Justice Department taps LISC to help reduce crime and engage residents with police in poor communities

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Obama Administration is stepping up its efforts to tackle crime in some of the country's toughest neighborhoods.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is providing more than $7 million in new funding to programs that integrate community safety into broad neighborhood revitalization efforts in 17 urban and rural areas.

The grants are part of the Justice Department's Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) program, which also awarded nearly $2 million to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to support BCJI work on the ground. This is the third consecutive year that LISC was tapped to coach grantees, drawing on the national nonprofit's community safety model, which is being replicated in more than 50 neighborhoods across the country.

"Crime doesn't happen in a vacuum," said Julia Ryan, director of LISC's Community Safety Initiative. "To make our streets safer, we need to deal with everything from boarded up buildings to job loss to troubled schools. That's as true in small towns and tribal communities as it is in the urban core of our largest cities. "

The 2014 BCJI grants include six "planning and Implementation" awards of up to $1 million each to help communities put carefully designed strategies into action.   Another 11 communities won grants of $100,000 each to help local leaders develop new plans.  All are focused not just on crime as an isolated issue, but on how it connects to other critical quality-of-life challenges facing poor communities.

Earlier this year Attorney General Eric Holder pointed to the importance of this approach at LISC's community safety forum at the Ford Foundation. "As a result of your work, all across the country, more and more cities and towns are relying on data-driven reform strategies to reduce crime, reverse blight, and create better outcomes," he told an audience of police and community advocates.  "We must continue to do everything in our power to ensure that improvement in one area is not undermined by problems or inattention in another."

In Flint, Mich., for instance, Kettering University is leading a collaborative effort to improve the University Avenue Corridor—home to some of the city's largest employers and anchor institutions but also plagued by poverty, blight and high crime.

DOJ awarded Kettering and its partners a $1 million BCJI grant for their plan to connect 16 law enforcement and security organizations to university researchers, local nonprofits and residents in a comprehensive effort to raise standards of living.  LISC has been working with the group on its overall strategy around housing, economic development and community safety. The new BCJI grant extends that effort.

"We know we can't arrest our way out of high crime," said Dean Esserman, chief of police for the city of New Haven and a member of LISC's national board of directors. "We need a more realistic approach.  When we connect law enforcement to the individuals, businesses and organizations that have a stake in a neighborhood, then we can change the outlook for troubled places in significant ways."

Esserman was among the earliest law enforcement advocates of LISC's comprehensive community development approach to fighting crime, dating back to his leadership of the Providence Police Department, where he was chief from 2003-11.  Now at the helm of New Haven's police department, he is playing a central role in the city's $1 million BCJI grant for 2014, which will help tackle critical issues in the Newhallville neighborhood.

In Newark, a $100,000 planning grant will help a coalition led by the Urban League of Essex County develop strategies to address crime in a 40 square block area spanning the Fairmount community in Newark's West Ward.  Murders there have increased by 120 percent in recent years, and the number of other violent and property crimes have grown as well.  The Urban League is partnering with the Newark Police Department, the Fairmount Heights Neighborhood Association, the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies and Greater Newark LISC on efforts to study the problem and implement a plan for change.

The Justice Department this year is also focusing on helping small rural communities.   In Clarksdale, Miss., the Coahoma County Sheriff's Office is targeting crime in collaboration with local police, school leaders, residents, the AARP and Southern Bancorp Community Partners—LISC's partner on comprehensive community development in the area. A new $100,000 grant from BCJI will help them develop a plan to address the gangs and gun-running that have decimated Clarksdale's Brickyard neighborhood.

"Community safety affects us all, regardless of geography," LISC's Ryan said.  "These programs address the fundamental need to live in a safe, healthy community where there are the kind of homes, schools, jobs, parks, and shops that offer residents the chance to live well."

All told, BCJI now supports programs in 46 communities with nearly $31 million in grants.  For the full list of BCJI sites visit www.lisc.org/bcji.

About LISC
LISC combines corporate, government and philanthropic resources to help nonprofit community development corporations revitalize distressed neighborhoods. Since 1980, LISC has invested $13.8 billion to build or rehab 310,000 affordable homes and apartments and develop 51 million square feet of retail, community and educational space. For more, visit www.lisc.org.

Contact: Julia Ryan, LISC program director
212-455-1618 or [email protected]

SOURCE LISC