From the December 2005 issue of The Forester

SAFETY AND SECURITY - OUR RESPONSIBILITY
By Dave Paul, Vice President, FPCA

At the FPCA's general meeting on October 11, Officer Kevin Grooms, the new liaison officer with the Columbus Police Department's Strategic Response Bureau for the 18th Precinct, joined us to discuss crime and safety in and around our community and to suggest ways we can help keep our homes and our community safe. One of these suggestions was the revitalization of Forest Park's Block Watch program. Nearly all of those who attended the meeting indicated support for this idea.

Precinct 18 is among the largest police precincts in Columbus, and includes eight cruiser districts. Five of these districts account for virtually all of the area south of I-270, east of Worthington, north of Morse Road and west of Westerville Road. The remaining three districts are north of I-270; one includes the rapidly growing Polaris area. Forest Park West is in the northeast corner of the 180 cruiser district, while Forest Park East accounts for approximately two thirds of the 186 cruiser district.

If you read or watch the news, you know that the Police Department has had difficulty keeping up with growth and development, and a corresponding increase in crime, throughout our city, including the Northland area. For various reasons, including funding, the Department has been largely unable to field additional patrol officers to respond to the growth in our area. Response times have increased; patrol officers are spending more time responding to calls and compiling reports rather than patrolling our streets to prevent crime.

While the police may have at one time been able to proactively patrol our communities "on the lookout" for crime, they now spend most of their time responding to crimes in progress and accidents, and conducting crime scene investigations. As a result, the visibility of regular police patrols, and their effectiveness at preventing crime or detecting an increase in the conditions that encourage it, has declined.

The FPCA's Supplementary Security program was started a number of years ago to help offset this trend. Two-thirds of every FPCA member household's dues are currently earmarked for the program, which contracts with off-duty city police officers to patrol our community and perform house checks in response to resident requests several times each week. Unfortunately, the decline over the past several years in the number of households joining the FPCA means that we will probably need to reduce the number of Supplemental Security patrol hours scheduled each week in order to stay within our Association budget.

The best way for us to protect our community from an increase in crime, and its negative effect on property values, is to be more vigilant and better informed ourselves. We need to learn how to recognize and report crime, and the conditions that encourage it, on our streets. Forest Park residents need to be actively involved in and committed to this effort for it to succeed.

Some years ago, Forest Park was designated a "Block Watch" community; you may have noticed signs announcing this on several of our entrance streets. To achieve this designation, a significant percentage of Forest Park residents attended a series of meetings, conducted by the Police Department and presented at no cost, to learn how to recognize, prevent and report crimes in and around our community. They also agreed to organize and maintain a community network for the purpose of reporting these activities to the police promptly and effectively.

With the passage of time, our community's Block Watch program has become disorganized and ineffective. To reactivate it, we need to once again develop a community network and schedule a series of three organizing meetings, conducted by the Strategic Response Bureau over several weeks, to explain the program and provide training for interested households. Because of the large size of our community, Officer Grooms has recommended two networks and training schedules be established: one for Forest Park West and another for the East. (Although the Association intends to help organize and coordinate the Block Watch program, the Block Watch networks will be independent of the FPCA.)

How can you help?

In this issue of the newsletter, you'll find a form you can send in to indicate your family's interest and support for reviving the Block Watch program in Forest Park. By returning the form, you'll be indicating that a member of your household will be able to attend at least two of three organizing meetings, each one hour long. (You can also send an email message, including your name, address and phone number, to blockwatch@fpcivic.org to indicate your support and willingness to participate.) We can only schedule the meetings after a sufficient proportion of households have agreed to participate in the program; however, they will most likely be after the New Year. Please be sure to include a phone number and/or email address, so you can contacted as early as possible by a member of the FPCA's Block Watch committee once meetings have been scheduled.

This issue also includes an FPCA Household Data Sheet, which you can return with your membership dues to become a member of the Civic Association if you haven't already joined this year.

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Page last updated: 12/14/2005