Landmark Estates Celebrates Safe Communities Month

The Landmark neighborhood Watch of Montgomery, Alabama is an active group supporting a community of over 300 homes. In addition to quarterly meetings held at Frazer Memorial U.M.C., the group has participated in the annual August National Night Out.  Local law enforcement officials as well as city leaders have attended our meetings and provided excellent motivational programs. Several members have graduated from the Montgomery Police Department's (MPD) Citizen's Police Academy and volunteer at the MPD in their Crime Scene Bureau as well as performing Vacation Home Checks through the Patrol Division. Members also meet informally at a local restaurant to discuss current security topics. At a recent meeting the use of low cost devices such as driveway chimes and fake security cameras was discussed. Sources of supply were provided to all group members. A  resident  has prepared a listing of all residents, by street address that provides name and phone number as well.  Copies of this listing are provided to the individual patrol officers to help them identify and contact residents and neighbors at the time of any incident. We also use an Internet Group on Yahoo.com to quickly publish any information dealing with crime in a timely manner. In addition to residents, our district city councilman is also on the distribution list. We also copy any incident correspondence to the local MPD Neighborhood Watch program district contact (in this case, Corporal Cooper.) Cpl Cooper is in touch with our officers on a regular basis. Digests of the local MPD Crime/Incident reports are also distributed through our Yahoo group.. While not directly to crime, several residents have completed an extensive course in Disaster Preparedness offered by the city's Emergency Management Office. Several recent initiatives that have proven to be helpful are the  “Mark Your Property” program where residents are provided a worksheet to document their valuable items and are encouraged to mark them.  They are given a set of decals to display on their doors/windows stating that their property has been identified as such making it easier to have property returned if stolen.  Several neighbors participate in the “Watch Your Car” program by affixing decals to their vehicles allowing law enforcement officers to stop the vehicle on the city streets between midnight and 5:00am. All residents are encouraged to have home security/fire warning systems installed in their homes.  In addition to the insurance savings, it provides a valuable deterrent to crime. We have installed Neighborhood Watch signs in the neighborhood announcing that we are serious about deterring crime. Over the time our Neighborhood Watch Group has been in being,  we have found that residents are more willing to call the police either on the non-emergency number or 911 as well as looking out for their neighbors.