A Bigger Role for Neighborhood Watch

* Josh Meyer’s excellent piece on the response of Neighborhood Watch groups to the Northridge earthquake underlined a key tool that has been ignored in the talk of rising crime and violence.

Several years ago he wrote about the Ivar Hawks Neighborhood Watch in Hollywood, which made more than a dozen citizen’s arrests of drug dealers in the process of turning our troubled central Hollywood community around.

In its Jan. 17 cover story, in fact, U. S. News and World Report cited the Ivar Hawks and another program as “the best hope for progress against violence” at the local level.

During the earthquake, the Hawks and other members of our Ivar Hill Community Response Team, trained by the Los Angeles Fire Department disaster preparedness division in a seven-week course two years ago, performed precisely as hoped, just as the valiant Northridge groups did.

West Valley Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Val Paniccia suggested that a special shed be provided to each group with the necessities of earthquake relief, and that’s a terrific suggestion.

But where is Neighborhood Watch in the annals of Mayor Riordan’s Project Safety? Why not panelists or presenters on Neighborhood Watch at the governor’s crime summit?

The answer may be that many people still believe Neighborhood Watch is a little old lady peeking out through her curtains. It is that and much, much more.

It deserves a very significant role in the fight against crime and disaster, and Josh Meyer’s fine article may well help it find one.

JOE SHEA

Hollywood

Shea is president of the Ivar Hill Community Assn. and the Ivar Hawks Neighborhood Watch.