Tradition - Creativity – Neighborhood Watch
Among the many things that turned out successful that I didn’t want to do at first, the following incident proved to rate high up there. It was a risk, but the results were spectacular. Sharing the power is important, but it goes beyond that. Inspiration, competition, freedom, and justice are very important. Also, in overwhelming amounts, imagination to provide a breath of fresh air to the mundane, and a new twist to the phrase, “stuck in a rut.” Some people feel secure in the tried and true, while I like creativity. It used to be that creative thinking was a basic difference between liberals and conservatives, although I notice that the meaning of “liberal” is changing from “open minded’, which I think I am, to “intolerant,” meaning: “you have to think like I do,” and I don’t want to be part of that.
I like people to listen to what I say, but not necessarily agree, or to think like I do, only to listen, then think for yourself, thank you! And let me hear your side of things, I may learn something. The following incident shows how creativity turned one conservative idea into a benefit.
A few years back, I had gone with a girlfriend, to a neighbor’s home to take part in a ‘Neighborhood Watch Program’ where neighbors in a block gather at a house where the police gives a presentation on how to protect yourself and your property from local crime. ‘Bolt your doors and windows, trim your shrubs so none can hide behind them, keep your eyes open and call the Police if you see something suspicious’. Normal commonsense stuff. It was somewhat boring. Besides my friend and me, there were twelve other people present. My girlfriend bought a new deadbolt as a result and I had to install it. Good safety, but I never gave it another thought.
Someone at the TBA Board mentioned that maybe we should try the Neighborhood Watch Program in our Barrio. I knew it would not work, so I didn’t give it any more thought, but the board member was Bertha, and Bertha was not just anybody. She had gone nose to nose with the President of the United States. After she insisted for the third time, I finally said “Okay, Bertha, I’ll try it once.”
At first, I could not find any volunteers to invite the police into their houses, nor did the police have any desire to come to this Barrio. Finally, an elderly woman agreed. We convinced the police to make a date, passed out flyers, bought coffee and tea, and waited and waited. Two other elderly ladies and two very polite officers finally showed up. Halfway through it, it was impossible for me not to show my impatience. It was a waste of time. When one of the officers went to demonstrate where to place the deadbolt in the front door, she found out the door had no lock whatsoever, just a simple regular doorknob. “Everyone knows there is nothing to steal here,” the elderly owner sheepishly apologized.
I looked around her modest living room as I sat back in the worn-out sofa, too tired to laugh or cry. I was feeling deeply for what could have been a lonely soul, but then she seemed like a happy woman saying, “no pity for me, thank you.” Just then the officer said to keep an eye on the street and watch out for your neighbor’s property as well, something that sounded like snitching, which no one in the Barrio would ever do. However, the significance began to percolate into my brain. Drip, drip, drip. What about peer pressure? Or family support. And then suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks. I woke up! I sat straight up, now paying undivided attention to every word. I was sitting in the middle of one of the most powerful tools for organizing there is. Fidel Castro in Cuba had used something like it to control the country’s entire population of six million in a few short months and hook them into slavery. Healthcare is one of the best ways to control people.
He started with a national healthcare program. Within three months, Castro was using “Healthcare for everyone,” by creating an artificial contagious disease scare. People don’t like to be told they are going to die. If you don’t have a crisis, create one. Sounds familiar? It should, as the Democrats have been pushing for healthcare for everyone for years to move one step closer to controlling people. Then will come various scare tactics to advance progression into totalitarianism. That is the playbook. In each block, the Cuban government set up a center with a block captain, AKA the spy or snitch, in every neighborhood, block by block, and dispensed free mandatory vaccination to everyone. “Control health and you control the people,” Castro’s group would say. This way they could justify getting into everyone’s home, get everyone’s name and employment, and set up an information network with the snitch that would keep the government informed about the activities of every citizen. All they needed then, and all they need now, is a technology which will connect all aspects of surveillance of the people through the national use of the person’s social security number. This will finally chain the people to the government. Many European countries under the EU have already implemented a similar system.
We could use “Safety” instead of “Health”, and “share the power” instead of “Government control.” Suddenly, I was on full alert!
Could something be learned from the lessons of others? Not control them through health, instead, give them the control of their ‘safety.’ Same difference worlds apart, subtle and profound. I spent the next few weeks walking door to door. In the beginning, I got no cooperation from the residents nor from the police department who kept resisting in coming to the Barrio. But never give up. The next two meetings were attended by only three or four older people. Then thanks to Bertha’s suggestion we shifted tactics, using something like Alinsky Rule # 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy”. We held a Watch Meeting in the house of a board member, beginning with Sr. Peréz’ house, inviting all his extended family instead of the next-door neighbor. You must search for reality, often hidden in plain view. Family, Pride, and Hands. Suddenly each succeeding meeting was full of warm bodies, family members, not next-door neighbors, sometimes more than twenty. The surprising result, including police enthusiasm, was that we covered people from all the home in all the three Barrios, more than twenty blocks, and a few of them more than once. We brought tools from their Tool Library, accessible to all, to show how to secure things.
