Reimagining Public Safety for Universities & Students

For campus audiences the talk leans into the arc — refugee camp to city hall — and what it asks of students deciding what their work will stand for. Works as a commencement address, a public policy lecture, or a student-government keynote, with time built in for the questions students actually ask.

Weeks after Daunte Wright's death, Brooklyn Center passed the Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Community Safety and Violence Prevention Resolution — one of the most ambitious municipal public-safety reforms in the country: an unarmed community-response department, limits on pretextual traffic stops, and a civilian oversight structure.

Mike Elliott walks through what it actually took: the politics of passing it, the machinery of implementing it, the backlash that followed — and an honest accounting of what survived and what didn't after he left office. The act has since been cited by the ACLU, a United Nations report, and a California DOJ RIPA board report.

For cities, universities, and policy audiences trying to move beyond slogans: this is the version that includes the budget lines, the union negotiations, and the election that followed.