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In this special episode, Lemonada co-founder Stephanie Wittels Wachs sits down with the leaders of the Coalition to Advance Public Safety (CAPS), an organization working to intercept and prevent violence in communities across the U.S. The coalition’s work builds on years of knowledge of public health and the particular needs of different locales, as well as the lived experience of community members on the ground. With these tools, CAPS creates and maintains community violence intervention (CVI) ecosystems around the country. In this conversation, CAPS’ leaders share the progress that their work has already brought to fruition and how you can help support what comes next.

Thank you to the Coalition to Advance Public Safety for making today’s conversation possible. To learn more about the CVI ecosystem, and the individual organizations at work in this coalition, visit www.cviecosystem.org.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Fatimah Loren Dreier, Jamela Zarha Williams, Anthony Smith, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Aqeela Sherrills

Jamela Zarha Williams  00:01

Hello. I’m Jamela Zarha Williams, supervising producer for good things, bringing you another very good thing, a special episode of the Lemonada podcast, Last day in this episode, Lemonada co founder, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, sits down with the leaders of the coalition to advance public safety, also known as caps, an organization working to intercept and prevent violence in communities across the US. The coalition’s work builds on years of knowledge of public health and the particular needs of different locales, as well as the lived experience of community members on the ground in this conversation caps leaders share the progress that their work has already brought to fruition and how you can help support what comes next, enjoy.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  01:55

Hello, Last Day, listeners, it’s Stephanie. Over the last few seasons of last day, we’ve covered lots of different topics, from opioids to suicide to gun violence, and one thing that came up quite a bit when we dove into the topic of guns is the idea of community violence. This is defined as violence between individuals who may or may not know each other. It includes assaults, fights or shootings in public places. Research indicates that youth and young adults, ages 10 to 34 particularly those in communities of color, are disproportionately impacted. Headlines will tell you that community violence is a big problem in most cities. What they might not tell you is how trauma can lead to these acts of violence, and that they create trauma in turn, or that when folks lack resources, it creates an environment where violence is a way of life. Oftentimes, this knowledge stops there. It doesn’t get implemented into the ways that we can address the issue and what we end up with, time and time again, is an over reliance on law enforcement and an inability to meet people where they’re at. An alternative approach referred to as the community violence intervention ecosystem, or CVI ecosystem, looks at the bigger picture to provide resources and help stop violence before it starts. Today, I am honored to sit down with the leaders of three organizations who specialize in this work. First, we have Fatimah Loren Dreier, Executive Director of the Health Alliance for violence intervention, or HAVI, HAVI implements hospital based violence intervention programs to connect injured patients to much needed community based services. We’re also joined by Anthony Smith, executive director of Cities United, which supports a national network of mayors in reducing homicides and shootings among young black men and boys. And finally, we have Aqeela Sherrills with us today. Aqeela is executive director of the community based public safety collective, which builds neighborhood leadership to advance safety, preserve the integrity and tradition of black and brown community interventionist work and ensure equitable access to public funding. Together with David Mohammed, Executive Director of the National Institute for criminal justice reform. These leaders and their teams make up the Coalition to Advance Public Safety, or caps. David, unfortunately, wasn’t able to join us for this conversation, but his work has made a significant impact on the work of CAPS, as well as on this discussion. There is so much to learn from the work they’ve been doing, and I’m so excited for them to be here with us today to show us the way. Welcome to all of you, and thank you so much for carving out the time.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  04:53

Yes, thanks so much for having us.

 

Fatimah Loren Dreier  04:55

And wanted to just say that what Anthony said, and I hope. That over the course of this call and in the world, we shift from being alternatives to being the predominant way the system works, which is why we named ourselves caps, because we’re really trying to be the next level of public safety so.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  05:14

I’m actually going to start with you, because that is exactly where I wanted to start. You read my mind. I’m wondering if you could start broadly explaining the state of community violence, specifically gun violence, who’s most impacted, what are the consequences and outcomes you’re seeing, and then moving into what you just said, historically, how we’ve dealt with it, and the flaws in that approach, and where we need to be headed in the work that you’re doing.

