The Rapid City Police Department’s (RCPD) Quality of Life Unit (QLU), developed by collaborating with local community organizations and stakeholders, builds relationships with people live in the visible part of the poverty spectrum. The QLU is comprised of police officers and caseworkers who work together to build rapport and provide support to individuals experiencing homelessness and other vulnerable members of the community to link them to relevant support services. The QLU has been making significant strides in addressing the unique challenges faced by Rapid City’s large Indigenous population. Indigenous Reservation populations tend to be economically depressed, and more than half of all Native American residents of South Dakota live below the federal poverty limit. Indigenous individuals are also disproportionately overrepresented in Rapid City’s unhoused community, so by tailoring their efforts to meet the specific needs of this group, the QLU is working to bridge gaps in resources and support systems. RCPD also partners with numerous other social service stakeholders and organizations within the criminal justice system to foster a network of additional support and facilitate interventions. The QLU was conceptualized through the IACP Collective Healing Initiative, a Department of Justice, Office of Victim Services-funded project, in 2018, and has been an instrumental and sustained part of the RCPD community policing program. 

The Collective Healing Initiative (CHI), a Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime-funded project, was created to promote healing in the wake of harm, acknowledging the need and desire of police and communities to come together to address the impact of trauma on those served as well as the workforce providing services. Through their work as part of CHI, the Rapid City (SD) Police Department (RCPD) engaged with several community organizations to create meaningful collaboration to address crime victimization in the community.  This also included developing a Council of Elders, an advisory group of seven elders from local Indigenous tribes, to provide support and assist the community in navigating racial tensions. In Rapid City, the Indigenous population make up over 11 percent of the city’s population, which is a higher concentration than the average Indigenous population in the United States. Conversely, Indigenous individuals make up only three percent of RCPD’s staff. By bringing Indigenous elders into the conversation with RCPD during CHI, it provided the department with vital information and perspective on how they can continually work to better their relationships with the Indigenous community, and thereby engage in collaborative problem solving, with the goal of violence reduction. A member of the Council of Elders was also involved in the RCPD CHI workgroup, a core group of credible messengers from the Lakota Community, that collectively worked together to develop a path forward to ensure progress towards healing was sustainable.