Operation Progress, Los Angeles

In the Rolling Stone article about the Community Safety Partnership, they mention an unrelated initiative by one of the police officers who finally tired of his "warrior policing" approach, and focused on developing relationships with promising students, and mentoring them and providing scholarships and then support for the students while they're in college. 

That cop was John Coughlin, and his program, Operation Progress ("Transforming lives in Watts," "‘Operation Progress’ finds unlikely success matching LAPD mentors with students," Angelus), would change almost everyone it touched, including Tionne. It plucked kids by the hundreds from the projects in Watts, granted them tuition-paid, private educations, then sent them to top-tier colleges around the country on full-ride scholarships. It would surround those kids with tutors and mentors, lavish them with shopping sprees and paid internships. It would partner with billionaires and nonprofits to lift tweens and their younger siblings out of squalor, and slowly but surely begin to empty the pond of future Bloods and Crips.

I've written about my ideas about a place-based CSP approach to public safety and revitalization in DC's poor neighborhoods here, "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," (2021).

This would be a good added piece to the neighborhood-based place-focused investment program..  One of the problems potentially achieving students have is peer group pressure to not put effort into school.   Having dozens of graduates of a program like Operation Progress spread throughout a community would provide counter-pressure to peer group efforts to denigrate schooling and achievement.

This could create a critical mass of residents focused on improvement and breaking the cycle of poverty.