 

Fatimah Loren Dreier  05:40

I’ll kick us off, but we can all give an essay on this. So you may know, and your audience may know, that violence is the leading cause of death for children in the country. That became true in 2021 violence has been the leading cause of death for black boys and men since 1981 and so this has been a pandemic level crisis in our community for a long time, and has been woefully neglected in our national conversation about bringing a health approach instead, the predominant narrative has been a criminal Justice reproach, and the notion is we can arrest and police our way through what is really deep seated issues of systemic racism and neglect from an economic level, from a health level. And that this work, this body of work called community violence intervention, seeks to partner and lead with those who have lived experience to transform the lives of those who are at elevated risk or at the greatest risk of violence because of this systemic and historic neglect, and in doing so, be part of this new system for public safety and that it is shared. It is data driven, but it is focused on our like thriving in our community, as opposed to punitive measures after the fact. It’s how do we address this at its root?

 

Anthony Smith  07:08

Bottom, I hit it right on the head. I think the only piece I would add this is also about, how do you heal communities, and how do you make sure, not only that we can, you know, stop the number of folks who are being harmed by gun violence, but also start that healing process in the community that with those families, so a big part of the work. And you know, as you heard Fatima talk about this after the survivors need to be at the table. Need to be engaged, even the folks who have shot and other folks need to be a part of the solution, right? Because this is about, how do we redeem and heal our communities, and how do we bring all of us back together? And I think one of the big things I want to make sure that you and the audience here that this is not an alternative to public safety. This is public safety, and this is how we define public safety, not only in black and brown communities, but how we believe it should be defined across the country. And really trying to really push this agenda around, this is what keeps communities safe. This is what can we keep communities healthy, and this is what keep our young folks and their families hopeful about what their future can look like, right? Because once you can get past this burden of community violence, you can start seeing alternatives and start seeing better pathways. So really thinking about, how do we redefine and reinvest in what public safety really looks like in this country, so we can start the redemption and the healing of our communities.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  08:27

Aqeela, anything to add to that?

 

Aqeela Sherrills  08:29

I just wanted to add that community violence intervention has been around for 30 years, and they used to call it gang intervention. They used to call it crisis intervention workers. But you know, the practitioners in the field, we defined this work a few years ago as community based public safety, right? The Biden administration, you know, has really turbocharged this work by also languaging that there’s no one solution to violence and law enforcement is not the only solution, you know, to safety in our communities, that we need a both and strategy.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  09:02

Yeah, it’s interesting. I was wanting to ask David about what you’re talking about, the evidence based part of this, the data based part of this, the data that you’re collecting. Can one of you speak to that how you collect the data, how it informs the work that you do, and how it helps you to be most effective?

 

Fatimah Loren Dreier  09:20

We think about data in a couple different ways. What we value, from NIC JRS perspective, is the use of existing police data to understand and develop a problem analysis alongside analysis of the cost for every given homicide and non fatal shooting. This is important because I think as a public we need to message and fully understand what taxpayers are already paying for in terms of the violence that’s happening locally, but also take a look at what is the age range that we see in terms of those who are experiencing violence and may be likely to engage in violence in the future. What does that risk profile look like? That demographic information is actually really essential to building a strategy. So for example, if you know, if I were to develop a strategy and say, well, I’m going to support middle school students in their work and mentorship, that’s a powerful long term investment. But if the people who are engaged in violence today are in their mid 20s, the average age is around 28 that program isn’t having the kind of impact that a program that targets those who are at really high risk today, this is probably really important for your audience to know violence in any given city is very concentrated, certainly around a few neighborhoods, but even within those neighborhoods, majority of the people there are not violent, right of really important to understand that it’s actually A contagion. It’s a network people who were exposed to violence, not surprisingly, if they themselves have been shot, the likelihood that they will engage in violence to resolve disputes increases because of the trauma, and, again, the neglect. So we are talking about, like a fraction of a percent, and that population is who we’re targeting. When we talk about data driven we’re trying to from street knowledge to police data to hospital data. We’re really trying to get at who are those who are at the very, very highest risk. Make sure we’re touching those. Then we can build out additional systems for those who might be close to that problem, but a little bit further out. But we got to start with right those who are at the very, very, very highest risk, and it’s in any given city, it’s not many, right? It’s a very, very small number, but they’re very hard to reach, because they’re not going to traditional places, right? They’re not going to the local YMCA, right, to to play basketball. They’re going other places, and we have to go where they go.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  11:58

