Dear Council –
Following up to my previously-submitted questions, I would like to offer some comments as the City imagines strategies and budget allocations. The comments are not offered because of Menlo Park specifically, rather as they relate to the general trend and future action.
Warm regards
Soody Tronson
Menlo Park Resident
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It’s time to recognize that decades of pouring more money, resources, and legitimacy into policing in an effort to increase safety have failed — because policing is functioning as it is intended to: to contain, control, and criminalize Black and Brown, and the economically disadvantaged communities rather than to prevent and reduce violence. It’s time to invest in meeting community needs and building non-police community safety strategies. It’s time to invest in just recovery.
As police budgets and legitimacy are being challenged by movements to defund police and invest in community safety, police and politicians are predictably pulling out their biggest guns: crime statistics that they create, control, and conflate with threats to our wellbeing.
Rather than focusing on the root causes of increased violence — an unprecedented global pandemic and economic crisis, skyrocketing gun sales, and increased pressure on communities already pushed to the brink of survival, the symptoms are being used to justify pouring more and more resources into policing instead of into community-based safety strategies and ensuring a just recovery.
Yet the stats and studies don’t show that police prevent, stop, or resolve violence. They also don’t support the claim that community demands to divest from policing and invest in community safety through campaigns to defund the police are responsible for any increase in violence. They also conveniently fail to account for the violence police contribute. They certainly don’t prove that police address violence more effectively than other less violent and expensive approaches.
5 EVIDENCE-BASED STRATEGIES TO STOP VIOLENCE, drawn from John Jay Research Advisory Group on Preventing and Reducing Community Violence, Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence.[i]
1) IMPROVE THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
Place-based interventions that are structural, scalable, and sustainable have been shown to reduce violence and many strategies are economically viable. Increasing the prevalence of green space in a neighborhood, improving the quality of neighborhood buildings and housing, and creating public spaces with ample lighting suitable for pedestrian traffic can be cost-effective ways of decreasing community violence.
2) STRENGTHEN ANTI-VIOLENCE NORMS AND PEER RELATIONSHIP
Programs such as Cure Violence and Advance Peace view violence as a consequence of social norms spread by peer networks and social relationships. Outreach workers, a key part of these interventions, form supportive and confidential relationships with individuals at the highest risk of becoming perpetrators or victims of violence, connecting them with social resources and working to shift their behavior and attitudes toward non-violence. Evaluations suggest these programs may help reduce neighborhood violence.
3) ENGAGE AND SUPPORT YOUTH
Violence prevention and reduction strategies must include a priority on young people, focusing on protective factors as well as risk factors. Strategies that add structure and opportunities for youth have been shown to decrease their involvement in violent crime. Youth employment, job mentorship and training, educational supports, and behavioral interventions can improve youth outcomes and reduce violence. Some of these strategies require relatively costly individualized therapeutic interventions, but others focused on work and school have been associated with cost- efficient reductions in violence.
4) DECRIMINALIZATION AND TREATMENT
Numerous studies show that interventions to reduce harmful substance abuse are associated with lower rates of community violence, and not all strategies involve treatment. One study found that decriminalization reduced sexual assault, robbery, and burglary, another that a dollar spent on (civilian) drug treatment may cut crime by almost $4, gains that far exceed those of policing without the attendant social costs, and with a host of other social benefits. Violence prevention must include a focus on drug decriminalization, and treatment.
5) MITIGATE FINANCIAL STRESS
Violence is more prevalent where residents face severe and chronic financial stress. Timely, direct, and targeted financial assistance can help to reduce rates of violence. Financial stability and economic opportunities help to reduce crime. People experiencing negative income shocks are less inclined to behave violently when they receive timely financial assistance.
WHO STOPS VIOLENCE? VIOLENCE INTERRUPTERS
Violence interrupters are credible messengers and respected community members who conduct daily outreach to their communities, de-escalate, prevent and intervene in potentially violent situations, and respond after the fact to prevent escalation and retaliation.
For example, evaluation studies in cities across the country showed promising results for the CURE Violence model, which combines violence interruption strategies rooted in public health and support to individuals.[ii]
BRIEF BACKGROUND
In the face of decades-long evidence confirms that police are not particularly effective at preventing, interrupting or solving crime — because that has never been their true function — police departments have focused on “improving police-community relations” in an effort to boost their ever-increasing budget. They have also worked to increase the status and legitimacy of tasks unrelated to preventing or intervening in or resolving violence — like “order maintenance, social service and general assistance duties” and “educational, recreational, and even counseling services.” [iii]
This explains why police are reluctant to let go of functions such as responding to mental health crises, homeless “outreach,” and youth engagement programs — because they know
that retaining control of these functions is key to keeping their jobs and their budgets.
According to the John Jay Research Advisory Group on Preventing and Reducing Community Violence, “Community violence is more prevalent in neighborhoods where residents face severe and chronic financial stress.”[iv] As outlined in the recommendations of the COVID19 Policing Project’s latest report, investment of funds in direct support and community-based safety strategies, toward a just recovery, instead of doubling down on policing, is more likely to produce lasting public safety.[v]
For example, politicians invested only $160 million of funds cut from police budgets in community-based safety strategies, falling far short of what is needed to relieve economic and social pressures on communities that drive both violence and increases in criminalized activities.15 Addressing rising rates of violence requires deep investments in meeting our communities’ economic and social needs and in community-based violence prevention and interruption programs — NOT more policing.[vi]