The country has witnessed breathtaking progress in public safety infrastructure innovation over the past few years, as cities across the country have created mobile crisis response and violence intervention teams, launched trauma recovery centers and crisis stabilization units, and integrated 9-8-8 and 9-1-1 call centers to ensure that the right responder is sent to the right emergency. These advancements also enjoy overwhelming bipartisan support; and while no city has built all of the components of a modern public safety infrastructure yet, the fact that dozens of cities are actively building multiple pieces of the infrastructure provides both the contours of a vision for what a robust public safety infrastructure would look like and the concrete hope that the vision is within reach.

This week’s edition is focused on cities that are building public safety teams into their fire departments—specifically, we focus on how the renowned CAHOOTS team in Eugene, Oregon shifted its home from the police department to the fire department; the launch of new fire department-based behavioral response teams; and the launch of overdose response teams housed within fire departments.

The Vera Institute of Justice recently published a new polling deck—Winning the Narrative on Safer Roads and More Equitable Traffic Stops: Findings From National Polling and Public Opinion Research—that contains extensive framing advice for talking about how to shift police capacity towards the traffic stops that most impact public safety (for example, drunk driving). Here are three key findings.

“When it comes to keeping downtown safe, there is a group that's approaching it in a new way,” Kostiuk writes: “They are called ‘Safety Ambassadors,’ and they act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of Mile Square.” Kostiuk interviews one of the city’s safety ambassadors, a retired military veteran, who sees the job as “keeping the streets of Indianapolis safe” and “giving people a sense of pride for the city they are visiting.”

This proposed mobile crisis response system is a key piece of a broader plan known as the “Treatment Not Trauma” measure. What we’re focused on in this newsletter is the framing of the measure, because, when it comes to support from the public and the lawmakers who represent them, how policies are framed can matter as much as the substantive details contained within the policy.

The 9-8-8 Lifeline launched one year ago with a vision of providing “24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States.” For mental health professionals and advocates, 9-8-8 is a critical part of a broader mission to provide everyone in crisis with someone to call (e.g. 9-8-8), someone to respond (e.g. a mobile crisis unit), and somewhere to go (e.g. a crisis stabilization center).

“Every summer, teens and young adults across the country fill their bags, pack lunches and head to work — thanks to summer youth jobs programs. These initiatives, which have become ubiquitous nationwide, are beloved by politicians and constituents alike. They aim to perform myriad functions: helping connect youths to employment opportunities, offering them income and marketable skills, and dissuading them from risky behavior.”

Solstice House is a peer respite center in Madison, Wisconsin, which aims to provide a “warm, comforting environment that individuals can come to when they’re needing a respite from everyday life. If they're having mental health symptoms or stressors, and they're needing a break.” It’s also a program that “saves[s] the County and the State money” since, without the program, the “majority of the residents would have either been in the hospital [or] possibly ended up in jail.. “From fear to hope” is how Furman Avery, a program manager at Solstice House, describes the program’s philosophy: “I don’t push you. I don’t pull you. I walk beside you in your journey in recovery.”

Durham, North Carolina’s local ABC affiliate produced an excellent investigative segment on the Durham City Council’s decision announcing an additional investment of “nearly $2 million into its Community Safety Department which just last summer launched as the first of its kind in North Carolina.” The program has already become so popular in the community that the program’s director told ABC news that the “neighbors that we serve [are] asking for more HEART [and the team is even] seeing yard signs and other outpouring[s] of support …”

New Orleans is billing the mobile crisis intervention unit as the mental health focused “fourth branch” of the city’s emergency services—sitting alongside police, fire, and EMS—which is a structural positioning that illustrates that city leaders intend for the unit to become a permanent and vital part of the city’s first responder infrastructure.

The Alliance for Safety and Justice, a policy advocacy organization powered by over 180,000 crime survivors, recently published a Twitter thread recapping some historic wins around the country for crime victims and their loved ones. Building on the thread, here’s a brief overview of vital legislation that’s passed around the country in recent weeks, which includes financial assistance for survivors to relocate to a safe place, mental health support, and funding for trauma recovery centers.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine recently praised the opening of a new crisis stabilization center in Dayton, saying: “What we’re seeing today really does make Montgomery County a leader in the state and it really is one more major step forward to achieve what we want to achieve in Ohio … to have a system if your son or daughter or a family member is in crisis, there is a place for that person to go.”

A new report and guide from Everytown For Gun Safety, provides a roadmap for city leaders interested in acting on “a growing body of evidence [which] shows that summer youth employment programs aimed at the young people most at risk for or with histories of violence are a promising intervention to reduce violent crime in cities.”

There’s a growing bipartisan push to make Narcan—a life-saving drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose—as widely available to not only first responders, but to as many ordinary citizens as possible. To help combat the overdose crisis, leaders across the country are providing access to the easy-to-administer medication in schools and churches, bars and restaurants, in public transit stations and airlines, local vending machines and over the counter at pharmacies. Narcan has no effect when consumed by a person who is not having an overdose, meaning there is no risk in taking it. Hence, the push for widespread access. To gauge Americans’ views on the debate over increased access to Narcan, Safer Cities conducted a poll.

Safe Streets, Baltimore’s flagship community violence intervention program, focuses resources on high gun violence zones within the city, using trained experts to de-escalate conflict before it spreads. According to a new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University, that focus appears to be paying off: Safe Streets is “associated with a statistically significant 23% reduction in nonfatal shootings” across all program sites; and “Homicides were 22% lower than forecasted” if Safe Streets “had not been implemented” in the city’s five longest running program sites.

Community Safety Departments (CSD) are the third branch of public safety—sitting alongside fire and police as co-equal city departments. They function as umbrella organizations that centralize a city’s unarmed crisis response programs in the same way that a police department centralizes various law enforcement functions. Whereas a police department has divisions like robbery-homicide, and SWAT, CSDs have divisions such as mobile crisis response and violence intervention.

Albuquerque’s Community Safety Department broke ground on its new headquarters last week—showing how woven into the city’s fabric the department has become.

For the past two weeks, Safer Cities described new polling results which showed that voters. This week, we continue our deep dive into public opinion on community safety departments by analyzing why voters support community safety departments.

Last week, Safer Cities described new polling results which showed that 75% of voters would support the creation of an Albuquerque-style community safety department where they live. Today, we detail results that help unpack what motivates that overwhelming support.

Safer Cities recently covered the Albuquerque Community Safety Department, which is an umbrella department that centralizes the city’s unarmed crisis response programs.