Ras Baraka says the city has had double-digit percentage reductions in violent crime.
,” Mayor David Holt of Oklahoma City and I co-chair the group of 23 mayors and council members from cities as large as Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., to cities as small as Ridgeland, Miss., and Centerville, Minn.Set out a 21st-century public safety agenda for America’s communities;
Real-time data and mapping of incidents, allow cities to respond not only with law enforcement strategies but by blanketing trouble spots with “credible messengers,” who are necessary partners with police in crime reduction. , which was on the drawing board before George Floyd’s murder inspired a national conversation about defunding the police. We moved quickly to get it up and running, with hopes other cities would see a solution that was not about defunding but using public safety funds to build a different-looking public safety ecosystem.
None of this was easy and it took us six or seven years to create an ecosystem to strengthen relationships between our community and police. NLC mayors understand this. We all want immediate results but developing a deep bench of credible messengers takes commitment and time.At our meeting, Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston-Broome said her city saw a 23% decrease in homicides. St. Louis, represented at our meeting by Mayor Tishaura Jones, had 67 fewer homicides in 2022 than it did in 2020.