A New Approach

We need to invest in a different vision of safety for Durham.

BY JAVIERA CABALLERO AND JILLIAN JOHNSON backtalk@indyweek.com

No matter who we are or where we’re from, we all want to feel safe. But over the holidays, our community experienced multiple shootings, including a horrific mass shooting on New Year’s Day that injured five people. Our hearts are with the victims, their loved ones, and every single person who has been impacted by gun violence. Everyone deserves to feel safe in our city. That’s why we need unprecedented investments in real community safety.

Historically, our society’s vision of safety has been tied solely to policing and incarceration. This needlessly narrow approach doesn’t even begin to meet all of our community’s needs. The ShotSpotter technology’s failure to notify police of the mass shooting on New Year’s Day is only the latest example of this failed strategy. Across the country, communities are beginning to broaden their vision of safety to include resources like food and housing and programs to prevent violence and intervene during emergencies. Durham has led the way, developing alternatives to policing like nonprofit Bull City United’s violence interrupters and the Durham Community Safety Department’s Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART).

In conversations with neighbors over the years, we have heard consistent calls for community-led safety initiatives. Bull City United focuses on preventing violence at its source. Outreach workers and violence interrupters connect with people and help them find jobs, education, and other services. They also provide a needed space of understanding and empathy for people in high-risk communities in order to mediate conflict before any violence happens.

Complementing Bull City United’s focus on violence prevention, HEART provides an alternative for interventions when emergencies do occur. Durham neighbors experiencing mental health crises or other quality-of-life emergencies deserve to be met with a clinician trained to help them rather than with armed police. In the seven months that HEART has been taking 911 calls, the program has responded to nearly 3,000 of these incidents, either in conjunction with police or independently. Their community response team diverted nearly 70 percent of the calls that they received from the police to trained clinical social workers. The success of the program is evident—from national recognition to neighbors who have seen the day-to-day impact and have asked us when HEART will be accessible to them. The Durham community understands that when they or a loved one are dealing with a mental health crisis, they need trained responders who will treat them with care.

We have two choices ahead of us: we can continue funneling the majority of our money to carceral “solutions,” or we can invest in nonviolent community-based programs that address this historic moment and the full spectrum of our community’s needs. HEART and Bull City United are proven approaches that we know are effective. We strongly support significant investments in HEART so that all community members can access it 24/7, increased city funding for Bull City United to expand to four additional census tracts, and increased 911 operator pay. Just as important are investments that improve our residents’ quality of life: affordable housing so people can stay in Durham; education to better engage and enrich our youth; infrastructure so our neighbors can walk, bike, and take transit through the city; and more.

We know that alternatives to policing are effective— but it will take all of us to muster the political will to fully implement them. We’ve heard widespread support for these programs from parents, small business owners, and residents from all walks of life. We have an opportunity to build a different vision of safety in Durham: one that meets our neighbors where they are instead of criminalizing them. We just need to invest in it. W

Jillian Johnson and Javiera Caballero are at-large members of the Durham City Council.