Children's Safety Zone
Mikelle Biggs Story Index
Contact The Mesa Police Department immediately with any new information!
Mesa Police, Criminal Investigations 480-644-4078, Sgt. Steven Stahl, steven_stahl@mesa.ci.mesa.az.us
Our society has schizophrenic reactions to crime. If crime is part of the plot of a movie or novel, we consider it entertainment. If it is the subject of a news report, it becomes part of our intuitive knowledge about life. Both color our perceptions about how safe we are.
Some of us develop a heightened perception of danger. We lock our doors. We install security systems in our homes and vehicles. We avoid crowds. We stop going out after dark. We think these actions, like some modern-day talismans, will protect us.
The same movies, books or news reports benumb others. We get jaded about crime. We buy homes in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, places ''free of riffraff.'' Crime happens in other places and touches the lives of other people. We, however, will live safely.
In our business centers, perceptions of crime prompt business owners to pressure police to enforce laws more aggressively. Where those laws are lacking, police pressure city councils to pass more control measures.
Tempe's ''Please Don't Sit on the Sidewalk'' ordinance and last month's crackdown on curfew violations in Ahwatukee are the two most recent examples. Customers who think they lead safe lives perceive danger at the hands of our growing children.
Sometimes there are crimes that happen so swiftly and strike so close to home that they deeply touch us. The sheer nearness of them makes us face the unnerving fact that, for all our locked doors, safe neighborhoods and controlling laws, we are all vulnerable.
An 11-year-old Mesa girl vanishes. Something about her disappearance rocks our perceptions about the safe, good life in the East Valley. Mikelle Biggs was one of a group of children waiting on a neighborhood street for an ice cream truck to arrive.
It is easy to image the scene. It is something we all did countless times as children. It's a rite of childhood, innocent childhood.
When Mikelle disappeared Jan. 2, she may have become one of thousands of children abducted by strangers nationwide each year. What kind of a person could commit such an act? Suddenly all those young faces on milk cartons take on new meaning.
There are 4,600 such child snatching a year, 46,000 in a decade. We wonder if such crimes can ever be avoided.
Amazingly we can fight back, and our best weapon is perception.
We need to plant a perception in the mind of criminals. We need to make these rogues of society understand that our neighborhoods are too safe for them to use as hunting grounds. A neighborhood Block Watch can help send this message.
The program has been around since the early 1980s. According to Officer Charlie Miller of the Tempe Police Department's Crime Prevention Program, Block Watches organize a crime-alert system on the community level, block by block.
Although their main purpose is to protect property, they also motivate citizens to be alert to all potential crime in their community.
Any neighborhood can have one. It starts with one concerned citizen motivating neighbors. Once people agree to start the program, participants train themselves to be alert to any suspicious activity and to phone police immediately.
For example, after two cars were burglarized in our community, a notice was mailed to all homeowners in a Block Watch area. The alert warned people not to leave valuables in their vehicles.
Lee Berge, the neighborhood Block Watch coordinator for the Manor in Warner Ranch, said that the four Block Watches in her neighborhood send a message to the criminal that people there are fighting back.
To be part of the program, homeowners from least 50 percent of the homes within the watch area must attend to Block Watch meetings twice a year. Neighborhoods doing this for two years get Block Watch signs posted on their street.
Block Watch may not be the ultimate crime-fighting weapon, but communities that build them will come to understand that a community that works with police for its own protection is the safest community of all.
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Reproduced with permission from: The Arizona Republic Written by: By KATHY FINBERG ©Copyright 1999 Arizona Republic |
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