The National Network's approach has attracted significant media attention over twenty years. This page features the most recent coverage of our work and a searchable archive of media about the National Network's projects around the nation and abroad.
The National Network convenes regular conferences, working sessions and webinars to discuss and promote developments in its core areas of operation, showcase innovations, and set research and development priorities.
On WNYC Radio's Here's The Thing, Alec Baldwin speaks to Equal Justice Initiative's director and DOJ National Advisory Board member Bryan Stevenson about EJI’s recently released report on the history of lynchings in the U.S. and confronting the legacy of “racial terror.” Americans need to radically acknowledge and address a history of slavery and violence in the U.S. if we are to achieve the promise of an equal and just society, he says.
Last month, 15 city officials and social service providers from Kalamazoo, Michigan traveled to New York City for Ceasefire University, training on the implementation of the National Network’s Group Violence Intervention. As Kalamazoo gets ready to implement GVI, Kalamazoo Public Safety Department Chief Hadley wrote an open letter to the community to explain how the city is changing its approach to law enforcement, including a focus on building trust and legitimacy.
How do murder statistics reported by the media shape the way we think about our communities and the people who live in them? David M. Kennedy joined Sheila Kast and Jonna McKone on Maryland Morning's WYPR to consider some central questions about public safety, policing, violence, and National Network's Operation Ceasefire efforts in Baltimore.
In this Huffington Post article, Susan Scrupski discusses the culture shift necessary to reduce a community's domestic violence. For several years, High Point, NC, has been working with the National Network's model to effect just such a shift, insisting that abusers change their behavior rather than victims. The results have been dramatic. High Point Police Chief Marty Sumner says, "The best way I know to make her safe is to make him stop."
National Network for Safe Communities partner Andrew Papachristos of Yale University spoke on a panel called "Lessons from Ferguson" at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. Said Papachristos: "People have biases whether they realize it or not, it doesn't mean that they're overtly racist…One of the things we also know is that we can actually train people around biases.” In particular, the panel looked at a Chicago Police Department in-service program aimed at training officers to improve routine interactions with the communities they serve.
We’re excited to announce that National Network's close partner Dean Esserman, chief of the New Haven Police Department and professor at Yale University has been appointed to the advisory board of the The United States Department of Justice' National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. Chief Esserman has spent his entire career in public service as a law enforcement practitioner and his expertise will be a tremendously valuable addition to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice-led initiative.
Now that it's been operating for several years and there are clear indications that it's working, the National Network for Safe Communities' offender-focused domestic violence initiative is beginning to be seen as a real opportunity to protect the most vulnerable women from the most dangerous domestic violence abusers. "The offender-focused model, which the Piedmont town of High Point has used to target domestic violence, holds tremendous promise. Its elements just make sense."
The Crime Report discusses the first convening of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice, which took place this week in Columbus, OH. A national panel of experts, including National Initiative leader David Kennedy discussed the initiative and the importance of enhancing procedural justice, reducing implicit bias, and promoting reconciliation. “These habits of mind can look and smell like racism, but they’re not,” Kennedy said.
The National Network is enormously excited to take the Group Violence Intervention international with the London “Shield” pilot, which will launch in three boroughs. A partnership between the London's Mayor Boris Johnson, the London Crime Reduction Board, Metropolitan Police Service, and community organizations, Shield will focus on preventing violence and incarceration among those most likely to be touched by both, offering help to group members who want it, and strengthening London’s most troubled communities.
Mistrust of police only serves to make violent neighborhoods worse, said David Kennedy at the Ohio Task Force on Policing. He spoke in Cleveland at the first of four statewide forums examining relations between police and minority communities.
When you consider who falls victim to gun violence, the statistical data doesn't seem random at all. A new study by Yale's Andrew Papachristos shows that the networks through which this violence spreads are rather small and specific. And the key to curbing the epidemic might be similar to efforts used to contain other infectious diseases.
Kansas City has seen tremendous homicide reductions through its Kansas City No Violence Alliance, modeled after National Network for Safe Communities ' Group Violence Intervention. Kansas City Missouri Police Major Joe McHale highlighted the strategy’s effectiveness at using existing resources to prevent crime:“You’re taking the resources you’re using now and aligning mission better. The thing is, when you reduce violent crime, it has a ripple effect. It reduces other crime as well.”
