Planning key to keeping communities safe

To the Editor:

Congratulations to the folks of Centreville, who are stepping up by getting involved in their community. Experience has proven that if you stick with it, you will make a difference.

It has been more years than I wish to admit since I attended community meetings in places like Harbourville, Canning or Waterville where the community had seen enough and were ready to tackle the same issues that plague Centreville today. We had community meetings and together we came up with plans to try and solve many of the same issues of vandalism, thefts or general disruptions to the normally pleasant lifestyle the residents of community had come to expect.

In our deliberations, we included many of the old proven approaches such a Neighborhood Watch, but we also became innovative and introduced new programs like Citizens’ Patrol and engaged the youth come up with ideas of their own.

One can never be totally certain if our efforts paid off or the young people just matured and realized there were better ways to occupy their time, but one thing I can say for sure is the situation always seemed to improve once the community became engaged and found a solution that everyone believed in and were willing to see through to a successful conclusion.

The one common key to our success was always an engaged community becoming involved, and the people of Centreville are doing just that!

Sadly, Centreville is no different than any other community that has experienced growth with an influx of young children who very quickly become young adolescents with time on their hands and nothing to do. The problems facing these communities are so predictable, yet we never seem to be prepared to deal with them when they occur. Perhaps the time has come for municipal planners to work more closely with the developers and crime prevention specialists to come up with five or 10-year crime prevention plans for new communities. The dilemma facing Centreville today will undoubtedly come to a neighborhood near you tomorrow.

I guess the message here is that history has a way of teaching us lessons and shame on us if we have failed to learn from the experiences of the past by neglecting to plan for the future. It will be interesting to look back 10 years from now to see if Kings County has taken advantage of the lessons learned and has become a leader in developing safe communities.

The opportunity is there, it just takes innovation and leadership.

Claude O’Hara