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.

Working Together for Safety

By Ed Rast

Do you know what constitutes “Community Policing“ and how it reduces crime in San Jose?

The basic principal is to bring our many diverse neighborhoods, residents, and businesses together with their local beat officers to achieve a common goal. Community policing takes the view that police and citizens are co-producers of public safety services, jointly responsible for reducing crime and improving the quality of life in their neighborhoods. To get a better idea, have a look at this.

San Jose is known nationwide for our highly effective community policing programs like: Neighborhood Watch; Personal, Workplace, and Senior Safety; our many Crime Prevention programs; and National Night Out. You can visit the SJPD website to find out more.

Community attitudes toward police and fire officers can significantly affect the quality of public safety, especially in dense downtown, high-crime, and gang-heavy neighborhoods.

Our understaffed police depend heavily on neighbors to report criminal activity and help identify suspicious behavior. Cooperation like this is what gives San Jose a lower crime rate than almost every other large city in America.

Getting to know your local police officers face to face helps you understand their concerns and workload and helps them to understand the diverse people, issues, and concerns of the neighborhood they’re protecting. Misunderstandings occur when people do not reach out or communicate frequently.

Here are some examples of what you, your family, and your neighbors can do to help improve public safety in San Jose while growing the quality of life in your neighborhood:

• • Let your neighborhood police officers know you appreciate their hard work keeping your neighborhood safe.

• • Participate in community policing, including Neighborhood Watch and crime prevention programs.

• • Attend your neighborhood association meeting, where time is often scheduled for residents and neighborhood police to discuss local crime issues and what can be done.

• • Attend National Night Activities on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 (in most neighborhoods) Visit the SJPD website for more information.