GREENSBORO, N.C. — The City of Greensboro has created the Office of Community Safety (OCS) to bring together police, the community and city leaders around the topic of public safety.
"Public safety is a community responsibility," said Latisha McNeil, the OCS division manager. "We are responsible for seeing the community that we want to live in and part of that means that we have to be transparent and take ownership of some things that aren’t necessarily law enforcement or public safety related things that we normally see."
There are four main sections of the OCS:
Behavioral Health Response Team
The BHRT was formed in January 2021
The BHRT responds to people experiencing a mental-health crisis. Officers, along with clinicians, and a paramedic respond to the calls.
"Often times, police themselves don’t want to respond to things that they may not know how to handle and so providing them with the access to trained individuals to come out and assist, it only helps our community, but it also helps our law enforcement to feel confident and comfortable in doing their job," said McNeil.
Violence Prevention
Expected to start in January 2023
OCS plans to hire a violence prevention coordinator that will be working in the community to look at the causes of violence.
"I think that we may hear different things, we may see a certain thing related to violence, but we don’t talk about all of the causes that could lead up to that violence, and how do we as a community work together to solve that," said McNeil.
Law Enforcement Assistance Diversion
Expected to start in January 2023
The Law Enforcement Assistance Diversion (LEAD) program works to divert people accused of low-level offenses into treatment programs, rather than prison.
"You cannot have a one size fits all approach to solving societal issues, but what they’ll do is they’ll have a case manager, and that person will help them: if it’s getting substance-abuse treatment, if it’s access to education, employment, housing all those things that will enhance that persons quality of life," McNeil said.
Criminal Justice Advisory Commission
GCJAC meets at 6:30 pm on the third Thursday of each month.
The Greensboro Criminal Justice Advisory Commission works to educate the public on various justice-related topics and studying trends in policing strategies within the Greensboro Police Department (GPD).