The West Seattle Blockwatch Captains’ Network met on Oct. 25 to discuss the “soft roll-out” of the Block Watch Captain Finder Tool, an open-source project developed by Code for America alongside Karen Berge and Deborah Greer with WSBCN.

The online tool is designed to help answer the age-old question of “Is there a blockwatch in my area?” The traditional answer, Greer said, is, “Who knows?” It is designed to make neighborhood connections easier and get people involved in crime prevention, community building and emergency preparedness.

Greer said the tool is still in development (and really will always be in development since it is an open source project) but the Code for America fellowship with the City of Seattle is coming to an end early next month, so now is the time for West Seattle blockwatch captains and anyone interested in joining a blockwatch to peruse the website and provide last-minute feedback.

Blockwatch captains can enter contact information for their group and plot their coverage area on a map, and citizens seeking a blockwatch to join can search that data and get in touch with captains.

Greer and Berge said once the finder officially launches on Nov. 4 it will transition into the hands of the WSBCN for a year to be fine tuned. Next it will be available to the rest of Seattle, and eventually the rest of the nation.

Anyone interested in providing feedback can check out the Blockwatch Captain Finder Tool at http://seattle.citygroups.org/blockwatch.

A tutorial to help navigate the site has been posted on the WSBCN website and is available as a link at the top of this story. *Please note this tutorial matches the site as it exists now, but as changes are made the process may change.

As a reminder, this is an open source project so any information you upload as a blockwatch captain is visible to the public. Berge recommends creating an email address specifically for your blockwatch (you can then forward those emails to your primary account). Also, it’s not necessary to publish your name, just the name of the blockwatch (can be as simple as 9000 block of Anywhere Ave S.W.)

Also, create an account. If you don’t, the information you enter will be from “anonymous” and it is not as easy to get back in to tweak your information.

Remember that hitting “Save” after you enter information is the same as hitting “Publish,” so make sure your data is correct.

Feedback should be sent to WSBCN. They can be contacted in the following ways:
Email: wsblockwatchnet@gmail.com
Phone: 206-424-0040
Website: http://wsblockwatchnet.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=337488370959
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wsblockwatchnet

The West Seattle Blockwatch Captains’ Network holds monthly meeting on the fourth Tuesday from 6:30-8 PM, SW Police Precinct Meeting Room (2300 SW Webster Street).

The next meeting is January 24 as the Network takes time off for the holidays in November and December.