Managing your own community.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
They prowl their streets, scouting for telltale signs of crime.
That woman lingering at a bus stop could be a prostitute shopping for a john. And that unfamiliar van parked in a neighbor’s driveway? It could be full of burglars.
DeKalb County’s neighborhood watchdogs pass such information along to police. They also pick their grapevines for tips that sometimes yield arrests.
“We closed down a gambling house,” said Roy Goldenberg, a member of the county’s new “Volunteers in Patrol” program. He lives in the Beverly Hills neighborhood off Buford Highway and works closely with Ofc. Daryl Yarbro, the county beat cop for the area.
“Someone told me about it,” Goldenberg said of the gamblers’ haunt. “I told Yarbro . . . and they closed it down.”
Goldenberg is among 81 county residents who have signed up for the program, which started in December with a day and a half of training. Participants are taught to spot “suspicious” activity — the little details that might seem unworthy of a call to 911 but could warrant a call to the local beat cop. The volunteers are supposed to avoid confrontations. They have cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses for officers assigned to their neighborhoods and they contact them around the clock.
Yarbro said information he’s received from Goldenberg and other volunteers has proved invaluable. The former soldier has served 13 years on the DeKalb force, working everything from the vice squad to crime analysis. He said he enjoys this assignment the most because people smile at him when he drives down their streets.
“They’re happy and I wouldn’t do anything else,” Yarbro said, quickly adding, “unless I was told to.”
Yarbro is among 50 officers assigned to DeKalb’s Interactive Community Policing unit. The group is a throwback to an era when cops were assigned to neighborhoods and grew deep roots in them. The two-year-old experiment is a departure from the dominant method of crime-fighting in DeKalb, where most officers, alerted by 911 calls, zip from one hot spot to another and don’t have time to develop relationships.
The new volunteer program formalizes relationships established by ICP officers. Volunteers are encouraged to patrol by foot or car and are given magnetic car signs and reflective vests emblazoned with the name of the program.
Charlotte Booth, 73, patrols the Henderson Estates neighborhood near Spaghetti Junction with a longtime friend. She says it is a safe and stable place. But someone painted graffiti on a nearby overpass and she fears young gang members are trying to move in.
“We are not going to let gangs get a hold of our area and if it takes riding more than our allotted hours each month, then that’s what we’re going to do,” said Booth, who said she and her partner average more than the four to six hours a month that volunteers are supposed to log.
Booth said they have produced no information leading to arrests, but volunteer operations can be more intense in areas with more crime. One volunteer in the East Lake area talks of “covert” work and says information gathered on patrols has led to arrests. The person spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution from neighbors.
This person acts as an information conduit between longtime, mostly older, residents and police. The older residents, who don’t want to deal with the officers directly, pass along information about drug dealers or illegal boarding houses.
“Everybody would rather do it on the down-low if they’re going to narc on their neighbors,” the volunteer said. This person said the local beat cops have used the information to make arrests and to keep pressure on people they thought might be involved with drugs, making repeat visits over code violations and other minor offenses.
Sometimes the targets get nervous and leave, the volunteer said. “Our goal is to harass them more than they harass us.”
Max Dupree, a co-founder of the East Lake Terrace Neighborhood Association, confirmed the volunteer’s accounts and said complaints about crime have dropped since the program started.
“Several crack houses have been shut down and some of the burglars have been caught,” Dupree said. “We used to have a certain volume about break-ins coming through our list-serve and it’s pretty quiet now,” he said, referring to the neighborhood’s Internet forum. “People are giving gardening tips.”
For more information about the Volunteers In Patrol program, call 770-724-7550.
Volunteers must undergo a criminal background check and submit fingerprints. They must have proof of auto insurance and no moving violations in the last two years.
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