DETROIT — In Detroit, a city with similar challenges as Cleveland, local leaders are having success with a program that funds community-run organizations to prevent crime, and they’re encouraging other cities to look at their model.
“We know it’s working,” Detroit’s Interim Police Chief Todd Bettison said. “You know, the data shows us that it is working.”
One of the groups getting city funding is New Era Detroit, which Zeek Williams founded in 2014 with the goal of building up historically-disinvested, Black communities through direct outreach and community programming.
The group, which now has chapters across the country, including Cleveland, offers resources for everything from financial literacy to self defense, and they do armed street patrols to prevent crime.
"People know that if something happened in the community that they can depend on us to be able to stand up and put it all on the line for our people,” Williams said.
Bettison, a 27-year police veteran, spent much of his time as an officer working with groups like New Era to keep Detroit safe.
“Community violence interrupters, radio patrol coming together to address whatever the concern was in the neighborhood,” he said.
When he became Deputy Mayor in 2023, Bettison said he wanted to build on that connection between community and police. So, alongside program administrator Mike Peterson, Bettison helped launch a Community Violence Intervention (CVI) program that year.
It earmarked $10 million of the city’s pandemic relief dollars for six local violence prevention groups that had been doing the work for years, including New Era Detroit.
“These groups will tell you, whether these dollars are here or not, there's something within them that has them doing this work. So, it is it's a calling to them to go and do everything they can to keep their community as safe as possible.”
The pilot assigns each group a three to five square mile area in the city’s most violent neighborhoods, and pays them $700,000 over the course of the year to reduce crime.
Every three months, the city assesses the violent crime rate in those six areas compared to the year before. Groups that reduce crime in their areas by significant amounts can get bonuses up to $175,000 from the city each quarter.
“It's not money to go out and buy new cars, something like that,” Bettison said. “These groups are motivated to reduce violence. They get a chance to grow and reinvest back in what they do.”
Just one year into the program, city data shows CVI areas saw reductions in crime on par with or larger than other parts of the city. Violent crime in the area that New Era covers dropped 53% in their best quarter yet, and the CVI group with the most success, FORCE Detroit, saw their area’s crime rate drop 72% at one point.
“This stuff is simple math,” Williams said. “You know, get with the people on the ground, build those relationships with the people on the ground so that you can have a better understanding of the needs of the people on the ground.”
But, New Era Detroit didn’t always have a great relationship with the police department, and some city leaders were hesitant to fund any of these groups without more oversight. Bettison said he’s done the hard work of convincing his city to take the risk, and he encourages others to look at their model.
“We did it, we have the results, but all of the tough questions were asked,” he said.
Williams said the funding from the city has allowed New Era Detroit to expand their programming, establish a headquarters, and get the members, who have been doing the work as volunteers for free for years, on a payroll.
“We've helped hundreds of people with gas bills, light bill, evictions, you know, kids that don't have clothes, shoes,” Williams said. "And I mean, literally, we are the definition of taking money and putting it right back into the streets.”
While his relationship with the city took time to develop, Williams said he has always felt the support of the community. That's not always been the case in Cleveland, where the chapter’s chair was recently indicted on charges of extortion, which he claims are false. This comes after a complaint from a convenience store owner who claims the group's patrols intimidate his customers and didn't leave when asked. As that lawsuit unfolds, the Cleveland chapter is pausing their armed patrols and continuing to serve the community with their other programs.
But Williams said he now has data to prove programs like this can and do have an impact, and as he continues working to establish chapters across the country, he encourages other cities to take community violence intervention seriously too.
“I want to go down the blocks and say, 'Y'all got the power to stand up together. It's more of us than it is the people that's doing bad,’” he said. “In every community, it’s more people that want good, it’s more people that want better in the community than it is that a small amount of people that's tearing down our communities, everywhere in the country.”
New Era Detroit is one of six groups doing community violence intervention work in Detroit. The numbers from the latest quarter are expected to be released in mid-November, and we’ll bring you those updates then.