St. Paul recruitment program aims to diversify police ranks

One-third to half of those killed by police are disabled, a recent report says. “Our problem isn’t with police,” one mental health advocate says, but both sides say officers need more training.

Raton, a town once surrounded by eight coal mines, now has a main street of boarded-up buildings. There is reason for optimism as the town diversifies its local economy, betting on "a mix of small manufacturing businesses, health care and specialty services, and hospitality for travelers" to endure the sudden decline in mining revenue. Its calculated revitalization may hold lessons for other towns.

When the federal government fails to stimulate social change, local areas step up. Tennessee is giving more structure and funding to community college education, and it’s drastically increasing graduation rates. Alaska and other states are getting rid of money bail. All around the country, citizen activists are becoming advocates and attempting to make our political system accessible to everyone. Despite partisan politics in Washington, D.C., the country is nonetheless experiencing social progress.

Journalist Marcella Bombardieri calls community college "one of America's largest and most important anti-poverty programs." The president of Amarillo College in Texas is testing just how far community colleges can go to fight systemic issues - day care, social workers, and emergency funds for students' daily expenses are part of his plan. Other administrators are looking on at the dramatic experiment with mixed views and takeaways.

Pomegranate Kitchen in Wellington, New Zealand employees refugee women from around the world. The kitchen, which operates collaboratively rather than in a hierarchy, encourages these chefs to grow their cooking and managerial strengths as well as overcome cultural boundaries in order to become financially independent.

More than 2,700 police departments in the U.S. have crisis intervention teams aimed at responding to mental health crises with fewer arrests and less violence, but the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester police custody offers clear lessons in the shortcomings and misuse of the CIT model. A lack of adequate mental health services across the country, coupled with superficial training of the police, too often means a police response to a crisis will not de-escalate the situation or lead to meaningful help for the person in crisis. A recent study found CITs have not shown they will lower violence.

Crime-tracking mobile apps give millions of Brazilians crowdsourced data on urban violence, alerting people to dangerous places and filling gaps in government data on shootings, robberies, and other risks. But apps such as Fogo Cruzado (“Crossfire”) and Onde Tem Tiroteio (“Where There's a Shooting”) offer statistically crude glimpses of crime, distorted by media and racial biases that one expert blames for myths about the risks people actually face.

Frustrated by a tight labor market, two locally owned Grand Rapids employers discovered the virtues – economic, not just moral – of hiring formerly incarcerated people, whose gratitude for an opportunity translated into excellent performance and less risk of adding to rapid turnover. The employers helped guarantee success by paying for support services that made post-prison transitions easier. The employers then talked hundreds of other local employers into doing the same. Besides providing a business advantage, the program changes lives and is evidently contributing to much lower rates of recidivism.

Thunder Bay police formed IMPACT (Integrated Mobile Police Assessment Crisis Team), pairing crisis responders with mental health expertise with police officers to respond 24/7 to people experiencing mental health crises. Instead of defaulting to police responses, which risk the use of force and often land people in custody or a hospital, the teams often are able to get people connected to needed social and health services. So far the team has managed to divert about 40 percent of calls to helping services.

With an influx of COVID relief money, the Russellville school district began hiring and certifying more local, Spanish-speaking staff to help teach English language learners. Districtwide, the percentage of students who met their language proficiency goals increased from 46% in 2019 to 61% in 2022.