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Building What We Need: Lessons from Elected Leaders on Community-Centered Safety

By Cierren Edmondson, Policy Associate

As part of our ongoing efforts to support equitable and community-centered public safety solutions, the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) hosted a webinar titled “Building What We Need: Lessons from Elected Leaders on Community-Centered Safety.” This conversation brought together elected leaders and experts from the field to share lessons learned, highlight promising practices, and explore strategies for creating sustainable, community and public health based safety systems. 

The webinar was part of the broader Unlocking Democracy initiative, which includes the Elected Leaders Council (ELC), a space for elected officials and their staff to learn from each other and build capacity to champion community-centered safety strategies, and our Learning Communities, where interdisciplinary teams collaborate to implement, sustain, and evaluate community safety programs that focus on a public health and social support response. Redesigning public safety requires both strong programmatic solutions and committed elected leaders. By fostering collaboration between these groups, the ELC aims to support the successful implementation and long-term sustainability of community safety strategies that prioritize care, health, and well-being. 

Key Themes from the Spring 2025 ELC Listening Sessions

As part of the Spring 2025 cohort, CPE hosted a series of listening sessions with elected officials and their staff to better understand the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned by elected officials working to shift public safety paradigms and advance holistic community safety strategies in their jurisdictions. 

A number of promising practices emerged from the listening sessions, including: 

  • Thoughtful decision-making about which government or community entities should house community safety programs to ensure proper alignment and support.
  • Cross-agency collaboration to streamline operations and maximize community resources. 
  • Strategic messaging and communication to build public trust and understanding of community safety programs that serve as alternatives to traditional law-enforcement-first response. 

Participants also identified significant challenges, including: 

  • Challenges with dispatch coordination and effectively routing calls and establishing triage protocols, leading to longer response times and delays in program implementation. 
  • Data collection and evaluation limitations that hinder efforts to assess program impact, demonstrate effectiveness, and secure long-term support. 
  • Sustaining community and political support, especially in the face of competing demands, transitions in political leadership, and skepticism about the efficacy of community-centered and public health-based approaches. 
  • Workforce shortages, particularly among behavioral health professionals and community-based responders, which limits service hours and offerings. 
  • Precarious and insufficient funding that puts programs at risk for being scaled back or even shut down. 

Insights from the Field: Strategies for Change 

In addition to the insights from our listening sessions, the webinar featured speakers who brought diverse perspectives and practical solutions to these identified challenges from their work across the country and in their respective communities. Their experiences offered a closer look at how communities are putting theory into practice and overcoming barriers to successfully implement and sustain community-centered safety public safety programs. 

Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, current Culver City Councilmember and former mayor, spoke about her advocacy for a Community Violence Intervention (CVI) program and expanding local crisis response options. 

“I’m so proud of the creation of our Culver City Mobile Crisis Team (MCT) – launched in 2024 (plans began in 2021). Our MCT responds to mental health crises and provides necessary support, referrals, and transport. The team will soon expand to Mon-Sun 10am-10pm to meet the needs of our housed and unhoused neighbors. This team has expanded our community’s understanding of safety and allowed us more tools in our toolbelt to support all our neighbors’ needs.“

Brian Tashman, Deputy Director of Vera Action, shared findings from their public opinion polling around messaging about holistic public safety strategies. 

“When you try to change the way people are thinking about an issue, we know that the backlash comes. We know that often people are really disturbed by change and they try to instill fear, cause people to feel a certain way about your programs, and misrepresent what you’re trying to do. So we’ve tried to create playbooks for folks to fight back against backlash and neutralize some of the most common attacks. We want to help them understand how to defeat some of these really awful attacks—not just try to avoid them; not just try to duck them or change the conversation—but to really go head on. And often, it’s through continuing to own a really affirmative agenda on safety.“

Gantry Fox and Raquel Romans-Henry from Salvation and Social Justice discussed the development of their restorative justice hub and how they engage residents in shaping crisis response efforts. Their work emphasizes the importance of centering community voices and building long-term trust.

“Philanthropists who truly want to promote welfare and save the lives of the most impacted by issues like gun violence, mental health and substance misuse, are needed now more than ever given this federal administration change and the funding cuts. It’s critically important for philanthropy to not just give the dollars to the largest organizations, but to also give to the grassroots organizations who are on or boots on the ground or who do this work every day. When you’re a small, grassroots organization, your portfolio is sometimes dependent on one or two funding sources, and ultimately, you’re one bad move or one poor relationship or one extinct relationship away from no longer being in business. So I would definitely implore philanthropists to look at it that way and also donate those dollars to smaller organizations.”

“In my experience, you can have all the numbers in the world, and policymakers will still say, “who cares?” And so it becomes incredibly important to ensure that you are capturing the voices and the testimonies of people who are getting support on the ground. Not just merely documenting it, but also bringing them into those hearing rooms, and making sure that lawmakers are hearing from them directly. That’s the part of the work that I enjoy the most; working with community members to craft those testimonies and really connecting the dots between the data and what’s happening to them in a real way—and then using that to justify the work as we seek continued state support.”

The lessons from the ELC listening sessions and webinar speakers point to several clear implications for the field:

  • Build trust and understanding: Programs must pair compelling data with stories that reflect lived experience and speak to the value of community-centered and public health-based approaches.
  • Foster cross-sector collaboration: Success hinges on partnership across government agencies, nonprofits, healthcare systems, and communities. 
  • Expand technical and financial support: More targeted technical assistance, especially around dispatch coordination, messaging, data collection and evaluation, is needed. Additionally, research partnerships and philanthropic investment can help offset public funding limitations and public budget constraints.  

Redesigning Public Safety Requires Collaborative Work

The work of transforming public safety is ongoing, and elected leaders are critical to its success. By listening, learning, and leading, they are working to build the foundation for an equitable and compassionate future. 

To learn more, watch the full webinar recording here and view our companion resource. Together, we can ensure that elected leaders have the knowledge, tools, and support they need to drive meaningful change in their communities. 

CPE Crisis Response Resources

Panelist Resources

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