Shortly after a streak of well-publicized crimes hit the downtown area in late 2015, Columbus south side residents Julie Parker and Qua Austin organized a neighborhood watch.
Since then, the watch has grown to more than 200 people living in the neighborhood stretching from Second Avenue North, covering downtown and into south side residences near Mississippi University for Women.
“We really felt like we needed more of a community coalition,” Parker said. “Not only with our residents on the south side, but also with the merchants in the downtown area … to build community in our area.”
The group Austin and Parker organized has not been the only local neighborhood watch program to spring up in Columbus in the last two years. Of the nine active neighborhood watch programs in Columbus, six of them either began in the last year or were revamped last year after several years of inactivity, according to Rhonda Sanders, community-oriented policing officer with Columbus Police Department.
These programs came about following a push last year to create more neighborhood watches around the city to help CPD combat what many residents saw as a growing crime problem.
“We had a lot of auto burglaries,” Sanders said. “We had some house burglaries. …A lot of people just got interested in getting (watch programs). We wanted to activate some of them. Some of them had neighborhood watch and weren’t really active, so we restarted some of the ones that were not really active.”
The tipping point for Parker came Nov. 8, 2015, when a suspect robbed a couple taking a Sunday afternoon stroll near Fred’s department store on Third Avenue South.
“Just early afternoon, broad daylight,” she recalled.
Sanders began meeting with groups to train them on how to form good neighborhood watches — how to keep contact with each other, what constitutes suspicious activity and when to go to the police.
Though watch groups’ jobs are to keep local law enforcement informed of neighborhood goings-on, most communication is among members. Austin and Parker keep their neighbors informed through a neighborhood watch app, as well as emails and texts.
These programs help police, Sanders said. While plenty of the communication between neighbors is as simple as notices of upcoming events or asking about lost pets, some has to do with crime. Tips from neighborhood watch members have helped solve car burglaries and even home invasions in the last year, Sanders said.
“As long as they stay active, it works,” she said.
Other watch groups
In east Columbus, block captain Donna Hankee keeps the 30 or so members of East Columbus 1 Neighborhood Watch up to date with news and events through email and with monthly meetings held at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd where Sandra DePriest serves as reverend.
“Once a month, we discuss any activities, concerns about our neighborhood,” Hankee said. “We let everybody know of activities going on. We have emails set up, text messages set up alerting people of what we’re seeing. We try to work closely with the police department. We’re looking out for our neighbors.”
The program also keeps police and city officials accountable in looking after the safety and well-being of Columbus citizens, Hankee said.
“We’re saying no to crime. We want a safe community,” she said.
DePriest, who is also involved in another neighborhood watch program in north Columbus, said the program has been meeting since 2015. Like the south side watch program, East Columbus 1 started in response to publicized crimes.
“We had had some area shootings in the neighborhood and violence, gang activity and drug activity…and some burglaries,” DePriest said. “So we thought it was important to begin to connect with our neighbors and present a united front to see if we could not clean up our neighborhood.”
Nearly two years later, crime is still a concern, she said, but there have also been improvements.
“We don’t see ourselves in the news quite as much,” she said.
She also stressed the importance of neighborhood watch programs to bringing neighbors together.
“So often people live in a community for years and never meet their neighbors,” she said. “And this is a way to build those avenues of communication.”
Austin and Parker agreed.
“South side is just a microcosm of the concerns, we feel, of the city,” Austin said. “We love our city. We want to continue to live there. We want to be supportive of each other, but we also want to see Columbus continue to grow and be a viable and thriving community. …We want people to feel safe and secure.”
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.