Credit: (Taylor Jung/NJ Spotlight News; Courtesy of Paterson Healing Collective)
One year ago, New Jersey moved to expand violence intervention programs and put communities in charge of their mental health crisis response teams. Advocates hope the programs, which faced implementation and funding challenges, will finally come to fruition in the new year.
The Seabrooks-Washington Community-Led Crisis Response Act set aside millions in grant funding for community organizations to respond to nonemergency mental health crises instead of law enforcement as part of a two-year pilot.
However, delayed communication from the state impeded efforts to get the programs up and running, advocates said. As 2025 begins, advocates said they hope for legislation and funding in the state budget to provide more avenues for stable funding for these programs, as well as more consistent conversations with the state to carry out their programs successfully.
“I hope that the coming year, sooner than later, we get this done in the full implementation sense of the word, and find ourselves in a better position to save some lives that weren’t safe — Najee Seabrooks and Andrew Washington, Victoria Lee and Major Gulia Dale,” said Zayid Muhammad of the New Jersey Violence Intervention and Prevention Coalition, which includes community-based violence intervention programs that receive state funding.
Najee Seabrooks, Andrew Washington
New Jersey has invested $55 million in community-based violence intervention programs since 2021, beyond the Seabrooks-Washington grant initiative. That includes funding for various street outreach, mentorship and high-risk intervention programs.
A version of the Seabrooks-Washington Act was in the works for several years, according to Racquel Romans-Henry of Salvation and Social Justice, who helped write the legislation. However, it didn’t move in the Legislature until two separate high-profile police killings, first Najee Seabrooks in March 2023 and Andrew Washington five months later.
Seabrooks and Washington’s stories represented a watershed moment for the state. In both instances, families called for help to deescalate their loved ones’ mental health crises. Instead, those calls ended with police killing the people they were called to help. In Seabrooks’ case, his colleagues from Paterson Healing Collective were trained to manage emergencies like his and were barred by police from helping on the day of his death.
“Then the question became, ‘Wait a minute, you’re telling me, people who are doing this work, they themselves are being killed by the police. And their staff was on the scene, willing and able to assist them?’ It was just an awful, awful look,” said Romans-Henry, whose organization is a grant recipient in the pilot program.
When the Seabrooks-Washington Act was signed in January 2024 and grant recipients were announced in mid-July, advocates had hoped they could get to work immediately to establish their crisis intervention programs. Weeks later, Fort Lee police killed Victoria Lee after officers responded to her mental health crisis, which only underscored the need for community-led response programs, advocates said.
Delayed reimbursements
By August, grant recipients had not received funding amounts or copies of their grant contracts. The New Jersey Violence Intervention and Prevention Coalition sent a letter to legislators because community-based violence intervention programs working with the attorney general’s office were already experiencing delayed reimbursement issues.
The coalition requested that those programs be moved under the Department of Health’s purview and away from the attorney general’s office, a push they plan to continue in 2025. They cited concerns about the office’s alleged history of delayed reimbursements, which they say affected their ability to facilitate their programs.
“If the state is delayed in processing your reports, then that means there’s a delay in your receiving your money. And those delays can extend six, eight months at a time, sometimes longer,” said Romans-Henry.
The coalition also asked the Legislature to move the Seabrooks-Washington pilot program under Department of Health oversight, to “avoid this reporting and allocation system that currently exists through [the attorney general’s] Department of Law and Public Safety,” said Romans-Henry.
“The argument has always been that these nonviolent calls should be treated as public health emergencies as opposed to public safety emergencies,” she added.
‘A good concept,’ but …
Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D-Union)’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin’s office (D-Middlesex) said in a short statement, “We are reviewing those concerns.”
The attorney general’s office declined to comment. In a previous statement, the attorney general’s office told NJ Spotlight News that “Many of these [community violence intervention] initiatives have expanded the State’s approach to public safety to places it has never been before, all underscored by the dedication to community-based engagement.”
Advocates said in their letter to lawmakers that the Division of Violence Intervention and Victim Assistance was “a good concept,” but “it has realized no real benefit for our organizations.”
In addition to working with the Department of Health, advocates are also hoping for more engagement with state leaders to make the programs successful. The Seabrooks-Washington Act did include a provision that required the state to create an advisory council that would have to meet within 45 days of the bill’s enactment, but the council did not have its first meeting until Dec. 20.
“Those are the kind of conversations that should have started right at the gate. If the state was willing to not just have the conversation, but listen and make the adjustments, we’d be further along,” said Muhammad of the New Jersey Violence Intervention and Prevention Coalition.
Seeking Medicaid coverage
Looking toward the new year, advocates are also promoting a bill that would allow Medicaid coverage for violence prevention programs for people who receive medical treatment due to community violence. They also hope to receive permanent funding through the state budget to help provide stable services for their communities.
“We’re going to really see a push for more state and local and county leadership to really protect communities and minimize the police footprint… because we know that the safest communities are not the most policed, they’re the most resourced,” said Romans-Henry.
