asherrills23@nul.org

For three decades, Aqeela Sherrills has worked to advance community ownership of public safety and facilitate healing from violence in marginalized communities. Through his Community-Based Public Safety Collective, he advises and trains local public safety organizations in the methodologies that prevent violence and help victims heal. This effort builds on Aqeela’s work with The Newark Community Street Team, a community-based initiative he co-created and directed for five years. A one-time Crips member, Aqeela, then 19, co-founded the anti-violence Amer-I-Can Program with NFL star Jim Brown, which provided training to more than 400,000 adult and juvenile inmates and diverted 1,500 high-risk youth from continued involvement with California criminal justice system. Aqeela serves as senior advisor to the Alliance for Safety and Justice’s Shared Safety Initiative, a national nonprofit working to replace justice and prison system waste with common sense solutions.