Howdunnit

While most police-reform ideas focus on top-down imposition of standards, peer intervention puts the burden on individual police officers to prevent misconduct. Grounded in studies of bystanders’ behavior in the face of abuses by others, the method first was adopted by the New Orleans Police Department in light of widespread misconduct following Hurricane Katrina and has been credited with that department’s “remarkable progress” in shifting its culture. Now its use is spreading nationwide.

ABC News in Australia is using a solutions-focused, or constructive, approach to reporting on social problems. Focusing in particular on three areas, affordable housing, stormwater, and obesity, the Hobart newsroom is combating widespread hopelessness and mistrust of the media by highlighting what individuals and communities are already doing to address problems. The approach is used around the world and supported by organizations such as Solutions Journalism Network and the Constructive Institute. While change can be slow, these groups offer newsroom training to help shift reporting perspectives.

Teachers and administrators at schools across Hawaii are adjusting to what it means to teach summer school during the time of coronavirus—and how it'll shape their protocols once fall rolls around. These adjustments include taking students' temperatures, drastically reducing the number of its in-person classroom capacity, and finding ways to equip those students who need equipment to join class online.

Black firefighters in Chicago launched the nation's first organization aimed at mentoring young men and women of color and helping them prepare for the firefighters exam. It's a way to combat inner city violence and address a long history of discriminatory hiring. The Black Fire Brigade raised more than $30,000 to help 30 young people with the costs of a course in emergency medical technician training and will also provide them with job placement after they gain their certification.

A decade after Camden crime and police relations hit bottom, and five years after President Obama lauded its new police department as a model for reform, the city's successful reboot of its police force offers both encouragement and cautionary notes for a radical makeover of a police department. Excessive force rates and homicides have both dropped. A toothless disciplinary system has been replaced. But, while residents agree conditions have improved, they point to a number of changes still needed after the entire department was replaced.

Experiencing the death of a parent is oftentimes extremely traumatic, but an app created by a woman who personally experienced this type of loss, aims to bring some sense of help and closure for family members. Implementing a simple design and based on question prompts, the app known as RecordMeNow has been widely used and shown to specifically impact those diagnosed with terminal cancer as well as Motor Neurone Disease.

The groundswell for greater accountability in police shootings has barely caused a ripple in Hawaii, where the state’s Law Enforcement Officer Independent Review board has finished only one case in its first three years of existence and has suspended meetings during the pandemic. With one of its two citizen member slots vacant on an otherwise law-enforcement-heavy board, the panel fails a basic tenet of accountability by severely limiting public access to the cases it’s considering and its deliberations, says one critic.

CAHOOTS, the 31-year-old program considered a model for the growing number of community-based crisis programs, fielded more than 24,000 calls in 2019, less than 1% of which required police involvement. The program's unarmed first responders use "unconditional positive regard," meaning support and acceptance for people in a mental health crisis. Although Eugene is relatively small, its proven system of de-escalation, meant to avoid police violence, has now been adopted in Denver, Oakland, Portland, and elsewhere.

A chef shows the "absurdity" of gentrification with a creative fundraising campaign. At one of Tunde Wey’s pop-up dinners, he charged $12 for a plate, but charged white people $30, to spark up conversations about racial wealth inequality. His H*t Chicken Sh*t, “a dinner series to end gentrification,” successfully raised $52,000 to go towards residents of North Nashville, “a historically Black neighborhood,” and their affordable housing.

Though cities around the world range in size, demographics, and countless other factories, they share a common trait: cities are loud. The app Hush City offers an easy way to find a quiet space amid the noise. The app uses crowdsourced data to report on quiet, and not so quiet, areas in densely populated areas around the world.