Center for Innovations in Community Safety

CICS leverages unparalleled expertise and experience, deep relationships with a broad spectrum of community stakeholders, and a commitment to community-based change to build programs that are designed to transform our community safety infrastructure. 

Since its inception in 2020, our flagship program Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE), has grown exponentially and is now being implemented in over 300 law enforcement agencies across 40 US states and 3 Canadian provinces. ABLE agencies are comprised of approximately 158,000 law enforcement officers and serve approximately 100 million constituents. Our other flagship program, the Police for Tomorrow (PfT) Fellowship is now in its fourth cohort, bringing together police officers to understand the social, historical, and scientific context within which they police, and equipping them to shift the culture and practice of policing from the inside.

CICS is also working to end overreliance on policing and incarceration to address society’s ills—an overreliance that has caused unnecessary harm in communities across the nation and undermined public safety. To this end, CICS offers technical assistance to Alternative First Responder (AFR) programs and Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs (HVIPs).  

Over the past few years, municipalities across the country have begun to establish Alternative First Responder programs that utilize peer responders and/or clinicians to respond to a subset of their calls. CICS hosts events and conducts research to help these programs build their collective knowledge base and make productive connections among practitioners across different responder models. 

HVIPs offer holistic services to provide safety planning, social, legal, and medical services, and trauma-informed care to victims of interpersonal violence. One of the cornerstones of HVIP efficacy is establishing a trusting, therapeutic relationship with participants as soon as they arrive in the hospital. Leveraging our expertise and relationships, we work with HVIP programs around the Washington, D.C. area to provide technical assistance and research support.