Longview Hills @ Newport Oregon

Neighborhood Watch Patrol

Have you seen the Neighborhood Watch Patrol Signs cruizing around the park and downtown? There are several sets of them always in motion on different resident's cars.. Always changing. The impact on the community and the crooks is that they see that there is a large watchful presence at Longview Hills.

There really is no patrol and no set times to patrol. The signs just move around the park and Newport at random doing their job of warning of a presence. The impact hoped for is that the crooks get it in their heads that it is just not worth the effort to mess with Longview Hills when there is more easily unwatched targets for their thievery elsewhere.

The program started years ago with one set of signs donated by the Shimek's. At first there was a real patrol on holidays that was hard to get volunteers for. Then we hit on the idea of just having the sign on the Thomas truck sitting out front on Widmill and the occassional trip downtown.

One day, Charles Burke started inspiring the community about the purpose of the signs and motivating different folks to take turns of about a month to place the magnetic placards on their autos. Because of his dedication we had a long list of volunteers. Seeing that list grow the Davi's got the Social Club to buy more signs. So there started to be a larger presence throughout LVH and Newport as the volunteer vehicles went about their daily travels.

Now Charles is laid up with medical problems and he is unable to keep up with doling out the signs and finding volunteers to take them for a month at a time. The result is that the signs are showing up at my home as the volunteers come to the end of their month long commitment.

If we want to continue this program we need to find a way of keeping the signs on the cars. I would like to encourage you to take a set of sign out for a one month stroll around the community. You don't do anything just slap that puppy on your car and at the end of a month bring it back and put it on the red truck at 5706 NE Windmill dr. Want to help? When you see a set of signs on the red truck just take a set and put them on your car. Leaving on a trip? Just put them on the red truck. No sign up.. No commitment. Do what you can ... When you can.

With the flood of people entering the park this Saturday it would be nice to see those signs making a presence all over the park.

One other thing that you might not know is that Mike Rosica works nights at Walmart and for many months he has patroled every LVH street on his way home in the wee hours of the morning. He does that almost every day. At one time he caught 3 teenagers in the park at about 4am and called the police on them when they could not account for their presence at such a strange hour.

For you new folks you may wonder how we keep such a nice park here?? It is not all bought by money some of the perks and conditions are bought by the community's volunteers and their selfless donation of time.. Come join us.