The overarching goal or purpose of these efforts is to improve public safety through safety-conscious design and community-based solutions focused on crime prevention. The Connecting Cleveland 2020 Plan therefore sets forth a comprehensive set of policies for the area of Safety, each addressing a critical issue—along with specific strategies through which we might take immediate steps toward their implementation:

1. Safety by Design. Incorporate “safety-by-design” standards into local zoning codes, building codes, master plans, and design review guidelines.

• The Planning Commission should adopt safety-by-design standards for the city of Cleveland to insure that development projects have a positive impact on safety perceptions within the project area. For example, assign a safety officer to every special project or community planning initiative whose job it is to highlight potential safety concerns that a development may cause.

• Have each neighborhood in the city conduct a neighborhood safety auditusing planning, police, public services, and local residents to assess problems that contribute to crime on the front end.

2. Design Features. Use safety-by-design standards to require adequate lighting, areas open to surveillance, windows and porches along public streets, and safe pedestrian circulation systems.

3. Business District Patrols. Work with merchant associations and local development corporations to institute security patrols in neighborhood and regional business districts.

• Assign to particular neighborhoods an officer familiar with the unique problems that neighborhood faces.

• Establish a safe house and mini station in each of these neighborhoods, which will allow police to build relationships with residents of that community.

• Protect the investment of millions of dollars that have been and will be made in our business districts with the necessary level of police presence.

4. Police Presence. Continue collaboration between police and community groups to ensure greater police presence in areas experiencing increased criminal activity, and consider implementing programs such allowing officers to take patrol cars home for increased visibility in residential areas.

• Create a long-term plan to eventually have one auxiliary officer per neighborhood and an auxiliary office for each neighborhood.

• Develop “community policing” by working with all agencies and networking with block clubs to do problem solving and conflict resolution, and take a more proactive approach to utilizing volunteers to assist with community policing.

• Gradually restructure the Police Department around 36 precincts, within the six police districts, which will allow officers to strengthen relationships with residents. The only interaction residents in some neighborhoods ever have with the police is when they get arrested. Police officers need to be seen as part of the community and not as invaders.

• Deploy manpower according to need and size of the neighborhood. If the police know the residents, they will be more sensitive and understanding of the needs and the issues of that particular community. Phase in pilot program one neighborhood at a time.

5. Technology. Increase the efficiency of policing through use of such technology as video surveillance cameras, GIS mapping and data systems, and improved access to such information from police vehicles.

• Utilize red light cameras as a means of increasing traffic safety among drivers and pedestrians in key locations

• Install timed traffic signals at cross walks to increase pedestrian safety

6. Public Education. Expand programs designed to educate residents and businesses on safety precautions and crime deterrence, while providing information to counter inaccurate perceptions of crime levels in Cleveland’s neighborhoods and downtown.

• Work with faith-based institutions on programs to address the major issue of the lost family structure, which affects values passed on to youths in the city and ultimately contributes to menacing behavior.

• Develop a new interdepartmental philosophy that promotes pro-active, positive involvement by police and community engagement instead of focusing solely on reactive law enforcement.

• Work with police, fire and EMS units to develop programs that provide supervised recreation after school that combat alienation and association with delinquent or violent peers and introduce several protective factors, including skills for leisure activities and opportunities to become involved with other youth and adults.

• Develop a budget for a media campaign advertising local police department efforts and promoting a positive image of the law enforcement community through print ads, billboards, and commercials.

• Assemble a community-based problem-solving team composed of police, prosecutors, judges, probation and parole officers, as well as community residents, school and church leaders, and a shifting and expanding roster of other community leaders who might help to ensure meaningful collaboration around at-risk youth and juvenile offenders.

• Put, for example, a hospital administrator on the team charged with creating solutions to youthful drug dealing, such as requiring young offenders to work at the hospital on those horrific weekend nights when drug violence escalates, or having them care for crack babies.

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