More and more neighborhoods around Columbus are keeping a watchful eye out for troublemakers.
Recent crimes in the downtown and Southside areas have placed a renewed focus on neighborhood watches. Julie Parker, who lives in the Southside, thrust the issue before the council on Nov. 17 when she spoke on behalf of residents and business owners concerned for their safety in the wake of two recent incidents.
On Nov. 4, a woman was reportedly attacked by a man at dawn while running along First Street near the Riverwalk. On Nov. 8, two people were robbed at gunpoint while walking near Fred’s on Third Avenue South.
CPD Community Police Officer Rhonda Sanders said there are two active neighborhood watches in east Columbus, and she’s trying to revive two more on the Northside. She said additional efforts are underway on the Southside and downtown.
Sanders pointed out that neighborhood watches are important for the community, and CPD plays a role in organizing them. However, she said CPD does not run the watches.
“They are neighbors looking out for neighbors,” she said. “They’re our eyes.”
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One neighborhood watch in East Columbus has seen some success since it started earlier in the year. The East Side 1 Neighborhood Watch encompasses an area from McCrary and Warpath roads to McCrary and Highway 82 and Hemlock Street and Warpath.
Donna Hankee said East Side 1 has six block captains. The watch began in February in Hankee’s house. The group started with about 25 people and has held steady around that number since.
The group now meets at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the third Monday of every month.
Debbie Fancher, a neighborhood watch member, said the East Side 1 neighborhood watch was born from a desire to make change for a safer neighborhood.
“Basically, we had enough,” she said. “We’ve lived here for many years and it was a good little neighborhood. It seems like in the last couple of years the crime has just escalated.”
The meeting is not just restricted to discussing any suspicious activity. Hankee said members can talk about any general concerns in the community, or any news learned from attending events like city council meetings. She said city leaders also stop by to talk to the neighborhood watch.
Similarly, members are not restricted to only discussing things during the meeting.
“Several of us text or call,” Fancher said. “We communicate by email, so anyone who’s a member of our group and has email, we can send out information through that.”
Hankee said the East Side 1 monthly meetings are open to anyone who wants to attend.
Hankee said the group will focus on finding ways to get more community members involved as things move forward. But, she said, dealing with people’s fear of being involved can be a difficult obstacle to mount.
“The hardest struggle is everybody has a fear,” Hankee said. “Everybody is afraid of a repercussion if so and so finds out that they’re here. ‘Oh you’re gonna a snitch’ or something like that. That is the hardest stereotype for us to overcome.”
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Ward 4 Councilman Marty Turner said he supports neighborhood watches, though issues can occasionally arise when someone is mistakenly identified as not belonging.
Still, he said the pros far outweigh the cons, and neighborhood watches do not necessarily have to be formal. In Memphis Town, Turner said the residents keep their own informal watch. He said the area is safe, even if it gets a bad rap.
He said the watch helped him about three years ago when someone broke into his house.
“People say, ‘I hate nosy neighbors.’ I love nosy neighbors because if something happened in my neighborhood, I know one of my neighbors will see it and they will tell me,” Turner said. “…I think neighborhood watches are good.”
Ward 3 Councilman Charlie Box said he’s seen successes where neighborhood watches have been used in Columbus.
“It’s a great thing and I encourage anyone that wants to maybe have one or look into one for their neighborhood to call us and we’ll give them all the information,” Box said. “It’s a great thing. And the thing you can tell them that she (Sanders) stresses so much is, don’t be afraid to call 911. A lot of people are afraid to call 911 because they don’t want their name, they don’t want to get involved or something like that. But they won’t even ask you your name.”
Ward 5 Councilman Kabir Karriem also said he was highly supportive of neighborhood watches. He pointed to a Northside watch maintained through email that he said has been extremely successful in getting a huge portion of the community involved.
“I know it has over 1,000 people in it,” he said. “They email each other back and forth. They talk about anything from a dog being loose to some suspicious people who are in the neighborhood to watch out for. It’s a really good neighborhood watch group.”
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Though neighborhood watches keep an eye out for suspicious activity, the members of East Side 1 were quick to point out that they are trained to report problems to CPD, rather than confront them head-on.
“We just notify them if we see something suspicious,” Fancher said. “That (policing) isn’t our job.”
Karriem acknowledged that people could potentially be overzealous, leading to instances such as the one that ended in the February 2012 shooting death of Travyon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain.
However, Karriem said he believed that instance to be far outside the normal and was not an issue for Columbus.
“I don’t think the George Zimmerman situation is something normal,” he said. “I think it’s something that happened as a rarity. I mean, you have things like that. You have people that have preconceived notions about people, but I just don’t think that’s the norm. And I don’t think that that’s even the case here in Columbus. I think that we’ve got some really good folks in the neighborhood watch that I participate in and I think they do a good job.”
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To set up a neighborhood watch, appoint a block captain and contact Sanders at 251-7355. At the first meeting, Sanders typically brings in additional city leadership to ensure that everything is properly set up and all neighborhood watch issues are addressed. The area the particular watch will oversee is mapped and the watch appoints further block captains — ideally one for every six blocks.
Sanders said block captains are supposed to learn about the people in the community — to learn which cars are normally in what driveways, for example, or to make sure someone checks on the elderly person who might not get out very often.
Block captains report any unusual activity to CPD. Sander said she normally acts as the contact person, as a liaison between CPD and the community.
Dispatch reporter Isabelle Altman contributed to this report.
West Point watches
In West Point, there are three neighborhood watch organizations, but it has not always been that way.
Zate McGee helped revive a watch in her west side neighborhood four years ago. She said there had been organizations in the city before, but that many had become inactive in the mid-2000s. A West Point native, McGee, 56, said the watch began anew four years ago because her neighborhood has lots of elderly people who are home during the day and notice things in the area.
“I started talking about it to some of the neighbors, and they wanted to get it up and going again so we did,” she said. “We got the neighborhood signs put up and it’s been pretty good.”
Her group meets every three months at the West Point Police Department, where they discuss what they are seeing with officers. She said it’s important to know when something is suspicious.
“You have to get to know your neighbors, that’s the first thing,” McGee said. “You have to know what’s out of the ordinary, and that’s what you call in to 911 to report. And you just get them in the habit of calling. They say, ‘Well, I don’t want to bother anybody by getting involved.’ You’re not involved with them. Call. That way, an officer can come through the neighborhood and check it.”
She said around 10-15 people attend their meetings. Since her group was established, two other neighborhood watches have sprouted in West Point.
McGee said her group mainly communicates via phone. She said other groups use email.
“In my neighborhood, we have each others’ numbers and we communicate,” she said.
Ward 2 Selectmen William Binder said it is important that neighborhood watches communicate regularly with the WPPD, adding that it is an important way to develop good community-police relations.
“I look at the neighborhood watch as a great thing, especially with the holidays coming up when many people leave town and break-ins go up,” Binder said.
Starkville watches
Starkville residents are using a more 21st century technique to keep neighbors on the same page when monitoring suspicious activities.
Nextdoor.com, a Facebook-esque website, allows neighbors to post about activity they find unsettling. The site has an extensive vetting process to keep the groups limited to specific neighborhoods.
Starkville Police Chief Frank Nichols advocated Nextdoor in 2014 after his officer’s learned about it at a seminar. The program is active in at least four Starkville neighborhoods.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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