If JustCARE Falls, We Deliver Care Falls Too - Jun 23, 2022
Dominique Davis and his Community Safety Ambassadors have provided public safety for encampment outreach without guns or badges for the last two years. COURTESY OF WE DELIVER CARE
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Without much notice to the public, a police alternative pilot program has been operating on Seattle’s streets for the last two years. Through a partnership with JustCARE, a local public safety firm called We Deliver Care has been protecting outreach workers who are serving people experiencing homelessness. They’ve also been providing de-escalation services for people in crisis, and they’ve been doing it all without the involvement of a uniformed cop.
Now, with JustCARE’s future in question due to uncertainty around how city leaders will find funding, this promising program could also be on the chopping block. With the City still struggling to fully staff the police department, letting We Deliver Care fall by the wayside would remove a ready-made solution for providing public safety in the absence of police.
Dom Davis created We Deliver Care with his co-founder, Stephenie Wheeler-Smith, during the protests surrounding George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020. The two longtime community leaders took notice when Seattle Public Schools suspended its contract with the Seattle Police Department, and they worried that fully defunding SPD would leave communities in South Seattle without anyone to provide public safety.
While the City never really defunded SPD, the lack of any other organization offering de-escalation services provided We Deliver Care with an immediate opportunity. That's when JustCARE, a partnership between several organizations focused on outreach to people living in encampments in Pioneer Square and in the International District, reached out to Davis in search of alternative public safety responses.
Since its inception, the organization has grown to employ 25 Community Safety Ambassadors, and it has also completed a short-term contract to provide public safety for the Low Income Housing Institute. To support that growth, Davis relies on his extensive network of community ties to identify and recruit people with lived experience of the criminal legal system who want a job that allows them to give back to the community.
After the program’s first year of operation, researchers with the University of Washington conducted a study of JustCARE that included findings about the work We Deliver Care does with the organization. Their analysis showed a 39% reduction in 911 calls in the neighborhoods where they operate, and a 12% reduction in 911 calls from the hotels where the program provides shelter.
The only remaining question is whether City leaders will find a way to keep JustCARE, and consequently Davis’s We Deliver Care, sustainably funded. The program’s current funding will expire at the end of this month, and the program will shut down unless the City can find $10 million per year to keep it in operation.
