By Ian Holmes

Block Watch program paying off in Nanaimo

Apr 12, 2017 | 2:50 PM

NANAIMO — An ever-rising number of people in the Nanaimo area are using the Block Watch program to make life harder on criminals.

Jason Grant, a Brookfield Dr. resident and member of his local Block Watch, arrived home on Friday, April 7 to find a man who appeared to be examining his garden hose near a lock box.

Grant said the young man said he was looking for his friend Ryan.

“I told him there is no Ryan here and we just stood there staring at each other, then he walked away,” Grant told NanaimoNewsNOW.  “Alarm bells went off in my head that something just wasn’t right. I needed to call the RCMP and let them take care of the situation.”

Nanaimo RCMP Cst. Gary O’Brien said investigators believed the suspicious man was planning to break into Grant’s home.

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O’Brien said police arrived a few minutes later and arrested the man nearby.

“We didn’t have enough to charge him for what he was doing on his property, but it was enough to stop him,” O’Brien said. “We recorded the incident. He (Grant) probably prevented further thefts or break-and-enters in his neighbourhood.”

O’Brien said the man lurking on Grant’s property had previous convictions for break-and-enters in the Lower Mainland and is well known to police in Nanaimo.

Grant said there are about 40 members in their local Block Watch program in the Brookfield Dr. and Glengarry Cr. area. He believed the program has made the area safer, noting a Facebook page and email list make it simple to exchange information.

“With social media nowadays it makes it a lot easier to get a hold of one another and to be able to post something quickly and have somebody post relatively quickly.”

Grant said another positive factor of their Block Watch initiative is neighbours now know each other better and communicate more frequently.

O’Brien said Block Watch is “extremely effective” and is a critical crime prevention tool for Nanaimo Mounties.

“We can’t be there 24/7, you can’t have a cop at every corner, but you can have 150 sets of eyes in any neighbourhood looking out,” O’Brien said.

He said 5,200 people are involved in 62 Block Watch programs formed between Cedar and Lantzville since 2009.

He said property crimes drop by at least 50 per cent when a neighbourhood Block Watch sign goes up.

“The neighbours get to know each other, they start working with the police and they get educated on how to protect themselves, their property and their neighbourhood,” O’Brien said.

ian.holmes@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @reporterholmes