EJUSA is pleased to announce that it has received a $150,000 grant from Andrus Family Fund. The grant will support our Police/Community Initiative on Trauma-Informed Responses to Violence, a project currently piloting in Newark, New Jersey. The project focuses on changing police policies and practices by using the analysis and frame of trauma to create the necessary space to shift narratives about violence, create empathy and mutual understanding, and lay the foundation for a healing justice system.
The Police/Community Initiative begins with trauma training and builds towards advocacy to implement police reforms. In the training, police and community members develop mutual understanding of the links between unaddressed trauma and involvement in the justice system, the impact of trauma on responses to violence, the impact of PTSD on officer use of force, and historical trauma such as slavery.
“It went from conceptual with police officers being traumatized,” said one community member participant, “to understanding that these individuals jobs come with constantly engaging with trauma. A level of empathy shifted.”
According to a Newark Police officer, “Trainings on community sensitivity, racial sensitivity, sensitivity training in general (are needed). The good thing about this trauma course, the civilians and police officers being together was unique.”
After the training, police and community members work together to develop recommendations of trauma-informed policies and practices to reduce violence that can then be used for advocacy. In the project’s first year, the Newark community and police identified eight core recommendations for reform and systems change.
The Andrus Family Fund seeks to foster just and sustainable change in the United States. They support organizations that advance social justice and improve outcomes for vulnerable youth.