Afterwards, I put that experience out of mind. I probably never spoke at any one of those meetings, but I sat through them all. I prefer to do things from behind the scenes. I do not care to be seen or recognized or thanked. As a result, sometimes I pay little attention to things that don’t seem important to me, so I never did realize that if anyone didn’t know me before, now that I had been door to door to almost every house in the Barrio and inside most of them for a second time since the restoration home inspection, I may have been an outsider, but I was no longer a stranger, and I didn’t know that. I cared for all these people, and they were beginning to care back. One day I told Ray, “Although I developed a strong attachment and caring for each of the members in the Barrio, especially the rehab crew, and S.H. families, I tried very hard not to show it. Because it was never about me. I hope that I did that well.” Today, I must admit I felt, but didn’t show, a strong sense of friendship, and at the end it was difficult emotionally to part ways.
A few months later, including an incident with the rehab crew narrated in a next chapter, I got a call from the police department. I noticed the same tone of respect and consideration we were now also getting from the Planning Department.
“Greetings Sir, this is Officer Smith, from the Tucson Police Department. My Chief wanted me to call you and let you know that for the first time in this country, a police department has been able to show proof that a Neighborhood Watch Program really works.”
“Why is that?” I asked with suspicion. The thought crossed my mind of half of the Barrio now in jail.
“We normally do block by block, but no one has been able to do an entirely well-defined municipality, or an entire neighborhood with well-defined boundaries like yours before.”
“It isn’t mine.” I corrected him.
He ignored me and went on.
“What normally happens, but people don’t realize it, is that after we do a program on a block, the statistics show a hike in crime, followed later by a drop. Confusing! Except that, before, many didn’t report crime. Afterwards, more people called in to report crimes when they see something suspicious. But this blip could happen for many other reasons besides the Program. Too small a sample and we couldn’t conclusively prove a direct cause and effect. Besides, crime can be perpetrated by elements from outside, or the incriminating evidence left at someone else’s properties. But now, for the first time we have a large enough and very well-defined area, a full scale neighborhood, and now people are reporting crime as it happens. We see clearly the sharp peak of reported crime in your entire area, while not in others, so it can have no other cause. Also, your Barrio shows afterwards a sharp slope downward in crime going well beyond what it used to be, and you are now statistically well below the rest of the community. In your case, much beyond half.”
“Not my Barrio,” I mumbled. “It is theirs.”
If this had been the second worst neighborhood in the City of Tucson. Not anymore!
“Is it because of locks on the doors?” I asked stupidly.
“No. I think you know better than I why that is. People are not afraid to call on us, whereas before they felt that if they called the police, everyone would know who the caller was. Now it could be anyone because everybody has been given the same suggestion to call, and everyone knows that everyone can call. They have the control now. We have written an article on this report and sent it to all other police departments in the nation.”
I don’t know if this last part was true, I wonder, but it was nice of him to call. I also thought, but did not say, and the police are no longer afraid to come into the Barrio. They now know people here. It went both ways. His most important words were: “They have control now.”
The follow-up idea had been more difficult. To have the police give a Neighborhood Watch-type of lecture to the Rehab Crew of thirty workers, some of whom had been criminally minded goons, and a few had criminal records with extremely disagreeable experiences with the police. If you are young and have an accent or darker skin color, your encounter with the police is bound to be different than if you don’t, along with how you treat the officer in that encounter. One attitude feed on the other escalating back and forth.
I had been present at a few of those experiences and they were not happy ones. Many officers do not treat minority groups as they should. A question: Does the police profile people unfairly, or do groups earn a negative profile by their behavior? Or both? The problem is exasperated when the bad apple on either side gives all the rest an unfair lingering effect. See my 20-60-20 Theory in the next pages. Despite all the good policemen in the world, some are not. Same can be said for Barrio kids, not all Barrio kids are good. Profiling is crucial for safety, without prejudice, equitably. Starting with the family, could we get children’s negative behavior to decrease from the Barrio side? What about from the police side? I had some influence with the Barrio, none with the police, so why waste time complaining about the police first?
