Redefining what public safety means: Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles

Defund the police versus... My big disappointment over the reaction to the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer was not the demonstrations, except when violent or used by thieves as an opportunity to commit crimes, was the slogan "Defund the Police" ("Is it too late to change the messaging on "Defund the Police"? How about "Reconstruct Policing"?"," 2020).

Redefining public safety.  The slogan certainly hasn't helped the Democrats, who've been wrong-footed on public safety ever since.  Most importantly, it obscured the real need, to redefine what public safety means and how to deliver it.

A multi-faceted public safety response, including police, at least initially costs more to deliver than the current system.  Although maybe not once savings are counted.

What is public safety? Is it to just arrest people after they commit a crime, is to provide the mental health care services that when not provided lead to people's problems being defined as criminal, is it to create lasting structural change with a number of moving parts, police--because face it, some people need to be "policed", mental health services and crews, programs to break the generational cycle of crime in low income neighborhoods. Etc.

Alex Vitale's End of Policing has some provocative suggestions about how to decriminalize many social problems, which have been criminalized because the lack of alternatives to police.

It's not "bad apple" police officers, the system is the "bad apple." It's unfortunate that the concept of "broken windows" policing ("Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety," Atlantic Magazine, 1982) got translated into practice as "zero tolerance" policing, with a focus on citing or arresting people for the most minor of violations.  

I often think that the New York City Transit Police--under William Bratton before he became overall Police Commissioner and the Transit Police were merged into NYPD--is the only place where true "broken windows" policing, with a focus on addressing disorder in terms of both people and place, was implemented.

-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany," 2019
-- "Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023
-- "Proof of Broken Windows theory in Philadelphia and New York City," 2024

Failures repeat and few officers face repercussions for their illegal acts.  The blog entry "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York" (2021) and the comments section discusses a broader paradigm for providing public safety focusing on continued problems in Rochester New York, when police respond to people with mental health issues.

Just last week, three Memphis police officers were exonerated for the killing of a man they cornered in a traffic stop ("3 former Memphis police officers found not guilty in the death of Tyre Nichols," NPR).  To me, these cases and those resulting in large payouts--e.g., Chicago spends millions of dollars per year on settlements over police misconduct--ought to be indicators of a need for a structural approach to change ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," 2020).

Spending billions to maintain a community's level of crime and poverty/equity planning.  After my grand jury service in 2013, I was left with the thought that DC spends a couple billion dollars per year just to keep the low income parts of the system the same, at a negative equilibrium.  In Los Angeles a similar estimate is many many billions of dollars per year.

That led me to write about equity planning and social urbanism.

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017
-- "Equity planning: an update," 2020
-- "Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago," 2021

Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles.  Besides NYC subways, Los Angeles probably has one of the most significant "public safety" initiatives built on broken windows windows principles in the US, the "Community Safety Partnership" ("How Watts and the LAPD make peace," Los Angeles Times).

I first wrote about the CSP in "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"" (2014) after seeing it featured on the old Bryant Gumbel HBO TV show on sports.

In 2020, I wrote a follow up speculative piece applying it to different kinds of neighborhoods not dealing with gang problems like LA, but the problems resulting from drug use ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)."

The heart of the program is building a new relationship between the community and the police department ("American Police Must Own Their Racial Injustices," American Prospect)

New article on the CSP.  Last week, Rolling Stone Magazine published an up to date article on the program, "Inside the Battle for the Soul of the LAPD."

... the most salient thing Coughlin did in 2011 was say yes to Emada Tingirides. Tingirides, a Black sergeant and unstoppable rock star in the LAPD, had been tasked with setting up four new squads to undertake the impossible in Watts: to make peace with its residents, build faith with its leaders, and break the gangs’ stranglehold on its corners. Those new units, to be known as the Community Safety Partnership (CSP), were the brainchild of a pair of ex-combatants: the newly named police chief, Charlie Beck, and a firebrand opponent of gang cops and chiefs, the social-justice titan Connie Rice. After years of warfare in open court — Rice, an attorney and civil rights activist, had spent decades suing men like Beck for their “blue grip” suppression of the poor — they’d come to a hard-won truth: Shock-and-awe policing didn’t work. Far from making Los Angeles safe, it wreaked war without end between cops and gangs, and turned Watts and Compton into domestic kill zones, forever blighting the lives of the kids raised there.

