Watchful Citizens

It is midnight and I just returned home from a Citizens Undercover Narcotics Surveillance detail. We are private citizens working together with the Police Department to take back our streets, community-based policing in its purest form.

Friday night we saw firsthand 30 drug deals go down within a three-hour period. The buyers drove beautiful new cars, old cars, trucks, all makes and models. The buyers were men and women and children, people that looked just like you and me.

I saw a beautiful blond girl, about 19, driving a brand new red LeBaron convertible, pull up and allow five strange men to open her car doors to sell her drugs. She could have been raped, murdered, robbed. She could have been my daughter or your daughter. She put herself in a very dangerous position for the sole purpose of getting high. This happened in the Devonshire Division.

Through the program, I have found firsthand that the laws protect the criminal. The suspects’ cars could not be searched without the suspects’ permission. Our officers are working to protect us with one hand tied behind their backs and very little protection under the law. The laws protect the criminals destroying our city.

Community-based policing and the volunteer surveillance program will expose these inadequacies in our system. The people will get behind the officers and see to it that laws are implemented to bring justice to those who are buying and selling drugs and committing crimes leading to the deterioration of our city.

We all observed the atrocities during the Los Angeles riots and we refuse to let history repeat itself in the San Fernando Valley. The Volunteer Surveillance Program will put our city back in the hands of the law-abiding citizens, where it belongs.

BECKY LOHNES LEVEQUE, Northridge