What To Read This Week

This week’s edition reports results from two new polls—one national; one from Harris County, Texas—exploring public perception around Community Safety Departments. 

Context: 

Three years ago, Albuquerque—under Mayor Tim Keller’s leadership—launched the country’s first community safety department. The program houses the city’s civilian responder teams and is a co-equal branch of public safety along with the police department and fire department. Earlier this year, the department opened its own headquarters. And, just last month, Albuquerque welcomed its latest cohort of responders fresh from its training academy. 

Albuquerque’s Community Safety Department has become a national model for other cities and counties looking to community safety departments to help modernize their public safety infrastructure. As awareness—and momentum—for Community Safety Departments mounts, Safer Cities conducted polling to glean how residents respond to both the broad ideas and specific details that constitute community safety departments. 

1. National Poll Results. 

To gauge public support for community safety departments, Safer Cities recently conducted a national survey of 2,400 registered voters. 

• 76% Of Voters Say Community Safety Departments Are “Effective” At “Making Your Community Safer.”
  
  Read question wording here. 

  • By a 59 point margin—78% to 17%—voters view community safety departments as “effective” as opposed to “not effective.”

  • These results also reflect broad bipartisan support, including 83% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans who say community safety departments are effective.

• The Most Effective Arguments In Favor Of Community Safety Departments. We provided participants with “a few statements about the effectiveness of community safety departments” and then asked them to tell us “how convincing, if at all” each of those reasons are “for implementing community safety departments as a public safety policy?” Here are the three most persuasive arguments:

  • +64 Net Effective (82% to 18%): “Community safety departments are about sending the right responder to address every problem. When the call is for a robbery in progress, we should send the police. When the call is for a mental health crisis, we should send trained mental health professionals.”

  • +58 Net Effective (79% to 21%): “Sending civilian first responders rather than police officers, to address mental health crises, pick up needles from the street, and resolve minor parking disputes, frees up police officers to solve serious crimes like robberies, rapes, and murders.”

  • +54 Net Effective (77% to 23%): “Many people are too scared to reach out to police departments when they have unmet needs, and therefore they are not willing to call 911. To these individuals, community safety departments provide another pathway to reach out and get help. Thus, community safety departments can help solve a problem before it becomes a crisis that threatens public safety.”

• When Forced To Choose, Voters Prefer To Allocate New Public Safety Dollars To Community Safety Departments Than To Hiring More Police Officers. 
  
  Read question wording here.

  • 56% = “Spend the additional funds on community safety departments to address community safety.”

  • 37% = “Spend the additional funds on hiring more police officers to address community safety.”

2. Harris County (Texas) Poll Results. 

Harris County is the third most populous—and one of the most politically, economically, and demographically diverse—counties in the country. Here’s a new poll, the results of which largely echo those of the national polling above.

• Residents Say A Community Safety Department Would Be “Effective” At “Making Harris County Safer."
  
  Read the question wording here.

  • By a 74 point margin—87% to 13%—voters view community safety departments as “effective” as opposed to “not effective.”

  •  These results also reflect broad bipartisan support, including 95% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans who say community safety departments are effective.

• Residents Believe That Each Division Within A Community Safety Department Would Help Make The County Safer.
  
  To better understand how Harris County residents view not just the overarching community safety department concept, but also each of the individual divisions that are housed within it, we asked residents about various core units within such a program. The survey results reveal that Harris County residents believe that each of the functions within the department would be “effective” at “making Harris County safer.”

• 91% Of Residents Say Mobile Crisis Response Units Are “Effective” At “Making Harris County Safer.”

• 88% Of Residents Say Overdose Response Units Would Be “Effective” At “Making Harris County Safer.”

• 83% Of Residents Say Clean Team Units Would Be “Effective” At “Making Harris County Safer.”

• 81% Of Residents Say Transit Ambassador Units Would Be “Effective” At “Making Harris County Safer.”

• 80% Of Residents Say Safety Ambassador Units Would Be “Effective” At “Making Harris County Safer.”