It was no one’s intent to invent the future of policing when CSP was launched in 2011. But that is precisely what its founders have done: built a new breed of cop and retooled the social contract between a community and the officers who protect it. It’s premised in the notion that safety is a covenant between two parties: the cops who patrol the riskiest streets, and residents who trust and respect those cops enough to help them keep the peace. That is where CSP comes in. It deploys its cops less as foot patrolmen than as problem-­solvers. They get streetlights fixed, abandoned cars towed, and gang graffiti scrubbed. They find jobs for strapped parents, treatment for first offenders, and vocational education for at-risk teens. They sit gang leaders down and strike a pact: They’ll ignore petty drug deals and public drinking on weekends in exchange for those men leaving their weapons at home. Above all, they recruit every kid they can find for CSP rec teams and youth clubs. Volunteer-based outfits like the Police Athletic League have been around for decades, offering after-school programs, tutoring, and camps in major cities across the country, but L.A. is actually paying CSP cops to run cheer squads and reading groups. 

... He walks me through the protocols CSP established before it sent its officers into Watts. Stop the stop-and-frisk — a tactic Bratton endorsed — replace it with stop-and-chat, and get to know everyone on your beat. Focus less on crime than the problems that create it, especially with respect to school-age kids. Become their Pee Wee coach or their reading tutor. Take them out to Popeyes for heart-to-hearts. And when violent crimes occur, go arrest the doer, then return and ask his folks what they need: cash or food assistance, a job-training slot, an after-school program.

Despite the success, it's a constant battle to keep the CSP program in LA going, because it is so different from how police departments mostly operate on the principles of "warrior policing," "zero tolerance policing," "shock and awe" policing, mass incarceration, and focusing on car-based response to 911 calls rather than place-based policing.  It's another example that the problems of policing are structural, not the fault of a bad apple or two.

For example, a pilot CSP was created in the MacArthur Park area of LA.  But it never became part of the program, wasn't continued, and the gains have all been lost ("Community safety partnership for MacArthur Park in Los Angeles?").  And the program hasn't expanded to abutting neighborhoods that have similar problems.

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Exemplary public safety programs, that are mostly one-offs

• the above-mentioned Community Safety Partnership
• true broken windows policing
• Fullerton, California police department reorganized after officers beat a homeless man to death ("Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department," 2022)
• CAHOOTS (Eugene, Oregon) and other mental health response units here and there across the country--nevertheless most cities don't have enough teams to provide round the clock service and killings at the hands of police still occur
• Domestic violence response unit, High Point, NC and Appleton, Wisconsin  (""How High Point, N.C., Solved Its Domestic Violence Problem," Governing Magazine, "11 questions that could save a woman's life," Appleton Post-Crescent)
• Operation Ceasefire, gang intervention program, Boston ("Straight Outta Boston," Mother Jones)

Community safety partnership for MacArthur Park in Los Angeles?

Some time ago, I learned about how the LA Police Department in association with the Housing Authority, created what they called a community safety partnership, to put officers full time in high crime housing projects.  The program has been quite successful ("After Years Of Violence, L.A.'s Watts Sees Crime Subside," NPR and "What Does It Take to Stop Crips and Bloods From Killing Each Other," New York Times ).

I wrote a piece suggesting something similar for the Ballpark neighborhood of Salt Lake ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)," 2020).  I think it's a model that's quite portable.

