Community Watch Program

Community Watch is a crime prevention program that involves active participation from citizens in an assisted partnership with local law enforcement to reduce crime and victimization in their communities.

The Community Watch Program involves:

1.   Citizens protecting themselves and their property by using common sense crime prevention practices.

2.   This program allows neighbors to get to know each other, to start looking out for one another and to report suspicious activities.

3.   Community Watch also allows citizens to work together with law enforcement to make their community safer and crime free.

Why Start a Community Watch?

Law enforcement officers cannot be in every neighborhood twenty-four hours a day, so citizen involvement is necessary to combat crime.  You and your neighbors are the ones who really know what’s going on in your community, and by you and your neighbors working together as well as with local law enforcement, citizens can help fight crime.  Your involvement is key in deterring and fighting crime in your community. 

The Goal of Community Watch

The goal of the Community Watch Program is to make criminals aware that everyone in the community is watching, and that suspicious activity will be report to law enforcement.

Across Pitt County and the rest of North Carolina, citizens are working together to secure their homes, mark their valuables, identify drug dealers, develop child safety programs, and improve their environment where they and their family live.

How to start a Community Watch

Contact your local law enforcement about starting a Community Watch Program.  The Pitt County Sheriff’s Office can assist with information, materials and technical advice regarding the Community Watch Program.  Call 830-4600 Pitt County Sheriff’s Office Crime Prevention Unit.

Community Watch Programs work when people get involved and stay involved.

There are numerous activities that can be utilized through the Community Watch program:

1. Operation I.D.
This involves engraving your valuables with your Driver’s License Number; this makes it easier to identify property if it is stolen. 

2. Community Clean-Up
Get neighbors involved in a community clean-up day, you are working to clean up crime, clean up the community as well.  Make the community safe as well as a beautiful place to live.

3. Victim Assistance
If a neighbor were to be victimized know how to help that person. 

4. Community Watch Signs
Purchase Community Watch Signs, this will help identify your community as a place where citizens look out for each other.

5. Mc Gruff House
      This is a home in the community where children can go if they feel frightened or
      threatened.

6. National Night Out
      Communities participate in National Night Out Against Crime; neighbors come
      together and celebrate their drive to stop crime in their community.

7. Awareness Programs
There may be a specific topic a community wants to be educated on such as: