Community Safety in Historic Filipinotown

Community safety

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

SIPA has over a 50-year history in the community of Historic Filpinotown. Prior to this designation 20 years ago, the neighborhoods of Westlake, Rampart and parts of Echo Park served as the landing place for immigrants from the Philippines to Los Angeles and remains a largely immigrant neighborhood. Over the past five decades, SIPA has worked closely with youth and families through the hardships of community violence, police corruption, gangs and overall safety. Following the pandemic and the nation's racial reckoning, Historic Filipinotown continues to experience old and new challenges including community safety. According to the Los Angeles County Equity Explorer tool, Historic Filipinotown continues to rely heavily on policing in response to public safety, with a cost of $9,560,638 and with 90057 rating "highest" in the Justice Equity Need Index, with the highest levels of criminalization risk, inequity drivers, system involvement and overall need.

SIPA hopes to engage residents, small business owners, organizations and public leaders to develop community-based solutions toward community safety in Historic Filipinotown. As an organization that recognizes root causes of violence and utilizes trauma informed approaches, SIPA sees the increasing need to develop responses that leverage the strengths of community members to support safety proactively, hold accountability, heals harm and causes no harm or trauma to people. SIPA will utilize evidence based Restorative Justice principles and practices to guide the generation of safety strategies alongside community members. SIPA will begin its efforts by focusing on community building, recognizing that strong interpersonal relationships and trust essential to establishing a strong foundation for these efforts to succeed. SIPA will then engage committed community members, small business owners and natural leaders in additional training and skills development to build a cohort of residents who will take leadership in the development of a plan. Recognizing that this is a multi-year process, SIPA will utilize this grant to fund the pilot year of this effort, funding equivalent of a part-time position plus training to guide the work for a year.

Los Angeles County has been leading the efforts to reduce incarceration, recidivism, engagement with the justice system. SIPA's project to develop a model of community based safety specific to Historic Filipinotown would offer a place-based model for other neighborhoods and communities to adopt and modify to fit their own needs. The more Los Angeles County neighborhoods and residents are able to develop similar efforts, the less reliant our County will be on carceral responses. The long term goal is to create a paradigm shift among communities that center our shared humanity, address needs of all people in the community, and heal harms while calling for accountability and repair. Our communities will rely less on punishment, violence and disposability and will instead strengthen relationships, foster interdependency and build high accountability.

This pilot year of this project will focus mainly on community building and strengthening the foundation for the hard work ahead. Measures of success will include reaching at least 200 people in community building activities throughout the year and establishing a cohort of 30 committed people to participate in community safety and Restorative Justice trainings to carry the work into future years. Surveys will measure self-reported data on an increased knowledge and skills related to topics including trauma, Restorative Justice and community-led initiatives on safety.