You may have caught the post a couple weeks ago about my next door neighbor “throwing his hat in the ring” and running for a seat on our town council. Being a victim of crime multiple times, he promised his supporters that he would concentrate his efforts on neighborhood crime deterrence.

…….. a little history about this issue…. Our rural neighborhood has steadily become surrounded by shopping centers and apartment complexes. The crime rate has escalated about as quickly as the area’s been developed. Several years ago, we had a series of related arsons and vandalisms and I had attempted to rally the neighbors to band together to catch the offenders and begin a permanent Neighborhood Watch. Participation was lackluster and within a week the job landed on just a few men in the neighborhood. The lack of involvement by both the residents and our councilman was frustrating to us and as soon as the vandals were caught, we went back to simply taking care of our own property security issues…….

Our local elections are being held in a few weeks and this current situation took about 3 days to become a political issue. The current councilman, who had 6 years to develop a plan, decided that now would be a good time to address our crime problems. He called a meeting last night. Out of about 60 residents, five showed up. There were actually more elected officials, police and news crew attending than actual neighborhood residents.

A police spokesman explained the Neighborhood Watch program and pledged his department’s cooperation and our mayor promised the city’s complete support. It was agreed by everyone attending that the program needs to begin and hopefully it would mature into a functional Watch. Another meeting was scheduled for next month.

I fully expect our current councilman to be removed from office before our next meeting. I’m hoping that the residents in my area have had enough of the crime that we’ve been seeing and will keep the ball rolling this time.

We’ll post updates on this as it progresses, especially the steps involved along the way. Hopefully we’ll be able to outline the process here on the blog.

Justus

by