HUNTINGTON BEACH : Project Aims to Keep City ‘Safest in America’

Volunteers will fan out here Saturday to distribute safety tips to more than 50,000 homes, and 100 other homes will receive free high-security locks as part of a national program on safety awareness.

The event, which aims to educate 90% of the city’s residents about how to prevent residential burglaries, makes Huntington Beach the third city in the nation to participate in the program, headed by the Newport Beach-based A Safer America.

Huntington Beach was dubbed the “safest city in America” by a Kansas-based publisher in January, a slogan the city proudly embraces and is eager to maintain.

“The purpose of this is ‘how are we going to keep Huntington Beach the safest city?’ ” said Suzie Wajda, a Huntington Beach Police Department education specialist who read about the program in a crime prevention newsletter and applied.

“Well, now we’re going to go door to door with this campaign,” she said. “There are people who walk into the police department for crime tips, and people who participate in Neighborhood Watch, but how are you going to reach the people who don’t do either of these things?”

Wajda said 150 volunteers will meet at City Hall at 10 a.m. Saturday and then flood the city, distributing door hangers with burglary prevention tips.

A Safer America launched its first program in June, 1994, in Spokane, Wash. While 17 communities have received crime prevention literature, only two--Spokane, and Charlotte, N.C.--have received the donated lock sets that Huntington Beach will get Saturday.

The lock sets, including deadbolts and window and sliding glass door locks, are donated by Irvine-based Kwikset Corp., said Janie Roach, assistant director of A Safer America.

Roach said Fullerton and Orange have also expressed interest in the program.

“We feel that our primary job is to bring together private-sector funds to help the police departments offer these programs to the community,” Roach said.

Ken’s Locksmithery, of Huntington Beach, will help some residents who have been awarded lock sets install them, Wajda said. Twenty-five of the lock sets will be installed in the city’s low-income Oakview community, she said. An additional 50 will be given to elderly and needy residents throughout the city, and police will raffle 25 more sets to volunteers at the Saturday kickoff.

In Huntington Beach, 50% of burglars enter homes through unlocked doors and windows, city police said.