Early when I had placed a call to the police department requesting three officers to come to a special meeting with thirty youths from Barrio Libre for a Neighborhood Watch type of lecture to the teens, I got no response. After my third unanswered call, I personally went to the see the Chief of Police, the same man to whom I had brought the allegations against Juanito. Police Chief Ronstadt, the brother of singer Linda Ronstadt, he listened to me in silence. A lesson to be learned: you can be as outspoken as you want if you are very, very, respectful. Show some grace. Then he picked up the telephone and called a sergeant.
“Sergeant, I want the names of three officers, your choice, on my desk before the day is over, and I want those three officers to be present at the Neighborhood Watch Program in Barrio Libre next Thursday, 2 PM.”
That was the easy part! I told the crew that at 2 PM, on Thursday, the police would come to our meeting for a review on how to protect the houses we were working on.” I expected a certain amount of hesitation and was prepared. The reaction was instant.
“I am not going,” one after another said.
Working days start early and end up early because of the heat. Our usual Friday meetings were at 2 PM, also payday is on Friday!
“I will have your paycheck with me on Thursday, and whoever is not there from 2 PM to 3 PM will not get his pay-check until next Monday.”
Legal or not, I knew that would do it. When 2 PM on Thursday came, the three biggest officers in the police department showed up at our warehouse on time, checked-out the building, and sat all the way back by the exit door. Their arms were crossed, and I was sure that their guns’ safety catches were off. They had apprehension written all over them.
The crew began to trail in slowly, cautiously, each took a chair and they sat against the opposite wall by the entry, a good fifty feet separating the two groups now facing each other, all arms crossed. Suspicion and mistrust in the air was so heavy you could cut it with a knife. I was beginning to think this was a mistake. For all I knew, any of two people present in this room could have been arrestor and arrestee sometime in the past.
I had faith that the officers would act professionally, their chief had their numbers, and I had to bet on that and take my chances. I had no idea what the kids would do, but duty calls. The officers began their presentation, and I interrupted them often to ask one or another of the crew about the house they were working on at the moment and if it had any of the characteristics referred to by the officer and to describe it.
The officers told the kids how to protect the houses some of them had been used to breaking into but were now repairing. In other words, they taught the kids how to protect the properties from people like themselves. It could have been a loaded situation, heavy with tension, anger, and resentment, but now they were fixing the houses, not breaking into them, and getting paid for it. At the same rate, by installing the protection devises, they learned how to break into better fortified properties as taught them by the police of all people. It was a double-edged sword. I would not recommend this training to this type of group without other positive, supportive circumstances.
The U.S. Army teaches soldiers in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkey and other places how to fight and win more effectively, but besides military training skills, who is to say that some of them will not end up joining a criminal gang back home using their new skills and information?
Despite the dangers, the fear of such a backlash is no excuse to keep people from having equal knowledge on how to use tools, since lack of knowledge, as I said, is the way to control a population divided into majorities and minorities clashing with each other. The one true solution is to educate equally and share the power. There are so many other valuable knowledge which makes military training produce better and more qualified citizens, that the bad apple exception cannot negate the value of the whole. Veteran can be among the best workers to hire any time.
If we think about it, and compare the value of information in other issues, we can see that it is why the political issue of gun control is not an answer, but a suppressive move. The issue is not the gun. The fundamental issue is the hand and the brain that holds the tool, as if it is not a gun or a knife they get, it will be something else on their own. Remember with the training of the Young Woman Company group, it was critical to include good working ethics as well as proper use of tools. Morality, not amorality, needs to be included in every training.
Did I really know what I was doing and the risks I took? This was new grounds and unpredictable for me. However, these were not actions taken in isolation. Many supportive activities had taken place already. We had been working for years on multiple levels on neighborhood self-sufficiency, from the top, from the middle, and from the bottom; park, pool, tool library, zoning, jobs, rehab, making/selling adobe blocks, etc., Promoting little by little every positive example of personal responsibility, and utilizing Pride, Family, and Hands, so it was all pertinent to them.
I was paying close attention to the behavior of the crew members, not so much to that of the police officers; they are trained to act professionally, and they did.
Careful not to over-or-underreact, I thought of “It is all in what is left unsaid that does so much more harm”, such as not mentioning the sink hole when giving directions. In the process of training youths in the art of securing a home, we must inspire and educate them in the ethics of their new skills. The lack of talking about ethics or moral responsibilities, or about a sinkhole that can appear before reaching the safety goal which is a sample as to why the Rule #2 by Alinsky can be, and is, so harmful, “Never go outside the expertise of your people”, he wants to keep them ignorant. He promotes amorality. Not here. We taught new perspectives. We went beyond, way beyond.
Before I finish the story of kids and police, I’ll digress to show how another theory fits into this narrative by sharing another tool I used extensively in organizing, same as in manipulating, for obtaining a change of behavior with peer pressure. I call it the 20-60-20 Theory.