By Claire Decatur
Published: Mar. 20, 2025 at 7:15 PM EDT
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) –
“Hi-Crest neighborhood was traditionally a redlined neighborhood,” SENT Inc. founder & Executive Director Johnathan Sublet said. “It reached its high point in crime back in 2005. Over the last 20 years, we have seen a 66% decrease in crime.”
Since the launch of SENT Inc. and Fellowship Hi-Crest, crime has dropped another 29%, according to numbers crunched by Johnathan Sublet. He says many people paved the way to make this change possible.
“You had matriarchs like former deputy mayor Betty Dunn, Betty Philips, and Nellie Holgan and Sara LaClair, and all them who were working over that time,” Sublet said.
Theft and domestic disputes are the two leading crimes. Sublet says SENT’s services aim to de-escalate conflict where it starts.
“We now have services that send therapists into the homes of those who want therapists to come in and create nurturing environments in their homes,” Sublet said. “We’re also doing things like developing a farm-to-food truck workforce development program
The list of resources is lengthy but all have the end goal of helping their community’s individual needs.
“You have to look at the holistic picture so what we have tried to do is structure programming in our community that lowers anxiety by meeting these five universal needs,” Sublet said. “When you do that right, we say if I can lower anxiety, the motivation to go up performance to go up and behavior go up and that’s what we’ve done.”