Rancho Bernardo Neighborhood Watch moving into the digital age

By Elizabeth Marie Himchak

Rancho Bernardo Neighborhood Watch is being transformed for the digital age.

Its new leaders — Director Erik Johnson and Assistant Director Julie Sanders — said the transition from the decades-old format to one that primarily relies on alerts and other information distributed via

Nextdoor.com

is one San Diego Police Department advocates.

Nextdoor.com is a social networking site SDPD partnered with last spring to inform City of San Diego residents about crimes and other safety information in their neighborhoods. The website, started in 2010 and based out of San Francisco, is free to join and for the city to use.

It allows members within a community’s neighborhoods — such as Westwood in Rancho Bernardo — to interact with each other. To join, members must have their residential address verified. When it launched, SDPD Officer Edward Zwibel said, “Nextdoor makes it easy for neighbors to establish virtual neighborhood watch and help combat crime. Nextdoor will help create a stronger and safer community that we call home.”

The site is used for more than just sharing crime news. Members also post about lost pets, ask for babysitter or repairman recommendations, advertise garage sales and use it to learn neighbors’ names.

One of the RB areas with the highest usage of the site is Seven Oaks, Johnson said, where topics like knitting, gardening and sewing are frequent topics among members.

“We decided this will be a new era for Rancho Bernardo Neighborhood Watch,” Johnson said. “It’s going digital and virtual, but we’ll keep the storefront.”

The storefront is on the Rancho Bernardo Library’s second floor, where Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol and SDPD also have offices. So far, three volunteers will staff the Neighborhood Watch office during yet-to-be-determined hours.

Johnson said Neighborhood Watch has transformed greatly over the decades, from its early design as a volunteer organization where residents patrolled their streets to deter criminal activity and utilized calling trees to disseminate information.

For years, the Rancho Bernardo group has had difficulty recruiting and retaining the hundreds of volunteers needed to staff all the block captain, area captain and district coordinator positions. An assessment of its volunteer list a while back revealed many had moved or discontinued their involvement, but the list had not been updated or replacements found. So some parts of neighborhoods had an active Neighborhood Watch and others did not.

Johnson said the calling tree formula is out-of-date since it relies on the message being phoned to a small group of volunteers who call their assigned set of contacts who then repeat the process. Even when expanded to email notification, if someone in the chain did not answer their phone or check their email in a timely fashion, the message stopped progressing and it could take days to reach all affected.

Through Nextdoor.com a few individuals will have posting authority to share approved crime-related messages from the police department and a blast can be sent to everyone signed up, who can then get the alert via their preferred electronic devices, he said. The messages must be approved to prevent incorrect information or details the police want held in order to not damage an investigation from being released to all residents.

“There is the potential for ruining a case for SDPD and that we do not want,” Johnson said, explaining that recently happened in another San Diego neighborhood when too many details were shared about a crime, which led to the suspect not being brought to justice.

Johnson and Sanders said they were selected to lead the group on Jan. 7 despite being newcomers to the organization because their professional backgrounds well-equip them for the challenge. Recent incidents led to them joining Neighborhood Watch.

Johnson, a Bernardo Heights resident, said he joined five months ago after a car theft in his neighborhood. He is a business owner with Red Cross and ham radio operator experience. Sanders, an Eastview resident, said an intruder recently entering her backyard sparked her interest. She has experience in running nonprofit, all-volunteer organizations.

They said volunteers will still be needed, but their efforts will focus on providing community workshops on disaster preparation and crime prevention, and organizing events such as National Night Out. One of their first tasks will be going to other organizations in the community to teach others what Nextdoor.com is and can do so more residents join the site.

Sanders said this restructuring will also financially help the group since it will cut expenses for the organization that relies on grants and donations to cover its operating costs.