Community Safety: Leading

There are too few opportunities for young people in Vernon-Central, a low-income community in South Central Los Angeles where more than 20 percent of residents are unemployed.

At the same time, gangs and other trouble have led too many young people in the neighborhood into the criminal justice system.

As Mark Wilson sees it, those two facts—too common in many low-income communities—make a focus on public safety a natural fit for his community development corporation, the Coalition for Responsible Community Development.

In support of its mission to improve the lives of youth living in Vernon-Central, CRCD builds permanent supportive housing for youth, runs high school programs, engages young people in training and career-building, helps build economic growth in the area by supporting small businesses, and trains and hires unemployed youth in a number of programs.

“We do a lot of planning and we know what issues are currently impacting the ability of the youth we work with—age 18 to 24—to do well and to take advantage of our programs like job placement or training,” says Wilson, CRCD’s executive director. “In this neighborhood, everybody knows public safety is an issue.”

Since CRCD started in 2005, public safety has been woven into all its programs, and the CDC has been a force in local ex-offender reentry programs, housing for gang-involved youth, clean-up of vacant properties, graffiti abatement, and more.

But CRCD doesn’t do it all alone—the police, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, other city agencies and many other local organizations each play a role in the work. The partnerships won CRCD, LAPD and a local private developer one of LISC’s coveted MetLife Foundation Community-Police Partnership Awards this year.

“We’ve been a catalyst to bring people together. We were able to bring in other key organizations in different parts of the community,” Wilson says. He has some advice for what it takes for a CDC to be a leader around public safety.

Start by earning your stripes with some wins.The partnership between the Coalition for Responsible Community Development and officers in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division began with a graffiti-free zone. The program, which included neighborhood beautification and other community development strategies, was a big success.

“It was a lot easier to get people to the table once they saw that the police were on board and things were happening,” Wilson says. “Then we identified key leaders in the neighborhood and really got buy-in for the strategy of community development as public safety.”

Those early wins also gave CRCD credibility that proved valuable when it came time to hold police and community partners accountable for commitments. Wilson has earned a reputation with both residents and law enforcement as an honest broker, which has been invaluable to CRCD’s leadership role in safety efforts.

Focus on what you’re good at, and find others to fill in the gaps. Wilson says that CRCD is good at its core tasks, but he and his staff also know they don’t offer every program that can make Vernon-Central a safer community.

“We never felt our agency can solve all the issues in our community alone,” he says. “But, as the lead agency for the Vernon-Central Building Sustainable Communities program, we work with several nonprofits that offer afterschool programs, run health centers, work with seniors and do gang intervention. We know how to work in partnership.”

Be clear on benefits for participation.Neighborhood nonprofits don’t typically have much excess capacity. But you can get buy-in even when you don’t have funding to support local organizations’ programmatic involvement.

“The [public safety] program might help a group leverage a partnership or reach the goals of an existing program,” Wilson explains.

“In this neighborhood, every group has some people they work with who have issues with the legal system, but they might not know how to navigate it. Some groups like the opportunity to learn more about how we’re partnering with law enforcement.”

Don’t waste people’s time. Once a coalition has formed—loose or formal—be efficient and effective. Wilson says they have a strict rule not to repeat any business at a subsequent meeting, for example.

It can be tough to refuse to reiterate a conversation for anyone who missed the first discussion. “But you’ve got to keep moving the ball forward,” he says. “You don’t want people to think, ‘I’m not getting anything out of this.’”

Use your knowledge of the community. Vernon-Central is not a homogeneous neighborhood: Although 85 percent of the population is Latino, that includes enclaves of residents from Mexico, El Salvador, Belize and the Caribbean, and another 15 percent of the community is African-American.

“Every culture deals with law enforcement in its own way, and there are different gangs in the community as well,” Wilson says. “So we have to approach this work with a consciousness of those facts. We learn from our partners and we talk with them about what we know, too. We’re always tweaking our approach.”