Safer Cities recently covered the Albuquerque Community Safety Department, which is an umbrella department that centralizes the city’s unarmed crisis response programs. For example, the department’s:
“behavioral-health workers respond to calls, mostly from 911, about nonviolent crises involving mental health, homelessness, or substance use” and are “trained to connect people from some of the city’s most vulnerable populations with professional help. In doing so, they also reduce those residents’ interactions with local law-enforcement agencies, which in recent years have had the second-highest fatal-shooting rate among major American cities.”
Since its creation, Albuquerque Community Safety has responded to more than twenty thousand calls, and “less than one per cent have required eventual police involvement.”
To gauge whether Americans would support or oppose an Albuquerque style community safety department where they live, Safer Cities conducted a poll of 1,704 registered voters nationally.
Here’s what we found:
- 75% of voters, including most Republicans and most Democrats, support their city creating a community safety department that would function as a separate and coequal city department alongside the police and fire departments. Among Democrats, support sits at 88% (51% “strongly support”).
After watching a local television news segment on the Alburquerque Community Safety department, voter support for creating a community safety department where they live spiked to 88%.
You can watch the news segment here.
