#Bridgeport CT– Last night, the city of Bridgeport held a Zoom meeting of resources available to the city. One that stood out to me was Project Longevity, headed by retired Bridgeport Police Detective Harold Dimbo. When I heard the name, I noticed it sounded like it would be regarding retaining Bridgeport police officers (which is badly needed). What Project Longevity is, according to their about us page at https://www.project-longevity.org/about_us , “is a Community and Law Enforcement initiative to reduce serious violence”. Mr. Dimbo’s explanation in the Zoom meeting speaks volumes on HOW they reduce serious violence and I wanted to share it with you. Maybe the program can be expanded.
I’ll paraphrase what he said from this point forward. Mr. Dimbo said Project Longevity works for the community to police themselves. He continued that what has been happening in the past is that a person that gets arrested and locked up, is typically released with no job. What they saw was a band-aid being put on with no long term effort to break the cycle.
They began working with kids at risk and their families and work to move them in a positive direction. They’ve worked with them to find job training like tractor-trailer training, culinary, and other skills. They work with housing to attain Section 8 Housing vouchers for anyone who has a job and maintains that job for six months or more. They have organized support groups among mothers with like issues with their at risk children. Dimbo continued that this is not law enforcement driven. They are not there to make arrests but to find them help.
Dimbo rightfully bragged about people he has worked with in the past, like a person that was shot, been in and out of jail a number of times and how he now has turned it around with Project Longevity’s help and now has his Master’s degree. Others got their tractor-trailer license and are now buying homes. Another person in the project learned welding and turned in his section 8 voucher because he was making too much money and he turned the voucher in to help others in the program.
