Special meeting on Crime in Crystal Pointe

August 23rd, 2007

7:00 pm

32 homeowners in attendance.

John Francis reported that the Executive Board decided to have a special meeting to discuss the alternatives. After a flurry of email on the CPTalk list, several folks made suggestions and the Board felt it was a good idea to get together and discuss them.

Mike and Brent from Neighborhood Patrol were guest speakers, and they gave a presentation about the services Neighborhood Patrol offers..

Neighborhood Patrol employs off-duty police officers with full arresting powers. Officers' cars have lights on them, and the officers do have the ability to arrest. Crystal Pointe is not alone. Many neighborhoods have been have victimized by crime.

Neighborhood Patrol provides multiple drive-throughs per day. The officers are trained in surveillance. Neighborhood Patrol provides search and attention to houses where homeowners are on vacation. Often, the presence of the officers of Neighborhood Patrol alone lends itself to the prevention of crime.

Because off-duty police officers are employees of the IMPD, they will be proactive in addressing situations like open garage doors and suspicious activity. The other benefit is that they can target speeding and traffic violations.

When an officer responds to a security system alarm, they can exempt alarms if they respond and customers won't be charged with a false alarm from their security company.

Brent pointed out the fact that There are several problem areas, such as cul de sacs. Crystal Pointe has a lot of cul de sacs for a neighborhood of this size. Crystal Pointe also has 5 entrances, which provides criminals with an easy route of escape.

Speeding. Every neighborhood has problems with speeding. Neighborhood Patrol can call local police to come and write tickets. They also have a laser-enabled speed sign that can display speeds, and can calculate speeds over a given period of time. Generally, however, Mike pointed out that speeds are perceived as higher than they actually are.

Questions:

What kind of costs are there?

There is a cost for the services, obviously. Neighborhood Patrol's "Full Service" package $265 per home per year. (equals $69,960.00 per year essentially dues would increase from $200 per year to $465 per year.) The Full Service package includes vacation checks and alarm monitoring, etc. Includes 8 drive throughs in a 24 hour period. No additional fees for responding to alarms.

How many cars on the street at a time?

Neighborhood Patrol owns 7 cars. 3 cars are operated full time 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. During high traffic times, there will be 6 cars on the road. Cars have in-car computers and a GPS sensor that generates a map of where the driver has been. Can generate reports for the neighborhood.

How many other neighborhoods near ours? Cambridge. GHPOA which includes Geist Harbors, All of the "Admirals" (Admirals Bay, Admirals Landing, etc). Diamond Pointe, Bridgewater. 80-100K miles per year per car in a relatively small area. Neighborhood Patrol also works with local police forces and has a good working relationship. Each report filed by a Neighborhood Patrol officer is an actual police report filed through the local police forces.

Do you alter the route and times of drive throughs?

Yes. Neighborhood Patrol officers do not take the same path every time. It's broken up. Officers will often drive through 2-3 streets of one neighborhood, then go to another neighborhood, and come back and drive through other streets.

When a Neighborhood Patrol officer responds to an incident, he will leave a Notice Card. A notice card contains various information about the incident. It could be as simple as something like a garage door open, or it could be something much more serious. Neighborhood Patrol Also has phone stickers, which list all the phone numbers so neighbors can call.

Brent pointed out that WE (neighbors) are the best crime watch, but the problem is we often do not respond. If we see suspicious activity, we can call Neighborhood Patrol, and they will address it. Brent said "Bother us. You're paying for it." He said their typical response time is 3-5 minutes.

How many employees?

40 employees. Each employee work 8 hour shifts. Rarely, they have worked another shift, but mostly they work their days off.

End of presentation.

John then asked Bruce Smith, a Crystal Pointe resident, IMPD officer, and former Executive Board to offer another option:

Many officers from IMPD have their own side business of security companies. The Executive Board looked into the issue of a patrol a year or so ago, and asked Bruce to get some estimates from some officers he knows in IMPD. Generally, the hours would be less than Neighborhood Patrol, i.e. not 24/7, and officers would be paid hourly. Also, there would be no contract. It could end at any time. Traffic stops would be something they would probably do. Cost would be around $22.00 an hour. Perhaps a little more, maybe as high as $25.00 or $27.00 an hour.

Floor was opened for Comments:

(in no particular order, and I didn't get names of the commenters)

We need to clean our own closets. We're looking to have someone do "our jobs" for us. We need to be more proactive. People want to offer opinions but we haven't seen much action.

We (Crystal Pointe residents) are the ones speeding. If there is a problem with speeding, then we need to just slow down and be more aware. Probably 95% of the cars driving through Crystal Pointe are Crystal Pointe residents. We are our own problem. We can fix that.

There are 264 homes in our neighborhood, but not nearly 264 homes are represented in this meeting. The folks in this meeting probably aren't the ones who are the ones who are in violation.

Yes $265.00 per home is a lot of money, but the neighborhood needs to decide what does the neighborhood want? Alarm responses may be worth it alone, because IMPD will charge $25.00 for a false alarm.

Jason Jordan, a Crystal Pointe resident and IMPD officer presented the following statistics:

In the past 30 days, there have been 15 runs to Crystal Pointe for reported incidents. Six involved property crimes. Four were investigations, one of those for illegal burning. One was a security alarm response. One was a response to a complaint. The rest were for various miscellaneous things.

Jason obtained this information from the IndyStar web site as listed below.

Several suggestions were made as possible preventative measures or resolutions:

1. Report any incidents!

2. IndyStar.com has a section called Indy 911 where you can get a report of incidents of live runs made by police officers. You can search for neighborhood, sort by date, etc.

3. Many of the crimes are crimes of opportunity, i.e. garage doors left up, car doors unlocked, etc. Eliminating the opportunity will eliminate (most of) the crime.

4. Mini crime watch areas. Neighbors on cul de sacs getting to know each other and exchange phone numbers. Let each other know when garage doors are up after a certain time, say after 9:00 pm.

5. Form a true Crime Watch committee.

6. Jennifer North owns a business offering security systems. Jennifer said that she didn't want to push her business on homeowners, but that she would make anyone a great deal on security systems and monitoring services. This information is posted in the August Newsletter.

Several folks volunteered and signed up for a Crime Watch Committee. Formal meetings should begin soon.

I wanted to express a huge thank you to Bruce, Jason, Jennifer, and the Executive Board for putting all this information together. I also wanted to express thanks to all of the homeowners who took time out of their busy schedule to show up for the meeting. Several other homeowners expressed to me personally their desire to attend, but due to previous commitments were not able to attend. Clearly this is an issue the neighborhood cares about. If you were not able to attend, but you would like to be involved in the Crime Watch committee, please contact me at tim@crystalpointe.org, and I'll make sure your name is passed along to the head of the committee.

Thanks.

Tim Biddle

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