analysis of Ithaca’s calls for service found that the Ithaca Police Department (IPD) spends about a third of its time responding to calls that will not lead to arrest (RPS Collaborative, 2021). Although calls-for-service data do not capture the entirety of police interactions with the community, they provide a useful estimate for how police spend much of their time and a partial assessment of community needs. The analysis provides empirical guidance for the city’s creation of a new department of unarmed Community Solution Workers, a team trained in de-escalation and service delivery to respond to the many calls for service involving non-criminal issues and less serious crimes. These kinds of analyses highlight opportunities for non-criminalizing government responses to problems of homelessness, misbehavior of school children, and mental health issues.

Last, Policing Equity is guided by the principle that our work to improve the systems we have should align with our work to create the systems we deserve. Redesigning public safety is not a zero-sum game between improving existing institutions and creating new systems altogether. We must insist on harm reduction efforts (like investing in people’s basic needs and addressing root causes of interpersonal violence) in criminal justice systems alongside the building of non-punitive systems for otherwise non-criminal disturbances. Proponents of retributive “law and order” approaches to crime exploit public fears that reducing the footprint of policing will lead to spikes in violent crime. However, data suggests that a small minority of police work, less than 1% in 10 major cities, is related to violent crime, indicating that departments have the capacity to reduce the number of contacts with the public in ways that will subsequently reduce the risks of police violence (Asher and Horowitz, 2020).

For example, the city of Berkeley, CA — one of CPE’s law enforcement partners — announced plans to eliminate police enforcement of low-level traffic violations in order to limit police contact during vehicle stops that disproportionately harm Black and Brown people. Working closely with the Berkeley Police Department (BPD), CPE found that officer-initiated traffic stops did not significantly reduce crime, and Black people were about 6.5 times more likely to be stopped than white people. Our findings provided the evidence that spurred the city’s decisions to adopt critical policy changes. BPD will subsequently focus on traffic violations related to safety, stopping drivers who could cause injury or death rather than minor equipment violations. CPE law enforcement partner, Norfolk Police Department (NPD) in Norfolk, Virginia, has also reduced police-community contact by implementing virtual police responses for non-emergency calls for service, such as those involving property damage and theft. These kinds of changes resist the expansion or shoring up of carceral solutions while acknowledging the dire and immediate need to reduce the harms of policing in Black and vulnerable communities.

The experience of safety has been illusory or altogether non-existent for many Black Americans. Black communities have been disproportionately subjected to deficits and precarity caused by a retrenchment in state support systems and an unparalleled growth of carceral institutions. We must forge a path for populations relegated to the vulnerable margins of society to access the abundance and stability monopolized by the populations at the center. CPE has outlined four themes we believe are integral to helping close these gaps, broadening our understanding of community and individual well-being, and ensuring that progress is made by centering Black lives and futures. Until we do so, public safety will persist as an illusion for Black America.