NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH GROUPS in the St. Catherine South Police Division are dying because residents don't want to be called 'informers' or don't care about their community, residents and police claim.
More than 80 per cent of the Neighbourhood Watch groups in the St. Catherine South region are inactive.
PORTMORE STAR checks show at least 36 of the 47 neighbourhood watches in the division are out of commission. Of the 36 inactive watches, 30 were in Portmore.
ISLANDWIDE DROP
An islandwide drop in the activity of neighbourhood watch groups sparked the investigation into the St. Catherine South division by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Marlene Wilson-Christie.
Some of the communities where Neighbourhood Watch groups are inactive or non-existent are: Waterford, Gregory Park, Hellshire, Portmore Gardens, Westchester, West Bay and parts of Greater Portmore.
Only Newlands, Braeton Phase One, Monza, Daytona, Bridgeport and 6 West Greater Portmore have active Neighbourhood Watch groups.
Valrene Bennett, president of the Daytona Citizens' Association said the reason the neighbourhood watch in her scheme died was because residents feared being labelled as 'informers'. "Most people came off because they were branded as informers but we plan to make it very active again," she said.
KEY CAUSE
While fear ranked high as a reason for the decline in neighbourhood watch activity, the police think tenancy was a key cause. "A reason the neighbourhood watches are not so active is because people living [in] the houses on rent and lease don't come out. Because they sometimes move from scheme to scheme there is no sentimental value so whenever you have a neighbourhood watch meeting, only a set number of people will come out," said Constable V. Wright of the St. Catherine South community relations department.
He added that sometimes the community association was not organised.
Although most are dormant, there are plans to revive and establish new Neighbourhood Watch groups. Constable Wright said in order to revive the groups in Portmore, an interim council has been set up. The council has had three meetings so far.
"The council is looking at new strategies to tackle crime. ... We are using this as a preventative measure rather than trying to act when there is a problem.
He adds though that the problem of tenants not being concerned about the communities is a major challenge.
"We're trying to get them to realise that they can be hurt and robbed as well so they should show some concern as well," he said.
Neighbourhood Watch groups were first launched in 1987 as a public initiative and was supposed to be a major crime prevention tool. In the early days, the programme was a reactive one where residents would respond to the calls for help upon hearing a whistle or a pot cover. Since then, the movement has developed into one which also deals with community development.
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