5 Tips to Promote Safety in Your Neighborhood
Everyone wants to live in a peaceful, secure environment. Unfortunately, many residential areas are experiencing rising crime rates. This, in turn, can lead to increased fear among residents and visitors. If you want to prevent your community from becoming a perilous place to live, it’s important to take action now.
Whether you’re a mayor, city council member, or police chief, you play a key role in making sure your community remains peaceful and secure. Here are five ways to make the neighborhoods in your jurisdiction safer.
1. Make Sure Public Places Are Secure
Public gathering areas can bring community members together and add to the cohesiveness of any town or neighborhood. They include parks, event centers, transportation hubs, and any other public gathering area. It’s important to design these types of spaces with optimal visibility and security in mind. Failing to do so could pose a danger to community members, especially vulnerable populations like seniors and children.
There are many different ways to make public spaces more secure. Make sure public parks are well-lit and that all playground sets for kids are kept far away from areas of concealment. Keep park bathroom doors locked after hours to prevent vandals and ill-intentioned characters from loitering. Consider installing surveillance cameras in high-risk areas to deter criminals. Finally, arrange for law enforcement to patrol public areas regularly to help keep patrons safe.
2. Organize a Neighborhood Watch
Boosting neighborhood security is a community effort. When everyone decides to keep to themselves and let others keep an eye on things, it can make entire neighborhoods feel disconnected and unsafe. To help the average resident feel more involved and invested in preventing crime in their area, consider organizing a neighborhood watch.
A neighborhood watch is a group of civilians who work closely with law enforcement to enhance safety and reduce crime. Volunteers typically watch for signs of suspicious or criminal activity, then report it to law enforcement. Make it clear that they should never take direct action or attempt to apprehend a criminal themselves. Instead, they act as the eyes and ears for trained law enforcement. To relieve the burden on individual members of your neighborhood watch group, recruit as many neighbors as possible to share the various responsibilities.
3. Improve Street Lighting
A dark, poorly lit street is a magnet for criminal activity. People with ill intent often look for the shadiest portions of town to perform their mischievous deeds. They’re less likely to be seen and get caught if they operate under the cloak of darkness. That’s why home security companies often recommend installing exterior flood lights and motion-activated lights to keep predators at bay. You should ensure the neighborhoods under your purview are just as safe.
To squelch criminal activity, make sure street lighting is adequate in all areas of your neighborhood. Broken streetlights should be promptly repaired. All public spaces such as public transit stations, parks, and parking lots, should also be well-lit to ensure public safety. Whenever possible, install bright streetlights and make sure they’re spaced evenly to avoid any shadowed areas. Adequate lighting will make it easier to detect any suspicious characters or illegal activities going on at night.
4. Support Local Youth Programs
Over 3% of violent crime in the United States is committed by kids and young adults between the ages of 12 and 24. Often, young people engage in unlawful behavior because they’re bored and don’t have constructive things to do with their time. They may also come from dysfunctional families and end up getting in trouble when they search for things to do outside of their homes.
To encourage children and teens to make better use of their time, support local youth programs whenever possible. These may include after-school activities, volunteer opportunities, community sports, and mentoring programs. These types of opportunities give young people a positive way to spend their extra time so they’re less likely to engage in harmful thrill-seeking activities.
5. Urge Residents to Use the Local Emergency Notification System
Many states, cities, and neighborhoods are adopting one or more emergency notification systems. These systems help keep residents informed of dangerous situations or persons in their area so they can seek safety. Local police and fire departments can use the systems to send out mass safety notifications to citizens in a matter of seconds. These systems may use a combination of texts, phone calls, emails, and other alerts.
To help promote safety in your neighborhood, encourage residents to sign up for local emergency notifications. Let them know the service is free and can help keep them informed about critical situations and time-sensitive emergencies happening near them. These types of systems can save lives in the event of a fire, a missing person, high-speed highway chases, and other critical local events.
Crime rates have been on the rise throughout the United States, but that doesn’t mean your town or neighborhood has to become a statistic. As a local government or law enforcement official, you have the ability to implement changes that will help keep citizens safe. Use these tips to make your community a more secure place for residents and a less hospitable destination for criminals.