In mid-October, a resident on Washington Avenue observed suspicious activity and called the Haddonfield Police Department. Soon after, a neighbor on SW Atlantic Avenue reported a person hiding in her backyard.
Police responded and arrested the suspects without incident. The two men had stolen and crushed three copper downspouts, according to a police statement.
The incident brings light to how initiating a neighborhood watch group in Haddonfield could be beneficial, said Chief of Police John Banning.
“Nobody knows your neighborhood better than you do,” Banning said.
A meeting of the Haddonfield Civic Association will be held at borough hall on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at 7:30 p.m. to discuss the possibility of a neighborhood watch.
The meeting has been in the making for about four months, said Brian Wolfson, who is chair of Municipal Affairs and is on the civic association board.
Discussions leading up to this point, Wolfson said, have included the input of Banning and Commissioner Ed Borden.
The neighborhood watch would look for the unusual, smaller-level issues on a block-by-block situation, said Banning.
“They (the neighbors) know when a car doesn’t belong on that street,” he said.
The involvement of the watch group would depend on the nature of the interest of community members who attend the meeting, said Borden.
The group would be a process of education, he added.
“Mostly it is a process of educating people about what to be on the lookout for,” he said, and encouraging them to call the police with issues when they happen rather than after the fact.
“While still valuable to get, it’s just not as helpful as if someone calls quickly,” said Borden.
Crimes in the area, he said, are driven by economic turmoil and drug involvement.
Sometimes, he added, they are “crimes of opportunity.”
If a car is left unlocked and an offender checks the door, they will steal goods and leave quickly.
Thefts from cars, said Banning, are not a new phenomenon in the borough.
“It’s an ongoing problem that we constantly have here,” he said.
Neighborhood watch groups can be found across the United States, said Wolfson.
“It is a crime prevention program that encourages neighbors to participate, know each other, and know their routines so that they can distinguish between a routine that’s normal and not normal,” he added. “It is a program designed to recognize suspicious activities or sounds and know how to report that information properly.”
This would not be the first time Haddonfield would have a town watch group, but this group would be different, said Banning.
Unlike 25 years ago when the town watch had radios and walked through towns, everyone nowadays has cell phones.
“We recognize that,” he said.
The starting point would be to aid in more awareness in communities, as well as feedback and open communication between residents and the police department, Banning explained.
Lt. Edward Wiley would serve as a liaison and meet with residents occasionally to talk about problems at hand, but the neighbors would run the group.
“This could be very extensive depending on how people respond,” said Wolfson. “It’s about teaching residents how to reduce the risk of even being victimized.”
