APD 2020 Community Survey Results In

The results of the APD community survey are in. Below is their media release.

MEDIA RELEASE
October 26, 2020

2020 Community Survey Results

APPLETON, WI (October 26, 2020): On 10/26/2020, Chief Thomas presented the results of the 2020 Community Survey to the Chief’s Community Advisory Board.

These are very challenging times for all of us, and how we provide police services to our community is a critical conversation that we need to have. To have that discussion we need validated data, obtained from feedback directly from our citizens, so we know how our citizen’s feel about the services we provide.

We are large community, made up of many smaller communities, so we also need to be able to pull out data to learn how certain groups feel about us based on race, age, or the part of the city they live in.

This survey is one of the pillars of our Five Pillar Initiative, the goal of which is to live our mission statement and fully engage our community in what we do.

A 23 question survey was mailed to 2,000 random households, owner occupied and rentals, in the City of Appleton. This is approximately 6.5% of the households in the city.

Thank you to those who took the time and participated. We received 687 responses, a return rate of 34.4%.

Some of the results;

The community believes the top issues in the City of Appleton:

1. Drug Abuse
2. Inattentive/Distracted Driving
3. Speeding and Reckless Driving
4. Operating while under the influence
5. Domestic Violence

97% of our citizens feel safe in their neighborhood during the day.
4% don’t feel safe in their neighborhood at night.

96.5% feel we are meeting the needs of the community, 3.8% believe we are not.

94.1% feel we are Good or Excellent at demonstrating Integrity and Respect, 5.6% rated us Fair, 0.9% rated us Poor.

83.6% do not believe we should reduce or reallocate funding for the police department, 5.2% want to.

74.2% believe the School Resource Officer program is important for our schools and community, 23% don’t know, and 2.9% don’t feel it is important.

Customer Service; of the 367 households that had contact with us in the last 12 months, 95.6% were Satisfied, or Very Satisfied with our service, 4.3% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.

Trust is the lifeblood of policing, without trust we are not able to accomplish our mission. 93.5% Trust the Appleton Police Department, 6% Trust us a little, 0.6% don’t Trust us.

These are amazing numbers that our team and our community both should be very proud of. The community has taken the time to understand us, and know what we do, and understands we all need to work together to make this community safe for everyone.

For our team it is confirmation of generations of work with the understanding that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. We have a tremendous responsibility to live up to these expectations, every day and every call, and we are committed to doing that.

Chief Thomas