Better Community Policing Can Begin with a Good Neighborhood Watch

Back in the era of the caveman, (1972) I became a cop. In those days you didn’t have FTO’s (Field Training Officers), but you got any old-timer that was available, and you learned the ropes, for about two weeks, and then you were on your old. I worked a year on swings, and once I passed probation got called into the our then chief’s office, and was told (not asked) that I was now going to be one of his administrative aids, and would be forced to have all holidays and weekends off, (terrible), but enough of that.

Due to the fact that I had been a long-term substitute high school teacher, and also had some experience in the business world, I was tasked with two jobs; (1) Developing a different type of school resource officer program in which the S.R.O. actually taught classes at the high school level, and only if needed assisted administration with a situation that required an immediate patrol response. (Obviously S.R.O.'s would respond to a serious threat.) Without going into too much, we found that a great deal more kids would open up to a teacher/cop, than a patrol officer just tasked with handling a response issue on campus.) That is a whole other topic which I may write about a little later. (2) This chief who was pretty progressive for his time, wanted us to develop a better Neighborhood Watch program.

There was a Watch program in place, but it was rudimentary at best. With the Chief’s caveat that he wanted greater interaction with the community as a whole; [He was actually somewhat ahead of his time.] one of the first things we did was to develop an in-house citizen’s academy, whereupon citizens throughout the city could attend a monthly training at the police department where different folks from detectives, patrol, traffic, SWAT, and later our gang and Family Protection Team could do a brief training; thus allowing interaction with department personnel. If they were found physically capable, and wanted they were also assigned a specific patrol officer who took them on a ride-a-long for either a full or partial shift. This allowed us a greater contact variable in the city, and our attendance grew.

We then began attending Neighborhood Watch meetings on a much more frequent basis and educating the attendees on what to look for as to suspicious activity. We worked heavily with these groups Block Captains. We had specific pamphlets developed that were passed out to citizens groups as well as Watch groups, that explained in more detail what we wanted. We made it a point of immediately getting into contact with these groups when we started experiencing issues within a specific neighborhood. We also advised the Watch that when they observed a suspicious scenario or a crime in progress to obviously call the police department’s dispatch. However, if they had specific information or questions concerning an on-going issue, we gave them our contact information so they could get in touch with us without having to try to locate the right officer or detective in the loop. When all this transpired, we started solving more crime, and the citizens not only felt more secure, but started to get the feeling that they were becoming an integral part of the law enforcement process.

Due to the high rate of criminal activity in certain apartment complexes in the city, we came up with another solution. We began having meetings with the apartment managers, and when available their owners. These contacts were not just a one time affair, we had regular meetings with the managers and owners on a regular basis, so we could discuss issues. One of their biggest complaints to come out of these gatherings was that if either their tenants or those that associated with same, were the ones involved in criminal activity got wind that they had turned them into the police, they were fearful of retribution, and had a right to be; as there were many previous examples of same.

So, we devised a plan where every apartment manager was given a specific identification number. When they called into our apartment liaison officer, all they would do was give this number and whatever information they had on the topic at hand. Only the liaison officer and a few others knew this number. When the crime was an in-progress scenario, they could also give our on-duty watch commander or police dispatch this same identification number, and they had been trained to send patrol to the call, and if needed get a hold of us and we would forward the necessary information to the detective(s) charged with handling the case. Therefore, in only rare occasions would the apartment manager ever be contacted by uniformed officers. This worked great, and we cut way down on our apartment crime rates.

We need more and more information from the community. If we don’t set up the necessary conduits to obtain said information, that is definitely on us.