Nearly a half-century ago, a New York Times article stunned Americans. It began, “For more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.”
One witness said: “I didn’t want to get involved.”
That March 1964 incident galvanized a nation. Studies lamented, as one put it, “the inability of local communities, to realize the common values of their residents or solve commonly experienced problems.” In the end, it seemed to be less about callousness than people simply not knowing their neighbors and not knowing enough about what was going on around them to be able to identify things out of the ordinary.
It was in this climate of shock at “bystander apathy” that neighborhood watch groups were born.
Today, those groups are receiving renewed attention in our region as large numbers of foreclosures and high levels of joblessness are taking a toll on the stability of our neighborhoods. At the same time, strained government finances are hurting law enforcement, after-school programs and other community institutions. And in a state with a wide range of races, ethnic groups and languages, neighbors may not interact much with each other.
Volunteerism – residents working together to solve community problems – is more important then ever to break patterns of fragmentation and isolation. As The Bee’s Chelsea Phua reported on Tuesday, people are launching new neighborhood watch groups and rejuvenating already existing ones.
These should not be seen only as a tool to fight and prevent crime – and they have been proven effective at that. Neighborhood Watch groups also provide a way for people of different backgrounds to interact with each other and find common ground – building relationships among neighbors to make more livable places. Out of these groups can come social events, trash cleanups, painting over graffiti, restoring playgrounds.
Neighborhood Watch is not about vigilantism, people acting as pseudo-police officers. It is not about 24-hour “Big Brother is watching you” spying. It is not about gossiping busybodies.
It’s about neighbors looking after neighbors.
Reduced crime is merely a byproduct of people banding together to reclaim an old-fashioned sense of community.