The next Riverton Community Watch meeting is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, in the Council Chambers at Riverton City Hall, 816 N. Federal Blvd.
The presentation will focus on the “crime triangle,” organizer Carol Harper told the Riverton City Council this week, encouraging local residents to attend.
“We don’t want to lose momentum on this,” Harper said, noting that the community watch group has been “slow-growing” since it formed this summer.
Some people have been resistant to the idea, Harper said, because they think “we don’t need a community watch,” or they say, “My neighborhood is just fine.”
“A huge percentage of us read the crime reports,” Harper said. “We just think it’s not going to happen to (us) – until it happens.”
The upcoming Community Watch meeting will offer information residents can use to “not give perpetrators and criminals the opportunity to even commit the crime in the first place,” she said.
Attendees will also learn how to start a community watch group in their own neighborhoods – an undertaking that is relatively “simple,” Harper said.
“We’re not asking to make this huge, complicated network,” she said. “Our hope is that we can at least have our neighborhoods be aware and care … even if it was just one person in the neighborhood, (or) just going next door and meeting your neighbor.”
Organizer Greg Tallabas agreed that the key to the community watch strategy is “everybody coming out” and participating in the effort.
“We need our community to step up,” he said. “We can put (up) all the signs, cameras, lights – we can hire security officers … but if we don’t come out and speak up and be part of it, all this is a waste of time.”