Santa Ana Community Safety Assessment

In Santa Ana, UPI works with The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative to develop and promote coordinated violence reduction and prevention strategies. Beginning in Fall 2017, UPI concentrated its efforts to build cross-sector support for the completion of a community safety assessment.

UPI worked in partnership with Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities to assess residents’ top safety concerns. UPI met with nearly 1,000 residents, including a wide variety of populations, ranging from youth to seniors, and from persons experiencing homelessness to those coming out of jail. UPI also met with community leaders, and 15 partner organizations throughout the city of Santa Ana to conduct surveys, focus groups, and detailed interviews.

Our resulting Community Safety Assessment Report found:

• Homelessness, Fear of Deportation, and Drug Sales/Use are among the top 3 safety concerns
• Schools and Family are the most effective in addressing safety while Law Enforcement and Elected Officials are the least effective
• Over the last 5 years, Santa Ana has experienced a 62% increase in homicides
• Public trust and credibility of SAPD is only half of what it should be

Most importantly, our report concluded that Santa Ana’s “business as usual” approach is not working. Residents are not getting what they ask for or the public safety they are paying for.

Santa_Ana_Safety_Fact_Sheet.pdf

UPI_Santa_Ana_Report_Digital.pdf