Aaron preps a pipe for a hit of fentanyl in the Westlake District.(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 

Steve Lopez of the LA Times has been following the decline of MacArthur Park in LA ("Can MacArthur Park be saved? A look to the past points the way forward," "‘Why are you messing with me for smoking fentanyl?’ The tough task of policing MacArthur Park," "‘I can’t deal with life sober’: Response to the MacArthur Park drug epidemic just isn’t enough," and "The time for excuses is over. L.A.’s MacArthur Park needs a champion now") which is apparently a recurring problem.  

A homeless man, wrapped in a blanket, walks by two men prepping a pipe for a hit of fentanyl near an alley in Westlake known for drug use. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 

The park declines, is cleaned up, people don't maintain the same level of care, and the park declines again.  Not unlike the Kensington district in Philadelphia ("Business and bloodshed," Philadelphia Inquirer), the area has significant problems.  From the fourth article:

In MacArthur Park, it’s not as if the problems have been ignored, nor are they easy to fix. They’re deeply rooted in poverty, homelessness, the lack of affordable housing, a low-wage economy, cheap and powerfully destructive drugs and gang-controlled criminal enterprise. 

Recently, Bass and her team have been strategizing with the police, recreation and sanitation departments and working with supportive housing providers. 

On Thursday, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who believes too much money is spent on law enforcement and not enough on social services, held a news conference in MacArthur Park to announce several partnerships and social service initiatives. She also said she is committed — along with county Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, among others — to improving “the quality of life for residents and visitors alike.” 

           ("What are the answers to MacArthur Park crisis, and can Councilmember Hernandez lead the way?," LAT, "Can key politicians in Los Angeles help MacArthur Park? They’re going to try," LA Daily News). 

...The neighborhood is primarily made up of low-income Spanish-speaking people, many of them undocumented residents who can’t vote and can be easily ignored even though they’re a critical part of L.A.’s economy, present and future. So it’s good to finally see such a response in a neighborhood that has become a symbol of the disorder that is crippling Los Angeles, but it shouldn’t have taken this long to confront the festering crisis head-on. 

I wondered if this might be yet another of the many MacArthur Park rescue projects that brought temporary relief before falling apart. It’s not just neighborhood problems that have to be fixed. It’s the fractured relationships between various city and county agencies, the culture of over-promising and under-delivering, and the scourge of fragile egos and petty politics.

The need for police + social services = community safety partnership.  Lopez argues that without police involvement, change is unlikely, or at least unlikely to be long term.  I would say they just need to introduce and maintain a CSP.   Which is what Lopez describes in the first article.

Parks conservancies as more engaged parks managers.  Note that this is a problem for many urban parks across the nation ("Addressing Homelessness in Public Parks," NRPA).  NYC deals with it by having park  conservancies, basically park improvement districts, to provide the kind of more detailed attention to the public space that is beyond the capacity of a parks agency responsible for many parks.  Sometimes these are funded in part by a small property tax on commercial property in the area.

Not unlike libraries, many of which have created social work positions to address homeless related problems as people gather in libraries ("‘A lot of people in need’: Social workers added to staffs at Mass. libraries," 25News, "How One Library Is Filling the Gaps in Homeless Services," Governing), one of the only public spaces open to all, certain parks in many cities need the kind of focused attention common to many of New York City's parks.  (Salt Lake should do the same for some of its major urban parks also.)

Transit agencies have created similar programs to better address homeless issues ("Transit's Response to People Who Are Homeless," APTA, Homelessness: A Guide for Public Transportation, National Academies Press).

Engaging the community in positive activities is crucial.  FWIW, like the Sharkey point about the importance of community organizing as an element of the crime drop (Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence), I argue that parks are loci for civic engagement (""Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement," 2024), and wrt safety, that parks with problems need to be used by positive users--as Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces used to say "if you plan for streets and traffic that's what you get, it you plan for people and places that's what you get instead."

Tons of activities need to be organized in problematic parks to help sweep the nuisance uses away.

Group walks, dog walks, park cleanups, organized playground activities, etc.

