Advancing the work of the Minneapolis Safe and Thriving Communities Report and Plan, City leaders have published the Community Safety Ecosystem Asset and Gap Analysis: Findings and Action Plan. Commissioned by the City, the actionable framework identifies the City's current strengths, existing barriers, and strategic opportunities for moving the City's community safety goals forward.
The City partnered with the New York University School of Law’s Policing Project to produce the report. The Policing Project drew on several sources of data, as well as conversations with City and non-governmental contract agencies to provide deeper insights into successes as well as barriers within the system. The report looks at the differing types of calls for service over a 3-year period before providing an action plan of recommendations for the City, many of which are already underway, or even completed. The report is broken down by looking at desired state, current state, and gaps for each of the three types of community safety ecosystem services – response, prevention, and restoration.
“The analysis found that Minneapolis has a well-established network and strong foundation for unarmed real-time response services,” said Office of Community Safety Director of Design and Implementation Amanda Harrington. “Currently, about 9 percent of 9-1-1 calls are diverted to expanded non-police services, which includes the Behavioral Crisis Response (BCR) team, traffic control unit, animal control and 311 and online response. The analysis provides action steps to scale these services for greater impact.”
Beyond the strong base for diverted alternative response calls, the analysis also focused on improvements to safety services, their efficiency and how to integrate resources into a comprehensive ecosystem. Action steps outlined refinements to governance structures that promote coordination, accountability, and transparency.
“Work has already begun on the recommendations in the report,” said Director Harrington. “For example, we are currently working with Minneapolis Police Department and Hennepin County for juvenile diversion process, our data collection processes, online data dashboards for greater transparency, refining our policies, and building a stronger governance model to sustain the work.”
Director Harrington added that the City is not starting from scratch as the City has been working on implementation of the Safe and Thriving Communities plan for a year. Minneapolis has a strong foundation of programs and personnel, but there are opportunities for improvement as policing and community safety are reimagined in Minneapolis. The City will work with the NYU Policing Project for another year as it continues to work on the report’s findings and action plan.
"The Policing Project at NYU Law is proud to have worked alongside the City in identifying opportunities to advance their community safety goals and will continue to support this ambitious and achievable undertaking," said Alexander Heaton, NYU Policing Project Director of Reimagining Public Safety.