A four-part series inspired by the work of Longmont Public Safety
Part 3: From Dependency to Interdependence
đź“– Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Key Ideas:
- Many neighborhoods began in dependency, expecting safety to be delivered.
- With encouragement, residents discovered their own abundance.
- Interdependence created cultural change: crime dropped, fear faded.
Series Intro:
This is Part 3 of Neighborhoods Becoming: Lessons in Safety, Trust, and Belonging. We’ve seen how belonging leads to safety (Part 1) and how slow, patient work sustains change (Part 2). Now, we look at the transformation at its fullest: interdependence.
When Longmont’s neighborhoods first reached out for help, many were weary and fearful. Calls to police had piled up. Some residents demanded more enforcement, others wanted none at all. But almost across the board, neighbors fell on the low end of what might be called a “dependency scale.” They believed safety was something to be delivered to them.
Over time, that belief shifted. With encouragement, neighbors began to see themselves not as lacking, but as abundant — rich with skills, gifts, and social capital. They learned to welcome new residents, to extend help across neighborhoods, to see life together as something to be created, not endured.
That is the essence of interdependence: not the absence of public safety, but a new kind of partnership where responsibility is shared. Officers still enforced laws when needed, but more often they were coaches, facilitators, or simply friends sharing a meal at a neighborhood barbecue.
The results spoke for themselves. Crime decreased by 50%. Gang membership plummeted. Lethal domestic violence nearly disappeared. But the deeper transformation was cultural: fear became a distant memory, replaced by an identity rooted in abundance, trust, and connection.
When dependency gives way to interdependence, safety no longer needs to be delivered. It is lived, every day, by people who know they belong to each other.
This blog is part of “Neighborhoods Becoming: Lessons in Safety, Trust, and Belonging,” a four-part series inspired by the work of Longmont Public Safety. Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4.