Safety We Can Feel Report & Survey
What do you think our families need to feel safe?
We got together with several other community building organizations to ask over 1,300 Philadelphia residents this question.
Beginning in the fall of 2020, we worked with our allies in Amistad Law Project, Movement Alliance Project, Vietlead, Pennsylvania Working Families Party, Reclaim Philadelphia and Philadelphia Community Bail Fund to ask community members what it would take to build safe community in Philadelphia. Over 1,300 Philadelphia residents responded to the survey and gave us a snapshot of where Philly feels we can find real community safety.
Here are some Key Findings:
The police are not keeping us safe.
75 percent of respondents think the police are bad at preventing violence in their neighborhood.
Of those that had to call the police for help this year, the majority (59%) said the police were unhelpful. Only 10 percent thought they were ‘very helpful’.
People overwhelmingly support reallocating police funding towards community services
Respondents wanted to see more funding going towards centers for mental health and addiction recovery (58%), housing and stability assistance (57%), and education and youth programming (53%) as approaches to addressing violence.
96% of respondents support the decision to reallocate funds from policing to these programs and services.
The city is not prioritizing key services for funding
Affordable housing, mental health services, and public schools & community colleges were the essential services respondents said the city prioritized the LEAST for funding. Community violence prevention, drug treatment, and youth recreational programming were also frequent choices.