As Cathy Franklin recovered from surgery, she looked out of the windows of her Forest Hill home and didn’t like the view.
She saw people dealing drugs across the street, in front of her house and in front of her neighbor’s home.
Rather than complaining, she decided to do something. She went to a meeting and found out how to start a block watch on her North Akron street.
“After we handed out our fliers – Sgt. [Mike] Lugenbeal came with me – there’s been no activity on my street,” said Franklin, 52, who works in the treasurer’s office for the Akron Public Schools. “So it was a very big plus in my mind.”
Franklin’s Dan Street Block Watch is among nine new block watches started in the Forest Hill area in Akron this year, part of an attempt by city officials and local community leaders to increase block watches across the city.
John Valle started the effort after he was named to Akron’s new position of director of neighborhood assistance in 2012. He thought it was important that he assist the approximately 150 existing block watches and work to create new ones.
Valle has so far mainly focused on two areas – the Zahn Drive section of Northwest Akron and the Forest Hill part of North Hill – but he plans to move into other parts of the city in the coming months. And he and others who have been involved in the effort in Forest Hill think it could serve as a model for the rest of the city. Residents there, besides starting a block watch, also hope to form a neighborhood association, tailored after the successful West Hill Neighborhood Association.
“It would be nice to say we started something and reached out into every community, not just Forest Hill,” said Councilman Jim Hurley, who is unopposed in this year’s election and whose new ward will be centered on North Hill where he grew up and still lives.
Valle said block watches provide the city and police with eyes and ears in neighborhoods, reporting anything out of the ordinary, and help to deter crime. He said a call from a block watch member carries weight and spurs speedy results from police and other city agencies.
“They know you care,” he said. “They know you take pride. They know you’re trying to improve the quality of life in your neighborhood.”
How it started
A new playground helped start the block watch project in Forest Hill.
In August of last year, more than 170 volunteers came together to put up a new playground in the parking lot of Celebration Church on Dan Street. This was one of three new playgrounds built in the city that day, with the help of the KaBOOM! Foundation in Washington, D.C. and the John S. Knight Foundation.
Valle made the rounds to the new playgrounds, and his last stop was at Celebration Church. He asked Pastor Jeff Wade if he had time for a cup of coffee and the two talked about what else could be done to help the neighborhood.
This initial coffee talk spurred a couple of breakfasts at the nearby Fred’s diner, a mainstay in Forest Hill, with Valle and Wade drawing others into the conversation, including Hurley and Michael Kane, who owns Kane Sign Co. in Forest Hill and lives across the street from his business.
They decided to divide up a 60 block area of Forest Hill, bordered by state Route 8 to the west, East Tallmadge Avenue to the north, Home Avenue to the east, and Moraine Avenue to the east, into nine block watch areas.
Between March and May of this year, they held meetings with residents in each of the blocks they had identified, with more than 140 people attending the meetings.
At each meeting, Valley and Hurley explained the effort and the potential benefits of starting a block watch. Carol Schneider, who heads up the successful Lexington Avenue Block Watch, talked about how to start and maintain a group, and Sgt. Mike Lugenbeal outlined the help the police provide. The department sends an officer to each block watch meeting, and gives residents timely crime stats about what’s happening in their area.
“Block watches almost have a private policeman working for them,” Lugenbeal said. “There’s a direct liaison between the Akron Police Department and a block watch that other citizens don’t necessarily have.”
Residents’ concerns
The concerns residents raised during the block watch meetings differed somewhat, depending on the area, though crime and vacant houses were recurring topics.
One resident spoke up at a meeting and said he thought he had a crack house on his block. Wade said the police looked into it and “took them on a vacation from there.”
Another resident was concerned about the elderly people living near him and whether they were getting the services they needed.
Several people brought up the issue of speeding, which has long been a problem for the area that many use as a cut through to Chapel Hill. Kane, whose business and home are on Glenwood Avenue, one of the main pass-through roads, said cars sometimes go as fast as 50 mph. He said this includes fuel tankers zooming past Forest Hill elementary school.