David M. Kennedy says Los Angeles' progress from the aggressive policing of the 1990s to the preventative, community-oriented policing of the 2000s is representative of the national change in thinking about about how to make communities safer.
The Epoch Times interviews Dr. Tracie L. Keesee, project director of the DOJ National Initiative and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity at UCLA, which aims to improve racial equity, accountability, and transparency in policing. Dr. Keesee, who is also a 25 year veteran of the Denver Police Department, says that in improving relationships between police and communities, "What you're really talking about is trust. So we have community conversations, about what does equitable policing look like to you? Surprisingly, we all want the same thing. It's just how do we come about it and do it so it's fair and just, not to the individual, but to the community."
New Orleans homicide reduction in 2014 has brought the city's murder rate to the lowest level in four decades. The National Network's collaboration with the New Orleans Group Violence Reduction Strategy, launched under Mayor Mitch Landrieu's NOLA FOR LIFE campaign, has played a major part in reducing group-related homicides. In particular, the city's Multi-Agency Gang Unit has been instrumental in creating an effective law enforcement partnership to reduce group violence. "We know that the strategy is working as it was designed to do," says David Kennedy.
Last year, Kansas City saw its lowest total homicides since 1972. This is due in large part to the recent efforts of the Kansas City No Violence Alliance to reduce violent crime using the National Network's Group Violence Intervention. "Violence begets violence,” she said. “We’re asking why and how we can prevent future crimes," says Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.
This op-ed highlights the importance of talking about constructive ways to improve police legitimacy and strengthen relationships between law enforcement and minority communities. As we begin our work within the DOJ National Initiative, we are encouraged by “proactive efforts to ensure greater fairness, accountability and transparency will improve trust and confidence and create a safer society for us all.”
The FBI honored University of Missouri-Kansas City professors Andrew Fox and Ken Novak with an award for Community Leadership for their work with the Kansas City No Violence Alliance in identifying the city's most violent criminals using social network analysis.
David Kennedy joined WNYC's Brian Lehrer show's family meeting on race and justice to speak about the DOJ National Initiative and community's role in resetting and reshaping everyday encounters between law enforcement and the community. "Yes, this is about race--but more importantly, it's about relationships," says Kennedy.
Group enforcements are a key focus of the KC No Violence Alliance’s goal to reduce violence in Kansas City. Group members associated with violence are engaged before any enforcement and offered services and other help. “They were offered anything we could do to help them choose a different path and to interrupt a cycle of violence,” said Kansas City Police Department Major Joe McHale. “Instead they chose violence.”
A new Massachusetts-based group, the National Medical Council on Gun Violence, says it’s time to go beyond asking patients if they have access to a gun. “If people don’t know what to do when they get a ‘yes,’ then they’re never going to screen for it,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, who helped organize the “Caring for Patients at Risk for Gun Violence: Medical, Legal, & Ethical Issues” conference at Baystate Medical Center on Dec 6th.
Jim Warren's op-ed explores innovative methods used to educate cops and communities after the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others. "The unique thing we did [in Chicago] was develop strategies for violence reduction that involve procedural justice and legitimacy," explains Yale Law School's Tracey Meares.
In Sunday's edition of New York Times Magazine, Chip Brown writes a feature profile on Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s innovative approach to crime in New York City, leading a national example of strategic prosecution. "Vance's efforts to make prosecutors smarter... depend on what he calls, 'extreme collaboration' with the Police Department,'" Brown writes.
As part of a two-day event hosted by the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services at the Gideon Putnam resort in Saratoga Springs, more than 250 law enforcement professionals attended a conference on New York’s Gun Involved Violence Elimination initiative, or GIVE. The GIVE program targets 20 communities that account for 86 percent of the state’s violent crime outside New York City.
In light of the recent events in Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, and around the country, President Barack Obama announced the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which will examine how to strengthen public trust and foster strong relationships between local law enforcement and the communities that they protect, while also promoting effective crime reduction. NNSC partners' Connie Rice of Advancement Project (CA) and Yale Law School's Tracey Meares will serve on the task force, committed to institutionalizing the National Network's core principles at federal and local levels across the country. "When any part of the American family does not feel like it is being treated fairly, that's a problem for all of us--it's not just a problem for some or a particular community. It means that we are not as strong as a country as we could be--and we're not as effective at fighting crime as we could be," President Obama said.
