Turning The Neighborhood Watch Program into a Success

If you turn on the news you are likely to be welcomed with the newest law enforcement scandal to be caught on camera. Law enforcement remains to be a topic of high controversy in the United States. Our headlines seem to always be plastered with news of a cop killing someone, someone killing a cop, police brutality or police abusing their K-9 co-workers. Currently, the topic of law enforcement is much too broad to tackle with one campaign. However, a commonly forgotten issue in law enforcement is the failure of the Neighborhood Watch Program to prevent crime in all neighborhoods.

The National Neighborhood Watch began in 1972. When it began the program was being partially funded by the National Sheriffs’ Association, through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice. The funding has since stopped, but the program continues. The program uses neighborhood citizens to act as the eyes and ears of law enforcement in their own communities by alerting local law enforcement if any suspicious activity is spotted (Welcome to National Neighborhood Watch – A Division of the National Sheriffs' Association (NSA), n.d.).

The program is meant to be a portal in which citizens are trained to assist law enforcement and their own communities by being an asset to those in the field. Unfortunately, the Neighborhood Watch Program is failing nationwide. The biggest problem the Neighborhood Watch Program faces is that areas with the highest crime rates are the areas that are usually the most unwilling to participate in a program such as this. Middle-class neighborhoods tend to trust their neighbors more than residents in lower-class neighborhoods tend to trust their neighbors, leading to an already lower crime rate in the middle-class neighborhoods than in the lower-class neighborhoods. The Neighborhood Watch Program requires there to be a certain level of trust between residents of the neighborhood and the police (Sherman, n.d.).

I will focus on the Olde Towne area of Portsmouth, Va., specifically areas farther from the waterfront, surrounding I.C. Norcom High School. This particular area has a high rate of low-income housing and apartment options, and a higher concentration of homeless than the remaining parts of the city. My plan for improving the success of the existing Neighborhood Watch Programs, while encouraging the creation of more Neighborhood Watch Programs is based on improving the relationship between the community and local law enforcement – Portsmouth Police Department – and also establishing a sense of trust between both parties. This plan consists of promoting positive images of law enforcement, participating in community service, community involvement and building personal relationships between the community and law enforcement.

Promoting a Positive Image

This plan starts with social media. The Portsmouth Police Department would reach out to the main contacts of current Neighborhood Watch Programs in the community and ask them to share any success stories of the program, how their relationship with the Portsmouth Police Department is, interactions with police, their hopes for the future of the Neighborhood Watch Program and photos or videos they would like to share from their program. The majority of this campaign would be based on social media, so I would incorporate hashtags that people could use when they want to refer to the Portsmouth Police Department and the local Neighborhood Watch Programs. Because the campaign would be focused on improving the image of, and communities’ relationships with both the Neighborhood Watch Program and the Portsmouth Police Department I would use two hashtags: #PortsmouthPolice and #PortsmouthWatch.

Hashtags are used to group photographs and videos together which bare the same hashtag. This would allow the Portsmouth Police Department to filter what is put on its social media. The hashtag would simply make it easier for the police department to find photos and videos that could pertain to what it wants to share and celebrate on with the public. The legality of usage can be covered by simply stating in media bylines that by using this hashtag the owner is permitting the Portsmouth Police Department to review and possibly use the photo or video on its media. To eliminate as much controversy as possible, the person appointed to the police department’s social media can also direct message the owner – on behalf of the Portsmouth Police Department – to explicitly ask permission to use the photo or video. To ensure there is not a lull in user-generated content, at least five to 10 photos or videos, which promote the police department in a positive light, should be picked and the content owners contacted to ask permission to use it. This would prevent lulls in this type of content because you are not relying on the availability and activity of a sole source for content. Reaching out to the creator would also allow the police department the chance to ask for details about the scene being depicted such as, where did it occur, when was this taken, do you know anyone involved, who is involved in the situation being depicted and any other questions that would help to tell the story of what is happening in the image or video.

Once the content is posted, the creator, and therefore owner, of the photo or video would be credited and tagged in the content’s caption. If the owner informs the police department of anyone else that should be credited, that should be included in the caption as well. User-generated content can be a great tool when trying to improve a company, organization or location’s image to the public. It can be considered a form of unpaid, or earned, media. Research has proven that people are more likely to trust earned media more than unearned, or paid, media because the organization does not have control over the message that is being spread. The content is more genuine because the creator is not required to spin the message a particular way (Lynch, 2018).

