Dear PD fans,

Looking at current international and domestic events such as the Covid-19 pandemic and police violence and racism brings about fear and hope. The Positive Deviance approach provides the opportunity to look at these entrenched and complex problems through different lenses: looking at what is working in dire or worse case scenario and try to emulate the undelaying uncommon strategies that enables success against the odds.

Regarding Covid-19 and its ravage in assisted living places both in the US and abroad, I would like to highlight the success of some such facilities against the odd. Here is the story of an elder care facility in Maryland: The state reported 12,168 cases and 1,830 deaths at elder care facilities. As the Sun Newspaper reported earlier this week, that’s about one in five positive tests and nearly two-thirds of the deaths since the pandemic hit the state.

None has occurred at the Maryland Baptist Aged Home on Rayner Avenue in West Baltimore, according to the Sun’s database of nursing home cases. That’s because, in late February, Reverend Derrick DeWitt believed the country faced a deadly threat of unpredictable scope. He took immediate action… “The first thing we did was eliminate all visitations,” he says. (read more)

Regarding police violence in the US, the media has covered individual policemen’s act of courage during tense demonstrations…. What if there were some precincts in predominant African American urban neighborhood who had no incidence of violence?

I found such a place in Stockton, California. The uncommon strategy: Atonement.

It was July 2016, in the furious days after the police shootings of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Those were followed closely by the deadly ambush of police officers in Dallas, Texas, and in Baton Rouge after protests over the Sterling killing. Nationwide, police departments were assuming a protective posture as outrage roiled cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. However, Jones was out in his community, talking about the role of police in everything from pre-Civil War slave-catching to Jim Crow enforcement and the carceral policies of the War on Drugs.

“This needs to be said,” the white police chief told the largely African American congregation. “There was a time when police used to be dispatched to keep lynchings ‘civil.’ That’s a fact of our history that we need to acknowledge.”

In a video of his speech, Jones looks oddly marooned in his uniform on the giant church stage. “Now, I didn’t do that,” he continued. “But the badge we wear still does carry the burden, and we need to at least understand why those issues are deep-rooted in a lot of our communities.” The parishioners murmured in affirmation—and perhaps surprise. “My, my, my,” one said.

At the time, Jones didn’t know how this apology would be received. “I was nervous the first time I did it,” he told me later. “I know just the way you do it is so important, and you have to be sincere.”

That apology marked the beginning of an unprecedented truth-and-reconciliation process with communities of color in Stockton, a high-poverty city in California’s Central Valley that for years, had been struggling with a familiar American crisis. When Jones took over as chief in 2012, its annual murder rate was higher than Chicago’s. That year, the city of 300,000 saw 71 homicides and an overall crime rate more than twice the national average. A municipal bankruptcy had slashed the size of the police force, and it could barely keep up with 911 calls.

After two decades of zero-tolerance policing tactics, a history of local abuse, and high-profile officer-involved shootings, there was a deep well of mistrust between police and the Stockton communities most beset by violence. A career Stockton officer, Jones had begun taking steps to improve, training his officers on fair practices and using more focused, less invasive strategies to prevent violence. But he came to believe that they wouldn’t make real headway on addressing the city’s public safety issues unless he embarked on something more radical: not just apologies but atonement. (read more)

These two examples of Positive Deviance will be called “anecdotal” by the skeptics but PD is not just about finding those examples but using a unique process to invite communities in trouble to uncover the solutions by themselves, fostering quick adoption or adaptation of what they found works to their own communities, and monitor the progress.

That is the challenge Positive Deviance invites you to take and as the case studies illustrate, a journey of transformation well worth it.

Monique Sternin
Co-Founder, Positive Deviance Initiative

Linh Nguyen
Manager, Positive Deviance Website

Over the past months, the official PD website has seen many new features including:

• Comprehensive, easy-to-search bibliography
• Reorganized facilitators page
• Quick and simple project submission form

We hope that these improvements helps the members of the PD community better learn, contribute, and connect with one another!