The City of Albuquerque’s Community Safety Department, known as ACS, is the nation’s first cabinet-level department of its kind with first responders trained to step in when someone is experiencing a mental health, addiction, or housing crisis to get the person connected with the right resources.
ACS is also the first municipal agency in New Mexico created as a peer with the municipal police and fire departments. It is considered the third branch of public safety, designed to be equal with police and fire departments while alleviating pressure on those units and maximizing resources dedicated to public safety. ACS retained LEH in its early days to help the department strategize and craft an organizational plan and approach that was responsive to community needs with the capacity to eventually scale to 24/7 response city-wide. The resulting organizational plan reflected more than a year of research, discussion, and planning with a wide range of experts and community members to understand the needs and gaps in public safety. A cornerstone of city leaders’ work was to design with community at the center, including meetings with residents from Albuquerque neighborhoods hit hardest by violence and economic disparity.
Since the inaugural plan was published, ACS has realized its vision to provide 24/7 response across the city of Albuquerque and has garnered attention nationwide for its success, including features by The Washington Post and New York Times.
If you’d like follow the work of ACS responders, click any of their profiles below:
