How to Create an Effective Neighborhood Watch: Nighttime Patrol & Catching Terrorists

Neighborhood watches have evolved in America, right along with our country's own moral compass that led to more elevated crime levels. Not that early America didn't realize our local communities were going to occasionally have one or two incompetents who would just as assume steal blind from their neighbor than adhere to the mostly inherent qualities of neighborly love. In those 18^th century scenarios of hiring a town watchman to patrol their town for the sake of goodwill, it connected indirectly to the much more intense 1960's when neighborly love turned to suspicion of everybody either being a rapist or a burglar. Still, even in the 60's, nobody would have guessed that the evolution of the neighborhood would eventually lead to a terrorist living in one.

After JFK was assassinated in 1963, the profound sociological changes associated with it were an obvious sign that culture was on the verge of heading to places never considered just five years earlier. It was the horrific (and open) rape of Kitty Genovese in a New York neighborhood five months after the JFK assassination that gets credit for starting the more vigilant neighborhood watch programs.

Yet any of us who've experienced a neighborhood watch in our own communities knows that putting one together is easy to wane from the excuses of being too busy or perceived lack of care by neighbors around us.

In most cases, our neighbors around us aren't going to have a lack of care in looking out for their fellow neighbor in times of crisis. Most of us want to assume our neighborhood is safe and not full of suspicious individuals who may be planning nefarious activities mere feet from the confines of our own living rooms. Unless obvious in the negative, we want to tuck away the reality that our neighborhoods are more often than not a long way from reaching anything resembling utopia.

But things are improving in making neighborhood watches more worthy of the time spent creating them by busy people. The thought of a terrorist living in our neighborhood isn't any longer something that we shove away as being impossible. It's more than a possibility in any neighborhood of 21^st century America, no matter if it's an upper crust community or a slum. The same said about everywhere else, including military bases as we saw with Fort Hood in Texas.

How do we go about keeping a neighborhood watch going strong that even includes the more recent trend of neighbors patrolling outdoors during a.m. hours?

Keeping the community together

The obvious and general way to keep a neighborhood watch an inspired process is by having once-a-week meetings in someone's house. This, of course, can lead to procrastination when the inconvenience of having to use a prominent neighbor's house may mean excuses for not meeting and getting coordinated.

As a solution, rotate meetings to different homes each week. That way if you don't want the annoyance of your living room being overtaken to discuss neighborhood watch business for an evening, the house next door can take over. In duplexes or apartment situations, it usually works better to meet in the manager's abode. Most managers aren't going to mind meeting in their own domain unless they're a potential threat themselves and hiding something behind the couch.

Arrange meetings with local law enforcement

While meetings with law enforcement can take more time, it can also be a mere one-time meet-up in order to get everybody on the same page. The disconnection between an individual's concerns and police is where the biggest problem lies in curbing criminal behavior in neighborhoods. Perhaps the reason for that is the growing philosophy by some in wanting to take care of their property on their own without being dependant on law enforcement to be our protector all the time.

When police meet up with residents, they'll immediately give everybody guidelines on how to make the neighborhood watch more successful. Nevertheless, don't be surprised if L.A.'s recent iWatch terrorist watch system eventually gets assimilated into every state and county police department. Then more complex tips will be given on how to stay truly vigilant without just uttering the word ad infinitum.

The advent of a.m. patrols by willing neighbors...

It used to be that a major part of a neighborhood watch would mean a neighbor peeking out their windows from time to time during the night (if awake) to spot anything unusual going on outside or in a residence. In more recent years, you'll occasionally find close communities with insomniac neighbors who are willing to spend time outside patrolling their street at night, usually in the safe confines of their car.

Mind you, you'll find this mostly in retirement communities more than in communities with happily working people. Occasionally, though, you'll find younger neighbors who happen to have the not very unusual circumstance of being unemployed or work from home where monitoring the neighborhood for a few hours in the a.m. hours isn't a severe problem.

If done, it's best to stay in your vehicle with the door locked and your indoor car light off so a suspicious person can't tell who's in there. There's nothing more menacing than seeing a creeping vehicle in the night with no ability to see who's behind the wheel.

Will it all be enough to catch a terrorist?

It could be, as long as communities that partake in neighborhood watches together know deception when they see it. When terrorists keep being taught to nonchalantly blend into the crowd, they could be one of the neighbors at the neighborhood watch meetings. In those scenarios, new techniques would have to be taught in deciphering which neighbor is telling the truth about their daily activities and which one isn't.

Would you be flummoxed if this kind of weeding out process gets neighborhood watches renamed to neighborhood espionage in the coming decade?

Sources:

http://www.usaonwatch.org

http://www.homesecurityinformation.com/neighborhood-watch.htm