Engaging Hispanics.  The area is home to a large number of low income Hispanics, many undocumented.  They don't have a predilection to participate in community affairs, because many come from countries where activists are killed.  This has made it difficult to maintain a functioning community council--many of the seats go vacant ("Mired in overdose crisis, MacArthur Park struggles to revive Neighborhood Council," Los Angeles Daily News).

I don't think social urbanism--a Latin American strategy for community revitalization--is relevant because this community already has parks and libraries.  

One strategy is to build and or strengthen Latino-focused community organizations.  No question that extranormal organization and community building is required.

In the health field, in there is a program in nearby Orange County, called Latino Health Access, that could be a model for how to create a program to engage Latinos in community improvement programs.

Latino Health Access, Orange County, California.   Focused on providing health care to the Latino community, which has traditionally been underserved, the organization focuses on education, prevention and participation, training a cadre--many thousands over the years--of paraprofessionals and volunteers working in and already part of the community, to deliver health education, focused on chronic diseases, such as diabetes.

The organization was featured in a four-part HBO documentary “The Weight of the Nation,” on addressing obesity.

The organization sponsors an annual health walk, has built a park and community center in an impoverished neighborhood that lacked such facilities ("Residents Bring First-Ever Park to California’s 92701 Zip Code," Salud America!), and the organization's main clinic has a community room with space for exercise classes, fitness equipment, and space, a "Youth Room," for adolescents.

LHA has published a workbook, Recruiting the Heart, Training the Brain: The Work of Latino Health Access, discussing what they do, how they built the organization, and their care model.

Rayful Edmond's death reminds me of my introduction to Washington, DC

The Post reported, "Inside the sudden death and complex legacy of an ex-D.C. drug kingpin," that Rayful Edmond, a kingpin during the crack cocaine days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, has died.  (Also see "Running Low on Rayful," Washington City Paper.)

Besides all the deaths, in another way, his is a tragic story, because clearly he had the smarts to be a very successful businessman.

... authorities say that in the 1980s, he commanded a ruthless crack cocaine operation, raking in an estimated $2 million a week and fueling a deadly epidemic that plunged D.C. into the national consciousness as America’s murder capital. 

The sudden death stunned Edmond’s family and attorneys, who have said that although he was once a prolific salesman of drugs, he claimed not to have used any himself. And his demise elicited sharply divergent reactions in D.C., a place that prides itself on second chances. To many who investigated and prosecuted him, Edmond was a larger-than-life criminal who profited from death and addiction in the city. 

To some who considered him a friend and neighbor, he was a local legend whose charisma helped build an empire, and who was known to cover rent, food and medicine for those in need. “He may have been convicted of serious crimes, but Rayful’s only intention in life was to be able to help people,” said Tiffani Collins, one of Edmond’s attorneys. “Sometimes people go about giving that help the wrong way, but there is no doubt in my mind he would have wanted his life to be a lesson for anyone to benefit from it.”

... The nightly crossfire among street crews guarding their turf — and profits — helped to sharply drive up D.C.’s annual homicide toll in the late 1980s and early 1990s, peaking at nearly 500, almost double the rate in 2023. Although Edmond was never convicted of a violent crime, authorities say he was responsible for hundreds of deaths, from murders to overdoses. 

When I first came to DC, it was in 1987, and I wanted to live in the city as opposed to the suburbs.  I lived in Ann Arbor--a city--before the move, and in Detroit off and on until I was 12, and then the suburbs for 6 years.

Then, not only was I a knee jerk liberal but mostly "young and dumb," not really ready to live in the 'hood.  I joke that I wish that Elijah Anderson's books Streetwise and Code of the Street had been already published, so I could have been better prepared!

Flicker photo by Ted Eytan.

Why this matters is we lived a few blocks away from his main distribution area, a set of two one way streets near Florida Avenue and today's thriving Union Market, Morton Place and Orleans Place. 

One thing I learned from this is that one way streets make it easier to make and hide drug transactions.  (In the H Street neighborhood, G Street and another pair of one way streets had similar problems.)

