December Winona Watch Updates
The Winona Woods Neighborhood Watch Committee met this month to determine how to best improve our program. The committee determined more assistance is needed in a few areas and we are appealing to the community for help.
Area One: More Volunteers
1.) Please consider signing up for a Foot Patrol on our calendar. You only need to be out twenty minutes. There is no set route or time at which it needs to be completed. You can even complete a beat while on your routine dog walk, run or drive. Residents are not expected to and should not get involved in any crime they may witness, just call 911.
2.) We are looking for a volunteer willing to write a short monthly column (one to two paragraphs) for the newsletter which would recap any important events in the neighborhood as well as offer thoughtful tips and tricks about crime prevention.
Area Two: Increased Prevention
Most of the crime committed within our neighborhood has been theft. In the vast majority of the cases doors and windows have been left just plain unlocked or otherwise unsecured. Although this type of crime has seen a swift downturn within recent moths we continue to urge you to take the following reasonable precautions to secure your belongings:
A.) LOCK YOUR DOORS.
B.) DO NOT LEAVE VALUABLES IN YOUR VEHICLE.
C.) INSTALL OUTDOOR LIGHTING FIXTURES AND USE THEM.
For those of you who are interested, some residents have recommended this low cost driveway alarm sold at Harbor Freight for increased security which might be worth a try.
Winona Watch is also in the process of securing yellow vests for the foot patrol, higher quality window stickers for homeowners to display at their homes as well as signs for the ends of each of our streets. Hopefully, this evidence of an engaged community would work to encourage would be thieves to consider choosing another area to steal from.
Area Three: Social Media
No doubt Social Media such as our Facebook Page is a great tool for communication. Although we know all of our residents have only good intentions, Facebook is not an appropriate place to report out of the ordinary activity or actual crime. If you see or hear anything suspicious or have been effected by a crime PLEASE go ahead and call 911 immediately and directly. Posting information of this nature can lead to rumor, misinformation and unnecessary concern quickly. The association has worked closely with the IPD in order to develop the Winona Watch Area Crime alerts (sign up here) which come out twice a week. The information in them has been vetted and confirmed. We’d much prefer to share reports in this manner. Of course, should anything very significant happen Winona Watch will not hesitate reach out via the Winona Watch Mailing List to alert neighbors with as much speed as possible with verified information.
Furthermore, many residents have expressed concern that it appears that our neighborhood is experiencing a rise in the number of crimes committed. However, since we have begun to collect data it has become very apparent that the number of issues has actually decreased sharply. What are increasing are resident reports of suspicious activity and resident communication about the events which did not exist before a platform was available to discuss and share it. This has lead to a misconception of an increase prevalence of crime, when all that’s happening is that we are hearing about it more.