Dateline Sunday features North Charleston Police Department's ST - WCBD-TV: News, Weather, and Sports for Charleston, SC

Dateline Sunday features North Charleston Police Department's STAND intervention

News 2 went behind the scenes with Dateline as they interviewed two North Charleston police officers and follow eight men through a program intended to get criminals to "Stop and Take A New Direction" (STAND).

For a full year, "Dateline" followed the program, capturing the personal journeys of the criminals who are trying to reform; of the reluctant police officers struggling to work with criminals instead of against them; and of the working class neighborhood that is trying desperately to save itself.

In 2011, in an effort to transform North Charleston, U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles created STAND to combat drug crime in the area.

"We would just come in and the goal would be to arrest people," Nettles said on News 2 Today. "The mindset should be, we want to go into a community and improve the quality of lives."

The North Charleston officers in charge of the program, narcotics detectives: Charity Prosser, a 39-year-old mother and wife, and her partner, Jamel Foster, a Navy veteran and father of four, appear on News 2 Today Sunday at 9 A.M. to discuss the surprising bond they formed with some of the would-be criminals.

Dateline airs Sunday night at 7:00.