The white brick walls hint at what this place used to be. The doors once led to holding cells. The cubicles were designated for police operations.
Located in Newark, New Jersey — just a half an hour outside New York City — this former police precinct building is now a center for police reform: the Office of Violence Prevention and Recovery.
A few years ago, the Newark Police Department was found to have unconstitutional policing practices. In 2016, they were ordered by a federal court to change their practices and are closely monitored to make sure they follow through on its promise of reform.
Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery Credit: Photo by Calvin Milliner
The Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery is part of that promise. In addition to repurposing the precinct building, the department also dedicated 5% of its overall budget to the violence reduction initiative, which amounts to $19 million.
A place where police brutality was happening is now a place of hope, help, and healing — that’s how Lakeesha Eure, the director of Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery, puts it.
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The space provides support for at-risk youth and adults who have been impacted by the criminal justice system: counseling, stress management and conflict resolution programs, and employment opportunities can all be found here.
Will Simpson, is the Director of Violence Reduction Initiatives for Equal Justice USA, a national organization that describes itself as "working to transform the justice system by promoting responses to violence that break cycles of trauma."
“For a long time, when we talked about safety it was police and prisons,” he said. “We began to actually decenter police and recenter community in the public safety paradigm.”
Go inside Newark's community-centric policing transformation.
Simpson grew up in Newark, which was historically known for its high crime rates. “There was a heaviness,” he says, to living there.
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But there’s been a seismic shift since 2016, as Newark’s homicide rate reached a 60-year-low. Simpson credits the turnaround in large part to community-centric reform.
This old precinct building illustrates his point.
Black Lives Matter and “peace and love” signs hang in the windows. The white walls are being painted a calming shade of blush. And rooms are being remodeled to create spaces of refuge.
Related: Meet the retired cop who made reform happen in the Deep South
03/30: This article was amended to clarify Will Simpson's job title.