Community Safety · Civic Storytelling
Newark Community Street Team
“Public Safety in Public Hands” for NowThis: how Newark rethought public safety by putting it in the community’s hands. I was contracted for the camera and stayed for the subject. Civic work like this is my range, not a detour from it.
- Client
- NowThis
- Year
- 2023
- Role
- Cinematographer
The Challenge
During the pandemic, NowThis contracted me to film a story in Newark about a question most of the country was arguing over and few places were actually answering: what happens when public safety is placed in the hands of the community rather than only the police?
I was hired to shoot it, not to shape it. But the Newark Community Street Team's work runs on trust built over years, and the people doing it had no reason to perform for a camera that showed up for an afternoon.
My Approach
I have never been able to film a subject I have not tried to understand. Between setups I asked questions and listened to how the team described their own work, until I understood what public safety in public hands actually means on a Newark block: violence interrupted by people from the neighborhood, credibility earned face to face, and the kind of prevention that never makes the news because nothing happened.
That understanding changed how I shot it. I stayed close, moved slowly and let conversations run long, so the footage carried the relationships rather than illustrating a statistic. Being contracted for camera does not mean arriving without a point of view.
The Impact
Public Safety in Public Hands published on NowThis, putting a community-led model in front of a national audience in a year when the country was arguing about what safety should even mean.
Community issues are not a side interest for me, they are my range. I am always glad to be in the room for these conversations, whether I am directing the piece or holding the camera on someone else's. It is the work I most want to do well.