We asked our block watchers the following questions in small group discussion:

• What can you do to keep your neighborhood safe?
• What causes crime in your neighborhood?
• What are your obstacles, assets, and resources?
• What strategies have you found success with? What strategies haven’t you found success with?

And here’s what they had to say….

Question 1: What can you do to keep your neighborhood safe?

Group 1

• Forming Block Watches
• Educating on Specific Issues
• More Lighting and the uses of cameras

Group 2

• Be more visible
• More Lighting
• Adopt a Dog – to protect your house, to meet neighbors, create connections
• Start a Phone Chain
• Community websites/communication mechanisms

Group 3

• Report Crime – silent complaint forms if want to be anonymous
• Phone Tree/email/text/etc
• Get to know your neighbors
• Get the Youth involved

Group 4

• Sitting on the porch
• Turn on your lights/ Use Motion sensors/pulsating lights for emergencies
• Instantly communicate with Neighbors
• Empowering People so they are not afraid to report crime/criminal activities – and back up your neighbors
• Keep up your property/maintenance
• Relationships with police officers
• Use 311
• Report vacant/abandoned property
• Know your committee people/community groups and their chairs

Group 5

• Be vigilant
• Look out for your neighbor
• Call your police at the first notice
• Be visible in the community – daily and block-wide events
• Educating neighbors
• Broaden communication/phone tree
• Relationships with police officers in your area
• Public School area
• Drug-Free Zone – work with DA to create these!
• 1000 ft buffer w/in all public school areas
• Block-wide events
• Be sensitive to timeliness of communication given the issue and the needed response
• Use resources/reporting that is available to be in the know
• Question: When do you use 311? 911? Other complaint forms? Emergency vs. non-emergency? EOC Call Center will prioritize calls.
  • When in doubt, call 911.
• How to get past the fear factor?
  • Referral network – 2 degrees of separation.
  • Know that you can call anonymously whether you speak directly to an officer or leave the information with 911.

Question 2: What causes crime in your neighborhood?

Group 1:

• Economic Distress
• Neighbors being lax with their personal property
• Abandoned houses
• Not well lit public areas
• Drug addiction
• Lack of education
• Gang activity
• Lack of consequences/oversight by parents
• ‘Follow the Leader’ mentality
• Glamorization of crime

Group 2:

• Drug activity (esp. in the business district)
• Poverty
• Loitering
• Lack of parental supervision of youth
• Leniency in sentencing when they are sentenced

Group 3

• Idle Youth

• What happens in neighborhoods is done by actors from outside
• Program facilities exist, but resources to carry out programming does not
• People are not aware or educated about protecting themselves against crime
• Drug Habit and culture of crime
• Vacant lots and poor lighting
• Not enough police on patrol/low visibility of police that are on patrol
• Seasonality of crime (sports events, concerts, eg)
• Elected officials not being held accountable
• Global Economy is down so people turn to petty crime to ‘cope’

Question 3: As a block watch, what are your obstacles, and what are your assets and resources?

Group 1

• Obstacles
  • Communication
  • Lack of Response from Zone
  • People’s Concern about ‘reaction’
  • Poor Reputation of an area leading to ‘bad intertia’
• Assets:
  • Core Group of People with Time, People, Resources
  • Population of Young People
  • People willing to be identified
  • Block Watch that has a significant history/reputation has good momentum
  • Local Community Group (CDC/CBO

  Group 2:

  • Obstacles:
    • Fearful of reaction
    • Lack of knowledge of boundaries
    • Lack of Interest
    • Lack of Facilitator/Leader
  • Assets:
    • District Magistrate
    • Councilperson/staff
    • 311/CitizenObserver
    • Listservs
    • Churches/Nonprofits/community groups
    • Community Development group can provide assistance and may have a wealth of volunteers

Group 3:

• Obstacles:
  • Fear(of personal harm – if they get ‘involved’)
  • Reputation of Block Groups (being nosey)
  • Apathy (this is the status quo)
• Assets
  • Getting to know your neighbors
  • Soliciting help of youth to beautify/clean up
  • Being able to speak up when they see something happen

