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Across the island crime is of concern to citizens in the city, town, suburbs, villages, and rural areas. Increasingly, citizens and law enforcement professionals realize that neither one can eradicate crime working separately. Neighbours and other concerned citizens, working cooperatively with law enforcement, can have a positive effect.
Home burglaries, in particular, can be minimized when community residents take steps to make their homes less attractive and vulnerable to burglars.
Burglary, the unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony or theft, is generally considered a crime against property. It has, however, a high potential for death or injury to the victim who comes into surprise contact with the intruder. Through the well recognized concept of NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, residents can make a difference in preventing crime.
The Role of The Community Neighbourhood Watch
Ask anyone whose home has been burglarized … the shock and helpless anger accompanying the discovery that an intruder has entered one’s home will not easily be forgotten. The damage may be minimal or major, the losses slight or catastrophic. The incident may or may not have involved injury to a family member—yet one hard fact remains: another statistic has been added to the ever-growing list of burglarized homes. The burglar won again—and has no doubt vanished, leaving no real clue to lead to his arrest.
Is Your Neighbourhood Ready to Resist Crime? Or Is It A Target For Burglars? It’s Up To You!!
Chances are good that a home burglarized today is located in a neighbourhood where one vital prevention tool is missing: an active NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH group. This community-based organization of citizens working together with law enforcement has become the key to preventing burglary and crime nationwide.
The Commonwealth of Dominica Police Force adopted the Community Policing/NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH Program to unite law enforcement agencies, private organizations, and individual citizens in a massive effort to reduce crime. A work plan emerged for use by police and citizens for putting together local neighbourhood-based programs. Since its establishment, NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH has developed many residential crime prevention programs in which individual citizens work to:
- make their own homes and families less inviting targets for crime, and
- cooperate with law enforcement through block and neighbourhood groups to control crime throughout the community.
Neighbourhood Crime Prevention: Joint Responsibility
The prevention of crime—particularly crime involving residential neighbourhoods—is a responsibility that must be shared equally by law enforcement and private citizens. The fact is, the impact on crime prevention by law enforcement alone is minimal when compared with the power of private citizens working with law enforcement and with each other. NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH is based on this concept of cooperation, and nationwide statistics prove that it works. When citizens take positive steps to secure their own property and neighbors learn how to report suspicious activity around their homes, burglary and related offenses decrease dramatically.
Neighbourhood Watch Areas Show Crime Drop
Throughout many countries, dramatic decreases in burglary and related offenses are reported by law enforcement professionals in communities with active NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH programs.
Statistics show that when a concerned citizenry does its part, the possibilities are endless…and the results positive. NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH is now the most successful anticrime initiative in many countries and the most effective and least expensive tool for restoring the safe, pleasant environment we all want for our families! This is homeowners’ insurance that works! Taking Positive Steps
Victim responses to a home burglary generally follow a similar pattern: Initial fear and anger give way to an obsession with seeing the intruder caught and making sure the home is never targeted by criminals again. In the past, many frightened victims sat back and simply hoped their homes would be spared a repeat performance. They, as well as their neighbors, worried and wondered about what they could do to protect their property.
Since the establishment of NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, however, homeowners who want to take intelligently planned action to decrease crime statistics in their areas have discovered that they have a ready, willing and highly qualified partner in their local law enforcement agency. These homeowners now know that their agency would rather work with citizens to prevent crime than spend time and manpower investigating it after it occurs.
The Growing Need for NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
It is a fact of life that relationships in many of today’s communities have become less personal than they were years ago. Families are more transient, children have more activities that take them and their parents away from home, and there are more families with both parents working. The once-familiar sight of families visiting with each other on front porches while keeping a watchful eye on children and activities in the neighbourhood is a rarity in most communities today. This trend away from personal contact in the neighbourhood and the decrease in time families spend at home are two of the essential ingredients that make communities ripe for crimes of opportunity, such as burglary.
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PORTSMOUTH WATCH
