Reimagining Public Safety

This process began in the fall of 2023 when the City was selected to participate in Bloomberg Philanthropies and Harvard University’s competitive Leadership Innovation Track. This program, provided at no cost to the City, equips City leaders and staff with the skills and knowledge needed to tackle community challenges in groundbreaking ways. With coaching and support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, a multidisciplinary team of City staff was assembled and embarked upon a journey to better understand concerns with public safety, identify new ideas and approaches to solving challenges, and test new solutions—with community involvement at every stage.

Understanding Public Safety Concerns

The City team began its innovation and improvement efforts by conducting extensive research into public safety concerns, including a review of data and surveys, current and best practices, and community interviews. Through this, the team identified four (4) main contributors driving the declining perceptions of public safety:

1. Increased number of individuals experiencing homelessness
2. Neglected infrastructure
3. Lack of visible police presence
4. Longer-than-expected police response times

Generate new Ideas

Public “co-creation” sessions were held with the community, where over 350 ideas to improve the perception of public safety were generated. From this exercise, two (2) ideas emerged:

• Co-Responder Model: Use non-sworn police personnel to address non-life-threatening concerns
• “Door Dash” Model: Provide an option to send status updates about the expected response time and responding officer via text to callers

Overwhelmingly, the community supported the Co-Responder Model, particularly for addressing homelessness.

Next Steps and Delivery

The City has already made progress toward implementing these solutions. A grant was recently secured to pilot the Co-Responder Model, and work is underway to build out the program. In addition, smaller-scale steps have already been implemented, such as creating magnets listing the various ways to contact the City, depending on the type of issue (911 for emergencies, non-emergency numbers, City Customer Service Center, and online incident reporting). This magnet idea came directly from resident input during the co-creation sessions.

Continued Community Engagement and Measuring Success

The City will continue collecting feedback through a targeted public safety survey, which is randomly administered to households. If selected, residents can provide input on public safety services, allowing the City to track overall satisfaction. However, all residents are encouraged to share feedback with the City at any time and can do so below. The City will use this feedback, along with results from the annual Neighbor Survey, to measure trends in public safety perceptions and assess the effectiveness of these innovations. With your help, we are dedicated to being “the city you never want to leave.”

City of Fort Lauderdale neighbors gather to discuss how to best improve public safety