BALLARD 'WATCH' SLASHED CRIME

MANATEE - Drug peddling riddled the Bradenton neighborhood Janean
Martin moved into almost two years ago.

To bring the illegal activity to a stop, Martin and her neighbors in
the Ballard Park community banded together 18 months ago under the
Neighborhood Watch crime prevention program.

According to Bradenton Police Officer Linda Stoops of the agency's
crime prevention unit, the group has managed to silence crime with the
aid of Bradenton Police in that short amount of time.

Residents met with Stoops and Lt. Ed Kish to take the crime-related
pulse of their neighborhood, which runs from Sixth Avenue West to 14th
Street West and is bordered by Ninth Avenue West and Wares Creek.
Today, about 70 residents from 43 homes are members of the area's
Neighborhood Watch program, an 80 to 85 percent participation rate.
According to Martin, nothing gets by them.

"Our neighborhood is a unit - it's a team - and we've always taken a
team approach to what we do," she said. "Our crime watch makes all of
us feel safer. We feel we're protecting ourselves and others around
us. More eyes are better than few."

That's been the aim of Neighborhood Watch since the national crime
prevention program was first created 32 years ago - to bring local law
enforcement agencies and the citizens they protect together to combat
crime.

Eric L. Schultz, project director of the National Neighborhood Watch
Program, said the project first started in 1972 after the tumultuous
end of the 1960s made crime rates soar. Since then, a reliance on
residents to patrol their neighborhoods for suspicious individuals or
cars, potential break-ins or robbery threats has helped law
enforcement agencies nationwide narrow in on local crime and better
understand the communities they serve.

"There's never been a study done to correlate Neighborhood Watch with
crime reduction, but we've gotten many stories relayed to us from
police departments, sheriff's offices and community groups who've said
the program has been very effective," he said.

"The goal," Schultz continued, "is to bring the community together -
to increase communication between neighbors and between citizens and
law enforcement. The program helps do just that by developing a good
line of communication."

According to Schultz, how the program is run is solely up to local law
enforcement agencies, and the size of a Neighborhood Watch depends
upon how many residents want to start one.

Budget restraints and cutbacks are sometimes the reason why some
agencies don't offer the program, which law enforcement officials said
only requires a "minimal" portion of their budgets.

The Manatee County Sheriff's Office, Bradenton Police and Palmetto
Police all offer the crime prevention program to residents.

The sheriff's office invests about $389,719 in personnel and operating
expenses to run its crime prevention division, which oversees programs
like Neighborhood Watch. Bradenton Police and Palmetto Police did not
provide the Herald with a breakdown on funding for their crime
prevention units.

Stoops said smaller law enforcement agencies, like Bradenton and
Palmetto police departments, usually operate on "shoestring" budgets.
As a result, they need to stick to the basics with crime prevention
programs like Neighborhood Watch. Purchasing 50 Neighborhood Watch
signs, for example, costs about $600, Stoops said.

The sheriff's office oversees between 30 to 50 active Neighborhood
Watch programs. The Bradenton Police Department oversees about 15
groups, and Palmetto Police oversees about five or six.

It's not uncommon for Neighborhood Watch programs to become inactive
and temporarily disband once a crime is solved or a culprit is caught,
which accounts for the small number of groups, according to Stoops and
Palmetto Police Sgt. Scott Tyler.

"They kind of come and go," Tyler said. "People start feeling safe and
it starts to wane. We encourage them to stay active because the value
of crime watch is incalculable."

Manatee County Sheriff's Deputy Al Demaio and Jake Parrish, supervisor
of the crime prevention division, handle the Neighborhood Watch
program through the sheriff's office.

Residents undergo three 45-minute workshops on crime prevention safety
- - an introduction to Neighborhood Watch, residential safety and a
third on personal safety, frauds and scams. The Bradenton Police and
Palmetto Police programs follow a similar training structure.

In addition to the standard workshops, the sheriff's office crime
prevention team also visits homes to make sure they are safe from
intruders and have additional sub-programs to increase safety.

Under the door-hanger program, neighbors notify a resident if their
home has been made vulnerable to an intruder, such as by leaving a
garage door open. Notices are left on doors in the hopes that the
resident becomes more savvy in crime prevention.

"There are three elements to committing a crime - desire, ability and
opportunity. We can't do anything about the first two, but we can do
something to make it a little bit more aggravating to the burglar,"
Demaio said.

Although concrete statistics reflecting the effectiveness of
Neighborhood Watch aren't readily available, law enforcement officers
said they've seen it work day after day.

"Neighborhood Watch is really a simple idea," Manatee Sheriff Charlie
Wells said. "People used to do that all the time, but as we moved into
a much more complex world, neighbors in a lot of places just quit
talking to one another; it became so impersonal. We take them back to
that day and ask them to observe what goes on in their community, and
it works."

INFORMATION

Neighborhood Watch programs are based upon police jurisdiction. For
more information on starting a Neighborhood Watch program in your
community, contact:

* The Manatee County Sheriff's Office Crime Prevention Division at
747- 3011, ext. 2500.

* Bradenton Police Officer Linda Stoops at 708-6273, ext.
393.

* Palmetto Police Sgt. Scott Tyler at 721-2000, ext. 360.