Editorials

Commentary: No one wants to be a victim

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By Gary P. Custer

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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No one wants to be a crime victim.

Both the threats and the preventive measures residents take to protect themselves vary from neighborhood to neighborhood.

In most neighborhoods burglaries and physical assaults are the most feared — regardless of the actual area crime statistics. The residents' primary preventive measure is to form a mobile crime watch. Volunteers stick a sign on their car and drive around their neighborhoods looking for suspicious activities. If they find any they contact the police.

Such programs have value because they get residents involved in neighborhood activities and demonstrate to some amateur criminals that there is some degree of risk involved in committing crimes in a given neighborhood.

Unfortunately, crime watches are not much of an deterrent to professional criminals who know how to minimize the risks or those who do not care about the risks.

The real barrier to maintaining an effective traditional crime watch is the difficulty in getting a large enough group of permanent volunteers.

Almost every neighborhood has a few people willing to spend a few hours a week patrolling during the day or early evening, but most do not have enough to ensure that all areas of a neighborhood are watched at all times. Unfortunately, criminals do not confine their activities to times when crime watch volunteers are available.

There needs to be a new model that more effectively accomplishes the crime watch goals.

The key element is access to information about suspicious activities. The primary source of information should be people in homes all over the neighborhood instead of volunteers in an easily avoidable crime watch car.

With a little effort a system could be set up in which volunteers agree to spend a few hours a week watching for suspicious activity in the area visible from windows in their houses. They would make a formal commitment to watch and report to a coordinator if something happened or periodically if nothing was happening during their official shift.

The coordinator would ensure that volunteers were watching their assigned areas, alert other watch members or the police if there are suspicious activities and record information from the watchers that could help reveal patterns indicating locations of serious neighborhood problems.

In the continual exchange of information between watchers and coordinators could be included information about previous suspicious activities, neighbors who are on vacation, residents who are ill, lost pets and a variety of other things which make it possible for neighbors to look out for neighbors.

The stationary watchers program would have several advantages over the traditional mobile watch programs.

Because there would be residents watching every part of the neighborhood during any given period, the coordinator would have a continuing flow of information about any suspicious activities for immediate action or future monitoring.

The potential volunteer pool would be expanded because people who cannot leave their homes could participate. The elderly, children and people with physical limitations could all help make their neighborhood safer.

Watch hours could be extended into the early morning hours by including neighborhood night owls.

The responsibility for neighborhood security would be spread more evenly over a neighborhood's population rather than be concentrated on a few dedicated people.

Since people would watch from inside their homes they would avoid getting into dangerous situations.

The information about suspicious activities collected over an extended time period would help residents recognize more subtle threats to their personal safety and help their neighborhood police officers protect them better.

Finally, the mere existence of the program is a powerful deterrent. No potential criminal could ever be sure that he was not being watched by a suspicious neighborhood resident dialing 911.

The stationary crime watch model could provide all of the benefits of an effective mobile crime watch without some of the serious problems which cause volunteer burnout and the death of many crime watch programs.

Of course, the system would not work in all neighborhoods. A neighborhood's geography, leadership, types of threats, traffic patterns, types and number of businesses and institutions and resident participation are all major factors affecting this type of program.

The good thing about a program such as this is that it does not need to replace existing programs. If people in your neighborhood already have a mobile crime watch the stationary watch program would make it more effective. It would also make other traditional neighborhood improvement programs more effective because it would increase the overall participation of neighborhood residents.

—GPC

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