The Safe Streets Campaign

Mission

Safe Streets empowers individuals, families, youth, neighborhoods and organizations to create safe neighborhoods.

Overview

During the past 18 years, the Safe Streets Campaign has partnered with local organizations, community members, and local government to better equip individuals and neighborhoods to combat crime and take back their streets.   Safe Streets Campaign was born in 1989 when illegal gang violence and illegal drug dealing were escalating out of control.   With the Pierce County Alliance and the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, the Safe Streets Campaign was a founding member of the Washington State Meth Initiative.   Safe Streets Campaign introduced the practice of community mobilization as a way to be part of the solution.

As a core component of the Initiative, this ensured that community education and prevention were put into practice in cooperation with proactive law enforcement, family services, treatment, meth lab clean–up, and protection of drug endangered children throughout the state.

Safe Streets Campaign has been involved in methamphetamine prevention strategies.   One example is the legislation that requires all pseudoephedrine and cold products be sold by pharmacists only.   Safe Streets Campaign was the coordinating agency for the Meth 360 program that was launched by Partnership for a Drug–Free America.   Meth 360 is a program that involves law enforcement, prevention, and treatment professionals in educating the community members on the dangers of meth in their neighborhoods.

In general, Safe Streets volunteers and staff are dedicated to accomplishing its mission through the following strategies:

Organizing neighborhoods and communities for action

Through forming block organizations, volunteers help people plant the seeds of grassroots, community leadership.   They connect residents with necessary community resources to effectively tackle a wide-range of community challenges.   And they involve young people to improve the physical, social, and economic conditions of the community.  Block organizing brings neighbors together to perform block organizations that help to eradicate and prevent crime.   Based on the concept of cooperation, block organizing brings together law enforcement, city officials, and residents in cooperative efforts to work together to provide protection for their homes and communities.   Crimes such as burglary, vandalism, and mischief threaten every member of each community.   The Safe Streets organizing program helps discourage this type of activity.   Block Watch has been very effective in helping residents eradicate meth labs from their neighborhoods.   For more information go to www.safest.org.

Develop leadership among youth and adults

Safe Streets’ youth Leading Change program builds skills in young people to help them sustain drug- and violence-free lifestyles.   Young people act as mentors and role models for their peers and younger students in schools and neighborhoods.   Safe Streets also supports neighborhood block members as they build their leadership skills through community improvement projects.

Bring community and strategic partners together on specific problems or opportunities relevant to building safe communities

Safe Streets helps form broad-based alliances of community organizations and neighborhood stakeholders to face specific problems.   They lead a country and statewide methamphetamine eradication project, which includes Meth Watch, an education project for retailers.   Much of the crime a community—especially violent crime—is tied to drugs and methamphetamine in particular.   Gang violence, truancy, and the reentry of ex–offenders into the community also represent significant threats to the safety of neighborhoods.   The Safe Streets Campaign and their strategic partners continue to work to build neighborhood safety.   Successful programs designed to protect communities built by Safe Streets Campaign are:

Safe Routes.  This program is designed to give kids a safer journey to school.  Reading, writing, arithmetic—recess, of course—is what kids should have on their minds as they make their way to school each weekday morning.   They shouldn’t have to worry about speeding cars, unsafe sidewalks, predators, bullies, or other hazards that may threaten their safety. The Safe Routes to School Program works to ease these worries so that children can safely walk or bike to school.   Through Safe Routes, parents, community members, school personnel, city traffic engineers, city planners, law enforcement officers, and community leaders work together to assess the safety of school walking routes and make necessary improvements.   New crosswalks, more crossing guards—as well as educating students and drivers about safe travel— can enhance the safety of our children as they make their way to school. In Pierce County, the Safe Streets Campaign has helped to organize various agencies and people—including Feet First, America Walks, the City of Tacoma Engineering Department, Tacoma Cares, the South End Citizen Patrol, and Pierce County’s Health Department—to create Safe Routes for students at two schools, Helen Stafford Elementary and Arlington Elementary School in Tacoma.

In the future, Safe Streets wants to work with neighbors in other areas of the country so that more children can enjoy improved safety on the way to school.

Citizens’ Patrol.  Through this program, volunteers work with police to improve neighborhood safety.  Neighbors who are involved in a Citizen Patrol program don’t just complain about speeding care and possible illegal activities.   They make their presence known in their neighborhoods and use that unified presence to discourage criminal activities. Wearing bright orange safety vests identifying them as Citizen Patrol volunteers, they patrol parks, neighborhoods, business districts, and public school grounds.   Patrols work with volunteer dispatchers who report possible illegal activities and call for service when necessary.   Citizens’ Patrols also provide security services at community youth events and are involved in Safe Routes efforts.

To date, the Safe Streets Campaign assists Citizen Patrol Groups in the Stewart Heights in East Tacoma and the Celebration Park neighborhoods in South Tacoma.   More neighborhoods are working on this innovative solution to community problems.   Citizens’ Patrols enhance the work of law enforcement as they make their presence known in their neighborhoods—and work for safer streets.