Group 4

• Ditto other obstacles
  • Lack of Trust (amongst people, people/orgs, orgs/block level)
  • Being able to recruit and retain members
  • Reluctancy to join group/get involved is it has always been the same people doing the same thing
  • Lack of knowledge of resources/support available in neighborhood
• Assets
  • Close ties to neighborhoods orgs
  • Relationship with churches
  • Adopt-A-Block city program
  • Longevity of members leads to knowledge and development of person as resource
  • Momentum maintained when there are events
  • CTAC
  • Tap into other cleanup crews (thru schools/npos)
  • Religious Institutions and their networks
  • Partnerships with community agencies to lead to collective action
  • Engage the local schools and schoolchildren – starts the stewardship learning early

• Resources:
  • Allegheny Cleanways
  • PRC
  • PennDot
  • DPW
  • Service Groups (Senior Group – AARP, Lions, Fraternities at local colleges)
  • Hospitals

Sidebar discussion:

• Fear of promoting/revitalizing neighborhood as it may cause gentrification
• Volunteer’s time, energy, and sheer numbers are limited.
• Fear of Retaliation – article recently in PP-G as to city’s excellent witness protection record.
• Anonymous reporting? 311 is anonymous but you can get a tracking number
• Remember, when calling 911, even if they ask for your name, you do not have to give your number – our cell phone tracking technology is not as advanced in Pittsburgh
• Non-Emergency situation:
  • 311
  • Silent Complaint form on Bureau of Police website
• Emergency – have to call 911

Question 4: What strategies have you found success with? What strategies have you not found success with?

Group 1:

• Success
  • Weed&Seed Funding for youth activities – fun, social, and educational/experiential activities
  • Separate their beautification and Clean-Up from their block watch groups
  • OBB – Case Mgmt approach – to meet each individual block watch where the need is but also put it in the larger context of the network
  • Communication via email – being consistent
  • Establish core groups of people/team
  • Utilizing strategies to follow-up and strengthen 911 call
  • Just be visible
  • Engage the local police/city council reps/community groups with block watch strategies
  • Connecting with other groups in the community to strengthen efforts
  • “Call 911” campaign ( case study – 200 more calls translated to 200 more arrests)
  • Encourage people to participate in community-wide and zone-wide public safety meetings

• Not as successful:
  • After separating out block/cleaning group, they did not have a group
  • Not being able to secure transportation for people to attend meetings
  • Plateau of participation – even with significant effort, hit a wall and could not generate more input/involvement

• Case Study – tracking of 911 calls over 12months in Manchester –
  • The increase of calls was a 40% increase and resulted in a 40% (matching) increase in arrests – which led to decrease in crime over last 3 years
  • Flyers, announced at every community mtg, encouraged community safety committee to talk to neighbors, eg.

Group 2

• Success
  • Starting up an organization – maintaining it is more difficult
  • Each groups need has to be met – biz, residential, renters, etc. – hard to get all stakeholders’ needs addressed at every meeting
  • Have to form partnerships – Elm Streets programs, eg.
  • Find your neighboring district if you do not have a main/elm streets program but they do and see what you can collaborate with
  • Beat Cops – keep them consistent, more effective.
  • Boris Weinstein’s Group – Citizen’s Against Litter – Community Clean Ups
  • Not just relying on your neighbors – be proactive

Group 3

• Success
  • Develop good relationship with zone commander and community relations officer
  • Develop a databse of information and communicate that info at meetings
  • Engage neighbors/people in conversations
  • CPA
  • Attend cross-neighborhood gatherings
  • Food

• No success
  • Don’t let complainers take \up all of the meeting time
  • Don’t expect the police to ‘do it all for you’ – be active
  • Perception around which neighborhoods are safe or unsafe. Some neighborhoods downplay this for various reasons (which doesn’t appropriately confront the crime)
  • Flyers as communication methods

Group 4

• Success
  • Used State Elm Street Program Grant to purchase solar motion-detector lights in back alleyways – neighbors can look out their windows and see actions/events occurring

Sidebar discussion:

• Keep in mind – CDBG – community development block grant – federal monies designed to go into your communities. This summer, being used in Lawrenceville to hire off-duty officers to ‘walk the beat’ in neighborhoods. Go to federal elected officials, and join partnerships with a local community group to take advantage of CDBG.
  • There is an income requirement on which neighborhoods are eligible (80% AMI) – map on city’s website.
    
• www.ctaconline.org – technical assistance center to help you get your 501c3 status