Atlanta Tried Housing Police in Disinvested Black Communities to Increase Trust. Is it Working?

Since moving to a county-run police department, Camden, N.J., historically one of the nation’s poorest and most dangerous cities, has altered its culture to overcome years of mistrust by developing a personal relationship with and empowering the local community.

The Built to Last program, run by the Philadelphia Energy Authority, began as a pilot in 2021, but in the face of increased demand, the city recently granted $5 million in its budget to “future-proof” homes with electric heat pump HVAC systems, rooftop solar, electric appliances and other repairs that create more energy-efficient homes for low-income families. Since 2021, the program has repaired over 100 homes and has about 200 currently in progress.

After East Haven, Connecticut, police officers were caught harassing residents based on race, the Obama Justice Department took the police department to court and won a consent decree requiring a long list of reforms, in hiring, training, discipline, and use of force. The oversight, rare for a small city, changed the department's culture and won praise from many residents, who now trust the police more. Such federal action waned in the Trump years, but is expected to revive in the Biden administration, though perhaps under a more collaborative, less coercive model.

Jumpstart Germantown and five spinoff programs trained about 1,000 people in the art of locally controlled neighborhood rehabilitation. The Jumpstart programs target particular neighborhoods, mainly mid-range housing stock with vacant and deteriorating conditions, and lend money to newly minted developers to fix and resell the properties. Housing rehabs maintain the character of neighborhoods, rather than gentrifying them or making wholesale redevelopment changes. Beyond the community improvement benefits, the program helps diversify the real estate business and provides employment opportunities.

In Wisconsin, plain-clothes law enforcement officers are teaming up with mental health experts to handle calls related to crisis intervention. The goal of the Marathon County Crisis Assessment Response Team is to reduce unnecessary detentions of people experiencing mental health crises, while also increasing trust with the community. In the two years since the program launched, the "rate of hospitalizing or jailing people in crisis" has dropped in both consecutive years, which has consequently saved the county a great deal of expenses.

A decade after Camden crime and police relations hit bottom, and five years after President Obama lauded its new police department as a model for reform, the city's successful reboot of its police force offers both encouragement and cautionary notes for a radical makeover of a police department. Excessive force rates and homicides have both dropped. A toothless disciplinary system has been replaced. But, while residents agree conditions have improved, they point to a number of changes still needed after the entire department was replaced.

Community members and local organizations on the South side of Chicago collaborate to reclaim their neighborhoods from crime, violence, and poverty by engaging in community conflict resolution, policing and networks of support. Groups like the Southwest Organizing Project and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network banded together to interrupt gang violence in the city, relying on the experience of former gang members and offenders to guide the organizations' missions for non-violence in their communities.

Of the three most notable experiments testing the effectiveness of police foot patrols at reducing crime, only one – the Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment – showed a significant reduction in violence, thanks to a three-month randomized controlled trial. By rethinking an old practice and infusing it with data-driven thinking about focusing on "hot spots," the Philadelphia brand of foot patrols debunked the myth that patrol might, at best, only improve community relations without having an effect on crime. But random car patrols, reacting mainly to radio calls, remains the dominant approach nationwide.

Community members, city officials, and local organizations work together to address the complex factors behind Detroit's recession. While land developers work to demolish and rebuild abandoned properties, the city looks for ways to balance gentrification of the downtown area with the need for urban growth and revitalization in other neighborhoods.

Even as cities fight gentrification, residents are often consulted late in urban planning, if at all. Cat Goughnour is pushing for change in Portland. Her consulting group ran a series of workshops, resulting in community-generated ideas for improving the Albina neighborhood that wouldn’t displace longtime residents.