Another observation I want to make and if you can’t make a random observation on your own blog, where can you?
The operative word in “neighborhood watch” is “watch”.
There’s another word for an armed neighborhood watch. I’m wary of them. I think it’s inevitable that harm will come of them.
If the people have lost confidence in the police and can’t trust them to enforce the law, we have a very serious problem. You can see the consequences of that every weekend in the reports of homicides on the South Side of Chicago. Isn’t there some midpoint between servility to agents of law enforcement and taking the law into your own hands?
Along with “watch” there is the stupid phrase “stranger danger” promoted by police. You are much more likely to suffer death, injury or abuse, especially as a child, from a family member, friend, acquaintance or a person of trust, like a priest, teacher or cop. Not from a stranger.
Cops, in fact, are more likely than the general public to abuse their own family members. An effective “neighborhood watch” would be one in which folks monitored activities within the families of their neighbors rather than stalk strangers. In small-town Amerika, of course, everybody does know everybody’s business.