NEW POLL Finds Robust Support For Civilian Transit Ambassadors

Over the summer, Los Angeles County announced that it will add 300 unarmed, uniformed transit ambassadors to watch over the county’s trains and buses to “create a culture in which the ambassadors [act as] the front line, managing the lion’s share of incidents in transit [and] reserve law enforcement and armed responses to those incidents that truly warrant it.”

Across the country, in Cleveland, Ohio, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority just launched its new unarmed “highly visible, uniformed civilian force created with the goal of preventing violence and disruptive behavior, providing assistance during medical emergencies and maintaining a vigilant watch over rail stations, transit centers and bus lines … [The] team includes crisis intervention specialists who are trained and have expertise in using conflict resolution skills to help people experiencing mental health crises.”

As these novel approaches to transit security launch, Safer Cities conducted a poll to gauge public support for civilian transit ambassadors. Our survey of likely voters nationally, conducted in partnership with Data For Progress (methodology) found:

75% of voters support the creation of an unarmed transit security ambassador unit where they live.

Moreover, our results show that support for transit security ambassadors exceeds 7 of 10 voters across party, race, gender, age, and educational attainment:

Likely voters overwhelmingly believe that each of the core functions that transit security ambassadors serve are “very important” or “important”.

We also sought to understand which aspects of a transit security ambassador’s job likely voters considered to be important or unimportant. Here are the results ordered in order of net importance: