Three Things To Read This Week
1. Introducing Safer Cities Explainers:
Last week, Safer Cities introduced our coverage map, which curates many of the innovative programs that we’ve covered from crisis stabilization to mobile crisis response teams, from Narcan access to trauma recovery centers. This week, we’re introducing short explainers on four key issues that we’ve covered:
Narcan Access: Against the backdrop of overdose deaths hitting a record high in the United States last year, there is an emerging bipartisan consensus among elected officials that cities need to get Narcan—a nasal spray proven to reverse opioid overdoses—into the hands of as many people as can responsibly administer it.
Overdose Response Teams: As overdose deaths reached record highs in America last year, cities are turning to Overdose Response Teams to combat the overdose epidemic.
Security Ambassadors: Security Ambassadors are a “highly visible uniformed presence at the street level” deployed along major streets, downtown areas, or residential neighborhoods. By serving as “eyes on the street,” security ambassadors deter crime while also making residents safer.
Hospital-Based Violence Intervention: Hospital-Based Violence Intervention programs combine the medical expertise of the hospital staff with trained community experts who work together with victims of violent crime while they are recovering to reduce the odds that a victim of a violent crime will commit, or suffer from, violent crime in the future.
The goal of these explainers is to provide a short and accessible overview for each topic and to provide examples of where these programs exist and are working. We’ll build on this initial set of explainers over time.
2. Police Officers Should “Respond To Really Dangerous Situations And High Stakes Cases.”
Last week, Safer Cities featured the second of three editions highlighting an important aspect of New York University Law School’s Policing Project’s newly published report on Denver’s mobile crisis response program, STAR, or “Support Team Assisted Response”. The report includes insights from interviews with 911 dispatchers, police officials, STAR’s own clinicians, and “residents of Denver’s communities most affected by policing and other first response practices.”
This week’s edition dives into another thorny question discussed in the NYU report: What do community members and municipal actors in Denver believe the police should do?
Community members told the researchers that armed police officers should focus on “really dangerous situations” and “high stakes cases” such as:
“carjackings, assaults, and murder”;
“domestic violence or gunshots”;
“murder cases or rape”;
“children being kidnapped”;
“DUIs”; and
“if you’re going 100 miles [per hour] in a 20 [miles per hour zone].”
Municipal staffers, too, “generally believed that the ‘best utilizations’ of police time and energy involved addressing violent crime rather than deeply rooted social problems such as homelessness, substance use, and mental health issues.”
Takeaway: Both community members and municipal staffers indicated that a clear benefit of the Denver Star program—and other unarmed civilian responder services—is “freeing up police time [so that] police could respond to other more pressing ‘emergency’ calls/matters.” Again, “the ‘appropriate’ scope of police work often was described as responding to and solving ‘violent crime.’”
Related: These community responses echo results from a September 2021 Safer Cities national survey of 1,311 likely voters nationally on the importance of competing uses of police time and resources. The results reveal a wide chasm between how the police spend their time and how likely voters think the police should spend their time. Specifically, “solving shootings and murders” and “solving rapes” were the most important uses of police officer time according to voters while “responding to traffic violations” and “responding to mental health and homelessness related issues” were the least important uses of police time.
3. Cities Find More Innovative Ways To Expand Narcan Access
There’s a growing bipartisan push to make Narcan available not only to first responders, but to as many ordinary citizens as possible. Thus, leaders across the country are providing access to the easy-to-administer medication in schools, churches, bars and clubs, public transit stations and airlines, local vending machines, and over-the-counter pharmacies.
Here’s a look at more cities making the overdose reversing medication available at novel locations:
Turnpikes. For KOCO5, Oklahoma City’s ABC News affiliate, Andy Weber reports that “drivers on Oklahoma’s turnpikes will now have access to vending machines that [dispense] free Naloxone, better known as Narcan.” The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority is installing seven vending machines designed for easy access—“all a user has to do is touch the screen, pick the product they would like and enter their ZIP code”—at various turnpike locations that collectively serve in excess of one million travelers per day.
Restaurants. For NPR, Sarah Kim reports on a new trend of “local health departments across the U.S. looking to restaurants … to make Narcan more accessible to the public.” Kim interviewed restaurant owners, managers, and leaders of restaurant associations around the country who at first thought having Narcan available would be daunting but, after getting trained on administering the medication, became impressed with how simple the medication is to stock and administer if needed. For example, Marie Ackerman, a restaurant manager in Virginia told the news station: “I think anybody can do it. I think even a child could do it.”
Jails. For the Louisville Times-Tribune in Kentucky, Sarah Ladd reports that the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections “recently installed a vending machine in its exit lobby where people being released from jail can get free naloxone nasal spray.” Ben Goldman, the community health administrator for Louisville Health Department, explained to the newspaper that “in the two weeks after leaving jail, a person’s risk of overdosing from opioids is much higher…”
Universities. For The Stanford Daily, Jacqueline Munis reports on Stanford University installing “one hundred new shelves containing free Narcan and fentanyl test strips in dorms across campus.” Ralph Castro, associate dean of students, told the newspaper that because Narcan is “a safe medication that saves lives,” the university’s goal is “to continue to expand access in every way we can.” Stanford also made Narcan training mandatory for dormitory resident assistants.
