Community.
Collaboration.
Change.
The SafeCity Initiative converges technology tools and public engagement to improve the security of Savannah’s growing small business community.
Small Business, Secured.
How SafeCity Works:
High quality cameras are placed in strategic locations throughout local business corridors in order to provide as many businesses as possible clear coverage of their facilities. Visible signage is placed prominently in business’s windows, informing of SafeCity surveillance and acting as a deterrent to crime.
Partnerships help prevent crime.
The true power of SafeCity isn’t in the equipment we use - it is in the community’s commitment to keeping their neighborhoods safe. Research shows that the “community’s moral voice” is a critical component to reducing crime in an area; When different groups within a city (city leaders, law enforcement, community-based organizations, individuals & businesses) view themselves as partners and collaborate to both define and enforce their community values, this partnership is more successful in enacting positive
change than any single entity could be alone. In this effort, it is critical that each group share the responsibility for public safety and community quality of life and that they use their individual resources and expertise in support of the community mission.
We’re better together, Savannah.
To support this effort, SafeCity provides program participants with highly visible yellow signage, and window/door decals that are instantly recognizable and repeated throughout an area (and reinforced by concentrated camera coverage). By combining these crime deterrent strategies along with top of the line technology tools and, critically, the engagement and support of our local business community, we seek to build SafeCity Corridors throughout Savannah in order to provide protection to individual businesses within those areas while also helping to reduce crime rates and continue economic growth throughout our beautiful city.
““SafeCity is rooted in the idea of community and what you can do for your neighborhood, not what you can do for yourself””
Technology tools as a force multiplier
Studies show that installing “target hardening measures”, such as visible security cameras, alarm systems and enhanced security lighting, have an immediate and substantial impact. SafeCity participants are able to log in remotely to view camera coverage of their business, any time, anywhere. Business owners will have user specific secure passwords and will only be able to access camera that cover their business. As an additional safeguard, our SafeCity servers record data for 30 days. In the event footage is needed, it will be provided, at no cost. SafeCity is a tool in our community’s toolkit that empowers small businesses to enact change in their neighborhoods.