Somerville has released recommendations for major public safety reforms, including a new commission to review police policies and a policing model in which mental health professionals and social workers accompany officers on certain calls.
Other proposals heard at a Feb. 4 community meeting – the culmination of more than three years of work – include changing police hiring rules to bring in more diverse officers, mandatory use by officers in the field of body-worn cameras and hiring civilians to help investigate property crimes.
These recommendations at a meeting held by the city’s Department of Racial and Social Justice were proposed by the Public Safety for All Task Force, Civilian Oversight Task Force and the Anti-Violence Working Group, established in response to a 2022 Public Safety for All survey.
The department was established in 2020 after former mayor Joe Curtatone’s declaration of systemic racism as a public health emergency. Under mayor Katjana Ballantyne, Somerville launched the Public Safety for All initiative to create a community-driven safety system that would shape policy that “advances racial and social justice across all economic classes, ages, genders, races, ethnicities and identities,” according to the initiative overview.
One of the most significant proposals is to create a public safety oversight commission that would have the authority to review police policies, provide alternative dispute resolution and ensure data transparency. Eighty-one percent of residents want an oversight group, according to the Public Safety for All survey.
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/25520364-civilian-oversight-task-force-executive-summary-final/?embed=1
The group’s recommended commission would be made of nine people with diverse backgrounds – six appointed by the City Council and three by the mayor to serve three-year terms –with no current or former Somerville Police Department employees allowed.
It should have the power to access and analyze all police data and records, subpoena testimony, release information to the public, mediate disputes, review and recommend changes to policies and practices, launch investigations and make disciplinary recommendations, the group said.
Map to implementation
An outlined 13-month implementation process begins with city staff and the City Council writing a law (to be passed in month four) and beginning a training program with SPD. After a search for a director, members and a police liaison followed by appointments in month five and six, the group is expected to lock down its processes and hold its first public meeting and accept complaints in month nine. A second public meeting follows in month 12, when the group launches its other role: alternative dispute resolution, “voluntary options to solve disagreements between community members and members of the police department.”
In the final month of the proposed timeline, the group will start posting police data “to keep the public informed about how police are operating” and begin negotiation among city staff, the police department and unions on what it calls accountability backstopping: The local board’s powers to investigate resident complaints and make disciplinary recommendations if a statewide enforcer refers a case back to Somerville or decides to not discipline.
“The board should do more than look at cases,” according to a recommendations overview. “The board should look toward trends in police operations and recommend improvements when they can.”
A custom co-response model
Another key recommendation is the co-response model, in which mental health professionals and social workers would respond alongside police officers to certain calls – something that “could easily build off the existing community outreach, help and recovery program that exists within the Somerville Police Department,” the group said in a printed summary.
Some residents pushed for a fully alternative response system that removes law enforcement from crisis response. Public Safety for All task force member Taylor Perkins pointed to survey data showing that residents, especially in higher-crime neighborhoods, preferred a co-response approach.
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/25520366-public-safety-for-all-task-force-recommendations/?embed=1
“Many community members, including those most impacted by crime, felt that co-response was the safer and more effective option,” Perkins stated.
Ben Struhl, executive director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, said implementing an alternative response system requires significant logistical and infrastructure planning and cannot be borrowed wholesale from other cities where one is running.
“It’s easy to hear about programs in places like Eugene, Oregon, but we needed to do the hard work to figure out what actually fits our city – its laws, its structure and its people,” Struhl said during a Q&A. “You can’t just drop a van into a community and call it an alternative response system. You need prevention strategies, resources and a way to ensure that responders have somewhere to bring people who need help.”
Resident involvement
Another member of the Public Safety for All task force, Kimberly Pitts, reflected on the experience of participating in police ride-alongs and simulator training, which provided firsthand insight into officers’ decision-making.
“The day I went in, I got a better understanding of the pressures they’re under when they’re out on the street,” Pitts said. “It changed my perspective.”
One Public Safety for All proposal apart from co-response looked at more civilian involvement – considering running “active-bystander training” to create “a culture of peer intervention” along with the training and appointing of civilian members of the police department “for certain activities, such as property crime investigations.”
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/25520365-anti-violence-working-group-executive-summary-final-0/?embed=1
“Civilian employees do not have the power to arrest or carry a firearm,” the group noted of the property-crime investigators idea.
Some ideas are underway
Neighboring Cambridge has a confusing and overlapping approach to co-response and alternative response to crises, all developed within the past few years to decrease the number of armed officers handling situations that may be better handled by trained listeners such as social workers. The city has its own unarmed response department that has struggled to find its role; a resident-led team called Heart that was supported by many on the City Council but met resistance from staff; and an embrace of co-response last year by police who opposed it through 2023.
Somerville has already begun implementing recommendations, expanding outreach efforts by social workers. The city is accepting applications for a Public Safety for All program manager to oversee the implementation of these reforms.
Ballantyne opened the meeting thanking the task force members and describing the significance of community-driven policies. “Public Safety for all is the goal of my administration … those most impacted by public safety decisions should be helping us shape them,” Ballantyne said.
“This is just the beginning” of a long-term effort to reshape public safety in the city, Ballantyne said.
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