City wants to know how safe you feel

The City of Seattle has released an online survey to determine residents’ public safety concerns in their neighborhoods, as well as on public transportation. The survey was created by a team of graduate students at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

With this survey, the City hopes to have a snapshot of perceptions of the police and public safety at a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level. The survey also gives residents an opportunity to anonymously offer their opinions on the police and public safety in Seattle — a new option for this kind of survey.

The new survey asks residents their opinion of public safety conditions in Seattle’s urban villages, if there are any urban villages they avoid, and why. The survey also asks for opinions on the Seattle Police Department, focusing on community relations and behavior. These questions are similar to questions the City posed in its biannual survey over the past ten years.

In order to hear input from the entire city, Evans School students will have paper copies delivered to targeted locations, and will actively solicit responses from traditionally underrepresented communities. The City hopes to receive up to 15,000 responses to the survey questions.

Evans School students will do an analysis of initial responses by May and plan to present their analysis to the mayor’s Youth and Families Initiative subcabinet in mid-May.

You can take the survey here.

12 thoughts to “City wants to know how safe you feel”

  1. Well about half the survey is “are the racist police hassling you?” I wasn’t expecting many questions about the effectiveness of the police, but those were easy to answer.

  2. To the people who constantly trot out the tired “hug a ___” phrase, Would YOU be willing to pay more in taxes so that we could have more police to patrol and follow up on crimes? This is not an opportunity to rail against the government or any other program. JUST the police budget and for the sake of argument a tax that can only go to hiring additional police. Discuss…

  3. I would pay more for more police officers and would like to see money for police and fire in a dedicated fund, not the general budget so it can’t be raided by the Mayor and City Council. I would also like to see the police go through more training and I would like to see more police officers reside within the city limits. Although I don’t think the City can legally require this, the 18% figure does seem a bit low.

  4. I’m sure car prowling would get a lot more attention if it was the cops own cars getting prowled. Since so few of them live here they can treat it as a minor crime problem and ignore it.

  5. Yes, I certainly would.

    You’re mistaken if you think that everyone who wants safe streets is an anti-tax, knee-jerk, wingnut. Lifelong Democrat here, and I want more cops and I want ’em to start kicking ass.

    Taxes are too low generally in America. Most of us can afford to pay a bit more. A few of us can afford to pay a LOT more. And so we should. I would rather live in Finland (high taxes, effective government, high quality of life for all) than live in Somalia (no taxes, no government, miserable life for everyone but a tiny handful of thugs). Of course, where headed more and more towards Somalia every day.

  6. I agree, Seattle already parts of Seattle already look like Mogadishu….it started when state workers were moved from defined pensions plans to 401ks. Like Ballard Bubba, I’m gonna write a check tonight and send to Olympia.

  7. I like the fact that there is an effort to gain some feedback from the community on views of our police force and hood safety. Adds to the people that show up to council meetings and comment. I would agree with SPG that more of my wallet can go to local safety departments and to other infrastructure that can improve our streets. Then I would prioritize money to education/mentorship of kids.

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