Several local agencies carry out policies set by city legislatures to ensure community safety. The most notable among these are municipal policy departments and county sheriffs. Local governments can also increase community safety by supporting neighborhood design features that reduce the possibility of injury and foster crime prevention, as well as monitoring private interests to ensure they don’t overstep into public domain. Local and state justice systems work closely with other community safety efforts to hold community members accountable to laws and safety standards. Increasingly, agencies involved in safety and justice are leveraging advanced technologies ranging from drones to AI-enabled sentencing platforms to accomplish their missions. Given the novelty of these technologies and their potentially far-reaching impact, robust civic engagement by community members with relevant technical expertise is vital to ensuring their proper use.
Jim Treglio is a retired materials scientist who mobilized a Community Emergency Response Team program in San Diego. Treglio shared his experience using his technical background to work with the local fire department and how scientists can contribute to community response efforts.
In this month's "Postcard", Griff O’Neill, a physicist by training currently working as an engineer in the semiconductor industry in California, describes how he sat down for coffee with two city council members from his community.