“It’s unsettling when school’s in session,” he said.
After attending the initial meeting about forming block watches, Franklin contacted Lugenbeal and they passed out fliers for the first Dan Street Block Club meeting. Ten people attended, but this number dropped to four in the second meeting. Lugenbeal advised Franklin not to despair because summertime and vacations likely kept many away. He said attendance is better when the weather isn’t so nice.
Franklin decided to wait to schedule another meeting until after a meeting held at the beginning of the month that everyone who had gone to the previous block watch meeting was invited to attend. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the fledgling block watches, but also to talk about creating a neighborhood association that could serve as an umbrella group for the block watches.
Umbrella group
Two leaders from the successful West Hill Neighborhood Organization attended the Forest Hill meeting to offer their advice.
Jane Startzman, the group’s president, told the group of about 40 residents that her group began with just a few people who didn’t like what they saw happening in their neighborhood. She said they decided to form a non-profit neighborhood organization that could take on projects and sponsor fun community events.
“We were sick and tired of complaining,” she said. “We need to be a catalyst. Sitting here complaining isn’t doing anything.”
They formed Housing and Crime and Safety committees to focus on the issues residents were most concerned about.
Nancy Smith, who chairs the Crime and Safety Committee, said many residents are uncomfortable calling the police to report suspicious or illegal activity, with some fearing potential retaliation.
“I’m willing to call the police for anyone,” she said.
Schneider, the Lexington Avenue Block Watch captain, said her 130-house street has been “revitalized” since residents started a block watch a decade ago.
“Our street looks pretty good,” she said. “I’m pretty proud.”
After hearing from Startzman, Smith, and Schneider, the Forest Hill residents decided they wanted to move forward with starting a neighborhood association, while also continuing their efforts to build smaller block watches. The larger group will meet again next month.
Future plans
Not all block watches stay together, with activity often driven by the amount of crime happening in the area.
“If there’s low crime in a block watch area, block watches tend not to meet,” Lugenbeal said. “If there is crime, they meet more often.”
Those who have been active in the Forest Hill area, though, are hoping the block watches and the association will be successful.
Hurley and Valle think these groups can be a conduit to get and give information to residents. Hurley thinks some residents might be reluctant to get involved out of fear that they will be viewed as tattletales, angering their neighbors.
“I don’t want people to be afraid,” he said.
One important pending issue for this area is what to do with vacant land in the Evans and Hollibaugh avenues area where the city bought and tore down blighted buildings and has proposed building 17 new single family houses. Some residents, though, have said they’d prefer this be kept as green space or turned into a park. Hurley says he’s waiting for a consensus.
“It will be up to the residents in the neighborhood,” he said. “When I find out what they really want, we will go from there.”
Wade thinks the neighborhood efforts could greatly improve this area.
“I think this has some real potential to make this a better place to live,” said Wade, the pastor of Celebration Church for more than 10 years.
Kane, the business owner and Forest Hill resident who also coaches soccer at the nearby North High School, has another hope for the block watch effort. He thinks the sense of community in Forest Hill has been lost because most residents go home, drive into their garages, and come back out the next morning when they go to work. He said people don’t sit on their front porches or know their neighbors like they did in the past.
“The greatest goal I’m hoping for out of the block watch is to hopefully rejuvenate that sense of community that we had at one time and that seems to have slowly eroded away,” he said.
Franklin says she’s already seen positive results from her block watch. She said the grandchildren of one of her neighbors a few doors down recently were concerned because her door was open and she wasn’t there — they said she never left her door open.
Franklin said residents called police and volunteered to help, going door-to-door to look for their missing neighbor and walking behind houses in case she had fallen. It turned out that she had just gone to the store — and left her door open. Regardless, Franklin was pleased that neighbors banded together to look out for one of their own.
“I think being that we had started a neighborhood watch brought an awareness to people and that’s why that happened,” she said, smiling. “It was just nice.”
Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at 330-996-3705 or swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @swarsmith. Read the Beacon Journal’s political blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/ohio-politics.