Chief Michael Miller urges Aug. 7 is about getting to know your neighbor
The origin of National Night Out is rooted roughly 35 miles from the Borough of Berlin in the western suburbs of Philadelphia.
As a volunteer of the Lower Merion Community Watch program, Matt Peskin, in the late 1970s, created a movement aimed to connect neighboring town watch programs and offer those groups a platform to communicate.
By 1981, Peskin founded the National Association of Town Watch, and with widespread support from communities and local law enforcement agencies, National Night Out came into being in August 1984.
The idea was to connect law enforcement, neighborhood watch groups, crime prevention associations and volunteers across the United States.
According to the NNO website, more than 16,000 communities take part each year.
However, since the 1980s, NNO has changed. In the beginning, it was customary for residents in a municipality to merely turn their porch light on, host a barbeque and chat with law enforcement and other agencies as their members made their way through a neighborhood.
Borough Chief of Police Michael Miller said this has changed, and maybe not for the better as many communities now host NNO events in centralized locations.
“A lot of out-of-town people come. I think an event like this is for your own community. The purpose is to turn on your porch light and meet your neighbor,” Miller said.
Aug. 7 marks Berlin’s fourth NNO and the second with Miller as the chief of police.
Before last year’s event, Miller decided Berlin should revert back to tradition and decentralize the borough’s NNO.
The police department solicited each neighborhood to designate a block captain and urged each block to make NNO their own.
“It is more about the neighbors getting to know each other, each neighborhood can do whatever they want,” he said.
Last year featured a pie baking contest and judges traveled to each block to decide on a winner who was awarded a gift certificate to a local restaurant. At a local senior living center a pot-luck was held.
This year, the borough will celebrate NNO in the same fashion.
Keeping with tradition, Miller, his department and others will visit each location and mingle with neighbors.
“It’s good community engagement,” he said.
He added, “We are here to talk about anything, the easy and the hard topics. We may not have the answer to everything but we can get back to them.”
Miller said NNO is an opportunity for residents to see that police are “no different from them” and that “many of us live in the same community.”
“We want to tell them what we can do and hear what their concerns are. Normally, people don’t talk to the police,” he said, adding he’s heard people say “they don’t want to bother the police.”
However, he said, “If it is important to them, it is important to us.”
National Night Out is set for 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., Tues., Aug. 7. If residents are interested in having a block party, select a block captain and email Ptlm. Eric Wolf at: ewolf@berlinpolice.net. Include your name, cell phone number a street name.
