As a Block Watch captain peripherally involved with the capture of the two suspected burglars last week, I wanted to communicate to my neighbors, the mayor’s office and the police what many of us are saying in our Northwest Neighborhood.

Thanks to Shannon Affholter for organizing the block watch groups, establishing the e-mail alerts that helped capture these crooks and have so quickly raised our consciousness of our crime problem.

We thank the police for catching these crooks and for always being quick to respond to our 911 calls.

It would have been nice if the mayor’s office, the City Council or the police thought to contact the Block Watch to say “nice work” and “what can we do to help you build on this success?” A good start might be for the mayor and the City Council members who live in the Northwest Neighborhood to join the Block Watch.

We want to meet with the police department and the mayor’s office to discuss solutions to these crimes, including trial proactive programs that may include restricting alley access to residents of that block, providing residents inexpensive video cameras as a means of alley surveillance, police bike patrols, and a Web site that geographically depicts each of the crimes that Block Watches catalogue.

In less than 30 days as an active electronic group, the Block Watch captains have catalogued at least 20 serious crimes!

We’re all wondering: Has crime in our neighborhood increased dramatically or are we just hearing about more crimes because we’re communicating more effectively?

Certainly the Block Watch alerts will provide the police with far better data to deal with our increasing crime. We expect the police and the mayor to work with us to leverage this data to further reduce our crime.

Paul Donovan

Everett