Police Chief Encourages Neighborhood Watch in Light of Cairo Protests

In light of Egyptians banding together to protect each other during the recent Cairo protests, San Marino Police Chief John Schaefer sent out an e-mail encouraging San Marino citizens to join the Neighborhood Watch.

Schaefer sent the e-mail on Feb. 2 to about 900 residents who subscribe to the CLEAR program, which notifies subscribers about local police news.

Schaefer’s friend who lives in Egypt described neighbors uniting during the chaotic protests.

Part of Schaefer’s friend’s e-mail that was in the CLEAR message reads:

“These have been extraordinary days in Egypt. I’ve never seen such popular solidarity and banding together to protect neighborhoods against thugs and thieves.

I’ve been up every night for the last 4 nights, from 1-4 or 4-7 or some other late night/early morning shift, we are patrolling our street to make sure that there are no intruders.

Anyway, the men in our building got together and at first we did what we could to set up a kind of defense inside the building. Then we realized that there were patrols being established on other streets nearby, which was heartening to us because we didn’t feel so isolated and we decided to open up the gates of our building, block our street at both ends, and set up shifts to make sure that no undesirables got near the building. In fact, nothing dangerous happened that night, but I was pretty nervous because we could hear gunfire not too far away plus the police had disappeared from the streets (still a mystery as to why that happened) which just invited more trouble.

Anyway, on practically every street near us, community residents set up roadblocks and patrols, and by the second night we were much better organized and felt much better prepared. What also helped is that a few well-equipped and highly trained Egyptian army commandos were posted on our street, and still are in the evenings, and I’m sure that one of those guys was/is worth about 200 or more of us amateurs (we’ve been carrying around baseball bats, which are notoriously ineffective against automatic weapons)."

 Schaefer then goes on to say in the e-mail:

“While the prospect of massive protests to overthrow the government do not seem possible, earthquakes, riots or even every-day crime are variations of this type of situation, and residents, including those here in San Marino, need to be prepared to respond.

Are you prepared? Do you know your neighbors? Do you know what you would do if something like a major earthquake, a riot or a crime were to occur in our area?

If you and your neighbors would like to be better prepared, please consider allowing us to host a Neighborhood Watch Meeting in your neighborhood.”

The day before Schaefer sent out the e-mail, he met with local Norma Mardelli, an Egyptian whose family in Cairo told her that neighbors were coming together to protect each other.

Mardelli sent San Marino Patch a on Feb. 4, encouraging others to get involved in Neighborhood Watch.

“Being a resident of San Marino for the last 22 years as well as being born and raised in Egypt, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the current events and how close it is to home.

For the last 2 years, the Chief of Police, Fire Chief, the councilmen and a few residents have been trying to launch a neighborhood watch and disaster awareness program.  Several meetings and events have been planned yet not greatly attended.” 

Schaefer said the dynamic of San Marino and other communities is that people are busy and preoccupied with their own lives.

“Things happen in neighborhoods and people don’t know or pay attention because it doesn’t immediately impact them,” said Schaefer. “So there isn’t a lot of reliance for neighbors to come together and be looking out for each other.”

A burglary happens every week in San Marino, said Schaefer, who encouraged others to get to know their neighbors so they can better tell if something out of the ordinary is occurring on their street.

In fact, from 2009 to 2010, as San Marino Patch reported in December.

“Eventually what we are going to do is break the community down into smaller sections and neighborhoods and people become a captain and organize the team in that neighborhood,” said San Marino City Councilman Richard Sun. “Once a year they have a meeting where the police department and fire department come to that meeting.”

Sun said the city would love to combine Neighborhood Watch with the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), which is run by the San Marino Fire Department. Sun said he will undergo training to become a part of CERT.

“A little bit of my fear is when I send that [e-mail] out and people think, ‘Oh, my gosh, this guy is a nut. He thinks we’re going to have total chaos here and rioting in the street, and that will never happen, we’re in America,’” said Schaefer. “But on a lesser scale, those kinds of things do go on. People may say, ‘We haven’t had an earthquake in a while, and it’s not a pressing problem,’ and it goes to the backburner.”

Mardelli and Schaefer said that in the case of a natural disaster, it is important to know who on your street is a doctor or who has a generator or water.

“Our Police and Fire department will not have the man power to reach each and every home yet would like to be able in advance to train and plan for it as much as possible,” Mardelli said in her letter.

Schaefer agreed that after a natural disaster, government services may not be around for three to four days or a week. He said one San Marino resident responded to the email and said that he has a rifle to protect himself, but Schaefer said he is not encouraging residents to arm themselves with guns.

“This model of policing we have in America now is modeled after something that a fellow called Sir Robert Peale developed in the 1800s,” said Schaefer. “One of the things he said in his policing principals was that the model should never be that there’s enough police officers on every corner to watch everything people are doing. They are just an extension of the community. In a city like San Marino, we have 13,000 residents and 28 cops; there’s no way that 28 cops can look over continuously 13,000 people.”

San Marino resident Jeff Groseth, who received Schaefer’s e-mail, said he has a generator and two weeks worth of food, water and supplies in case of an emergency.

“I thought [the e-mail] was an interesting way to promote emergency preparedness, which in California we tend to be really lax on,” said Groseth, a staff engineer for Caltech’s Submillimeter Observatory. “We have potentially really big problems that we are exposed to. We live on top of an earthquake fault that is thousands of years overdue for an earthquake.”

Groseth said the person who was his Neighborhood Watch captain retired from that duty but Groseth wants to see if at least a few neighbors would be willing to sit down and listen to someone talk about Neighborhood Watch.

If San Marino residents are interested in Neighborhood Watch, they can contact Police Chief John Schaefer at 626-300-0723 or jschaefer@smpd.us and Norma Mardelli at 818-400-3794.