Being able to review and choose the content used from the hashtags will allow the Portsmouth Police Department to control what the public sees on its media specifically, but not what is seen under the hashtags. Filtering what is shown on the police department’s own media allows it to promote the image that is desired without controlling what people are saying and gives the police department access to real-life experiences from the community it serves. Using this method to filter what appears on the department’s media also allows it to make sure the content being used is legal and being used legally. Candid photos and videos that are taken in a public space are legal under the First Amendment – Freedom of Speech – meaning that, legally, any content taken in a public space can be used by the creator. By constitutional law – under the First Amendment – it is not a crime to photograph or record police doing their job in a public space (Willingham, 2018).

For more information on the First Amendment and First Amendment court cases, go to Cornell Law or Findlaw.com

The threat to the above tactic is that people can post negative things about the Portsmouth Police department that, in some cases, may be backed with photographic or video evidence. People that choose to post this content using the hashtags #PortsmouthPolice and #PortsmouthWatch have a legal right to do so, however, this can also be used to help improve the image of the local police. When people post negative experiences with police, using the Portsmouth Police Department’s hashtags, it gives the police department a chance to thank them for making the police department aware of the situation and allows it to respond to the problem more immediately. This content allows the police department to identify problems with local law enforcement and gives it the chance to work with the community to combat problems with the law enforcement. Part of improving the image of something is identifying the problem, responding to the problem and coming up with the best solution possible.

The person acting on behalf of the Portsmouth Police Department would also create a blog or some other kind of public forum where people could share both positive and negative experiences they have had with Portsmouth police. Similar to the social media posts, this will help the police department to act quicker and be more responsive to the negative experiences people have had with local law enforcement. Giving people a place where they feel heard and appreciated can be the difference between a quiet investigation followed by a solution, and extended periods of negative media, negative feelings between the police and the public and negative public reactions.

Allowing the public to be a part of the discussion and giving them a place where they feel heard makes them feel as though they have a voice among law enforcement, rather than feeling like they are being controlled and ignored by it. These tactics can also give the police department a better idea of how the public in the city of Portsmouth feels about the local law enforcement. If mostly negative content is being received through the hashtags and public forums, it shows that there is still a disconnect between the two parties. On the other hand, if mostly positive content is received it shows that the community feels respected by local law enforcement and vice versa. The last benefit of using these tactics are that they give a clear timeline of the changing perception of law enforcement within the community. This is because it allows the police department to go back and see if the newer posts about local law enforcement are continually becoming more positive or becoming more negative than before.

Community Service and Involvement

The second part of this campaign, which is focused on improving the success of the Neighborhood Watch Programs in Olde Towne Portsmouth, encourages the officers to take part in community service projects in their spare time. Officers would be encouraged to either volunteer at neighborhood and city events, or just to participate in and attend the events. This allows the officers a space to establish non-threatening, non-authoritative, personal connection in the neighborhoods and communities. Being out of uniform also gives the officers a chance to make those personal connections with community members who may have otherwise avoided them.

The Portsmouth Police Department could incentivize officers with small prizes such as gift cards, free lunch, earned time-off or recognition for their sacrifice and time donated to the community. To solidify the suggested incentives, a representative of the Portsmouth Police Department would reach out to the Portsmouth Chief of Police, Tonya D. Chapman. The incentives offered to the officers would depend on the city budget, as well as legality and other factors. To get the officers involved in community events in Olde Towne Portsmouth a representative of the Portsmouth Police Department would contact Audrey Lassiter. Lassiter is the executive director on the board of the Olde Towne Business Association.

Lassiter should also be the contact for creating community events led by the Portsmouth Police Department, unless otherwise arrangements or contacts are stated. An example of events that the Portsmouth Police Department could lead are community service events. For example, some of the lower-income neighborhoods in the Olde Towne area are becoming worn by age and weather. The police department would work with Lassiter and Portsmouth Chief of Police Chapman to create an event where groups of officers, not in uniform, would go into those communities to clean, repair playground equipment, paint aging buildings, remove negative street art such as derogatory words and symbols, and to plant flowers and trees. By working to beautify the community, the officers are showing that they want to help the community and displaying a sense of pride in the communities they serve. If community members decide to work alongside the police officers, that would give the officers another chance to establish a personal, organic, trust-building relationship.

If the officers show that they have pride in the community, rather than just having authority in the community, it makes them appear more approachable. If there is a problem with crime controlling the community, involvement like what has been described, would give the community members a chance to talk to officers and build a relationship without feeling as though their lives will be put at risk for talking to a uniformed cop. Participating in, and leading, community service projects would break down barriers, making the Neighborhood Watch Programs more successful in neighborhoods that already have one, giving information to people who may not know about the program and allowing crime controlled neighborhoods to feel that they have a trusted police contact to reach out to in confidence if there is no interest in developing a program.

