Neighborhood Watch is a program designed to help prevent crime.
As chair of the Lindberg Park Neighborhood Watch, I have seen that it is much more. It brings a neighborhood closer together. It forms a bond between the neighborhood and the Police Dept.
Neighborhood Watch helps neighbors get to know each other, create friendships and develop a sense of community. This results in neighbors looking out for each other, caring for each other.
Having regular communication with our Police Dept. makes us feel comfortable reporting any suspicious behavior and actual crime.
This program has led to many actual tangible results in my neighborhood.
Over recent years, our neighborhood watch has helped solve over a dozen crimes by reporting suspicious people and behavior to our Police Dept.
We have virtually no graffiti. As soon as it appears, we all report it to the Graffiti Hotline. It is gone in one or two days. Without gang-related graffiti, gang exposure is decreased.
A house in our neighborhood caught on fire. A block captain saw it and reported it to the Fire Dept. soon after it started, so the damage was minimal. We were told that the house could have burned down if not reported so promptly.
We have used our Lindberg Park Neighborhood Watch infrastructure to form a community-based disaster program for our neighborhood.
We raised money, purchased disaster supplies, built a disaster supply cabinet, developed action plans and a communication system for when the next big disaster occurs.
We are not the only one. Inspiring leaders from some of the other Culver City Neighborhood Watch groups attended our recent Neighborhood Watch meeting and spoke about some of their group’s successes. These leaders included Rich Kissel (Culver Crest), Bruce Forman (Studio Estates), David Voncannon (Tellefson Park), Judi Sherman (Fox Hills), and Vince Motyl (East End).
I strongly encourage all neighborhoods to develop a neighborhood watch program.
Any questions regarding the development of your program can be answered by Lt. Sam Agaiby of the Police Dept. at 310.253.6258.
On behalf of the Lindberg Park Neighborhood Watch group, I would like to thank Police Chief Scott Bixby, Lt. Agaiby, and our entire Police Dept. for promoting the neighborhood watch program and providing resources to all the groups to make them so successful.
Ira Diamond, DPM, Chair of the Lindberg Park Neighborhood Watch, may be contacted at
Diamondline@earthlink.net
