Tacomans give police services low marks in recent community survey. What do they like?
The results of Tacoma’s 2024 community survey are in, and as far as respondents are concerned, the city has some work to do in one major area: police services.
The city issues a community survey every two years. The most-recent one was conducted in June and July, and 905 residents throughout each of the five council districts participated.
Members of the City Council heard a presentation on the 2024 findings during a study session on Tuesday, Aug. 6.
In addition to low police-services ratings, residents’ trust in local government was fairly poor. Tacoma did well in other areas, such as customer service and utilities.
Jacques Colon, the city’s chief strategy officer, told local leaders that the survey acts as “a point-in-time snapshot.” Various factors contribute to how respondents were feeling when they answered questions, he said.
“So, as with all of the data sources that we look at,” Colon said, “it’s important to look at the story that’s being told by this data, but also important to recognize that there are many other pieces of data that help fill out what the real story is on the ground.”
Results are meant to guide the city as it makes decisions concerning its 10-year strategic plan, Community Safety Action Strategy, budget and more, said Ryan Murray of the ETC Institute, which was hired to conduct the effort.
The city spent $37,730 on the survey, taken from the general fund, city spokesperson Maria Lee told The News Tribune via email.
Trust in government, economic health
Murray characterized participants’ trust in their municipal government as “relatively low.” More than three-quarters of respondents (76%) said their trust in Tacoma’s government was poor or fair. Only 24% rated it as good or excellent.
Participants answered certain financial questions on par with folks in other areas of the country, Murray said. For example, nearly 60% said they were dissatisfied/very dissatisfied with the city’s cost of living. When it comes to its overall economic health, 46% said the same.
“Those are the signs of the times,” Murray explained, adding that some of the unhappiness might be attributable to the fact that it’s an election year. “And what we typically will see is [in a] post-election year, we will see a slight uptick in some of these perception-related results.”
Tacoma’s police and fire services
Tacoma performed poorly in the police-services category.
Nearly 6 in 10 respondents answered they are dissatisfied, or very much so, with police efforts to prevent crime in their community. Forty-six percent answered that way when asked about police services’ overall quality, and 56% said the same in terms of how fast police respond to emergencies.
Murray pointed out that such views of law enforcement are part of a broader trend, particularly in the West — less so in other areas, such as the Midwest or states like Texas.
At the same time, satisfaction with fire and Emergency Medical Services was quite high in Tacoma. For instance, only 2% of participants disapproved of fire services’ quality.
“When we talk about overall perceptions of the Police Department … they’re relatively low,” Murray said. “And this is likely something that’s not occurring based on service levels of the Police Department, but rather a perception-related issue within the community itself.”
Certain Facebook users watching a livestream of the study session didn’t like such framing. They argued that couching it that way is dismissive, and that residents’ responses were rooted in their everyday experiences.
Community safety in Tacoma
Many Tacoma residents apparently don’t feel safe after the sun goes down. While 16% said they feel unsafe/very unsafe in their neighborhood during the day, that number ballooned to 44% at night.
Deputy Mayor John Hines commented on this finding following the presentation.
“Looking at the number of our residents who feel safe in their neighborhoods during the day versus at night, and just the sheer shift makes me think a lot more about things like street lights,” he said. “How could … something like that, that is completely unrelated to normal ways we approach safety, actually really shift and drive some of the perceptions of safety we see in our community?”
In addition, more than half of survey respondents said they feel unsafe/very unsafe in the downtown area.
Other highlights included how residents feel about Tacoma’s facade. Just 30% of respondents were satisfied/very satisfied with both the city’s overall image and its appearance.
Looking ahead, the ETC Institute recommends that Tacoma give high-priority status to four infrastructure-related areas of service: adequacy of street lighting, condition of major streets, neighborhood walkability and cleanliness of public areas/streets, per the survey’s executive summary.
Customer service and survey usefulness
Tacoma performed well in certain regards.
Roughly 60% of residents who had contacted the city’s customer service said they were treated courteously over the phone, Murray said, “which goes a long way in building that trust.”
Many folks are similarly pleased with how close they live to essential daily services like parks and schools: Nearly three-quarters of respondents counted themselves as satisfied or very much so.
The top four issues that residents want to see the city and its partners address in their neighborhoods are, according to the survey: homelessness, housing affordability, community safety and access to living-wage jobs.
Roughly half of participants said they were satisfied/very satisfied with the overall quality of life in Tacoma (48%), as well as feeling like they belong in the community (52%). People are also pleased with the city’s water (72%) and electric utility (69%) services.
Murray said Tacoma’s utility services have been “performing exceptionally well” and underscored a 57% satisfaction rate for utility billing and customer service.
“We do a lot of utility surveys here,” Murray said. “What I know for a fact is that most of the time that respondents call about utility billing, it’s most likely a question or a problem about their bill. And so, to receive such high rankings there is very great to see.”
Council member Kristina Walker, who tuned into the session virtually, thanked the presenters.
“Thank you for giving it to us now, too, right before the budget discussion,” she said. “I’m sure this was intentional, but I think it will be super helpful as we talk about how we invest dollars into our community.”
