Cities across the country are launching Safety Ambassador teams to provide a highly visible, uniformed presence at street level and help make public spaces safer and more welcoming. Often deployed along major streets, alleys, city parking lots and residential neighborhoods, ambassadors may walk residents home at night, help drivers with flat tires, assist visitors and businesses and connect unhoused residents or people in crisis with services.
In Denver, ambassadors wearing recognizable bright yellow vests patrol downtown walkways and business districts, responding to safety and cleanliness concerns, helping visitors and connecting people in distress to the city’s mobile crisis response and other services, an effort designed to deliver fast assistance and match “the right responder to the right need at the right time.”
Safer Cities recently spoke with Ryan Ertman, Senior Director of Safety and Security for the Downtown Denver Partnership, about how the team helps keep downtown safe and welcoming, responds to challenging situations and connects people with the support they need:
- On Pairing Immediate Safety Response With Long-Term Outreach: “We have an amazing team that serves in a number of ambassadorial capacities, with two specialized roles, outreach caseworkers and public safety ambassadors, making up the full team… our public safety ambassadors are a team of unarmed, uniformed individuals with strong communication skills and an emphasis on supporting a safe, welcoming environment for all. They patrol within the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District and make contact with people both proactively and reactively. Our team also responds to reports from the public regarding security concerns, violations of City ordinances, and those in need of help. Our team is excellent at de-escalation and dealing with people experiencing homelessness as well as those experiencing substance misuse and mental health issues. When an individual wants help, our public safety ambassadors connect the person to our case workers who have more time and resources to help. If the person does not want help, continues to violate the law and refuses to adhere to education and warnings, we contact the police for possible enforcement.
Our outreach caseworkers proactively make contact with vulnerable populations and focus on building the trust needed to ultimately make connections to services. Once trust is established, they identify barriers to service and treatment and work to break through those barriers to help their clients get into addiction treatment and mental health services. Every day our case workers meet with new and regular clients to try to get them one step closer to their goals and, ideally, into treatment or services and housing…”
- On The Importance Of Investing In A Team That Is Highly Trained: “Training and experience are paramount to ensuring this balance can be achieved. We have an internal team because not just anyone can perform this job… Our team members need to be friendly and lead with a trauma-informed-care lens and understand where people are coming from. Once you can take a moment to demonstrate some empathy, most situations can be de-escalated quickly. We are building and supporting a downtown for everyone and we ask that everyone adhere to the same social contract. By treating everyone with respect and dignity from the start, we can avoid most problems. Our team is very safety-focused and are trained to watch for indicators of violence to avoid problems before they arise.”
- On What The Job Demands From Safety Ambassadors: “Patience, compassion, and vigilance are absolutely critical to success in this role. It is not easy to have such a critical public-facing role with no enforcement authority behind it. You have to approach every situation with compassion and have the patience to solve incredibly complex problems of those who are not always behaving appropriately, kindly, or logically. We have an incredible team that is genuinely passionate about and dedicated to our mission to ensure downtown is a welcoming, safe place for all.”