Neighbourhood Watch being organized in Rainy River

By Ken Johnston
Editor

With the recent rash of break-ins in Rainy River, town council has decided to try and do something to make Rainy River a safer place for its citizens.
Councillors Marilyn McAlister and Gerry Marchuk met with Ontario Provincial Police Officer Doug Irish to see what can be done to bolster safety in the community. Irish suggested that they attempt to set up a Neighbourhood Watch Program (NWP).
“This is a way to get everyone involved in crime prevention since we can’t be everywhere all the time,” said Irish.
The NWP is just that, neighbours watching their neighbourhood. It is aimed at reducing crime in the community by getting neighbours to keep an eye on each other’s interests. “Neighbours...can combat crime...before it stops,” says literature from Aviva Canada Inc.; one of the country’s largest property/casualty insurers.
Through active participation of citizens in crime prevention, NWP, provides a means of reducing the opportunity for crime to occur. Citizens are taught how to make their homes and businesses a less inviting target for thieves; how to participate in Operation Identification, making their personal property less desirable for burglars and how to alert suspicious activity in their neighbourhoods.
Irish and McAlister have set Oct. 18th as the date to hold the first informational meeting about the program. Anyone interested in making their neighbourhood safer is invited to attend. It will be at RRHS in the new meeting room on the west end of the school at 7 p.m.
Once established the NWP will use resource information from the O.P.P. to educate the neighbourhood on how to better prevent crime and protect their assets from it.
In larger centers there is usually a block captain system where neighbours call that person with anything suspicious they see. Irish said that being a smaller community they may assign the captains more than one block.
Irish said that being a small town many people already know when something that shouldn’t be is happening. “The biggest problem we have is people not calling the police, for whatever reasons.” This program will allow the neighbourhood to work together to keep things like vandalism or theft from occurring. Through the block captains there will be greater communication with the police about concerns in the community.
The police will also help NWP members to learn how to identify suspicious activities, offer tips on how to be safe, help implement Operation Identification (marking I.D. on your property), and offer tips on home security.
Irish said this will be the first NWP in the district and he is hopeful that it will be widely accepted and help prevent any future rashes of crime from happening again.