I would also add, you know that violence is a public health issue, right? And we know that public health professionals in Africa utilize the public health frame, right, to intervene, to prevent and treat, to essentially eliminate malaria, right? You know, as Fatima just said, you know, violence is not like specific to black people or brown folks in communities, right? You know, violence is a disease, and it’s contagious. When people are traumatized and they don’t get help, it ripples and and it impacts. You know other people. You know, those who are closest in proximity to the violence have to be equipped with the skills, the tools and the resources to do the intervention and prevention and the treatment, right? And so we take that approach by training. You know, ex gang members, ex convicts. You know, you know folks who are involved with youth organizations, training them as public safety professionals and public health professionals, and they engage their folks through a relationship based strategy, leveraging their their relationship capital in communities to prevent retaliatory violence from happening. This work is highly dangerous. We know that that there’s a small percentage, as Fatima said, 2% of the population is producing 80 to 90% of the harm that’s happening in community, right? So we can utilize data today to identify those individuals, right, who have been failed by the system in many cases, and and be able to provide comprehensive support services and wraparound services to support people in their respective healing journey.

 

Anthony Smith  13:24

The only thing I would add to all of what a Keyla and Fatima has talked about is using that data to help us think about how many folks we need working in the ecosystem, right? How many outreach workers do we need? How many interrupters do we need, case managers, victim supporters, and just all of the different areas inside of the ecosystem do we need? But also, how much do we need to invest, right? So we’ve been able to use that data and those numbers to help cities come up with what the true investment needs to be annually, right? So how much do we need to spend to support and to identify, engage and support the folks that we just talked about who are at the highest risk, right? So how do you how do you identify them, how you engage them, and how you support them, because really around how many, how much resources you have, and how do you get those resources. So data is important, not only identifying the issue, but also helping us with making sure we have the right number of resources to get to those folks who are most at risk.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  16:06

The terms you’re using, it’s such a different way to think about it makes so much sense, prevention, intervention, treatment, even using this term CVI ecosystem, I’d love for you to flesh that out a little bit, because I’ve heard you say it a few times. How are you championing this ecosystem? What does that mean to you? What does it look like 30,000 feet, and what does it look like on the ground day to day? Because I know those things aren’t always the same, so I’d love for you each to describe that for me.

 

Anthony Smith  16:53

I’ll let Aqeela kick us off, and then I’ll jump in.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  16:56

So I’ll start with the ground, right in terms of the CVI ecosystem. You know, this work requires like kind of intense coordination and collaboration in order to be effective, right? And to me, the hub of this work is the is the boots on the ground CVI practitioner. You know, if your strategy doesn’t employ residents in the neighborhood, or I like to say Pookie Rahim and Sabrina in them, then you most likely don’t have a CDI strategy that’s going to be effective at, actually, you know, intervening, you know, preventing, treating violence as a public health issue, right? And so, you know, there are multiple intersections where people you know, need to be met. You know, there’s a community, there’s schools, you know, there’s hospitals. You know, when people get harmed, that’s the place they go. Place they go to, right? There’s the Trauma Recovery Center. To utilize an example, you take an organization like the Newark community street team in Newark, New Jersey, who has been extremely successful at supporting this ecosystem in the city of Newark, and having seven consecutive years in a row of decreases of homicide and overall violence, the high risk interventionists are connected to police dispatch and to citizen and to word of mouth. When violence happens in the community, they respond, you know, to the sites. They’re highly trained professionals in conflict resolution, mediation and de escalation strategies. They don’t cross a yellow line. That’s the police’s business, but they collect information and data from residents to know what’s happening. In many cases, they follow the victims and their family to the hospital where there’s a handoff, right because now in Newark, at both Beth, Israel and University Hospital, you have hospital based violence intervention programs. You have community health workers who embedded in a trauma unit their bedside, consenting people to participation in the program and providing wraparound services for the survivor, you know, making sure that they, you know, meeting their doctor’s appointment, that they’re getting, you know, health, education, and that they’re connecting back with that high risk intervention in the field, right? There’s pretty high threshold for arrest and prosecution. And in most cities, if you look at the data around clearance rates with non fatals and homicides, the clearance rates are really, really low, right? And so law enforcement is not always making an arrest. So the community health workers, the high risk interventionists, they develop safety plans. So when Pookie, who was shot in the hospital is transitioning back into the neighborhood where he was shot at, the high risk intervention is already working to mediate that conflict so that he doesn’t get revictimized in our neighborhoods. You know, mental health has, has been stigmatized, you know, because black folks have been experimented on. And so we’re, in many cases, afraid of governmental buildings, and we don’t want to go, you say, mental health services. We’re hitting the opposite direction. So we reframe some of these things. We call them wellness services. And so now the person gets connected with the Trauma Recovery Center where they can get 16 free sessions to support them in a respective healing journey. And so this is how this ecosystem kind of works on the ground, right?

