Crime-Watch Groups Battle Apathy With Variety of Programs

The fires were being set almost nightly on Bellingham Avenue in North Hollywood. A few cars had been burned, trash in some bins set afire. The damage was never high, and no one was ever hurt. But it was scary. There was an arsonist out there, somewhere.

So neighborhood residents did what residents often do when crime directly threatens their neighborhood: They contacted police and organized a Neighborhood Watch group.

On Feb. 5, just 10 days after their first meeting, four group members spotted a man leaving an apartment garage where a fire had just been started. They followed and watched him until firefighters and police arrived. He was arrested for arson.

Though the capture of a suspect is perhaps the ultimate trophy for a Neighborhood Watch program, the fledgling group still faces perhaps its most difficult task: staying in existence.

Despite many residents who attend Neighborhood Watch meetings across the San Fernando Valley each year, police and civic activists say they continually face the challenge of keeping people interested and involved after the immediate threat of crime is gone. Indeed, Bellingham Avenue had a Neighborhood Watch years earlier, but it died for lack of interest.

“It is difficult to get people to see the value of staying involved when the crime situation is not that bad,” said Richard Beltran, a longtime Neighborhood Watch coordinator in the low-crime Chatsworth area. “It’s when crime gets close to them that they get interested.”

To keep citizens involved, the Neighborhood Watch concept has evolved to include a variety of programs that go past the basic crime-watch philosophy, ranging from earthquake response to drug awareness.

People who attend group meetings are just as likely to hear a city official tell them how to get rid of abandoned cars or how they can get a stop sign for their corner as they are to hear a police officer providing a rundown on recent crime in their neighborhood.

Though the focus of Neighborhood Watch remains crime prevention and the partnership of residents with police, incidents in which residents help police capture suspects, as on Bellingham Avenue, are rare.

“That’s icing on the cake,” said Stephanie Tapper, coordinator of the Neighborhood Watch group started after the Bellingham Avenue fires. “It is not our day-to-day contribution.”

Los Angeles police say it is difficult to gauge how many residents in the city are actively involved in Neighborhood Watch. Officer James Cypert, assistant officer in charge of the department’s crime prevention operations, said police do not have up-to-date membership statistics. Attendance at meetings is the best indicator of involvement, he said.

In recent years, the number of Neighborhood Watch meetings and attendance has fluctuated. In 1986, there were 5,003 meetings with 235,000 residents in attendance. In 1988, the most recent year for which citywide records were available, there were more meetings but fewer attendees: 5,137 meetings at which 220,000 people took part.

But police concede that the attendance figures don’t provide a look at how many people remain steadfastly involved and how many drift away.

Police officers who coordinate Neighborhood Watch in the Valley said new groups are started every month. Occasionally, the groups restart in places, such as Bellingham Avenue, where old watch groups have fallen apart. New housing developments and the rapidly changing makeup of neighborhoods bring new residents who seek the sense of protection a Neighborhood Watch program offers.

Residents of the newly built Autumn Ridge townhouse community in Sylmar started a group last month. Sheila Lebowitz, the group’s coordinator, said the program gives residents of the gated development a chance to meet each other and become “familiar with who belongs here and who doesn’t.”

“We think it is a crime prevention step we have to take,” she said.

Police estimate that more than 3,000 residents attend Neighborhood Watch meetings in the Valley each month. The block clubs, as they are called, run the gamut from dedicated groups that meet at least once monthly to those that rarely meet.

Sgt. Gary Merrifield, in charge of community relations at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, said there are about 400 Neighborhood Watch groups in the police division, which encompasses Sylmar, Pacoima, Lake View Terrace, Sunland and Tujunga. But, he said, only about 20 are “fire breathers”--groups that continually remain “super-active” in crime prevention.

The rest are mostly groups that formed when a specific problem, such as a rash of burglaries, hit a neighborhood, and are now only sporadically active.

“As soon as they get their clubs together, and they solve the immediate crime problems, they have a tendency to become non-existent,” Merrifield said. “Most are not as active as we would like them to be.”

Programs elsewhere in the Valley experience a similar response.

“A lot of the groups don’t stay active. It’s a problem,” said Community Relations Officer Iain Hamilton, who organizes Neighborhood Watch meetings in the West Valley. “Most people are concerned with what is happening right at the moment. Once they feel secure, it goes by.”

Despite the tendency for people to drop out, those dedicated to Neighborhood Watch persist in efforts to get more residents involved.

Tapper, head of the Bellingham Avenue group, said attendance at the first meeting after the arson suspect was caught dropped by a third. But she is planning meetings at which disaster preparedness will be discussed, a neighborhood earthquake plan will be formed and residents can learn how to get the city to paint crosswalks on their streets.

She said the fledgling group already has a newsletter in the works. And questionnaires passed among those attending meetings will provide information to help steer the group toward topics and problems that will keep residents involved.

“From the beginning we were aware of the problem of people dropping out,” Tapper said. “Now that our problem has been taken care of, we have to keep the interest going. We are going to have to stimulate them in many ways.

“We need to make everyone aware that they are very important participants. If the Neighborhood Watch becomes a way through which people can know what is happening in their neighborhood, then they will stay involved.”

The approach of the new group has worked elsewhere, authorities said.

Annette Banda, an aide to City Councilman Hal Bernson who helps police coordinate Neighborhood Watch programs in the northwest Valley, said the area has a core group of about 500 residents actively involved in the program and 5,000 more who receive a Neighborhood Watch newsletter.

Banda said people first get involved in crime prevention programs when they see a specific need. But meeting other needs helps keep the momentum going.

“We are keeping more involved because of the variety of programs we have,” she said.

Officer Norman Dumais, who works with Foothill area community groups, said the added programs act as “preventive maintenance,” keeping Neighborhood Watch groups in existence. “It helps keep the motivation there,” he said.

Police and civic activists say their continued efforts to get citizens involved are because Neighborhood Watch works. They call the concept of neighbor watching out for neighbor the cornerstone of crime prevention.

“The people in Neighborhood Watch are our eyes and ears out there,” said Sgt. Robert Shallenberger, head of community relations for the Police Department’s Van Nuys Division. “As soon as one of them picks up a phone to call us, the program is paying off.”

Throughout the Valley, authorities point to examples--large and small--in which the program has made a difference.

The largest Neighborhood Watch group in the Foothill area encompasses 800 homes in Sylmar. Since its inception six years ago, property crimes have dropped 75%, police say.

Neighborhood Watch groups in Sepulveda are credited with helping to cut down the visibility of prostitution and narcotics sales along Sepulveda Boulevard.

At the other end of the scale there is the 7300 block of Remmet Avenue in Canoga Park, which police likened to a small crime-free oasis in an area rife with gang and drug problems. Resident Phil Weldon said he started the block-long watch group six years ago, after nine homes on the block were burglarized in one year. He said there has been only one burglary in the area since then.

“All we did was introduce neighbor to neighbor,” Weldon said. “We don’t need Rambos. We just want people who can recognize a situation and call police. We want people who will watch out for each other, know who belongs here and who doesn’t.”

One day last week, Weldon saw four youths walk down Remmet. Weldon said he immediately recognized that the four, who he suspected of being gang members, did not live on the street.

“So I went out front to keep a watch, and I noticed that three of my neighbors suddenly had to go out and water their lawn,” Weldon said. “Another guy came out to work on his car. These gang kids just kept bopping on down the street. But they started walking a little faster. That made me feel so good.”