NEW POLL: Overwhelming Bipartisan Support For Unarmed Security Ambassadors
Safer Cities recently covered West Hollywood's decision to expand its unarmed security ambassadors program—“a highly visible uniformed presence at the street level” deployed “along major streets, alleys, city parking lots, and residential neighborhoods.” In addition to serving as “a visible deterrent on the street, [trying] to offset any low-hanging fruit criminal activity,” security ambassadors will walk you home if you don’t feel comfortable walking alone at night, change your tire when your car breaks down, and help connect unhoused people to services.
Testimony in front of the city council made clear that residents and small business owners love the security ambassadors program. But it is less clear how the idea of deploying unarmed security ambassadors would land with Americans outside of West Hollywood, one of the most progressive cities in one of the most progressive states in the country.
To better understand public opinion on the concept of unarmed, uniformed security ambassadors, Safer Cities conducted a survey of 1,249 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents in partnership with Data for Progress. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.
76%, including robust majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, support the creation of an unarmed security ambassador unit where they live.
Notably, since the concept of a security ambassador is foreign to most people outside of West Hollywood, we provided respondents with a brief definition:
Security Ambassadors are unarmed public safety professionals that are deployed on major streets, city parking lots, shopping districts, and residential neighborhoods. They purport to deter crime through their highly visible uniformed presence and by providing non-emergency aid to residents such as walking people home at night who feel unsafe walking alone.
After the brief explanation, we asked:
Likely voters overwhelmingly believe that the core functions that unarmed security ambassadors serve are “important” or “very important”.
In addition to gauging public support for creating local unarmed security ambassador units, we also sought to understand which aspects of a security ambassador’s job that likely voters considered to be important or unimportant. Here are the results ordered in terms of % of respondents who believe the function (or benefit) is either “very important” or “important”:
82%
80%
80%
79%
67%
CONCLUSION:
Across the country, cities and counties are introducing non-law enforcement responders to address an array of situations that make people feel less safe. Mobile crisis response and community violence intervention get the lion's share of the attention; and, deservedly so—both are important programs with real momentum and growing track-records.
Our results show there is also a strong, bipartisan support for unarmed security ambassador programs. Cities and counties should consider replicating West Hollywood's program.
But we also suspect there is a broader lesson to learn here: there likely is a healthy public appetite for a range of innovative programs that solve real problems for residents and do so without forcing armed encounters or wasting critical law enforcement resources.