 

Anthony Smith  19:48

Yeah, just to add a little bit, because I think, you know, as Akila talked about, the, you know, the coordination and boots on the ground. You know, Cities United works with cities really helping the mayor and their team really. To learn how to better coordinate and support the CVI ecosystem, how to get funding to the CVI ecosystem, how to have an Office of Community Safety, violence prevention that can really help, kind of like help with the coordination, and really thinking about how the government plays a role in supporting the ecosystem, not directly doing the work, although some governments are, but I think there’s a role for folks to play around coordination of services, right, like wraparound services, not the direct intervention work and outreach work, but really thinking about how city government can better utilize it as resources and the support of the work that’s happening on the ground. So really helping cities, then also a key stakeholder for us as young leaders, young folks, 18 to 24 especially those who live in the communities that are most impacted by community violence, how do you not only support them in understanding the issue, but help them think about how to be a part of right they can be. We’re building a pipeline of young folks who want to work inside of this ecosystem, want to be a part of this ecosystem, but also want to support it. So really just thinking about all of what Aquila said, but how do you put that other structure around it, so that when we start talking about public safety, people understand the real definition and understand that they have a role in it. And some of it is putting more dollars on the table, but some of it is also making sure the wraparound services are there to support when folks are ready for and need those kind of services as they deal with the trauma that they’ve been going through.

 

Fatimah Loren Dreier  21:18

But Aqeela, Anthony said, are all like perfect I’ll just add it’s important to offer some context that while many of these models, street outreach, hospital based violence intervention, has been around for a few decades, it’s really in the last few years that they’ve been funded, and the Biden administration has made a significant investment in federal dollars and to the tune of billions of dollars to support the growth of this sector, after decades again of not having this and so what’s kind of evolved over time is cities would think, okay, we only have a few dollars. Which program should we do the street outreach program or the hospital based violence intervention program? And you know, I equate that to saying I want to build a skyscraper. Do I just use cement or steel beams? Or you would never say that, right? You need all of those ingredients to create something. And our argument is that you as Aqueela, so beautifully laid out, this is a coordinated strategy across a number of access points, across a number of actual approaches to the work that, when they’re working in concert, can produce for a city, significant reductions in violence. This is based on science. This is based on how we understand we use these public health approaches and how we address covid Right when you have someone who is at elevated risk, who’s been exposed, there is a protocol, there is treatment. We are using those same public health principles. In this case, we understand the risk profile of those and especially on the hospital based side, if you’ve been shot, your risk of being shot again goes up 40% right? That’s a significant risk, and the current predominant system of care will leave that person, let them leave the hospital with that elevated risk, with no understanding of how to wrap care around this person to prevent future risk. That is absolutely absurd, given what we know and what we know we can do.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  25:21

How do you measure success in this space? I’d love for any of you to answer, all of you, if you could.

 

Anthony Smith  25:29

Again, I think there’s multiple ways of measuring success. More people are allowed, less shootings as a big form of that. But I think you know, as Fatima started having the conversation around what we want to see these same folks who were most impacted by gun violence start seeing better outcomes from education to employment to housing. So there’s bigger measurements outside of just the number that we all talk about on the day to day. And I think there’s even this ideal of communities feeling more hopeful, feeling more engaged and feeling more part of their bigger city, right? So there’s some measurements that you can’t get, but it’s successful, because you then see a community thriving, the way that foctamon Aquila has described it along this conversation. So there’s some things that you can measure up front from one we all look at homicide and shooting data on the daily right, we were looking for cities who were working in who are seeing reductions, so that we can continue to point to this is where success is happening. But then you want to start looking upstream and looking at making sure that as we do this work over the next 10 years, we can actually get to a place where we don’t need as a big of a CVI ecosystem, right? We don’t need as many police, right? So, I mean, there’s just a lot of different ways to measure success, but I think it all starts with the number of lives that we can save, the number of folks who are connected to resources, and the number of people who start buying into this new approach is also another measure of success. I think we’ve got to shift the mental models of what public safety is, and the more we can do that, the more folks are seeing this is not just alternative, but as the alternative, I think, is how I would start that conversation, as we think about success. But I’m sure there’s other ways that we can measure success that I know Akila, if I can join in with.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  27:13

