Block Watches Wither

Worried about recent car break-ins on her block, Chris Mullaly brought a question to her neighborhood community management team meeting: How do we start a block watch? The answer turned out not to be so simple.

Mullally asked that question at the last week’s regular meeting and annual pot luck dinner of the East Shore Management Team, which drew 15 neighbors to the Engine 16 firehouse in Morris Cove.

During a wide-ranging discussion of issues — including flying flags on Townsend Avenue to promote a Morris Cove identity — Mullally put it bluntly to Lt. Jason Rentkowitz, the neighborhood’s district manager.

“Neighbors want to start a block watch. Can we get a sign?”

Mullally explained that she is recently retired and there are other retired people on her block as well as many working people. She asked who should patrol the neighborhood at what points of the day. ​“Are there guidelines to follow?”

“I’m all about you guys staring a block watch,” Rentkowitz replied, but he he had no immediate information or response except to endorse the initiative and to be encouraging.

Mullally provided some more blow-by-blow of what was happening on her block in Morris Cove to underscore a quiet, yet palpable sense of urgency.

She described an incident recently when a neighbor took off for a quick trip to the grocery store, leaving her 12-year-old son at home. ​“Someone tried getting in through the side door. Fortunately they have a large dog.”

“Dogs are good,” Rentkowitz replied.

“Someone was jiggling the handle,” Mullally said the neighbor had told her. Discussion ensued on the block about illegal entrances into homes in nearby East Haven.

Result: The neighbor — the one with the 12-year-old son — got an expensive alarm system.

“Telling me is good. Telling each other is better,” Rentkowitz said.

“A few different areas [in Morris Cove] are interested in block watches,” said the management team chair Lisa Milone.

“I’ll get you the specific details. I’ll get you all the info,” Rentkowitz promised.

After the formal meeting, over the pot luck goodies, neighbors and Rentkowitz talked further about block watches — mainly how they were once numerous and now few and far between, at least in Morris Cove.

Former management team chair Tina Doyle said in the 1970s and 1980s Morris Cove had 20 to 25 block watches. ​“People do it informally,” she said.

Milone said she was 99 percent certain there is only one currently active block watch left in Morris Cove, on Myron Street. ​“Many times we start to get the ball going, and it’s hard [to sustain interest]. Now with Lt. Rentkowitz we can get it going,” Milone added.

Citywide, officials at times have sought to revive block watches. Two former police chiefs, James Lewis and Dean Esserman, announced efforts. (Read here about Esserman’s 2013 effort, which included a vow to create a map of all existing block watches in the city, and help neighborhood crime-spotters to share tips with each other.) Several candidates, including Toni Harp and Matthew Nemerson, called in the 2013 mayoral campaign for strengthening block watches. Unlike neighborhood-wide management teams, block watches are more localized efforts by neighbors to watch each other’s homes and share info.

Rentkowitz had spoken in his report about the various means of communication between neighbors and the police, including posting information on SeeClickFix app. Yet the discussion of block watch formation made him put that in perspective.

“A lot of people think apps and the Internet take the place of meeting in person,” he said, not numbering himself in that camp. ​“Having face-to-face encounters through a block watch is more beneficial to getting information,” and not antiquated at all, he averred.

And yet Rentkowtiz’s task to get info about the watches is not going to be simple.

When queried about how neighbors might get police guidance in starting block watches, police spokesperson David Hartman told the Independent: ​“I’ve nothing to do with block watch groups and there is no database for tracking their activity. They are citizens groups formed independently from the PD. Often, we are, however, invited to attend some of the city’s block watch meetings.”

The district manager would have a better grasp on the number of watches, Hartman added.

In 2012, when West River residents on isolated Porter Street wanted to form a block watch, Hartman himself the meeting, functioning as the department’s chief liaison and cheerleader for block watches. He distributedblock watch captain manuals, stickers with emergency numbers to affix to phones and windows, practical advice and safety tips, and a specialized pen for prospective new block-watchers to engrave their phone numbers on bikes, laptops, and other often-stolen items.

At several recent meetings of the police commission, that group’s chair, Anthony Dawson, along with other commissioners, have also urged Chief Campbell for the department to become more proactive with the city’s block watches.