UCLA Luskin’s Two-Year Evaluation of Community-Led Violence Intervention in Newark The Newark Community Street Team’s violence reduction model offers a scalable blueprint for public safety nationwide.

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On February 24, 2026, the Community Based Public Safety Collective and the Newark Community Street Team (NCST) hosted a virtual briefing to share findings from a groundbreaking two-year evaluation conducted by UCLA. The findings provide rigorous evidence that community-led violence intervention can significantly reduce violent crime.

Once facing one of the highest homicide rates in the nation, Newark has now achieved a 70-year low in homicides. The evaluation found that NCST’s high-risk interventions are directly associated with reductions in violent crime, particularly in neighborhoods most impacted by violence. Just as importantly, the research highlights how NCST has deepened community trust, strengthened resident engagement, and built durable local capacity for safety and healing.

In 2023, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs received a $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and the Community Based Public Safety Collective to conduct a two-year, mixed-methods evaluation of NCST, a nationally recognized community violence intervention initiative in Newark, New Jersey. Led by Professor Jorja Leap and Professor Emeritus Todd Franke of Social Welfare, the study represents one of the most comprehensive academic assessments to date of a community-led public safety model.

“This project was truly national in scope,” said Leap. “It brought together the Luskin School’s research expertise and resources with the leadership of the Newark Community Street Team and the broader Newark community to demonstrate how community-based public safety can work in practice. It was an extraordinary and deeply meaningful collaboration.”

“What this evaluation sought to demonstrate was the real-time mechanics of the intervention model — when violence increased, the deployment of high-risk interventionists increased accordingly,” said Leap. “There was no delayed response; the reaction was immediate. One of our most important findings was that these efforts contributed to residents feeling safer and reporting a greater sense of well-being.”

The study adds substantial evidence to the national conversation on community violence intervention and offers a practical, scalable framework for cities seeking sustainable, community-rooted public safety strategies.

Read the full NCST evaluation report and the executive summary.

Experts Question Trump’s ‘Narco-Terrorist’ Claims Against Venezuela’s Maduro Researchers say evidence does not support the administration’s portrayal of Maduro as a central driver of U.S. drug deaths.

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President Trump justified the U.S. raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by accusing him of leading a “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism” responsible for “hundreds of thousands” of American deaths. However, experts cited by the Los Angeles Times strongly question those claims, noting that Venezuela plays a limited role in the U.S. drug supply and none in fentanyl trafficking, which drives most overdose deaths.

Researchers say Trump’s assertions go far beyond the evidence laid out in Maduro’s indictment and contradict years of narcotics data showing Mexico and Colombia as far more significant actors.

Jorja Leap, UCLA social welfare professor, said Trump’s focus on Maduro and Venezuelan gangs “not only belies reality but also belittles the work of researchers who know better.” She added, “Aside from making it a political issue, this is disrespecting the work of researchers, social activists, community organizers and law enforcement who have worked on this problem on the ground and understand every aspect of it,” calling the rhetoric “political theater.”

Perception vs. Reality: UCLA Luskin’s Jorja Leap Talks Crime Coverage with ABC7

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Social Welfare Professor Jorja Leap was quoted in an ABC7 News story examining crime trends in Los Angeles. While data shows violent and property crimes are down 17% in the city, Leap explained that the rise of social media, true crime entertainment, and political rhetoric amplify fear, creating a perception of rising crime despite the statistics.

“I think we’ve got a collective PTSD, and I’m not being flippant,” Leap said.

“You go to divert yourself, and what do you watch? A murder mystery,” Leap added.

Jorja Leap on Building Trust and Lasting Change in Watts 60 Years After the Riots Leap underscores the need for genuine respect and trust-building, rather than symbolic gestures alone.

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Nearly six decades after the 1965 Watts Riots, sparked by a routine traffic stop that spiraled into six days of violence and civil unrest, the South Los Angeles community has seen pockets of progress, from improved healthcare access to innovative community policing efforts. Yet, for many residents, deep challenges remain: fragile trust with law enforcement, persistent violence, and limited pathways to economic opportunity.

While demographics have shifted and some progress has been made, Watts continues to struggle with issues of poverty and underfunding, with local leaders emphasizing that real change requires sustained public investment,

UCLA Luskin social welfare professor Jorja Leap, who is on the board of the Watts Gang Task Force and Chair the Research and Evaluation Center, stresses that meaningful progress in Watts requires far more than community events like National Night Out or youth outings organized by law enforcement. For there to be meaningful change, “the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department have to stop being badge-heavy,” Leap told the Los Angeles Daily News. “Day in and day out, they have to act as respectful partners. As long as we have people being stopped without cause, whether they are Black or Brown, we have a problem. And all the National Nights Out isn’t going to matter.”

