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Short Stuff: Neighborhood Watch · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and this is short Stuff because Jerry's here
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: for Dave and we're talking about the neighborhood Watch. So
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: look out.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: I think the fact of this podcast is right off
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: the bat. Yep, Because if you've ever seen a neighborhood watch,
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: like the official neighborhood Watch sign is in the National
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Neighborhood Watch program official organization. If you've ever seen that
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: sign and that I was going to say silhouetted, but
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: it's really just sort of a kind of a cartoony
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: black figure on those orange and white signs. It looks
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: very much like a film noir villain. That guy actually
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: kind of peering back over her shoulder. That dude has
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: a name, and it's Boris the Burglar.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Very get nice little trivia point.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one of the things that fascinates me
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: about this and why I picked this one, And also
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: thanks to Terry Yarlegata and Adoya Johnson, the first from
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, the latter from the Howard University School
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: of Law. But like, when I see signs like that,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: they seem like an urban archaeological find because they're from
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the seventies, the very early seventies, and sometimes in old
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: neighborhood and you know, Atlanta's chuck full of old neighborhoods.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: You can tell that sign was put up in nineteen
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: seventy two. Yeah, yeah, and that neighborhood watch probably hasn't
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: functioned for forty years, you know, And I just find
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: that super fascinating. So because of that fascination, I've dragged
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: us into the discussion about neighborhood watch as it is.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: That's right, which was formed officially in nineteen seventy two
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: after a rise in crime in the late sixties.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Thank you leaded gas again.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: The National Neighborhood Watch Program is the official name, and
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: that's under the umbrella of the National Sheriff's Association, and
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  Speaker 3: it's a national organization in that they have guidelines. You
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: can get some information in pamphlets on kind of how
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: to run one in your neighborhood. Although so we'll see
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: that kind of depends on your neighborhood what you want
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: to do with this program.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Sure, but they don't like there are way too.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Many neighborhood watch programs, you know, local ones for them
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: to really be involved in matter on a national level.
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  Speaker 2: It's just sort of the umbrella organization.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which can be a criticism, as we'll see, but
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the whole idea is basically, you can the cops can
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: get an assist from people who are kind of looking
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: for problems in their neighborhood, or at the very least
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: are on enough lookout that when it happens, they notice
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: it right, they don't just walk right past it, and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: then you can call the cops, and then the cops come,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and then the burglar boris the burglars thwarted. And all
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: of this is kind of based on what's called the
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Chicago School of social disorganization theory. It's a sociological theory
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: from the twenties and the thirties which basically says, if
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: you have a neighborhood that doesn't have very strong social ties,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: so neighbors don't really know each other that well, they
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: don't trust each other that well, very little community control,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: where people feel very confident about just committing crimes. That's
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the most vulnerable kind of neighborhood. And so a neighborhood
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  Speaker 1: watch essentially is meant to at least take care of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the second one, where it's like, you know, we're going
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: to make sure you don't feel confident about committing crime,
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  Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily fulfill the first one, which is
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: to bring communities together.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. We should mention kind of briefly that
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  Speaker 3: For a little while. After nine to eleven, the NSA
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: got a grant from the Department of Justice where they
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  Speaker 3: rebranded as USA on Watch, where they're like, hey, not
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: only should you just be looking out for boris the burglar,
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: but you should be looking out for terrorists in your neighborhood.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: But that grant ran out and they said, yeah, maybe
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: we should just stick to being a neighborhood to watch.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it went from keeping an eye on your neighborhood
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  Speaker 1: to spying on your neighbors. I think was essentially the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: spirit of it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty read.
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  Speaker 1: But this was the era when the postal workers, the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: mail carriers, we're expected to spy on everyone. Yeah. It
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: was a very paranoid time, understandably, so it was a
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: really rough time for the United States.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, some some would say there was a privacy grab
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  Speaker 3: that happened, Oh I hadn't thought about that, or a
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: you know, a lack of privacy grab.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I guess no, I get, I get what you mean.
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  Speaker 1: An intrusion, an intrusive intrusion.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, take a break for saying it just right.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, Let's take a break, man, and we'll come
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  Speaker 1: back and talk about whether these things actually prevent crime
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  Speaker 1: in the first place. All right, we'll be right back, So, Chuck,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the idea of neighborhood watch makes sense, but not everything
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that is intuitively right actually pans out when put under
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  Speaker 1: scientific scrutiny. It turns out neighborhood watch programs do hold
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: up under scientific scrutiny. At least one study from all
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  Speaker 1: the way back in two thousand and six, not a
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  Speaker 1: lot of studies about neighborhood watch programs. Apparently, they found
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  Speaker 1: eighteen other studies, and fifteen of those showed that neighborhood
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  Speaker 1: watch programs seem to prevent crime, Like the neighborhood watch
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  Speaker 1: program came along in a decline in crime happened afterward.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: So it does seem like they can prevent crime. They
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily thwart crime in progress.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I guess yeah.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: I mean they will tell you, and proponents of the
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  Speaker 3: program will say, like, hey, just having that sign up
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  Speaker 3: in your neighborhood is going to prevent crime somewhat because
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: you know, if a ne'er do well sees that you're
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: under neighborhood watch, they'll just move on to another neighborhood.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know about that, but that's what they say.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Well, it makes sense, Like, especially a non professional who's
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: just like I'm going to break into houses, they might
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: give them a second thought. So and if it prevents
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: one burglary, it's a crime to trent.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Sure.
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  Speaker 3: If you want to organize one of these things, you
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  Speaker 3: can recruit people and get together.
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  Speaker 2: You can schedule some meetings.