On Thursday morning, the blocks of Morton Place and Orleans Place NE that were once the epicenter of Edmond’s operation were quiet, full of well-kept rowhouses with fallen yellow ginkgo leaves blanketing the sidewalk. 

Then an open-air drug market called “The Strip,” Edmond’s employees once stashed drugs in abandoned houses here and sold them at a clip of 30 transactions a minute. High-rise apartment buildings have popped up in the surrounding blocks in recent years, next to Union Market, a foodie’s paradise serving everything from bubble tea to Mexican-Korean fusion.

Now Redfin lists transactions on those streets from the high 600s to over one million.

I thought the area was a good place to live because even though H Street NE was riot scarred, it was close to Union Station, Downtown, and Capitol Hill-US Capitol.  Then again, 30 people were murdered in the area in our first 18 months, and we had a lot of problems, serious marriage-breakup problems, with crime.

I moved from knee jerk liberal to what I called an "inner city progressive" whose liberal tendencies were mediated by the reality of the local conditions and governance.  (Still it was about a decade before I actually got off my ass and got involved, because I believed if I didn't the area would continue to languish--good timing since trends shifted favoring urban living).

Loree Murray was an activist involved in many issues, including DC statehood.

When I did get involved, one of the first organizations was Near Northeast Citizens Against Crime and Drugs, founded by a lady who lived around the corner from the mayhem ("A Woman Who Won't Sit Still From It," "Fought D.C. Cocaine Epidemic," Post) and police service area meetings--one of the problems we had is the area was split between two different police precincts creating problems of coordination.

Near Northeast Citizens Against Crime and Drugs was exactly the kind of community response and organizing initiative that Patrick Sharkey discusses in Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence as why we had the crime drop in the 2000s, nationally, and in DC.

A nearby apartment building, post-reproduction of space, was named in the honor of the founder of the group, Loree Murray.

FWIW, this area gave me another lesson, my lodestone in revitalization, in that investments in transit infrastructure in the right places has the fastest ROI, when the infill NoMA Red Line subway station opened in 2004 (case study) which brought about a huge influx in new residents.

An insight from my brother on societal supports and social infrastructure

 I hadn't seen my brother, who lives in Florida, for many many years.  He came to see me, all too briefly, when I was in the hospital two weeks ago.

As men do, we didn't express dying love for each other, we just talked about stuff.

One of the points he made is that why are so many state governments focusing on legalizing drugs ("How America got high as a kite," Financial Times).  For the money, and sometimes, theoretically, to be able to focus on helping people instead of criminalizing them, although the Oregon initiative isn't really working ("Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs. It Isn't Working," ) and it seems that the Portugal policy too has diminishing returns ("Portugal's drug decriminalization faces opposition as addiction multiplies," Washington Post).

I had no idea until a couple years ago, that the death rate from overdoses is significantly higher than that from murders or car accidents.  

We talked about legalizing drugs as a form of anesthetization.  This is called by some economists, sociologists and health researchers, "Deaths of Despair."  It and covid are contributing to the US's decline in lifespan ("Life expectancy in U.S. is falling amid surges in chronic illness," Washington Post).

He said instead of legalizing drugs we should be investing in people.  We didn't talk about national health care.  He mentioned investing in arts programs for people, for expanded educational opportunities, for investments in civic assets.

What Eric Klinenberg calls Social Infrastructure.  And how I write about social urbanism.

Of course, he's right.

Is the National Health Service/universal health care the reason that the UK doesn't have an opioid crisis comparable to the US?

I have been offline for awhile because of the process of getting my house not only ready for renting, but able to pass a home inspection, as we are renting out the house legally, by registering it with the city, etc.

The city's inspection process has been under fire recently, because a fire at an illegal rooming house killed two people ("D.C. officials strengthen policies for dangerous code violations after deadly fire," Washington Post).