Another event that could be orchestrated by the Portsmouth Police Department is a meal delivery service program. Police officers would take food to shut-ins, the elderly and the disabled. Initially, the program would probably only take place around the holidays and grow from there. The end goal for this initiative would be to have the ability to deliver meals, daily, to those who need them and to create a buddy program where officers could volunteer to be paired with at least one shut-in, elderly person or disabled member of the community. The objective of the buddy program would be to ensure that these members of the community have the resources to create friendships, have conversations, laugh with someone, smile and feel loved. Giving them this companionship not only helps them, but it helps officers, especially those who may live outside of the city, to create a more interpersonal, positive connection to the community they serve. As the program grows the Portsmouth Police Department could choose to open the buddy program to public volunteers if the demand for volunteers requires it.

Fostering Meaningful Relationships

The final component of this plan to improve the Neighborhood Watch Program in the Olde Towne area of Portsmouth is where long-term improvement will stem from. Officers would need to continue being active members in the community once they are off-duty. The key is that the police department will have to use those relationships, and the positive restructure of trust between law enforcement and the community to continue serving the community to the best of their abilities. The police department needs to use the timeline of content created by social media and public forums to detect trends and monitor the public’s perception of local law enforcement. The police department needs to host events where community members can continue to grow their relationships with local law enforcement and maybe get to know some police officers in a more personal way. One way to do this is to assign a small group of police officers to certain neighborhoods. They will be in charge of helping with, and hosting community events in their assigned neighborhoods.

The long-term change in the relationship between members of the community and law enforcement will start in the schools. The Portsmouth Police Department would arrange a day in the Portsmouth Public schools to educate students, faculty and staff about the Portsmouth Police Department’s involvement in the community and the Neighborhood Watch Program. More students will become interested in the program, inform parents or guardians of the program and ask questions about the program. Hopefully, this will lead to more people wanting to be involved in or start Neighborhood Watch Programs in the area. It also raises awareness of the program among students of all ages. Students who grow up with a more positive image of local law enforcement and the Neighborhood Watch Program, they are more likely to want to be involved with them in their own communities both presently and in the future, as adults.

The goal behind most of the initiatives and tactics mentioned above are to improve the community’s relationship with the Portsmouth Police Department. A major reason Neighborhood Watch Programs fail is because the community is either controlled by crime or the community feels a distrust in local law enforcement. These steps help to foster personal, rather than strictly professional, relationships between the officers and the community. If these steps successfully improve the image of the Portsmouth Police Department and raise levels of trust between the officers and members of the community, I believe we can improve the success of the Neighborhood Watch Program, and increase the number of programs in the Olde Towne area of Portsmouth. Pending the success of this campaign, my next step would be to implement the plan across the entire city and then the entire state. It is my prediction that if the commonwealth of Virginia saw enough improvement in the success of, and the number of active Neighborhood Watch Programs that other states would begin the implement the same, or similar plans across the country and we would see the long-awaited, widespread success of the National Neighborhood Watch Program.

The campaign would take a long time before we saw significant results depending on how severe of a disconnect there is between the community and local law enforcement. My goal is to see results from this campaign, which roots itself in rebuilding trust between two major entities – law enforcement and the community, in six to eight years. After four years, I think we would start to see a major turnaround in the trend of distrust, but I do not think we will see significant, consistent results for another two to four years afterward.

Key Insights Incorporated

I have incorporated all three of my key insights into my plan to improve the success of the Neighborhood Watch Program in the Olde Towne area of Portsmouth, Va.

My key insight about fake news relates to the social media and public forum parts of the campaign that I have outlined. Fake news is the reason the content being used must be investigated before it is used. It is easy to contribute to the epidemic of fake news by skipping this step. Someone could provide the police department with negative feedback. Without addressing the feedback and investigating it further this information could damage the reputation of the Portsmouth Police Department. An investigation allows the police department to ensure it is sharing only true information and can publically address any negative feedback and false information when it is necessary. It also promotes an image of transparency that is vital to changing the relationship between the police and the community.

The second part of my plan, community service and involvement, is the key to building a positive relationship and the trust needed to achieve improving the success of the Neighborhood Watch Program. The community service and involvement have to be targeted toward the Olde Towne area of Portsmouth or the impact will not be as heavy as if the officers were being incentivized to do community service in any location. Localized marketing principles and Edelman's beliefs about the future are applied in this stage to ensure the impact is felt directly by the citizens of Portsmouth - where the officers work.

Finally, education is used to increase awareness of the Neighborhood Watch Program, raise interest in the program and increase knowledge about the program. The goal is to use in-person teaching tactics to educate the public about the program to achieve the set goals and increase participation in the long-term. By not incorporating luxury technologies and having law enforcement officials make appearances in the neighborhoods and local schools, they have the ability to interact with community members, build a relationship with them, answer questions and debunk myths about law enforcement and the Neighborhood Watch Program.