At the meeting held on Monday September 15th, GANA members heard from United neighbors expert Bruce Scherler how easy it is to form a informal group or association to warn others of eminent crime and to disseminate crime activity of recent history. The association doesn’t need any paper work, no application procedures, no by-laws. The G.A.N.A. serves the purpose of the formal organization. What small groups do need is some basic organization so that residents in a small area can be quickly contacted about a criminal threat. That is most likely done through a phone tree. E-mails are not immediate enough for such contact. To organize the phone tree your area needs a captain that initiates the phone tree and organizes it. To facilitate a phone tree a copy is attached to this blog for you to photo-copy.
Of course the first call if you see something suspicious, is to call 911. Once a threat is deciminated by the phone tree, the block captain should contact the president of G.A.N.A. for wider decimation.
For information that doesn’t need immediate decimation, contact could be made by e-mail. So to be effective, a block captain should have both phone numbers and e-mails for everyone in the area that wants to be a part of the Neighborhood Watch. Signs can be erected in your area if you want. That will require some paperwork. contact Bruce Scherler at 322-7363 for more information about posting signs or any other question you might have about the Watch program.
