Phoenix leaders are considering a new tool focused on digital engagement to better track public safety concerns.
Appearing before Phoenix's public safety subcommittee Wednesday, Bar Asherov pitched Zencity’s technology: a survey that’s distributed equitably through the community, reaching about 90% of residents through digital advertising.
Ahserov said monthly surveys can provide information about key issues among certain demographics and areas.
“One of the most valuable pieces of it is that we can actually collect open-ended feedback so that we can get context around some of the answers that we're getting, allowing us to really measure what is top of mind from the community,” he said. “And if we think about it from a practical sense, it means that we're getting information that folks typically don't call 911 about, for example, so that we can gauge on an ongoing basis what are other things that are happening.”
He showed examples from Los Angeles where Zencity has been working with the police department for more than a year.
Eyal Halamish, Zencity’s vice president of strategic accounts, told KJZZ News that survey responses reflect the city’s demographics and do not contain information that’s personally identifiable.
“What we do is we go onto the ad networks, whether they be through Facebook, through Meta, through Google, through other different channels, and we'll basically say, okay, these are the different samples we need to get to within the city of Phoenix,” he said. “And we will just say, can you please place this ad in front of 25- to 35-year-old, you know, Black, African-American males in this region? And they'll start distributing those ads in that region.. and once they've got enough of that sample, we'll stop distributing towards that. We'll go back to the ad network and say, okay, now we need, you know, 60-plus-year-old white females. And we'll start distributing ads in that space until they get the response.”
Halamish told council members monthly surveys can help Phoenix measure community trust and safety.
“It means that we'll be able to provide insights for the chief, command staff, city manager, and city council as to how we're performing, not just on people's, you know, suggested comments on the side, but with a representative sample that we can rely on,” he said. “We can also track those trends to drive decision-making in the same way that we're looking at crime data. We're seeing police departments across the country use crime data alongside this data to make those decisions in a much more effective, efficient, and creative way.”
The full council could consider a police contract with Zencity in the next couple months.
Phoenix already uses Zencity’s technology for quarterly surveys to collect information on key concerns and measure community satisfaction about city services.
A city spokesperson said previous surveys revealed that people don’t feel a sense of community in Phoenix and, as a result, the city came up with 602 Day, named after Phoenix’s most popular area code. The inaugural celebration on June 2, 2024, was designated as a day to celebrate local businesses and organizations.
