Safer Cities recently conducted a national survey of 2,400 registered voters to gauge public support for community violence intervention. Here are the results.

Safer Cities recently conducted a national survey of 2,400 registered voters. To gauge public support for safety ambassador programs, the survey asked respondents two questions—one aimed at measuring perceived effectiveness and the other aimed at grasping prioritization between hiring safety ambassadors and hiring additional police officers. 

Over the next few editions, we’ll report on the results of a new Safer Cities national survey of 2,400 registered voters. 

We start with a question that asks voters to tell us how they’d “prefer”  to “invest additional funding to make your city safer” when forced with the choice of “hiring more police officers to address public safety” or “spend[ing] the additional funds on comprehensive approaches to address public safety.”

This year, for the first time in our country’s history, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy declared that gun violence is a public health crisis. In a recently released 40 page advisory, Dr. Murthy urged policymakers to deploy tools from the public health toolkit to reduce gun violence “with the vigor used to reduce injuries from tobacco and motor vehicle crashes.”

Summer jobs programs for teenagers reduce violent crime, according to the results of gold-standard randomized controlled trials conducted in Boston, Chicago, and New York City.

Transit Safety Ambassadors In Los Angeles Have “Saved More Than 250 Lives.” In Los Angeles County, Transit Safety Ambassadors are “increasingly seen as a critical component of making public transit safer, cleaner, and more orderly.”

As Jessica Salinas reports for KRQE in Albuquerque, “The city has opened the doors on the first-of-its-kind headquarters” for Albuquerque Community Safety, the unarmed public safety department “dealing with homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues.”

In Northern California, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District—or BART—embraces “mounting requests from passengers for an increased safety presence in the [transit] system but with less reliance on armed officers.”

People living in rural areas often have to wait longer for first responders to arrive in an urgent situation like an overdose or acute mental health crisis. That’s why, in Florida, Manatee County and Tampa General Hospital have partnered to launch the nation’s first “program that uses drone technology to deliver life-saving emergency equipment to 911 callers [while] improving response times for health-related emergencies.”

In Virginia, The “Someone To Call, Someone To Respond And Somewhere To Go” Vision Takes Shape. 

“‘Trauma Recovery Centers’ Are Favored By Law-And-Order Officials And Progressive Activists Alike For One Big Reason: They Work.”

Police Leadership Backs Civilian Crisis Response Programs: Police in three major cities express support for robust expansion of unarmed crisis response.

As opioid overdose deaths reached record highs last year, billions of dollars of opioid lawsuit settlement dollars began flowing to state and local governments. Here’s a look at how four places are spending the money.

This edition of Safer Cities focuses on how community violence intervention investments played out in three different cities—Baltimore, Detroit, and Orlando. Each of these programs leverage the fact that gun violence often spreads through cycles of retaliation between groups of people within the same social network. And they all rely on trained community experts to intervene in conflicts—especially within these social networks—to prevent violence before it happens.

Here are four new crisis stabilization centers launching around the country that promise to improve public safety while reducing visits to emergency rooms or jails.

From wound care to flu shots to long-lasting injectables that treat schizophrenia, street medicine programs improve public health and safety.

White House Hosts First CVI Leadership Academy Graduates. For Politico, Shia Kapos reports that Vice President Kamala Harris hosted the graduation ceremony for the first class of the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy.

The cohort spans 21 cities across the country; and, the academy “equips senior and executive leaders working in community violence intervention with the skills and knowledge needed to alter their communities and the organizations they lead … [It is] overseen by expert practitioners and scholars.”

As opioid deaths in America continue to reach historic highs, cities have launched promising new prevention programs in an effort to combat the overdose epidemic. This week’s Safer Cities focuses on those efforts, including: Increased and innovative access to life-saving medication like Narcan; Overdose response teams who save lives through rapid response in the wake of an overdose; and Addiction stabilization centers with medical professionals who offer crisis treatment and connections to long-term care.