podcast: Episode 6 - Detroit Safety Team with Curtis Renee and John Sloan III
The Detroit Safety Team assists communities in building a new safety infrastructure that shifts away from police reliance.
The Detroit Safety team describes their work as building “safety infrastructures by weaving together proactive and responsive practices.” Their main offering is the City-Wide Safety Team where members work alongside the core leadership body of DST to build relationships with the community in the city and beyond. Founded in 2014 by a group of organizers who were working to provide conflict transformation and resolution services at the annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit, DST has grown from a volunteer group for one event to a city-wide service provider.
City-Wide Safety Team
“Working closely with neighborhoods, DST builds and teaches holistic and humane safety methods and tools. The goal is to create and instill safety methods that shift away from police reliance within a neighborhood, community, or event.” City-wide members are trained in mediation, intervention, and de-escalation through different restorative justice programs, including:
- Introduction to Kingian Nonviolence
- Trauma, Resilience, and Neuroscience: Keys to Offering Emotional Support in the Moment
- Introduction to Restorative Practice
- Introduction to De-escalation and Mediation
- Pod Mapping
Services
In addition to the City-Wide Safety Team, DST works to offer the following services:
- Safety Training: They engage Detroiters with tools and training in proven safety methods.
- Community Building: They transform communities by moving to a non-punitive safety response that changes our relationship with harm, abuse, and conflict to one that allows for healing and refuses violence.
- Restorative Processes: They use responsive measures that allow those who have harmed, and those who have been harmed to work through conflict together through restorative circle practices.
DST uses a Gradient Pricing Model for its services. Combining existing ideals from Gift Economics and Sliding Scale models, they offer various tiers of pricing based on a client’s capacity to pay. Cost should never be a barrier to entry.
Source: Detroit Safety Team
