Quoted Text

Rotterdam residents form neighborhood watch
Friday, November 21, 2014
By Ned Campbell (Contact)
Gazette Reporter  

Rotterdam Watch Community Meeting

When: 6 p.m. Sunday

Where: Rollerama, 2710 Hamburg St.

Who: Town residents ages 18 and older

ROTTERDAM — Lock it. Alarm it. Light it up.

That’s the mantra of Rotterdam Watch, which started as a Facebook group and has grown into a small movement over the past three months.

Steve Parks, the group’s founder and most frequent patroller, said crime has gotten worse the past few years in Rotterdam and group members hope keeping a closer watch on the streets — along with locking doors, using alarms and turning on lights — will help to curb it.

Parks said listening to the police scanner has taught him many people committing the crimes — mostly burglaries and car break-ins — are coming from Schenectady.

“We’re not going to stand for it,” said Parks, 47. “We’re going to do something about it.”

Parks said he started the Facebook group — which has more than 400 members — in late August after seeing many comments about car break-ins and general mischief on another Facebook page called “You’re probably from Rotterdam if you remember ...”

Parks, a former security guard with a criminal justice degree, patrolled his neighborhood with his dog, Dakota, for about a month and has since been joined by a handful of people on weeknights and a group of 10 on weekends. Parks said he is on the streets six or seven days a week — even though back injuries he sustained while working on a utility pole for Time Warner Cable in 2004 prevent him from sitting or standing for extended periods of time. Parks is still on disability as a result of the injuries.

“When I go out on a patrol, it’s not long before I have to stop and get out and move around,” he said.

Parks said he hopes to gain more members and patrollers after Sunday, when the group hosts its first meeting at 6 p.m. at Rollerama on Hamburg Street. Fred Lee, president of Schenectady Neighborhood Watch, Rotterdam police Lt. Jason Murphy and Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam, will be on hand.

“We observe, and we report,” Parks said of the group’s role. “We don’t confront.”

Current patrollers and prospective members will also submit applications Sunday to officially join the group. They will also be fingerprinted and will go through background checks, Parks said.

“It’s not like we’re going to let in anybody,” he said.

In forming the group, Parks said he initially sought help from Rotterdam police, but was told the department didn’t have the staffing or budget to help. He said that after he spoke at a Town Board meeting this fall, however, Deputy Chief Bill Manikas told him the department would do everything it could to assist the group, and the police department is now serving as an adviser.

Parks said he also found a lot of the resources he needed online through the National Neighborhood Watch Institute. He hopes to eventually purchase signs to post around the community, at a cost of $40 each.

“[The police department] had no resources because they hadn’t had a program like that since the late ’70s,” he said.

Murphy said there’s always a need for neighborhood awareness, and Rotterdam Watch, by communicating about what’s going on in the community, is enhancing that.

“Nobody knows better what’s going on in the neighborhood than the actual residents of the neighborhood,” he said.

Lee, who has been advising Parks, said he’s committed to helping Rotterdam Watch get organized.

“The folks in Rotterdam have been having some similar issues that we’ve also had on the Northside of Schenectady,” he said, citing burglaries and petit larcenies. “I hope to provide them with a formal structure to get off and running and let them run their own unit as they see fit.”

basic steps

Lee said one way neighborhood watch groups can help prevent crime is by encouraging members and the public to take basic steps to avoid being a victim. Watch groups also form a community network that can mobilize when natural disasters strike, such as the massive lake effect snowstorm hitting Buffalo this week, Lee said. Members can also help spread the word and search when a child, adult or elderly person goes missing — often faster than police, he said.

“We don’t wait for an Amber Alert or an explanation,” he said.

Parks said he looks forward to working alongside Schenectady Neighborhood Watch in such situations in order to expand both organizations’ reach.

Parks said group members haven’t had to report any criminal activity to police yet, but they twice observed suspicious vehicles.

“We kept an eye on them for a little bit,” he said. “They saw they were being watched and left.”

Parks said his group is patrolling most of the town, but members are currently focused on the Coldbrook neighborhood, which has been hit with a recent spate of car burglaries. On Thursday, Rotterdam police charged Mia Richardson, 26, of Schenectady, with felony fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property after a resident reported seeing a man and woman checking cars in Coldbrook for unlocked doors around 5:30 a.m.

Several vehicles had loose change and power tools stolen, and a white 2009 Ford Fusion was also stolen and hasn’t been recovered, Rotterdam police said. The man escaped on foot. Police are unsure if the burglaries were related to the theft of items from several unlocked vehicles Wednesday morning

The Coldbrook arrest wasn’t reported by a group member, but the resident who did report the suspicious vehicle will be at Sunday’s meeting, Parks said.

He said he expects at least 50 people to show up Sunday, and from that group, he hopes to add another five to 10 people to watch the streets at night.

How many people would he like to join the group?

“Ideally? The whole town,” he said. “You want as many eyes [as possible], whether it’s sitting in the house or out driving around. People that walk their dogs at 6, 7 o’clock at night, they can easily say they’re a watcher, because they know the neighborhood they’re walking in.”

Quoted from Patches

crime is rampant all over this area......and watches should be in place for the drug dealers....who use the parking lots of

McDonald's ....Burger King......Walmart......Rotterdam Sq Mall.....and practically on every corner of this Town.....or CVS ...Rite Aids....

the drug trade has to begin to go down.....vigilance....and report it....take license #.....it's important.....just as it is to stop burglaries, shop lifting...