Starting a Neighborhood Watch Program

What is a Neighborhood Watch?

Neighborhood Watch Programs typically involve the following activities:

• Neighbors getting to know one another and working in a program of mutual assistance
• Training to assist neighbors in recognizing and reporting suspicious activities in their neighborhoods
• Implementation of crime prevention programs, such as Operation Identification - recording serial numbers from your possessions, Increased neighborhood lighting - improving night-time safety, and Security Inspections - improving the security measures in neighborhood homes

Neighborhood Watch Characteristics

• Any community resident can join -- young and old, single and married, renter and home owner.
• A few concerned residents, a community organization, or a law enforcement agency can spearhead the effort to organize a Watch.
• Members learn how to make their homes more secure, watch out for each other and the neighborhood, and report activities that raise their suspicions to the police or sheriff's office.
• You can form a Watch group around any geographical unit: a block, apartment, park, business area, public housing complex, office, and marina.
• Watch groups are not vigilantes. They are extra eyes and ears for reporting crime and helping neighbors. Neighborhood Watch helps build pride and serves as a springboard for efforts that address community concerns such as recreation for youth, child care, and affordable housing.

Getting Organized

Forming a Neighborhood Watch is a challenge. Here are a few tips to get your group started.

• Contact the Fayetteville Police Department at 587.3555 or the Community Outreach Coordinator at jmcquade@ci.fayetteville.ar.us for help in organizing a Neighborhood Watch. The Police Department will be able to assist in training members in home security and reporting skills as well as provide information on local crime patterns.
• Select a coordinator and block captains who are responsible for organizing meetings and relaying information to members.
• Recruit members, keeping up-to-date on new residents and making special efforts to involve the elderly, working parents, and young people.
• Work with local government and law enforcement to put up Neighborhood Watch signs, usually after at least 50 percent of all households are enrolled.

Neighbors Should Look For...

• Someone screaming or shouting for help
• Someone looking into windows and parked cars
• Unusual noises
• Property being taken out of closed businesses or houses where no one is at home
• 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 suspicious activities to the Fayetteville police Department though their non-emergency number (587.3555). Call 911 for emergencies. Talk with your neighbors about the problem.

How to Report Suspicious Activities

• Give your name and address.
• Briefly describe the event -- what happened, when, where, and who was involved.
• Describe the suspect: sex, race, age, height, weight, hair color, clothing, distinctive characteristics such as beard, mustache, scars, or accent.
• Describe the vehicle if one was involved: color, make, model, year, license plate, and special features such as stickers, dents, or decals.

Neighborhood Watch Activities

1. Distribute anti-crime information to citizens within your neighborhood or community regarding how to prevent and deter crime.
2. Hold public meetings with your local law enforcement agency about crime in the community and what can be done about it.
3. Conduct home security surveys to help detect and prevent their fellow citizens' homes from being burglarized.
4. Welcome new members to their neighborhood and encourage them to join in the Neighborhood Watch Program.
5. Set up a special watch or escort for senior citizens or other potential victims.
6. Provide "McGruff Houses" for young people to go to after school or in time of an emergency to avoid being hurt or mistreated.
7. Develop a special "vacation watch" program, where specific attention and observation is placed on the residences that will be vacant when the occupants are on vacation.
8. Contact the local newspaper and/or media for public attention regarding the crime prevention efforts in your neighborhood.
9. Have an "Operation Identification" program, where citizens within the neighborhood mark their valuables with identifying markings, so they can be recovered if stolen.

Combating Drugs in Your Neighborhood

The business of a "Drug House" is more or less the same in any community. The danger signs of a "Drug House" are the public nuisance that it creates.

Drug House Danger Signs

• Increased short-term auto and pedestrian visits to a particular house or apartment.
• Cars speeding up and down the street, honking or "burning rubber" as they speed away.
• Increase in litter such as used syringes, plastic bags, glass pipes, bottles, trash, stacks of used matches, and graffiti.
• Increase in crimes like auto burglaries, home burglaries, robbery, vandalism, and assault.
• Increase in noise such as loud voices, fights, gun fire, and loud radios especially at night.
• Active prostitution in or around the neighborhood.

The war on drugs cannot be won by one person or one agency in our community. It will be won by a combined effort by all of us --- a TEAM EFFORT is the key to achieving success in your campaign to eliminate drugs in your neighborhood. The start-up members of your team should include neighbors, your local police department, city council members and neighborhood business leaders.

How Do We Get Rid of a Drug House?

ORGANIZE A NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH PROGRAM - Block by block community mobilization is the most powerful weapon in the war on drugs. A neighborhood watch group is the fastest, safest and most effective way to rid your neighborhood of a "Drug House" and prevent it from coming back. Why? Because numbers give you power and power gives you results. For information on forming a neighborhood watch group call:

FAYETTEVILLE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT CRIME PREVENTION (479) 587-3555

Staying Alive!

It's an unfortunate fact that when a neighborhood crime crisis goes away, so does enthusiasm for Neighborhood Watch. Work to keep your Watch group a vital force for community well-being.

• Organize regular meetings that focus on current issues such as drug abuse, bias-motivated violence, crime in schools, child care before and after school, recreational activities for young people, and victim services.
• Organize community patrols to walk around streets or apartment complexes and alert police to crime and suspicious activities and identify problems needing attention. People in cars with cellular phones or CB radios can patrol.
• Adopt a park or school playground. Pick up litter, repair broken equipment, paint over graffiti.
• Work with local building code officials to require dead bolt locks, smoke alarms, and other safety devices in new and existing homes and commercial buildings. Work with parent groups and schools to start a McGruff House or other block parent program (to help children in emergency situations).
• Publish a newsletter that gives prevention tips and local crime news, recognizes residents of all ages who have made a difference, and highlights community events.
• Don't forget social events that give neighbors a chance to know each other -- a block party, potluck dinner, volleyball or softball game, picnic.