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Harewood crime watch seeing success; RCMP caution against going too far

Dec 11, 2017 | 4:54 PM

NANAIMO — Everyone in Harewood always knew where a specific white RV was parked.

It’s a constant fixture in crime watch groups on Facebook centered on the Harewood neighbourhood.

“It was kind of a game, sort of like Where’s Waldo,” Derek Goring told NanaimoNewsNOW. He’s the admin for the Nanaimo and Harewood Crime Watchdogs Facebook group, where concerned community members post about criminal activity they’ve seen in Harewood. Goring started the group after living in Harewood for a year and had both his and his girlfriend’s car broken into.

Since then, he said the group has picked up a substantial amount of momentum and sits at over 300 members since starting in October 2017.

“We’ve got drug dealers down the road here and drug dealers down the road over there. We’ve tried to put a stop to it, brought the cops down here many times.”

Looking at the future, Goring said he wants to expand to possibly group meetings and becoming more involved in the community at large.

Goring said he’s pleased with how many arrests and charges have been laid as a result of someone notifying the community and police about criminal activity they see.

“The cops do their job, they do a great job, but sometimes they need help from the community. They can’t be everywhere.”

However, Nanaimo RCMP Cst. Gary O’Brien said often these types of groups don’t go far enough.

“What happens is the RCMP is often not looped into this. If they want something done, as far as crime prevention, they need to involve us. And often it’ll stop at public shaming.”

He said photos of a possibly criminal incident or someone looking suspicious are often posted without context and posters don’t realize the legality and responsibility of posting something online.

Instead of a broad Facebook group, O’Brien recommended more blockwatch groups in the Harewood neighbourhood, of which there are already several.

Carly McLean runs the Hawthorne Blockwatch, in the Buttertubs Marsh area. The group is anonymous, primarily run through email and makes sure RCMP are connected.

She said rather than treat any incident or suspicion as a conversation, it’s more of a business transaction where someone calls RCMP and then emails her the concern, which is then anonymously sent out to others in the Blockwatch.

“It’s a group of concerned citizens protecting the neighbourhood, as opposed to ‘This house has this issue and we called and then they had another issue.’ I think it’s better to treat it as a business transaction of ‘This is what I noticed, it was reported’ and then move on.”

By keeping it anonymous and with discussion to a minimum, McLean said they’ve managed to effectively monitor the neighbourhood without gossip or drama.

“We all have to live in the neighbourhood, so you never want to generate any kind of arguments on how things are policed or how things are. Lets work together to keep our neighbourhood safe, lets not call people out on the things they’ve done.”

 

spencer@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit