The case for integrated public safety
Author
Tim Shriver
Vice President, State and Local Government Innovation
Peregrine
Published
July 6, 2023
Last Updated
October 1, 2026
Author
Tim Shriver
Vice President, State and Local Government Innovation
Peregrine
Published
July 6, 2023
Last Updated
October 1, 2026
KEY IDEAS:
- Cities need holistic, cross-disciplinary strategies to address complex challenges such as homelessness, violent crime, and behavioral health crises.
- Siloed public safety data prevents law enforcement, social services, and partner organizations from collaborating and focusing resources effectively.
- Data integration makes it easier to share information, build a common understanding, and develop long-term strategies that address underlying causes.
- With integrated public safety strategies, cities can better serve their communities, understand what is working, and deploy the right resources at the right time.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia often says, “Police are the fever reducer — we treat symptoms, but we don’t cure the illness.”
Public safety has traditionally been thought of as the work of law enforcement, fire-rescue, and offices of emergency management (OEMs), each with a critical but siloed responsibility. But that’s changing. Like Chief Garcia, city leaders, law enforcement, and communities are all recognizing that the challenges facing cities, from homelessness to violent crime, require a holistic response.
WHAT IS INTEGRATED PUBLIC SAFETY?
Integrated public safety is a coordinated approach that enables police, fire-rescue, emergency management, health and human services, housing, code enforcement, public works, and community-based teams to work from shared information and aligned strategies.
To deliver the best outcome for cities, traditional public safety agencies need to be able to effectively collaborate with an array of other departments including health and social services, code enforcement, public works, housing, and burgeoning civilian-led public safety departments.
The need for coordination becomes clear when looking at the issues cities are asked to solve every day.
Violent crime, for instance, must be addressed by police, but interrupting cycles of violence requires coordinated efforts across municipal agencies using strategies like place-based public safety. Code enforcement can identify and address environmental factors that enable and encourage crime. Community violence interrupters can intervene in conflict before it escalates. And social services can provide job assistance, addiction treatment, and other forms of support that address underlying causes of violent crime.
CASE STUDY → How the Atlanta Police Department Reduced Violent Crime by 21% With Data-Driven Policing
Homelessness and mental health crises are another example. For many police departments, one of the most common calls for service involves homeless individuals, topping more than 30% of call volume in some places. Chief James McElvain, retired police chief of Vancouver, WA, explains: “Homelessness isn’t necessarily a law enforcement problem, but we are the ones who get the calls, and we will respond because that’s our responsibility. But we don’t have the resources to provide more shelter space or services for mental health. We need others to come to the table.”
Homelessness outreach programs can often handle non-emergency calls, and social services can address underlying needs, such as addiction treatment and long-term mental health treatment, while housing departments can build and provide the necessary housing. Many police departments have built up expertise in responding to people in crisis, but a growing profession of mental health responders or co-responders can provide the best services and ensure that law enforcement officers are responding to the issues for which they are best equipped.
WHY DOES PUBLIC SAFETY REQUIRE MORE THAN POLICE RESPONSE?
Police play a critical role in responding to crime and emergencies, but many public safety challenges are shaped by factors outside the scope of law enforcement alone. Housing instability, behavioral health needs, environmental conditions, infrastructure problems, and lack of services often require coordinated action from multiple city departments and community partners.
It’s not enough for each of these different agencies to simply bring their expertise to solve their part of the problem. Right now, these departments are too often siloed, with their own ways of strategizing, executing, and measuring outcomes. Without shared visibility, each department may make reasonable decisions within its own silo while the city as a whole misses the larger pattern.
For example, it’s all too common for code enforcement to respond to complaints in the order they are received rather than strategically addressing the highest need areas. Meanwhile, police may address violent crime in one area due to spiking violence while social services organizations widely spread resources across a city or focus on another area based on a different set of metrics. The lack of coordination and collaboration hampers the ability of a city to holistically support neighborhoods experiencing repeated cycles of violent crime.
RESTRICTING DATA IN A COLLABORATION
Each interagency collaboration arrangement in Peregrine starts at zero access and builds from there. The data holder decides what types of their data will be included and what the system-enforced access policies will be for each data type across roles and contexts. Data holders can restrict exports and require in-the-moment access justifications logged as official records.
To effectively address issues like violent crime, cities must enable their departments to work together. Imagine if information from across city departments informed a holistic strategy where the city’s resources could have the most significant impact.
Consider the impact when organizations coordinate to focus on the highest-need neighborhoods or blocks:
By working together, slowly but surely, cities would address the root causes of violent crime and begin to interrupt the cycles of violence.
This doesn’t need to be a hypothetical. To unlock transformative change and make cross-disciplinary strategies like the scenario above possible, city leaders need the ability to integrate information from a wide variety of data sources and enable collaboration across a wide variety of departments. All the while, they must build trust with their communities that sensitive and personal data will be protected and only accessible to the appropriate municipal personnel.
READ MORE → Community Co-Response 101: How Integrated Teams Reduce Arrests and Improve Care
The challenges facing cities today cannot be solved by any one department alone. Addressing issues like violent crime, homelessness, behavioral health crises, and neighborhood disorder requires coordinated strategies, shared information, and the ability to understand what is working over time.
That’s where Peregrine comes in. Peregrine’s advanced data operations and analytics platform allows siloed data sources to be integrated, creating one digital workspace where personnel from departments can collaborate seamlessly. And Peregrine enables department leaders to granularly control data access so only the right people have access to the right information at the right time.
COLLABORATION AND DATA SOVEREIGNTY
You will never lose control of your community’s data in Peregrine. There is no interagency collaboration by default; each instance is established on a one-to-one basis and subject to strict and granular access controls that you decide. All collaboration arrangements require signed Memorandums of Understanding between clients and the system architecture enforces the data holder’s access policies. Access can be revoked at any time.
Read more in our Trust Center.
CASE STUDY → How the Concord Police Department Reduced Involuntary Psychiatric Holds by 27% Through Co-Response
With Peregrine, city leaders and front-line personnel can collaborate to develop and execute the best strategies to drive long-term solutions for their communities. They will know what works and why as well as what strategies aren’t working and need adjustment.
Seemingly intractable challenges facing communities today can and must be solved. Peregrine gives city leaders the tools to address root causes and build thriving cities for all. Get in touch today.
A former educator and non-profit executive, Tim Shriver became passionate about public safety innovation during law school where he studied under leading scholars of policing and privacy, worked in state and local government policy, and served in the Department of Justice. At Peregrine, Tim focuses on assuring our platform strengthens protection of privacy and civil liberties and advances public safety within and beyond policing.
Integrated public safety is a coordinated approach that helps city departments and community partners work together to address complex safety challenges. Instead of treating public safety as the responsibility of police, fire, or emergency management alone, integrated public safety brings together law enforcement, social services, housing, public works, code enforcement, behavioral health teams, and other partners around shared information and aligned strategies.
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