Burien Police Chief Scott Kimerer appeared before the Burien City Council March 19 to urge residents to form block watches. While concerns were voiced about recent high-profile crimes in the area, he said block watches were a useful, ongoing tool to aid police.

Chief Kimerer, Sergeant Henry McLauchlan, and block watch captains and Burien residents Forest and Mary Jane Lane spoke to the Highline Times about the importance of block watches, and how they are formed. The City of Burien Police Community Crime Prevention Unit at (206) 296-3370 to schedule your Block Watch Meeting. The Crime Prevention Officer will come to your home.

Police Chief Kimerer

"It is a program that really keeps the eyes and ears of a neighborhood open, and there is nobody better in a neighborhood for seeing what might be amiss than your neighbors," said Chief Kimerer of block watches. "We may go through a neighborhood and may not see what they see. It's quite a successful program.

"There are all kinds of other added benefits to the program, like having a little added sense of security in your neighborhood when you go on vacation knowing your neighbors will watch your house," he said. "Also, parts of the population who are less mobile such as the elderly or those with medical issues can be assisted if there is an ice storm, snow storms, power outage, or other emergency. We can help facilitate the neighbors getting started, then then we keep them engaged."

Sgt. McLauchlan

"Random patrol hasn't always been that effective," acknowledged Sgt. McLauchlan. "Without a doubt, the idea of getting block watchers working together is very effective, and we're available to help set them up, and to give them the criteria they will need. Make a call this way and we'll set you up with our community service officer, or I can talk to you. You can also speak with our block watch captains, who we call our 'coordinators'. We currently have over 100 block watches in the City of Burien.

"The key to this whole thing is that you know your neighbors," he added. "We help you send out an invitation to your neighbors to bring them together to an individual's home and we all meet and talk about how to increase effectiveness to make your house less attractive to bad guys, and to get this stuff to stop.

"You can have apartment watches, too," he pointed out. "If you collectively look at all the people in your apartment there are probably at least a few people there on a different shift than you. If there is a truck that's new that doesn't belong there, or if they hear a noise, apartment watches are effective, as long as there is someone there to call the police.The businesses have business watches and we want to encourage them too. Block watches are really one of the proven techniques to bind together and curtail criminal activity."

Block watchers Forest & Mary Jane Lane

The Lanes live on 25th Ave. SW and have a sheet with a map on one side and a roster on the other of residents along a stretch of their road. There are block watch signs posted along 25th Ave., too.

"We connect with other (adjacent) block watches," said Forest Lane, 62, who coincidentally lives on a forested lane. "We pass information to them to disseminate. I personally talk to everybody I see on the street. If strangers are up to no good they feel my presence and become uncomfortable. I was driving home in the afternoon and saw a truck parked by a driveway on our street and the guy is outside the truck and there were gas cans in the back and I just stopped, and asked him, 'Hey, what's up?' He comes up with a flimsy excuse and left. I got his license plate number. I don't have to push it too far."

"If my neighbors go out of town they will tell us," said Mary Jane. "They might let us know that a UPS truck is expected. But if we see another truck we are going to call 911. If someone has paused on the road in their car, I'll stop and ask, 'Are you lost? Do you need help finding an address?' Police told us that if someone is here for not a good purpose they don't want to be visually identified. So that friendly gesture means, 'OK. I see you. I can identify you in a line up.'

"When someone new moves in, we come over with a plate of cookies and say we've got a block watch going on," she added. "There are a couple of people on our street who have chosen not to become involved. They are just private people. We love them. We just say, 'Fine'. We are online with two thirds of the neighborhood, and have a block watch alert online."

Forest grew up in their home, and after a 20-year military career they moved back into it in 1992.

"We come from an Army community where everybody was very open," he said. "People met you first before you had a chance to reach out to them. But when we moved here we thought, 'Where is our plate of cookies?"

A year later, their house was broken into. There was no block watch at that time.

Recalled Forest, who taught terrain analysis at West Point, "When this burglary happened, we said, 'It starts here. We're going to start something.' Wars and battles have been fought and lost because they had intelligence but it wasn't reported. If we can get the information passed fast enough, they'll go somewhere else to try to do their crimes."