LA City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez announces public safety initiative for trauma-informed training

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez held a press conference Monday with the City of Los Angeles's Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office to announce a public safety initiative. 

The Project TURN initiative will bolster the capacity of community intervention workers, or employees who are trauma-informed, giving them more training. 

The initiative is to enhance unarmed models built on trust and cultural competency. There are currently over 100 community intervention workers in LA. 

Workers like Eddie Williams live in Watts and are often called out to the scene of a shooting, or a stabbing even before the police. His unarmed response is an alternative to policing and is all built on community trust. 

"When police respond, my main duty is to calm the crowd, get information and take back to crowd," said Williams. "I'm like a buffer." 

Rodriguez said that the community intervention workers help prevent retaliatory violence, reducing the need for officers to engage in the neighborhoods. Ideally, the workers find out information from community members, and handle the situation long before police need to arrive.

"That's the whole point, is that we want to avoid the crisis before we're in one," Rodriguez said.

The effectiveness of Project TURN will in part be determined by how successful the workers continue to be in de-escalating situations, according to Rodriguez. The program kicked off immediately on Monday, beginning with a three-day trauma informed training with an initial cohort of community intervention workers.

Bobby Arias, president of San Fernando Valley-based Champions in Service, said that the LAPD is aware of and supports the community intervention strategy. But he said that the workers "can't be perceived by the community as snitches," since they have to work with those in the neighborhood.

"These folks are born and bred in their respective neighborhoods," said Aqeela Sherrills, co-founder of the Community Based Public Safety Collective. "They know the terrain. They know the families ... They'll have more intelligence in terms of what's happening in the street than law enforcement will ever have."

The program was launched with $2.2 million in city funding.