SITE OVERVIEW ♦ LANGLEY PARK | MARYLAND
Target Area: SOMOS Langley Park • Population: 20,000
Fiscal Agent: CASA de Maryland
Research Partner: Howard University’s Center for Urban Progress
Crime Concerns: Gang-related violence, drug-related crimes, and violent crimes
BCJI Funding Year: 2015 Planning | 2017 Implementation
Neighborhood Profile
More than 70 percent of Langley Park’s approximately 20,000 residents are first-generation immigrants to the United States. Upwards of 86 percent of these individuals were born in Central America, principally Guatemala and El Salvador, and two-thirds came to the U.S. since 2000. The community has a 16 percent unemployment rate and 22 percent of households are below the poverty line. Only 10 percent of Langley Park residents have a college degree, while 57 percent of Langley Park adults ages 25 and up have less than a ninth grade education.
For many years, the community has been struggling with increasingly high rates of gang activity, and in 2012, the Prince George’s County Police Department (PGCPD) designated Langley Park one of the County’s most dangerous crime hotspots. Langley Park’s violent crime rate is about 50 percent higher than Prince George’s County’s rate, which is itself about a third higher than Maryland as a whole. Drivers of crime in the community include high rates of housing instability, the prevalence of single-parent households, and the immigrant community’s fear of interaction with police and concerns about deportation.
Planning Process
SOMOS Langley Park’s Theory of Change, as the BCJI project is known, is an outgrowth of community engagement, assessment and planning that CASA and a diverse set of partners performed in 2013 and 2014 under a Promise Neighborhoods Planning Grant from the U.S. Department of Education. For the BCJI planning grant, CASA established the Langley Park Crime Prevention Collaboration (CPC), a coalition of diverse stakeholders seeking to improve the relationship between residents and the police and find effective ways to reduce crime in the area.
The CPC held monthly meetings to develop and refine the strategy for the planning process, including assessing the data collected by CASA staff and analyzed by Howard University. CASA conducted outreach to invite Langley Park residents to join the CPC through door-knocking, visiting bus stops and laundromats, and presenting at tenant meetings.
A mixed methods research model included a quantitative and qualitative survey that captured responses from 175 Langley Park residents. The CPC also held a focus group of Prince George’s County police officers and Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning police officers, as well as a youth focus group to probe the insights of 14- to 19-year-olds regarding crime in the community, youth-police relations, and other challenges. Howard University obtained hard data on crime from multiple sources, including Prince George’s County Crime Database and police service call data for the core beat and three surrounding beats.
The survey found that nearly three-fourth of respondents do not feel safe walking alone in the community at night, more than a quarter had witnessed gang activity and more 90 percent think police community relations in Langley Park should be improved. Howard University identified several candidate linear hotspots in the community, including a “super-hot spot” just to the east of Riggs Road on University Boulevard. Although crime has decreased overall since 2010, calls for service, including assaults, rapes, burglaries, and thefts have remained high.
Implementation Strategies
The Langley Park project was awarded a BCJI implementation only grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance in fall 2017. The plan uses three strategies:
Improve community-police relations: At a new New American Academy for Residents, police teach new immigrant residents on issues from local laws and city ordinances to substance abuse prevention. The CPC offers cultural competency training and free Spanish language courses for law enforcement personnel that directly serve the Langley Park community and establishes a number of activities centered around community-oriented policing.
Increase access to social and economic opportunities: The CPC creates a community resource guide and conducts door-to-door outreach to inform residents of the resources and services available in the community. The CPC also implements an Alcoholism Awareness Campaign and, to reduce gang activity among youth, utilizes the Youth Empowered Towards Success (YETS) Program, which addresses the risk factors of gang involvement through workshops, recreational opportunities and community involvement.
Eliminate Crime Hot Spots: The CPC implements a problem-oriented policing program that brings law enforcement and business and property owners together to discuss and implement strategies such as improving facades and eliminating areas that are conducive to crime. The team also uses the SARA model (scanning, analysis, assessment and response) to frame monthly neighborhood walks with police and residents.
Other Key Partners
Prince George’s County, Prince George’s County Police Department, Latin American Youth Center (LAYC), Identity, Langley Park Resident Association Council, Urban Institute, University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, Prince George’s Community College, CentroNia, and St. Camillus Catholic Church
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