Stalker Case Sparks Renewed Interest in Crime-Watch Effort

The near-fatal attack on a sleeping couple in Mission Viejo on Aug. 25--an assault attributed to the Night Stalker--has had a galvanizing effect on the Neighborhood Watch movement in Orange County, according to volunteers and police officials involved in the grass-roots effort.

“Absolutely,” Fullerton Police Sgt. Bud Lathrop said. “There’s been a resurgence of interest. We’ve had a lot of inquiries from previously disassociated people--a large number of calls to organize a block as part of the Neighborhood Watch.”

The Irvine Police Department’s supervisor of preventive services, Mike Weiss, reported a 700% to 800% jump in calls from “people not previously involved in Neighborhood Watch, as a result of the Night Stalker.”

“We’re doing two or three programs a night” with groups interested in forming watch groups, Weiss said, adding that his office normally holds one meeting per night.

“It’s typical to have a well-publicized crime result in interest,” said Edwina Berenbrock, membership chairman of the Fullerton Neighborhood Watch Assn. “But those folks don’t always stick it out and form new groups.”

“I’m booked with meetings every Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday night through the middle of October,” said Suzie Wajda, of the community services section of the Huntington Beach Police Department. “That’s much busier than normal.”

As elsewhere in Orange County, Wajda reported that interest in Neighborhood Watch had been growing even before the Mission Viejo attack. “But the Night Stalker made this more of a reality,” Wajda said. “The week before they caught him, that’s all we heard about. In one day I talked to 100 people, and each of them mentioned it.”

(Authorities believe the Aug. 25 shooting of William Carns in his Mission Viejo home and the rape of his girlfriend to be the work of the serial killer. Carns, who survived, is hospitalized and reported to be improving.)

Lathrop and Berenbrock estimated that Fullerton’s independently incorporated Neighborhood Watch Assn., which is operated in cooperation with the Police Department, includes 10,000 member families on 177 blocks. Huntington Beach has an equal number of members, Wajda said.

Weiss estimated that 6,000 of Irvine’s 20,000 households are affiliated with some sort of watch group. Santa Ana, which will soon mark the 10th anniversary of its Neighborhood Watch program, has 900 block captains and 9,000 residences on its rolls, according to Sgt. Bob Ensley of the Police Department’s Community Services Division.

In La Palma, about 600 households are organized in 44 districts, with no more than 10 blocks per district, said Police Sgt. Russ Daedelow.

Daedelow said the La Palma group hopes to go the same route as Fullerton and Santa Ana, organizing into a nonprofit corporation, while Weiss said Irvine prefers “a police-based program.”

There are some basic similarities in the programs. Most police departments do not recruit or organize block associations, preferring to wait for a spontaneous expression of interest before sending officers or civilian specialists to meet with residents. The threshold level for success, volunteers and police agree, is about 80% participation.

‘Small Is Best’

“Small is best,” said Officer Tom Little of the Newport Beach Police Department. “We try to use line-of-sight as a guideline.” He said the ideal Neighborhood Watch unit is two sides of a street or a complete cul-de-sac where neighbors have a clear view of what is happening on their street.

A majority of the police departments surveyed in Orange County send officers or civilian crime prevention specialists to the first or second meeting of each Neighborhood Watch group to make a formal presentation. This often includes now-familiar suggestions about dead-bolt locks on doors, locks on windows, interior and exterior lighting and cutting down shrubs in front of windows. Window and garage decals are distributed.

Some departments provide printed invitations to prospective block captains. Others show a film and, at subsequent gatherings, demonstrate the importance of marking possessions with identification numbers and keeping a complete inventory, as well as home fire safety.

Monthly Bulletin

Members of watch groups in Irvine, Santa Ana and La Palma receive a regular monthly bulletin or newsletter, listing crimes committed in the area and tips on home security.

There are variations and exceptions to the growth patterns of watch programs and the manner in which the police interact with them.

In Stanton, Investigator Janet Strong, who has just taken over as the liaison with Neighborhood Watch groups, said that interest in the program seems to have faded over the past five or six years and that the Night Stalker scare provoked only two phone calls. “I’m basically going to be starting from scratch to get it going again,” she said.

Newport Beach police keep a “continual record of those groups holding meetings,” Little said. “If we see their interest is waning, we reserve the right to remove the (Neighborhood Watch street) sign.”

La Palma police took the lead in reorganizing their watch program last February by putting an ad in a local paper and sponsoring an introductory meeting. Santa Ana, which works with undocumented workers and recent immigrants from Southeast Asia, also actively recruits potential block captains.

Weiss emphasized the two-way nature of the relationship between police and watch groups. “We want to get an information flow from the community to us as well as from us to the community,” he said.

Times staff writers John Needham and Mark Landsbaum contributed to this story.