Leap on Policing and Police Reform in Los Angeles

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Jorja Leap, adjunct professor of social welfare at UCLA Luskin commented in a Rolling Stone feature about policing and police reform in Los Angeles. The story is focused on an effort in Watts by the LAPD to “make peace with its residents, build faith with its leaders, and break the gangs’ stranglehold on its corners,” by setting up units known as the Community Safety Partnership (CSP). Since it was launched in 2011, CSP has become a transformational power in Los Angeles, according to the story. A UCLA study by Leap, an expert on gangs, was released in 2020 and reported that in the first six years of the program CSP saved an estimated $1 million in taxpayer money in major crimes prevented. “…and that’s just in those three [Watts] developments,” said Leap, adding, “Its effects were so profound, we called on the city to expand it, and to mainstream its methods in the department.”

Read the story

 

Leap on the Meaning of Tattoos

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Jorja Leap, adjunct professor of social welfare at UCLA Luskin, commented in a CNN story about Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was deported to an prison in El Salvador on the basis of tattoos purportedly linked to affiliation with the transnational criminal organization known as MS-13. Leap was among gang experts who disagreed with the government’s position that the tattoos — publicized on social media — alone constituted proof of membership.

“I see a bunch of symbols that could be interpreted any number of ways,” said Leap, who has previously served as an expert gang witness in court proceedings. “There is nothing in those tattoos that is definitively gang representative,” she said of the markings, which are also the subject of contention over whether they have been digitally altered to suggest gang affiliation. Leap also was quoted in New York Times coverage of the story.

Read the CNN story
Read the NY Times story

Leap Discusses Altruism and Cynicism Amid Disaster

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Jorja Leap, adjunct professor of social welfare at UCLA Luskin, commented in a Fast Company story exploring why communities, individuals and even complete strangers come together in times of crisis. Leap was among experts consulted about the social psychology related to collective trauma events and mass tragedies that may explain the impulse for altruism and empathy, or “altruism born of suffering.” A more complicated question is whether the same feeling of empathy and good will persists after a collective trauma such as Los Angeles’ recent fires. At the same time, said Leap, “American mainstream society is about rugged individualism … so people are expected to make it on their own,” pointing out that while disasters can bring people together, it may be accompanied by cynicism. “We may be incredibly altruistic and responsive and then incredibly cynical, and sometimes that cynicism is self-protective. I really believe that cynicism is just cover-up for fear,” Leap said.

Read the story

 

A Backlash Against Policing and Criminal Justice Reforms

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Jorja Leap, an adjunct professor of social welfare at UCLA Luskin, was a guest on a recent KCRW radio feature on criminal justice reform in the 2024 election season. The discussion focused on crime trends in Los Angeles, described as a muddled picture. Los Angeles Police Department data show that violent crimes including homicide have dropped in the last few years, but property crimes and smash-and-grab mob retail thefts have increased. “We’re looking at the landscape of panic, and I don’t know any other way to put it,” Leap said. Unlawful acts that go viral have contributed to an atmosphere of crime anxiety, while often quieter criminal justice reform success stories get little to no attention, she added. “We are not interested in the good news,” she said, “and we’ve all been raised up on ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’”

Read/listen to the story

Leap Comments on California Governor’s Intervention in Policing

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UCLA Luskin Social Welfare’s Jorja Leap commented in a CalMatters article on efforts by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to influence local police agencies to change a number of law enforcement policies. Recent state intervention includes urging Oakland city leaders to change policy on police chases and the deployment of California Highway Patrol officers to Oakland and other California cities. National Guard prosecutors also have been sent to assist the district attorneys of Alameda County, San Francisco, Bakersfield and Riverside with drug cases. These efforts have drawn both support and criticism. Leap, an adjunct professor of social welfare who studies gang violence and community policing, described the state’s actions as a temporary fix for a deeply rooted problem. “We have a bunch of police chiefs who all stood up and said, ‘We can’t arrest our way out of the problem,’” Leap said. “And now we’ve got a governor going, ‘Yes, we can.’”

Read the article

 

Local Laws Limiting Gun Sales Fall Short

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A Los Angeles Times story on the limited impact of regulations restricting where and how firearm dealers are allowed to operate cited Jorja Leap of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare. There is little evidence that barring firearm retailers from certain neighborhoods or requiring them to install video cameras will significantly drive down gun violence. The newspaper cited research showing that only large-scale changes in the number of firearms dealers across multiple neighboring counties had a meaningful impact on local gun homicides. Leap explained that generations of racist economic policies and inequitable social structures correspond to higher rates of gun crime in certain areas. “People are poor. People don’t have resources. They don’t have mental health services,” Leap said. “A 12-year-old has lost a parent, or parents have walked out. He doesn’t go to therapy to deal with his feelings of anxiety and depression. He gets a gun.”

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