Recently several homeowners expresssed concern over crimes that have occurred in our community. I scheduled and held a meeting with Heather Clark, who is one of two crime prevention specialists in the local Encintas branch of the San Diego Sheriff's Department on August 18th.
Here is the key points from the meeting:
1. Heather had been kind enough to have one of their crime analysts develop a report of crimes in the South Mesa. She was not quite sure of the boundaries of our community but I had brought with me a copy of our community map that I left with her. I have attached a copy of the crime report for the South Mesa for your review. She is going to get the crime analyst to re-run the report to include neighbors like Devonshire and those north of Leucadia Boulevard.
2. There have been 23 incidents in the past two years. She indicated that 75 - 80% of these are quite preventable by having homeowners close garage doors, lock cars, lock house doors and keep valuables out of plain sight. Residential burglary is the most serious crime we have encountered and there have been three instances of those this year. She offered us some background on each. Having real data can help with potential mis-information that may be spreading about this subject. She felt that the crime rate was not that high but it is hard to make comparisons.
3. She offered to hold a 'town hall' type of meeting where she would come and present and the homeowners can ask questions to her. We are in the process of determining how many homeowners are interested in attending such a meeting so we can schedule a date and proper venue.
4. Heather creates and distributes a monthly newsletter on crime prevention that she started in May. We will post these on our Encinitas Ranch HOA website: at .http://www.encinitasranch.org/index.html.
We are very interested in finding someone in the community to serve as a Neighbor Watch coordinator. This individual will serve as the liaison to the Sheriff's office and receve the newsletters. These coordinators also meet periodically with other neighborhood watch coordinators and the Sheriff's department. Let me know if you or a neighbor is interested in serving in this capacity.
5. The crime prevention unit offers free residential security consultations where they go out to a house and do a free inspection and tell the homeowner about any potential issues they may have. I received a number of flyers and brochures from the sheriff's office on crime prevention. Let me know if you are interested in any of these.
6. Heather also gave us two web sites that can be used to look up crime statistics; http://www.arjis.com/ and http://www.sdsheriff.net/
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We held a very good town hall meeting last night on crime prevention at the Encinitas City Library. Henry Tirado, a crime prevention specialist from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department presented and provide the community with crime statistics as well as tips and hints on preventing crimes.
ReplyDeleteA homeowner can arrange to have an audit conducted of their home where the Sheriff's Department will thoroughly review all aspects of a home's entry points and lighting. A review can be scheduled by calling the crime prevention unit at 760-966-3500.