By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief
During its most recent board meeting on the evening of Thursday, October 24, Pacific Palisades Community Council hosted two guest speakers on the topic of Neighborhood Watch, as well as crime and safety.
The two Neighborhood Watch coordinators who spoke were Kathy Morgan (Brentwood) and Cyndi Hench (Westchester).
“They presented valuable information about the benefits of Neighborhood Watch for crime prevention as well as disaster preparedness and response,” PPCC wrote following the meeting. “They each emphasized that forming a Neighborhood Watch group fosters community connections and is a critical public safety tool, given current conditions in which police are understaffed and often unavailable for rapid response.”
National Neighborhood Watch Institute was formed to “supply law enforcement agencies and individuals better tools for their crime prevention dollar,” according to its website. The Neighborhood Watch program spans training materials, window warning decals, worksheets and street signs.
Hench explained that she got involved with Neighborhood Watch about 20 years ago when her house was burglarized. She said that when she got in touch with the police, “even back then, they told us that we really need Neighborhood Watch groups because we are not going to have enough police officers.”
Neighborhood Watch is designed to be a crime prevention tool, Hench explained, whereas law enforcement comes after the crime has occurred. It works on the basis of building relationships among neighbors so that they know how to get in touch with each other and have some familiarity to care enough to take action if they see something.
“Neighborhood Watch is really about neighbors knowing neighbors,” Hench continued, “because when you live around strangers, then you don’t really pay attention to what they’re doing or what’s happening at their houses.”
The program works best, Hench explained, when it’s done block by block. When Hench helps build a Neighborhood Watch group, she said that she starts WhatsApp groups so that neighbors have a place to communicate and share relevant information, with one mega-group up to 800 participants.
When a community is considering building a channel of communication, they can have a larger, widespread group (like the 800-person WhatsApp) and then have smaller groups, perhaps a single street or group of houses. Hench explained for the groups she is involved with, each member is vetted as they are added in, needing to cite a connection with a member who is already in the group.
Morgan then spoke on her experience with Neighborhood Watch, which she helped implement in Crestwood Hills. A few events triggered neighborhood interest, starting with the Getty fire, the increase of burglaries and then recent storms that caused flooding.
Previously they had a safety committee for the area, but that name was recently changed to the Crestwood Hills Association Neighborhood Watch.
“We found out from all the experts that Neighborhood Watch is really one of the best tools for staying safe,” Morgan said. “At its most basic, we think that it’s just neighbors being able to communicate with neighbors in an emergency, and also being able to share information about preparedness and about prevention.”
In Morgan’s experience, it’s not a “one-size-fits-all” approach, as “every single little area is not the same as the others.” She learned that Neighborhood Watch should be broken down into a smaller group, with roughly 20 homes being ideal and then assigning “zone captains.”
Their groups communicate things like smelling smoke, seeing a fire, reporting suspicious people in the area, power outages, lost pets and wildlife sightings, like coyotes.
“There’s power in numbers,” Morgan said. “The more we grow this, the more powerful we’ll get.”
For those interested in starting a Neighborhood Watch in their area, Morgan suggested to “start really simple” and get neighbors communicating with each other. Down the line, things can get more advanced, with neighbors sharing things like emergency contact information and where shut-off valves are in their home.
For neighborhoods or areas with an HOA, requesting a list of residences is a good place to start, Morgan said. Hench, who doesn’t live in an HOA area, suggested going door to door, meeting neighbors and getting that connection started.
“That’s how it gets started,” Hench said later in the presentation, “you nudge a neighbor and you just get out there and start talking.”
A link to a recording of the presentation is available via the PPCC website: pacpalicc.org. Additional information about Neighborhood Watch is available at nnwi.org.
