Neighborhood Watch: Why?
A Neighborhood Watch program will have many rewards to you and your family, regardless of whether or not you live in a high crime area. Neighborhood Watch is known to instill a greater sense of security, well-being, and reduce the fear of crime to residents, as well as create a greater "sense of community" and put the neighbor back in the neighborhood. Neighborhood Watch also brings the Bowling Green Police Department and the neighborhood together as a team to reduce criminal activity.Some other benefits of the Neighborhood Watch program are:
- Reduced risk of being a crime victim. The risk is reduced because participants are taught how to take preventive measures that substantially decrease their likelihood.
- Being better prepared to respond to suspicious activity. A concept of the Neighborhood Watch program is training to report suspicious activity within your neighborhood. Included in the training is how to communicate to the Bowling Green Police Department telecommunicators.
- Greater access to criminal activity information. The Neighborhood Watch program is designed to keep participants informed of crime trends and patterns utilizing the Neighborhood Watch Crime Alert System and criminal statistics. This information is provided at Neighborhood meetings.
- Neighborhood Watch signage. Criminals know that if a neighborhood has a Neighborhood Watch sign posted, then the neighborhood is not an easy target. The residents have taken the necessary steps to deter crime in their neighborhood, and the criminal knows he is probably being observed.
- Knowing your neighbors. Neighborhood Watch helps promote getting to know your neighbors and their regular patterns so that any activity that doesn't fit with regular schedules will be recognized as suspicious. This means that when you are away, you can feel more secure about your property.
- Reducing the fear of crime and making your neighborhood more liveable.
- Allowing other issues of concern to the community as a whole to be addressed. Once crime has been addressed and the fear of crime has been reduced, Neighborhood Watch participants can move on to address other issues that concern the community as a whole--issues which can be addressed by other departments within Bowling Green City Government.