The Neighborhood Watch Program is a highly successful effort that has been in existence for more than thirty years in cities and counties across America. Neighborhood Watch is a crime prevention program that enlists the active participation of residents in cooperation with law enforcement to reduce crime in their neighborhoods.

Around the country, neighbors for three decades have banded together to create Neighborhood Watch programs. They understand that the active participation of neighborhood residents is a critical element in community safety not through vigilantism, but simply through a willingness to look out for suspicious activity in their neighborhood, and report that activity to law enforcement and to each other. In doing so residents take a major step toward reclaiming high-crime neighborhoods, as well as making people throughout their community feel more secure and less fearful.

It involves:

• Neighbors getting to know each other and working together in a program of mutual assistance
• Residents trained to recognize and report suspicious activities in their neighborhoods
• Implementation of crime prevention techniques such as home security, Operation Identification etc.

Getting Organized

When a group decides to form a Neighborhood Watch, it:

• Contacts the police department or local crime prevention organization for help in training members in home security and reporting skills and for information on local crime patterns
• Selects a coordinator and block captains who are responsible for organizing meetings and relaying information to members
• Recruits members, keeps up-to-date on new residents and makes special efforts to involve the elderly, working parents, and young people
• Works with local government and law enforcement to put up Neighborhood Watch signs, usually after at least 50 percent of all households in a neighborhood are enrolled

What Neighborhood Watch Members Look For

• Someone screaming or shouting for help
• Someone looking into windows and parked cars
• Unusual noises
• Property being taken out of houses where no one is at home or a business is closed
• Cars, vans, or trucks moving slowly with no apparent destination, or without lights
• Anyone being forced into a vehicle
• A stranger sitting in a car or stopping to talk to a child
• Abandoned cars

Report these incidents to the police department. Talk about the problem with your neighbors.

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