I’ll jump in and say our current systems are of measuring like kind of safety in communities are antiquated and outdated. Honestly. I mean, you could make numbers say anything, you know what I’m saying, and they do, you know, they switch up the numbers. They change, they redefine, you know, what’s aggravated assault versus a regular assault? Like these things happen all the time in order to play with numbers, right? So it’s important that you do both qualitative, like, kind of evaluations and studies, as well as, like, quantitative you know, a lot of people feel like qualitative research is not rigor. It’s not true. You know, it’s important to understand relationships, you know, between people and in services and support like those things are important. They inform the numbers, right? And so we’re huge fans of participatory research, right? You know, because evidence based research traditionally has perpetuated structural violence in our community because we’re not able to participate in first, second and third position in these studies, you know, our communities have been studied ad nauseam, you know. And and what happens is that the research is then taken to other neighborhoods, and they’re like, Hey, we implemented this in your neighborhood, and now it worked extracting all of our genius and best, you know, ideas and practices and everything, and then somebody else owns it, right? And so this is why it’s important that we also have like kind of participatory models, you know, in which we can collect data and we can participate, not just as subjects, but as owners of our own data and also of our own stories, right? One of our also our measures for success, is that we want to see our practitioners make more money, because this work is dangerous, you know, so that they can support themselves and their families.

 

Fatimah Loren Dreier  28:52

Yeah, you’ve asked a challenging question, because I think people would be shocked to know how willfully ill equipped our systems are for our understanding of violence as it’s happening in our communities. And as I said, we’re not able to marshal the wisdom of those who are doing this work on the front lines every day, because our systems aren’t talking to one another. So let me give an example, if you wanted today, Stephanie to understand what violence has happened in the country? The only resource you have is a website that is rented by a PhD who realized that no one had this information, and he’s sourcing it from the media, from media reports and any other data he can get his hands on. He just lays out his methodology. This is the gun violence Data Archive. That’s the only place you can go. The CDCs report on gun violence comes out over a year and a half in the rears. So we only have the update of the violence problem that happened over a year ago. That is. Not going to get us where we’re going. So our infrastructure is really weak. Rand did this analysis and found that for every death in this country, if think about the dollar spent to prevent the next death, okay, violence is one of the it is the lowest, $63 to prevent the next death for HIV, it’s $180,000 to prevent the next step. So with that kind of investment, we are nowhere near where we need to be to create the infrastructure we’re talking about. So we’ve developed things like the CVI ecosystem, website, CVIecosystem.org, to begin to right size, what cities, states and the federal government needs to invest in the places that need them most when they need them annually, right in order to address the problem, at minimum, just the starting place. The more you invest, the more you see decline, right? That is true, but they have to be invested correctly in the right things. And we’ve, I think, shared here what we mean when we say these relationship based driven by data identifying those at the elevated risk, as well as some upstream interventions to ensure that we’re supporting an overall ecosystem.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  31:27

This work is so incredibly important and and you’ve been so clear today on why we need it and how much work there’s left to do. So I want our listeners to support this as much as humanly possible. You told us your website. Thank you so much. But what else can we do? How can our listeners get involved? Give us some marching orders on how we can all support the work you’re doing, because it’s incredible work.

 

Fatimah Loren Dreier  31:55

I think it’s a great question, because we do need more supporters in this work, we need more people going to our respective websites. By, you know, we mentioned our joint website, but the HAVI at the HAVI.org but we have a lot of advocacy to do. We need people from all walks of life saying, I demand a CVI ecosystem in my city. How is it that we don’t have this critical set of of work as the fundamental structure? I would I would never sit still if I knew that there were no schools in my community, right? I wouldn’t sit still if there weren’t a hospital, right? Because we need those things. We need a CVI ecosystem in the ways that we need schools and hospitals, they are fundamental and and we need every people who may not be aware to be aware, to educate themselves about what this is, and raise their voices. I think that’s really, really critical, and particularly for sustained funding. We have a number of strategies to achieve that. We’re very excited about, kind of a range of things I’ll share one which is something my organization’s working on, is using our current health insurance infrastructure, and particularly Medicaid, to reimburse for violence prevention services. My organization was instrumental in making violence prevention professional, those credible messengers that we’ve been talking about with lived experience, Pookie Rahim and all that, right, they are in the code of who a healthcare worker is, just like a doctor and a nurse, they’re there, okay, and now, just like a doctor and nurse, we’re working state by state to get them reimbursed that they can build their services forever, just like a doctor and nurse, doctor doesn’t wake up and wonder if He’s going to have resources to fund his work. He gets to wake up and do that work. He or she gets to wake up and do that work. And likewise with violence prevention professionals. We’re making this we’re going to make this permanent. It’s not just grant funded. It is a part of the system. It’s a never ending resource. It’s an abundant resource.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  34:19

Love that, Anthony.

