Longview Hills @ Newport Oregon

Neighborhood Watch Meeting...

Tuesday was the Neighborhood Watch Meeting. Marlene Crites, Coordinator, introduced Sgt. Malloy from the Newport Police who gave a talk on crime in and around Newport as well as tips for avoiding Identity Theft. His talk was interesting but one of the facts he had was that in the State of Oregon, Newport has the highest per capita crime rate in the state. He was quick to explain that we are not roiling in a hot bed of crime but being a resort beach city we do attract more than our share of criminals.

He was quick to praise Longview Hills as the safest place in Newport. He attributed that to the community programs and the way neighbors look after one another. He also said that you should not feel like you are being paranoid by calling 911 to report strange occurrences in the neighborhood and encourages you to do so.

He was asked about the pan handlers at WalMart, Freddy's and Safeway. His response was as much as he would like to see them gone they are acting within the law as long as they do not chase after or intimidate people. In the past large stores such as WalMart have lost law suits claiming that they violated these beggars civil rights so that leads to complaints not being filed by them. He also has interviewed many of them and asked them why they just don't take a local job of which there are several.. Their general reply is that they can make $100 a day tax free doing what they do. $700 a week is pretty good money. After a day's work they live in the bush around Newport drinking and partying away their day's take. He seemed to imply that if people would stop giving them money they would go away.

The sergeant ended his presentation and the Block captains meeting started. Some folks stayed around just to sit in and listen. There are now 36 block captains give or take as new come on aboard and a few have resigned. The reason for so many was a concentrated effort to reduce the number of people that a block captain watches over. That being accomplished it was felt that during an emergency block captains would be able to check on their folks in a rapid manner. This would allow them to inform the CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) of the status of their charges thus speeding up rescue operations and first aid through out the community. A special map of the park was handed out as well as a park roster based on lot numbers. Using the map and roster combination it will be easy to report the location of any residence within the park to the CERT team saving precious minutes in life threatening emergencies.

We called for the help of the Neighborhood Watch Block captains to rapidly report the status of the folks in their area to the CERT Communications center which will be located in the Clubhouse during most emergencies. The plan is in its infantcy and will be massaged and corrected from the feedback received from the community.

Thank you for attending and our parting comment was that the Neighborhood Watch Phone Tree has to be worked on to become more efficient and we ask everybody to think of ways to improve that system which will be hashed out at the next meeting.