Community Safety

“We had a choice: watch the evening news and go to bed depressed about another child lost to gang violence, or we could decide to do something about these tragedies. Thank God PACT helped us get organized, and the City responded.”

Lily Tenes, PACT volunteer, key leader in the creation of San Jose’s model gang prevention programs.

Driven by the concerns of PACT's volunteer grassroots leaders and other community members, PACT has worked to improve community safety in our neighborhoods and across the City of San Jose for many years. We have:

• Won street improvements and new stoplights to make our neighborhoods safe for residents.

• Secured commitments from the Chief of Police, District Attorney and County Sheriff to improve trust between local law enforcement and immigrant communities by ensuring that their departments will not conduct federal immigration enforcement.

• Created excellent new schools and worked for new youth job training, so that young people make healthy choices instead of getting involved in gangs or other criminal activities.
  

Currently, PACT is conducting a survey of community members experience with and trust in local police.  We are also researching best practice models of violence prevention to bring new policies and programs to our community.

PACT led the community campaign in the 1990s to make San Jose one of the safest and most youth-friendly big cities in the country.  This is a result of the persistent work of hundreds of concerned grassroots leaders who, through PACT, got the City to make this its top priority. Millions of dollars flowed into a coordinated effort involving new after school programs and homework centers, creative new law enforcement strategies, and cooperation among the City’s top civic leaders, making San Jose the safest big city in the USA.