Councilmember Monica Rodriguez announces new program for community taskforce

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez announced a $2.2 million increase in funding for the Community Intervention Workers program on Monday, offering programs like yoga and therapy to individuals frequently working in traumatic situations.

Product of the Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office, the initiative, Project Therapeutic Unarmed Response for Neighborhoods, seeks to improve Community Intervention Workers’ response to potentially violent situations, as well as their mental and physical well-being.

According to the press release, just over 100 CIWs work in Los Angeles — their work encompasses “community engagement, gang prevention, gang intervention, and violence interruption.” Part of their purpose is to allow law enforcement to focus on crime while attempting to reduce violent interactions with police.

“Community-based public safety workers are regularly exposed to high trauma environments,” said Councilwoman Rodriguez in the press release. “Providing comprehensive training and support is an important tenet of how our city will deliver transformative change, strengthen our public safety response and create more equitable investment in a community-based public safety model.”

Training and support for CIWs will be provided by the Community Based Public Safety Collective, in partnership with The Reverence Project and the Brotherhood Unified for Independent Leadership Through Discipline Program. These organizations all work towards the primary goal of increasing public safety in the city.

Project TURN lists meditation and healing circles within its several offerings of assistance.

“These individuals are oftentimes on the frontlines,” the press release continued. “But they’re helping to broker a peace [between communities at odds], and oftentimes, the retaliatory events that ensue in greater gun violence in our streets.”

Aqeela Sherrills, co-founder and executive director of the Community Based Public Safety Collective, emphasized the importance of CIWs and the care they need.

“Today is the first step in working with the practitioners [The CIWs], making sure that they get the proper therapeutic support in counseling that they need,” Sherrills said. “The public must be a constituency in the conversation in terms of safety.”

According to Sherrills, CIWs in Los Angeles only make about $40,000 a year.

“We need to make sure that we’re investing properly in the individuals who are risking their lives on a daily basis,” Sherrills said.

Founder and executive director of BUILD, Aquil Basheer, spoke of the importance that Project TURN provided for CIWs.

“We’re talking about putting the public back in public safety,” Basheer said. We’re talking about finally responding to a level of professionalism and discipline, the level of respect that so many of the workers that do this work have not been able to garner.”