Black leaders including National Urban League president and CEO Marc Morial took the stage on Saturday, March 1, for Kean University’s public safety and policing solutions panel in Union, New Jersey.
One of the panelists, New Jersey Assemblywoman and Legislative Black Caucus chair Shavonda E. Sumter hopes attendees could take away a better understanding of community-based programming.
“My hope is that the audience took away, including students, that public safety is up to all of us,” said Sumter. “That there are some structural changes that are required via policy [and] also via the intentional efforts of police departments, which are multifaceted: some are civil service, some are paid for by taxpayers, some are state and some are County.
“But none of it works without the community being involved, having a say in how they’re protected and also being a part of the community at large for public safety and reduction in harm.”
Jiles Ship, president of New Jersey’s National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives chapter, says such symposiums are crucial for involving the community with public safety solutions.
“We’re giving [the public] an opportunity to be a part of the solution,” said Shipp. “And hearing from them too because too often we talk about law enforcement issues [by] generally [through] other law enforcement professionals talking to each other, or else we talk to elected officials or politicians. You cannot be efficient in your public safety efforts unless you have the community at the table.”
The event stemmed from the university’s John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research and was open to the public. Barbara George Johnson, the vice president for the institute, says New Jersey’s Legislative Black Caucus reached out about solutions for reducing community violence.
“That led to this idea of looking at public safety, community and policing in particular…it was really important that we emphasize action, because we have never been a policy institute that just works on research, reporting [or] publications,” said Johnson. “We are really about centering the community, how we center the work [and] understand the issue, create reports [and] recommendations but then work with the policymakers and the nonprofit officers who can actually bring this to bear.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.