Three Takeaways From Our Interview With Mayor Baraka
If there is a shortlist of mayors in America who could be considered the architects of the effort to build a modern public safety infrastructure, that list certainly would include Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey (and a 2026 candidate for New Jersey Governor).
Under Baraka’s decade-long tenure as mayor, Newark established an Office of Violence Prevention, and designed a comprehensive framework that takes a public health lens to gun violence reduction. It seems to be working. Violent crime, including homicides, are at the lowest point in modern history in Newark.
There’s also an ecosystem of community safety programs, including long standing community-based and hospital-based violence intervention; homelessness outreach; and mental health crisis care. There’s a network of community organizations that work closely with the city to provide services and treatment. And there’s an academic partnership that is actively evaluating and publishing data on how these programs are performing.
Safer Cities interviewed Mayor Baraka about Newark’s approach to public safety, what other local leaders can learn from Newark’s experience, and his vision for how these innovative approaches can scale from Newark to other cities across New Jersey—and the country.
Here are our top three takeaways:
1. Violence As A Public Health Issue. Bringing Along The Skeptics.
Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy declared that gun violence is a public health crisis. The political currency of the concept has risen steadily in the intervening months.
The idea is nothing new for Mayor Baraka, who has championed the idea of treating violence as a public health issue throughout his decade as Newark’s mayor. Indeed, the city’s Strategic Gun Violence Reduction Plan now specifically “envisions a city where violence is approached from a public health perspective.”
We asked Mayor Baraka how he would respond not to fans of the public health approach, but to local leaders who remain skeptical. For some, the idea feels too squishy. For others, the concept sounds like you aren’t serious about crime, and for others it sounds like a way to minimize the importance of traditional law enforcement. How do you explain to skeptics what it means for violence to be treated as a public health issue and why the public health lens is a smart way to spend resources to reduce shootings and murders?
In his words …
The Proof Is In The Pudding. “We have a 60 year reduction in homicide in our city, right? So we haven't had this low homicides in the city since John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States.”
“I think ultimately, when people see wins and gains like we’ve seen in Newark, it starts to become more evident to policy makers. It’s becoming more evident to police brass.”
“First, people become more tolerant of it, and then they use [the framework and tools] more and more, and then they begin to actually incorporate it into their daily practices.”Taking a step back, though: “Public health combined with public safety has worked for a very long time. Car crashes, seat belts, reducing communicable diseases. Violence is the exact same thing."
“There have been epidemic proportions of violence in specific communities in America for a very, very long time. [For example,] the leading cause of death for young Black men is homicide. The kind of trauma that creates this kind of violence begets more trauma and has generational effects.”
“So, [compared to traditional lenses through which to view crimes] such as crimes of opportunity or crimes of passion, the public health lens is a more sustainable response to crime and violence because it takes seriously the trauma and other root causes that shape how much crime exists in a specific community.”
2. What City Leaders Need To Know When Crafting A More Comprehensive Approach To Public Safety.
The Benefit Goes Both Ways—Civilian Responders Ease The Burden For Law Enforcement, And Law Enforcement Can Help Civilian Responders Do Their Jobs Better, Too. “When other cities were exploding because of George Floyd's [murder], places like Newark didn't [explode] because of the whole holistic infrastructure that we have here. [The comprehensive, public health centered approach changes the] culture of the city [and it] also changes police strategy and begins to make you more effective in policing in your city because you have insight, not just eyesight.”
Take, for example, the relationship between the CVI team, housed in the Office of Violence Prevention, and the police department. Newark was one of the first cities in the country to launch a community violence intervention team, and it's now celebrating its 10-year anniversary. Mayor Baraka told us that the CVI program “deserves a robust amount of credit” for the dramatic decline in violent crime and homicides in particular. Researchers at UCLA agree, finding in a 2020 study that the program “effectively decreased crime” while also “increasing community trust as well as public safety.”
While the police were skeptical in the early phase of the program, today, the “police give the Office of Violence Prevention the data and show them where hot spots are in the city so the [CVI team] can respond … not just a police response, but a community response, [and] the expectation [from police is] that they [the CVI team] actually show up there.”
The CVI team: “Help de-escalate the situation; help with people's children whose father or mother have been victims of violence or perpetrators of violence; and help kids who have had a cycle of violence or arrest, handing them off to organizations that are associated with the Office of Violence Prevention.”
“Police begin to work like that, then it is proof and evident that they begin to take this seriously.”Data And Access to Academic Partners Can Refine Your Strategy—And Improve Public Safety. Take, for example, “Rutgers University [which houses the] Newark Public Safety Collaborative. They have practitioners and professors working on compiling and disaggregating data for us."
“They've [found that] communities that have more lighting versus other communities that don’t have lighting have a significant reduction in violent crime. So we began a strategy [of] lighting up some of our hotspots.”
“We've actually worked with PSE&G [the utility company] to get some of the community stores where violence happens in front of the most [Rutgers identified 10 to 15 outliers] … extra lighting outside of their stores as well. We work with them to make sure lights are on in communities.”
“The data shows that if there's more lighting in the area, the violent crime was reduced by almost 30%, by the way. So that was amazing to us, that's low hanging fruit. We needed to jump on that immediately."
3. Are Community Safety Departments The Future?
Newark isn’t the only city that’s leading the way on developing a modern public safety infrastructure. For example, three years ago, Albuquerque—under Mayor Tim Keller’s leadership—launched the country’s first “Community Safety Department.”
The Albuquerque Community Safety Department houses the city’s civilian responder teams and is a co-equal branch of public safety along with the police department. The department is structured like a police department with different divisions, each with trained teams that respond to specific situations from behavioral health crises to substance use, homelessness, and even parking disputes. New recruits go through a training academy just like police cadets would go to the police academy. And there are officially branded team uniforms and vehicles. In sum, it all looks, feels, and is institutionalized within the city’s public safety landscape.
We asked Mayor Baraka if he could imagine, say, 25 years from now, a world where nearly all cities across the country have a community safety department, just like they have a police department or a fire department?
Looking Beyond Newark: “Yes, I do …. whether it’s what we’re doing in Newark to incorporate [a broad array of programs and services] into a larger public safety strategy, or it’s what they're doing in Albuquerque, which is a novel and incredible idea to have a separate [community safety] department.”
Moreover, if elected Governor, Baraka said he’d take “an aggressive approach” to help the strategy that’s worked so well in Newark “spread across the state.”
“It is time for us to understand that this is the way forward … Look, the President of the United States has an Office of Violence Prevention now. It’s important for people to begin to embrace [these ideas] and be creative.”A Legacy Worth Building. Mayor Baraka told Safer Cities that he “absolutely” wants his work to envision and build what modern public safety looks like from the ground up to be a major piece of his professional legacy.
