DEPARTMENT: Government and Public Affairs
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Jeff Coyle
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City Wide
SUBJECT: Police Services Scientific Survey Results
SUMMARY:
The Public Safety Committee will be briefed on the results of the Police Services Scientific Survey conducted in February and March 2021.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
On December 11, 2020, the City Manager provided a plan to review and analyze police service response over the next several months to the Mayor and City Council. The goal of this review is to distinguish between calls that require a traditional police response from those calls that may be better handled by another City department or combination of police and other service provider.
Part of this plan focuses on understanding the community expectations of police services and develop response alternative recommendations to ensure police officers are placed in encounters that need a law enforcement response. This effort will give the community an opportunity to provide input on what encounters they want to have with police and work with partners to develop response additions or alternatives.
On January 29, the Public Safety Committee was presented with a community engagement plan for this project that included the administration of a scientific survey as the first step of the process. The Community Survey was conducted by ETC Institute, a national research firm, during February and March.
ETC Institute mailed 5,650 survey packets to a random sample of households in the City of San Antonio. Each survey packet contained a cover letter, signed by the City Manager, and a copy of the survey in both English and Spanish. Residents who received the survey were given the option of completing the survey by mail, phone, or online. The actual number of surveys completed totaled 1,150 with roughly 100 per Council District. The overall results for the survey have a precision of at least +/- 2.8% at the 95% level of confidence.
The survey re...
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