National Night Out Recap

By Jim Cogan

Last Tuesday, thousands of San Jose residents joined together with San Jose police officers to celebrate National Night Out. All over the city, officers who walk the beat on the midnight shift came to work early to get the opportunity to meet the neighbors that they serve.

In my neighborhood, over 80 residents came together for the first time in recent memory. It was a wonderful gathering of neighbors and police officers. Two sergeants and six officers attended our event. Amid the ice cream and good conversation I heard a phrase that summarized the entire event: “Now that I know about it, I’ll be on the look out…”

This statement was made by the officer who works the midnight shift on our neighborhood beat. His promise to be on the lookout for whatever was bothering my neighbor is exactly what National Night Out is all about, the community and police working together to protect San Jose. Perhaps they were discussing the recent car burglaries in the neighborhood or a strange car that doesn’t belong to anyone in the neighborhood. Whatever the case, the officer now has some invaluable information and my neighbor knows that that the police are ready to help.

I spoke to the officer, who appreciated the opportunity to meet the residents on his beat. He told me that he never gets to talk to residents, because most of us are asleep when he punches in for his shift. I was impressed with all of the officers who attended our event and speaking for my neighbors, I think we all will sleep a little better. The officers were all very courteous and excited to have the opportunity to meet residents. It really made my neighbors happy as well. Many of them thanked me for organizing the event and talked about how to make it better next year.

In our neighborhood, National Night Out sparked interest in getting organized. In fact, sixty of my neighbors signed up to organize a neighborhood watch and start a neighborhood association. I am confident that together we will strengthen our partnership with the San Jose Police Department and make our neighborhood safer.

Jim Cogan is President of Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers.

National Night Out 2009

By Jim Cogan

The best weapon we have against crime in our City is each other. Community policing relies on community involvement. Whether it’s participating in Neighborhood Watch, joining a neighborhood association or simply picking up the paper when your neighbor is on vacation, San Jose’s neighborhoods offer many models of community involvement that make a difference in keeping us safe.

Normally, I encourage you to support my favorite community policing program, Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers, but I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to participate in another valuable community policing event, National Night Out.

National Night Out is a crime and drug prevention event sponsored nationally by the National Association of Town Watch and co-sponsored locally by the San Jose Police Department. This year marks the 26th annual event, and over 34 million people across the country are expected to participate.

Tuesday evening, August 4, 2009, residents across the country will be taking back their streets. In my neighborhood, we are organizing an ice cream social in a park. A few of us have committed to distribute flyers inviting our neighbors to get together and meet each other. Other neighborhoods have barbeques or extravagant resource fairs, but we have chosen to keep it simple to ensure everyone the opportunity to talk and get to know each other.

Though ours will be a humble outing, we still expect our beat officers and perhaps some of the command staff to attend. We are an official National Night Out celebration and the police department makes every National Night Out event a priority. In fact, I first met San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis at a National Night Out event many years ago.

In order to ensure that the police knew about our event, I called the SJPD Community Services office at (408) 277-4133. They provided me with a lot of helpful information for making our flyers and put me on the list for police visits. They also referred me to this page on the SJPD website for more information.

I am really looking forward to the opportunity to meet my neighbors and talk about how we can improve our community. Please join me in making San Jose a little safer by getting involved and organizing your own National Night Out event on Tuesday evening August 4th.

Jim Cogan is President of Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers.