Cross-posted with permission from New York City Council Member Julissa Ferreras’ Facebook page:

“Council Member Julissa Ferreras and the nonprofit organization Hollaback! led an historic community safety audit on Saturday, May 5th in Queens from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Community members met at The Transfiguration Of Christ Greek Orthodox Church, 3805 98th Street, Corona, New York for training. Afterwards they surveyed blocks in their neighborhood where residents expressed safety concerns and developed a concrete plan to address those concerns.

“This audit focused on women’s safety is a key step in the crime prevention effort in my district. We hope to develop a better understanding of the community’s needs and concerns to help reduce the risk of crime against women in the future and I am proud to collaborate with Hollaback! in this effort,” stated Council Member Julissa Ferreras.

The audit gathered important information from the community including the ratio of men to women, how public space is being utilized and details on how well roads, parks and public transit stops are lit at nighttime. In addition, audit participants answered questions on how safe they feel when occupying public spaces.

“It takes a community to make communities safer. Block by block, we’re going to work together with community members, organizations, and government to develop concrete improvements for how we can make Queens safer,” says Hollaback! Executive Director Emily May.

Community safety audits are a UN-identified best practice to address street harassment in communities across the world….

Following an assessment of the audit data, recommendations to create safer spaces for women in Queens will be submitted to the city agencies. Council Member Ferreras and Hollaback! have already discussed plans to paint over graffiti, increase street lighting, create harassment-free zones around public schools and install an anti-harassment PSA campaign in public spaces such as parks and bus stops.

Audit participants received lunch a free T-shirt. Representatives from NYC agencies attended including NYPD, NYC Department of Transportation, and the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit. Collaborating community organizations include Elmcor Senior Services, Dominican American Society (DAS), Ecuadorian Civic Committee, Make the Road New York, and Community Board 3 members This event was generously supported by: Health First, Dominicana Radio Dispatcher, Mama’s Leo’s Latticini, Transfiguration of Christ Greek Orthodox Church, and SD Printing.”

Congratulations to the organizations in NYC that made this possible and I look forward to reading/reporting on updates on what else they do.

METRAC based in Toronto, Canada, launched the safety audit model in the 1980s and have led audits throughout Canada since then. The United Nations uses the audit system to evaluate communities worldwide. It’s a great model to use to get a sense for how safe people feel in their communities.

In Washington, DC, where I’m based, Holla Back DC/Collective Action for Safe Spaces and I led 50 people in 10 teams across the city to do safety audits. A daytime audit took place on March 20, 2011, and an evening one on May 5, 2011. Our efforts were covered by the Washington Post.

All of us who led the audits have full time jobs and volunteered our time to organize it. We were not able to organize it as thoroughly and get the kind of diversity of participants as we wanted. And perhaps we were too ambitious to audit the whole city instead of just one or two neighborhoods. For these reasons, we have not yet used our results to advocate for specific changes the way the audit leaders in NYC will. I love the nonprofit + government partnership NYC followed and I hope that the next time we do audits in DC, we will be able to have that kind of partnership.