Our clean and safe ambassadors are taking every precaution to keep you and themselves safe during the coronavirus pandemic. According to Lisa Defendiefer, director of Operations for Capital Crossroads and Discovery SIDs, "Our biggest role is providing a reassuring presence…being proactive is critical in these times." Here are a few steps we’re taking:

• Ambassadors are observing social distancing between themselves and when engaging people downtown.
• Ambassadors clean public areas in the SID's office 3 to 4 times a day along with their equipment, radios and daily issued items using a disinfectant that is effective on the coronavirus as well as other viruses and bacteria.
• Ambassadors are issued and wear PPE or personal protective equipment such as nitrile gloves, N95 masks.
• Ambassadors inspect all public trash containers, topping them off, with our own trash bags to reduce the exposure risks to the City Refuse Department Collectors.
• Finally, we’ve condensed the ambassador’s work hours and divided our operation into two teams. The teams are divided by week so only 50% of our workforce is on duty at any time thus reducing the chances that our entire team would be affected.

Ambassadors are seeing more people “in need” in downtown throughout the day and night. So they are working with our homeless outreach team to support social service providers such as The Open Shelter, downtown YMCA, and Faith Mission since they are caring for some of the most vulnerable people currently. 

Hours of operation for the clean and safe ambassadors are Monday through Sunday from 10:00 a.m. - 8:30 p.m. The SID’s special duty police officers work until 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday. To keep current on future changes to our operations, visit DowntownServices.org.