#SafeCrowding: Putting the Public Back in Public Safety!

Conventional private security, like traditional policing, rations safety out in the form of surrogates acting on behalf of clients and communities. These private and public providers offer broad layers of protection and society would be much less safe without them.

As a safety creator, I mobilize the broadest layer of protection, the public, in securing their own businesses and public spaces. We can't afford to await rationing from the private and public sectors when criminals operate in an all hands on deck fashion. Sitting by while your community implodes is a suicide pact many impotent citizens sign with their tormentors.

Safe crowding leverages what a " lead, " a safety creator like myself, can do alongside business owners, event organizers, staff, patrons and social media to motivate and organize stakeholders to displace crime in their midst instead of awaiting rationing from elsewhere or even worse, doing nothing.

I've been actively safe crowding for several years with stakeholders in a wonderful neighborhood whose residents and businesses are routinely targeted for theft, harassment and assault.

By working within their comfort zones and offering simple services at the anchor institution where I work like walking women to their cars and answering area posts about crime on social media, safe crowding functions where we displace negativity in our midst through relationships formed and concerns shared. We turn keyboard strokes and conversation into suspects identified, police reports written and arrests made.

I invite them not to change their beliefs but to change tactics in the ugly face of crime aimed at their  beautiful neighborhood.

In an era of online crowd sourcing, digital and direct action safe crowding is a logical next step- one taken every day by myself and allies.

#CapBlackUrbanSafetyist