Neighborhood Safety

This is post is a sequel to my earlier 3D Police post, where I pointed out that what the public wants and the public does NOT get is crime prevention. My last post was on bad lefty branding, and "defund the police" is BLM style bad-branding, utterly failing to describe the issue Defund the Police wishes to pursue (more funding for other unspecific services, not the dissolving of police as an institution.) Before we get what I am about to propose, we first need to understand the three categories of organizations that exist and the four types of public safety that exist. The three categories of organizations are:

1. Government: state funded colleges, police departments, city counsels etc. all paid for by your tax dollars and ultimately controlled by people who depend on your vote to keep their jobs. The bottom line of the government in a democracy is to enforce the collective will of the people.
2. Businesses: they use money and resources to produce more money and resources. This is where most jobs come from, and it is also where most products and services come from.
3. Non-Profit-Organizations (NPO): these are essentially charities, typically dependent on grants, donations and/or government funding. These organizations address society's problems: shelters, most chemical dependency treatment, food banks, humane societies, institutions devoted to research, clubs etc.

Keep in mind that certain groups of organizations do not all fall in the same category. A local community college like Seattle Central is a government institution. Antioch University Seattle is an NPO. Argosy (Art Institute of Seattle) was a business. Argosy going out of business is a good example of how not all categories are good for all things, the for-profit colleges are notoriously sketchy and often short lived, a thrift store is what you get when you try to do retail as an NPO, and Government does not produce the best cheese.

Now understand that there are currently 4 main Public Safety roles:

1. Police: these are the hired guns of the District Attorney, the government's monopoly on violence. Notice they are in the category of government.
2. Private Security: the professionalism in the security industry has increased drastically over the last few decades, but its obvious to all that business employee "security officers" don't hold the same weight as Police.
3. Firefighters: that first red ambulance that shows up with the hard core professionals saving your life - those are firefighters. Yes, they have great toys for putting out fires, but their first concern is your immediate physical safety. Notice they do not have the same BLM publicity problem Police have, and notice that Firefighters are also for the most part Government employees.
4. Paramedics and EMTs of the white ambulance that show up after the red ambulance are basically hospital delivery drivers. Once firefighters stabilize someone in medical duress, the white ambulance staff gets paid a dollar or two above minimum wage to deliver that someone to the hospital. These not-really-firefighters, like the not-really-police above, are business employees.

So where is the NPO public safety staff? Crime prevention is ultimately an education issue. Education is best handled by government and NPOs. Government is already using all the resources they can for crime prevention by providing K-12 education and Police. They should and will do better in the future, but the NPO piece is clearly missing.

The best example I can think of for NPO public safety are the "Downtown Ambassadors" of the "Downtown Seattle Association" NPO. They looks sort of like cops on bikes, except for they don't have guns and are dressed in brighter colors. When they see a problem, rather than panic and make useless complaint after  complaint to 911, they actually directly approach the problem. If they see a homeless woman trying to sell herself on the street they do not make an arrest, they instead try to get that homeless woman the help she needs.

And Downtown Ambassadors are now found in Downtowns of major cities all over the USA and Canada. But this is a fairly new and experimental project. What I am proposing here is giving this movement a clear mandate, and expanding it to a much wider range of neighborhoods. What I am proposing is a Neighborhood Safety Team (NST.)

The mandate of a NST is to prevent crime. How to do this best varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, depending on demographics and lifestyles in each neighborhood. In a rural town of 5,000 people, a Neighborhood Safety Teams biggest concern might be alcohol, preventing drunk driving and breaking up teenage parties before the local Sheriff has to be involved. In an intercity neighborhood a Neighborhood Safety Team may be negotiating peace between rival gangs and holding group treatment meetings for people having issues with chemical dependency.

Neighborhood Safety Teams need tremendous autonomy from the Law Enforcement, while simultaneously having tremendous support from Law Enforcement. On one hand Law Enforcement needs to understand that the NST are not extensions of the law; the NST is not there to help the police bring evil doers to justice. On the other hand the police need to understand that if a person on an NST calls for help, that person is in severe danger and has to be a very high priority.

The leader of every Neighborhood Safety Team should be a certified chemical dependency counselor, for the following reasons:

1. It is likely most NSTs will be involved in getting people into self help meetings like AA and SMART Recovery. NST must be ready and willing to start self help groups from scratch if they need to. Certified chemical dependency counselors can start and run groups.
2. Much of the crime that needs to be prevented will be drug and alcohol related, and a certified chemical dependency counselor will have some training in understanding this dynamic and what changes need to happen in the neighborhood in order to reduce crime.
3. There is a special type of legal protection for certified chemical dependency counselors (42 CFR Part 2) that allows those counselors to exercise confidentiality not unlike a lawyer or doctor. Having a certified chemical dependency counselor at the head of a NST helps everyone be clear that the NST is on the side of the neighborhood residents, not the side of the District Attorney.

A NST would be funded through an NPO, depending on what NPOs service that neighborhood. In turn those NPOs can seek grants, donations and/or government funding with witch to support the NST. Because NPOs are always at the mercy of the communities they serve this keeps the NST accountable to their communities. Beyond this local government can decide which NPO in their area the NST will answer to by choosing which NPO they give funding to support the NST.

But an NST doesn't necessarily need government funding. An upper class neighborhood in Florida may have an NST funded through a home owner's association, and that NST might be focused on getting the spoiled grandchildren off of cocaine and helping those grandchildren organize more constructive community activities. A poor rural community may fund an NST through a local church in order to hold meetings for people struggling with methamphetamine and crashing keggers making sure kids are educated on consent and the dangers of alcohol consumption. 

But all NSTs will be experts in what things people in their Neighborhood need to do in order to avoid getting in trouble with the law. They will be eagerly explaining these issues to the residents of the neighborhood, educating constantly. In most states a certified chemical dependency counselor needs a two year college degree before they can be certified. But the leader of the team isn't the only specialist that could be helpful on the team. Depending on what the needs are in that neighborhood, other team members with education in law enforcement, sociology, anthropology, education, social work or psychology could be helpful. In some neighborhoods former thugs who have turned their life around could be valuable team members, while in other neighborhoods retired law enforcement might be valued.

You can't expect active duty police to educate instead of incarcerate. You can't expect police to sit down with a drug dealer on the corner and explain to them the dealer could make more money working part time washing dishes with far less risk. You can't expect police to be on call to handle neighborhood disputes in order to prevent violence. You can't have them constantly talking to youth making sure those youth are pursuing edifying activities and learning to stay within the law. You can't expect the police to help reorganize your community to be safer. That's why you need an NST.

I basically don't have faith that law enforcement can change their ways: in the end they are servants of the district attorney, eager to put you in prison for any crime they can trick you into implicating yourself in with their lies and intimidation, weather you are innocent or not. Meanwhile they may beat you bloody or fill you with hot lead for target practice. They are very good at what they do, and they are probably not going to change.

Instead we need a new type of public safety that is focused on crime prevention and education. The NST led by a certified chemical dependency counselor and backed by an appropriate NPO will be able to reach out to the people in your Neighborhood to help them obey they law in the first place so that Law Enforcement does not have to be involved.