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  Speaker 3: You can get some local law enforcement in there maybe
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: to come to one of those meetings and kind of
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: discuss how these things go. If you're like a really
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: buttoned down neighborhood watch group, you might have an actual
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  Speaker 3: liaison with law enforcement. You might have a group coordinator
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  Speaker 3: and block captains and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 1: They might have sashes. In the well funded neighborhood.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: Watch group, they might they might even have patrols. And
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: this is where it can get a little dodgy. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: because there have been plenty of instances in the United
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: States where these things have turned from sort of neighborhood
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  Speaker 3: watch where you see something and you maybe called the
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: cops to people kind of acting on their own vigilanti style,
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: or people on their own calling the cops just because
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: someone is guilty of, you know, being a person of
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: color in their neighborhood.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: That certainly happens all the time.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. So you talked about a lack of
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: oversight and the fact that the National Neighborhood Watch Association
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: just doesn't they can't possibly keep up with them. I
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: think there's something like twenty twenty eight thousand neighborhood watch
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  Speaker 1: groups that are registered right now, and probably a lot
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: of them are defunct, but there's still that's way too
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: many for this probably just paper thin funded organization to
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: keep up with. So they're just like, hey, you know,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: they register with us, so we tell them best practices,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: but if they turn into vigilante groups we don't know about,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with us. Some people are like,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. You're actually encouraging the
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: formation of these groups in the first place. You can
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: make an argument that a neighborhood would come up with
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: their own content of a neighborhood watch anyway, probably right,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So it does seem like the National Neighborhood Watch Association
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: is probably fairly at least not guilty. Their hands aren't dirty,
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  Speaker 1: I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But even still,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: they're quite aware that some of these neighborhood watch groups,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: whether they're registered or not, do evolve INDI vigil anti groups. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I think nationally their aim is pure. But
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  Speaker 3: then when you get the wrong neighborhood and a wrong
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  Speaker 3: group of people, like happened here in the state of Georgia,
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  Speaker 3: you might have a neighborhood watch group targeting a family
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  Speaker 3: that they don't like being there and sitting outside their
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: house and digging through their trash and photographing the family
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  Speaker 3: and digitally audio recording them and monitoring their movements. That
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  Speaker 3: has happened in Springfield, Missouri. The Klan set up a
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: neighborhood watch and had signs saying neighborhood watch. You can
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  Speaker 3: sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Other we talked about well funded groups too. Some
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  Speaker 1: of them will use police scanners. Some of them even
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: have invested those flashing dome lights like all nake a
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Gunyah or police squad for their cars when they're going
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: to respond to a report.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not a cop.
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  Speaker 1: Still, this is your neighbor who works in it during
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the day and frankly drinks one or two beers too
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  Speaker 1: many each night, showing up with a flashing light at
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  Speaker 1: your front door because your neighbor across the street thought
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: that you were doing something suspicious or somebody was doing
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  Speaker 1: something suspicious at your house. Yeah, that is not okay
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  Speaker 1: under basically any circumstance. Again, like you said, the concept
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: is pure, it gets perverted way too easily because it
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  Speaker 1: gives power to the people who want the power, because
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: those are the ones very often who volunteer for this stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And you know, I talked about different
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: crimes that were committed. Of course, the most obvious is
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  Speaker 3: when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager
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  Speaker 3: in Sanford, Florida, in twenty twelve. And Zimmerman, you know,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: supposedly was a neighborhood watch volunteer. And I think their
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  Speaker 3: neighborhood watch was not one of the official under the
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  Speaker 3: National Neighborhood Watch at least a National neighborhood watches, like
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  Speaker 3: they weren't us, right, but that's how far it can go. So,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: you know, we want to keep our neighborhood safe, but
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: settle down.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Man, that was this seems like a lifetime ago, doesn't it.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
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  Speaker 3: Man, yeah, that's it was sort of. I mean, what
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  Speaker 3: twenty twelve? How many years ago is at thirteen?
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, right on the nose, so there is. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently wrong with keeping an eye on your neighborhood,
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  Speaker 1: especially if it helps you meet some of your neighbors
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  Speaker 1: and you guys work together to prevent people from breaking
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: into your homes or selling drugs on your street or whatever. Like,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: it's totally understandable. It seems like, according to the National
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Neighborhood Watch Association that the kind of the steps that
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: they've laid out since nineteen seventy two are not necessarily
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: fall But that doesn't mean that groups are just not forming.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: They're forming in other ways through like text chains, like
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: you know, neighborhood text threads. There's a lot of neighborhoods
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: at Facebook pages. Next Door is a big one. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: If you want to read some crazy off of the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: chain stuff like go on to next door. It can
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: be pretty entertaining and then ring, which is that that
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: camera video doorbell, the first one I think now is
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: owned by Amazon. They partner with law enforcement and they're
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: really doing their best to fill in the gaps in
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the police state.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you're.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: If you want to get one of these started in
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: your neighborhood and want to be on the up and
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: up and do it the right way, you can go
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: to that National Neighborhood Watch website and get officially registered.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: They will have some resources to kind of guide you along.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: But again, you know, do it, do it the right way.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: It's not a crime to just be in your neighborhood.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: And you see plenty of, you know, the videos every
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: day on social media where somebody, you know, sometimes someone
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: that does live in that neighborhood is even accosted because
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: they're a person of color who dares to park in
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: their own driveway and walk to their own front door.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: That has happened before. Yeah, yeah, I think won't jeez
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: check the show stuffs out on that bomber note.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: I think, so okay. Stuff you should Know is a
• 12:25
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• 12:31
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