 

Anthony Smith  34:21

Yeah, all of that, yeah, all of what was just said. But I think, you know, cityunited.org is how you can go find out more about city united and support us. But I think the most pressing piece is the piece around identifying and understanding who’s doing this work in your city, and make sure you support them. There’s a number of organizations who are always looking for resources, looking for supporters, and making sure that you are as you can write a check to them, but also support them and helping them with their infrastructure. If you got infrastructure background you want to sit on the board, folks can always use you on their board, because this work is local, right? This is about how you make sure that this is placed. Strategies, and we need folks thinking about it in their place. Last thing I will say is that, you know, budget cycle comes every year. Go to your city council and say to your council members that this is an important piece that needs to be in the budget. It needs to be a permanent piece in the budget. It needs to be resourced at the right amount in the city. Needs to make an investment in it. So we got to make sure that our mayors, our council members, our city managers, and all those folks who help run our cities, understand that the public wants this. And I think I don’t know your listening audience, but I do think there needs to be folks who don’t look like the three of us having that conversation with their elected officials. They expected from me. So when I come they can tune me out. But if I can get more white men and white women, just to be 100% honest with you and folks who don’t live in these communities, to say, this is a resource that we value, that we want to support, I think that’s a big win, too. And our last thing I was saying, I think it’s one of the things Fatima said, is that go read and learn. There’s so much out in the field about CVI right now, the community violence intervention, that you should not be in the dark. There’s been too many papers, too much research, and too many things that have been put out over the last few years that can really help you get a better understanding of what this is. And I think if you see this and you understand it, you would understand that this is the same safety infrastructure that you want for your family, that we’re asking for, for our families and our community that we love and care for so I think those are ways that folks can really be helpful.

 

Aqeela Sherrills  36:32

And I would say CVPS collective, the communitybasedpublicsafetycollective.org is our website, lots of information there. Call out one of the reports that we actually produced a few years back. It’s called redefining public safety in America, in which we talked to about 20 of the key thought leaders around CVI in the country. We list their organizations, like the budgets, like what they do, and then also we pulled out stories and everything you know from some of the practitioners on the ground in the city to talk about, like, kind of why this work is important, and how and how it works, right? Just to echo, you know what both Anthony and Fatima shared, that, you know, money talks to money family, we need money to fail with straight up, failures are prerequisite for success, and we are investing far too little money in this work. You know, philanthropy has played a significant role in this movement in terms of seeding and incubating innovation, right? So that we can do our proof of concept and then be able to take this work, as Anthony said, to our to our municipal governments, and have them to fund this work through the general fund, right? So much of this work has been turbocharged by the Biden administration through ARPA funds, right? Make a specific designations for CVI in Newark. You know, the mayor put out about $20 million in ARPA funds to support his community based violence infrastructure. However, those dollars run out in 25 we need appropriators to understand that this work works, you know, and that that we have evidence, you know, and don’t make us jump to 1000 hoops, you know, to try to prove ourselves over and over again. Because we want to ask you also, like, hey, give it $300 billion you know, to law enforcement, where’s the evidence there, right? So, so there needs to be some balance, like, straight up. And so, you know, if you’re not comfortable talking to us like, you know, like Anthony was saying, please reach out, you know what I’m saying to to to our philanthropic partners, you know, who, who are, who are investing in this work, and say, hey, you know, where are you investing? You know, maybe we’ll take this angle. We’ll take that side, you know. And so the more support that we can get, you know, in terms of helping to to, you know, make this proof of concept like in terms of building ecosystems and city through caps, you know, work, I think the more you know, safety that we can create in our respective communities across the country.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  39:01

Well, I am going to hop off this call and email my city council, my mayor and my city manager, and demand to know where our ecosystem is they, I have them on speed dial. I excited to have something else to yell at them about.

 

Anthony Smith  39:20

Please do let us know how that goes.

 

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  39:22

I will, I will. Thank you all so much for coming. This was such an enlightening and hopeful conversation. I’m so thrilled that our listeners can be able to hear it. So thanks for giving us your time today.

 

Anthony Smith  39:33

Thank you for having us, Stephanie. Appreciate it.

 

CREDITS  39:38

What inspiring, extraordinary work they are doing. Thank you to the coalition to advance public safety for making this conversation possible. To learn more about the CVI ecosystem and the individual organizations at work in the coalition, visit www.cviecosystem.org.