SEATTLE — Upcoming Seattle Police Department "Micro-Community Policing Plan" dialogues will give residents an opportunity to weigh in on the results of the recently released 2022 Seattle Public Safety Survey Results and communicate with officers about ways to improve feelings of public safety within their neighborhoods.
"Community perceptions matter when it comes to public safety and quality of life issues around public safety and so it gives an opportunity to understand how one neighborhood and one precinct might be very different from another neighborhood in that very precinct," said Jackie Helfgott, head of the research team and director of the Crime and Justice Research Center at Seattle University.
Dialogues will be held in Seattle's east precinct on June 26, north precinct on July 3, south precinct on July 10, southwest precinct on July 17, and west precinct on July 24. To sign up for a dialogue, click here.
The Public Safety Survey examines perceptions of public safety in neighborhoods across Seattle – both top concerns and general feelings around public safety.
"We also measure public safety-related quality of life elements such as police legitimacy, the degree to which people trust the police," Helfgott said. "We measure social cohesion, the degree to which people trust and rely on their neighbors. We measure informal social control, the degree to which people get involved in public safety, joining block watch or coming to one of the dialogues, and we measure fear of crime and we measure social disorganization, people's perceptions of lower-level misdemeanor-type activity."
The study aims to examine the public safety health of a neighborhood by looking at their rankings on those scales and their top concerns. Along with gathering information about micro-communities, the dialogues are meant to create ongoing community policing relationships.
In addition to the precinct-by-precinct events, partners are hosting Before the Badge sessions, where community members can meet with police recruits and help shape their understanding of the communities they'll be serving.