We Keep Us Safe. We asked Powderhorn Park community members about their experiences of safety in the neighborhood and what they believe is needed. Here’s what we learned.
We All Play a Part…
Most people who responded to the survey (76%) feel a great sense of personal responsibility for supporting public safety and well-being. A majority (64%) think other individuals in the community are also responsible for helping promote safety and well-being.
… Especially in Sharing Resources, Mediating Conflict, and Removing Needles
There was consensus that the community should support some safety interventions over others. In particular, most respondents felt community members ought to play a role in sharing resources with those experiencing an emergency, mediating conflict between neighbors (84%), and removing needles from public areas (79%).
Some Issues Require Professional Help
Certain issues, like gun violence, are beyond the scope of individual help. Only 21% of those surveyed said individuals should disrupt gun violence, even with access to training. 39% said the same for disrupting drug sales and/or mitigating harms of drug use. Folks were evenly split on whether individuals have a role to play in disrupting physical violence. See Figure 2.
Training is Needed
Across the board, respondents were more confident in the ability of individuals to support safety and wellbeing when they had access to encouragement and training. On average, training for individuals boosted the confidence of those surveyed by 23%.
Training had the biggest impact on confidence in the areas of disrupting sexual assault and mediating conflict between strangers. A majority of respondents said individuals should support these interventions with training (57% and 69%, respectively). However, a much smaller group think the community is currently ready to tackle those issues (14% and 28%). See Figure 2.
Most Common Experiences
One of our goals was to understand what types of situations people experience most commonly in the neighborhood. A majority of those who responded had encountered most of the situations we asked them about. This includes conflict between neighbors or strangers, someone experiencing a crisis, physical attacks, gun violence, drug sales or use, and theft. A majority of people had not encountered sexual exploitation or assault. See Figure 3.
Common Responses
We wanted to learn what actions community members took most. Most commonly, respondents had directed someone to additional resources, or contacted a friend or neighbor for support. Third most common was attempting to de-escalate a situation by oneself. A majority of people have never attempted medical intervention. Perhaps additional training is needed for folks to feel comfortable performing CPR or Narcan in an emergency.
We noticed more people have called 911 for MPD than for a mental health response, despite the City’s new Behavioral Crisis Response Team. This may be because the program is new, people didn’t know about it, or they preferred a police response over a mental health response.
SIDE ITEM
We Know Ourselves Best
A majority of respondents (54%) said their neighbors are currently ready to support the mediation of conflict between neighbors. But this number dropped to just 28% when it came to mediating conflict between strangers.
A Note On Our Data Set
We had 22 responses to our expanded survey, and 13 responses to our general survey. This is a small sample size, so we don’t believe these views are entirely representative of the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood.
Of those who responded, 64% of people live or own property in the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood. The remaining 36% live, work, or own property in a nearby neighborhood. 40% of people who responded were between the ages of 35 and 44, 27% were 55+, and 18% were 18-34. 58% of respondents were white, 27% were people of color, and 15% didn’t respond.