I was worried that was going to make our experience more difficult, but it didn't. The situations were different -- that was a building illegally converted into a rooming house, and besides that, doing it in ways that were unsafe.

Although it was plenty difficult in that we aimed to fix everything on our house that needed fixing, and given the reality of deferred maintenance over 11 years, the list of "what to do" became pretty long.

And there are other things that you have to do as a landlord with a property that you don't have to do as an owner-occupant, such as have storm windows and screens on every window -- and because we have a walkout basement that theoretically could be lived in, that was 6 windows...

And frankly, there were things that needed to be done when we bought the house and we didn't do them (like we never received a key to the garage and the lock had been painted over besides, but we never replaced the lock, so it never could be secured in the 11 years we lived there--well, I got it fixed, thank you Capitol Garage Door and it is so cool to open the door with a key and then lock it). Now we can put stuff in there (it has a dirt floor, so there are limits) like ladders etc. and it doesn't clutter the house.

Suzanne was worried we wouldn't pass (she gets anxious about stuff like that) and I said, besides the wear and tear on the floors, the house is in better condition today than we when we first walked in 11 years ago.

Now, I couldn't have said that 3 months ago.  It's been a process.  We found a great unlicensed "contractor" who was comparatively cheap, so it cost us considerably less than the normal cost.

For example, the new walkway.  The former walkway was constructed of individual bluestone "pavers," very large, which over the decades had settled slightly before grade.  We put this in its place, and afterwards, I planted zinnias along it. 

But that was a two-day project for the contractor, and I spent a couple hours digging out the stones, and transporting them to the garage.  Fortunately for us, we are one house off the alley, so I could get them to the garage that way (our house has two grade levels--the ground floor is at street grade, but the back of the house is like 6 feet or more lower, and we have a walkout basement).

In fact, I commented to my brother that the array of specialists we pulled together to do all this things (like rebuilding historic windows, replacing broken glass panes, yard work and hauling, garage door locks, finding replacement fencing, etc. -- we already have a great plumber and electrician--the plumber is fabulous but not cheap, but his work is always excellent, and the electrician firm is good and inexpensive--e.g., something we needed to do, Kolb Electric estimated it would cost $2,200, and the firm we chose offered a similar option for one-third the price, but an even cheap option that all told cost $250, plus our painting of the electric line housing), that we could put together a team that could successfully flip houses.

... so part of the cleaning process has been going through (or at least reboxing) tons of printed matter that I either read and clipped, or somehow didn't read at the time. I was skimming a Financial Times from 2017, and there was an op-ed on the likelihood of the UK developing an opioid crisis comparable to that of the US ("The Opioid Files: Follow The Post's investigation of the opioid crisis," Washington Post, and it occurred to me that wasn't likely because of the way the health care system is organized there.

The profit motive around being "a prescription drug mill" is different in the UK than in the US ("As overdoses soared, nearly 35 billion opioids — half of distributed pills — handled by 15 percent of pharmacies," Post), and doctors are less independent and subject to more oversight.

Capitalism without adequate regulation doesn't work because there are always actors willing to take advantage of gaps in regulation or opportunities for extranormal benefit.

The opiod epidemic is more of an issue that I realized

In DC it's not so bad, and not all that visible in most parts of the city.  But I happened to be reading the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, and columnist Mike Newall wrote about his experience giving Narcan to an overdose victim in the Kensington neighborhood ("On Kensington Avenue, strangers with Narcan").

In the course of the article, where he mentioned how the city has gotten agencies on the same page in terms of responding to the problem, and has "deputized" the community, including addicts, by widely distributing the overdose revival drug Narcan, aiming to reduce overdose deaths, he mentioned that:

The City of Philadelphia projects that there will be 1,250 drug overdose deaths in 2017, most due to opiods.

That's 10 times DC's murder rate and drug overdose rate, and 4.5 times Philadelphia's 2016 number of homicides.  Philadelphia has about 2.5 times the population of DC -- 1.57 million to 681,000.

Which puts the problem in perspective.