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partnering
with
communities

How We Partner with Communities

Unlocking Safety offers, amplifies, and advocates for solutions that center the expertise, priorities, and safety of Black and brown communities. Through our community engagement work, Unlocking Safety is focused on undoing the impact of White Supremacy and placing power in the hands of those most impacted by inequitable public safety systems. 

We work collaboratively with vulnerable communities to provide partnerships, products, and services that support their advocacy efforts, reduce harm done to their communities, and empower them to redesign their public safety systems.

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David Wilson City of West Hollywood City Manager

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s West Hollywood Station and the City of West Hollywood Release of their Justice Navigator Assessment: “We are deeply appreciative of the work that [Unlocking Safety] is doing to highlight racial disparities in interactions where they may exist. The effort of examining such disparities builds upon decades of proactive work that the City of West Hollywood has led with the LASD West Hollywood Station to ensure that law enforcement in our community is effective, responsive, and connected to the city’s core value of respect and support for all people.”

Serena Muhammad Deputy Director of the
St. Louis Mental Health Board

St. Louis Redesigns Public Safety: "You often hear about disproportionate impact or bias or how some communities experience policing differently than other communities. [Unlocking Safety’s] ability to document that is important."

Christine Elow Police Commissioner for the City of Cambridge Police Department

Cambridge Police Launches New Procedural Justice Dashboard: “The investment made into and launch of the Procedural Justice Dashboard is one of the many important strategic priorities we have recently made to drive real, long-lasting change to policing in [the City of] Cambridge. This is another step in our continued journey as a premier 21st century police department.”

Ellen McDonnell Contra Costa County Public Defender

Contra Costa County Public Defender's Office Comprehensive Study: “Our collaboration with [Unlocking Safety] will enable us to develop more robust data collection capacity to use the Racial Justice Act to challenge the racial biases our clients experience at every stage of the criminal legal system. We are excited about this cutting-edge partnership which will also improve our office’s holistic community defense practices.”

Using Science To Partner with Communities

The challenge of redesigning public safety systems can, at times, feel insurmountable, especially for communities traditionally left out of the conversation and with limited access to the data necessary to understand the disparities that affect them or the resources to realize change.

Unlocking Safety uses science – the throughline in all we do – to take bold action and foster community-led public safety redesign efforts. We use various peer-reviewed research and evaluation processes to analyze and support the development of new and refined approaches to policing, community health, and economic well-being.

This work is grounded in the science of public safety redesign, including research into and evaluation of the social determinants of community safety and health. All of our programs and initiatives center Black communities, and our products and resources are developed in such a way as to make the science of public safety redesign more transparent, accessible, and impactful.

programs

Community Up

Community Up is designed to support community members interested in building equitable public safety systems that can exist beyond the burden and trauma of racist policing. This program provides data-driven insights that make policing’s most persistent problems easy to see, equipping community members with resources to advance their grassroots public safety work. Community Up is both a program and a space through which activists and policymakers can ideate, support one another, and advance public safety research and policy.

UNLOCKING DEMOCRACY

Unlocking Democracy is a community empowerment program and the central hub for Unlocking’s Safety community-centered resources, initiatives, and interactive working groups. This program is designed to support stakeholders seeking to build more equitable public safety systems through various learning communities, adaptive community resource hubs, and more.

Learning communities
and data
connection

Unlocking Safety and The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center hosted Learning Communities for Policing Alternatives, addressing pressing public safety issues in Black communities. The initiative provided support and tools for implementing evidence-led interventions, documenting outcomes, and effectively using data in storytelling. Stay tuned for upcoming programming from Unlocking Safety.

Featured Resources

Resource LIBRARY

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