Without freedom from violence, no other freedoms are possible. Low income, high crime and racially isolated communities cannot advance while in the grip of a culture of destruction and dysfunctional law enforcement policies. Advancement Project's Urban Peace work seeks more responsive and effective police protection for low income communities and elimination of the epidemic of gang violence in Los Angeles and all the negative health and other related impacts on poor communities of color that arise from it.
Fighting Gang Violence as an Epidemic
Our goal for reducing gang violence is to substantially shift government energy from a suppression strategy, which has been a massive failure, to greater emphasis on prevention. The experience of the past twenty-five years has shown that we can't arrest our way out of this problem. We are pushing for development of a comprehensive approach to preventing gang involvement and gang violence, one that will coordinate all relevant jurisdictions in the region. more »
Violence Prevention, Gang Reduction and Youth Development
Our January 2007 report to the City of Los Angeles forced the gang violence problem back on the public agenda, against the tide of satisfaction with significant declines in violent crime in recent years. Our analysis is two-fold: First, the problem crosses all jurisdictions in the region, so the City and County need to move from a haphazard, disjointed collection of small-scale programs toward a more comprehensive, data-driven and strategic effort. Second, the failure of the past two decades proves that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem, so we must begin to move more resources toward preventing gang involvement. We are currently pursuing a strategy of building a comprehensive approach to preventing gang involvement and violence revolving around schools, through sustained engagement with public officials and law enforcement at the City of Los Angeles and County of Los Angeles and other jurisdictions, community leaders, schools and others.
Changing the Dynamics of Law Enforcement
Our other peace goal is to end what we call "public safety apartheid" - the combined result of resource shortages and of the historical strategy of largely seeking only to "contain" violence in poor communities. Our approach is to enable law enforcement and community residents to develop a true partnership. We are working within the LAPD to change its culture, training and incentives, and, perhaps oddly for a civil rights organization, advocating for a substantial increase in the number of police officers. more »
Police Reform
Through painstaking research, our 2006 report on the LAPD Rampart scandal brought the issue of police reform back to the forefront. Our recommendations called on the City to end "public safety apartheid" by providing more police protection to poor neighborhoods (not what most people might expect from civil rights advocates) and finally change for good the LAPD's warrior culture and its ways of interacting with communities of color. In sharp contrast to LAPD stonewalling against numerous previous commission reports over the past 40 years, LAPD Chief Bratton has embraced the "Rice Report" and created an internal task force, co-led by Advancement Project Co-Director Connie Rice, to re-engineer LAPD's training and incentive systems so that LAPD can develop true community-police collaboration that effectively fights crime without bias, corruption or brutality and helps communities end the vicious cycle of destruction and despair.
