Tracy Press

Second Thoughts: If Tracy residents want safer neighborhoods, they should look to a Southside gathering for a perfect example.

McDonald Park is known as a rough-and-tumble place — a regular in the Tracy police blotter better known for brawls than for barbecues. But for at least one Saturday, it was part of Norman Rockwell’s America.

Last weekend, present and former residents of Southside Tracy staked a claim to their public space with a reunion.

With so many folks enjoying the sunshine, it’s little wonder the park was crime-free that day. Public presence, Tracy police officer Irene Rose says, is the best way to keep crooks away.

A place can be protected by the thin blue line, but it takes local residents to truly make it safe.

“We can’t do it without them,” Rose said. “To really prevent crime, the community has to be part of it.”

Rose would know. She’s been in law enforcement for 31 years — 20 of those in Tracy. For the past five years and a stint before that, she’s been the city’s crime prevention officer. It’s her job to help residents fight crime, literally in their own front yards.

And using those yards, she says, is the surest way for residents to battle back the criminal element.

“People used to be in the front of their homes,” she said. “I tell people, ‘Quit living in the back of your home.’”

Give a portion of blame to the commuter culture. People drive home from jobs outside the city and retreat to fenced-off backyards in fenced-off subdivisions. It’s a loss of community that rears its head in the form of increased crime.

“But you can overcome that by being neighborly,” Rose told me. “Building a community is important to it being safe.”
That means getting to know the strangers next door, a strategy with a proven Tracy track record.

Following a fatal shooting at Alden Park in September 2007, Rose said that locals banded together to form a neighborhood watch. The crime rate there plummeted.

In the 8½ months before the homicide, Rose said, there were nine thefts, 17 burglaries, 13 reports of vandalism and five car thefts in the neighborhood. In the seven months after, the stat sheet totaled two thefts, one burglary, five cases of vandalism and one car theft.

Either it’s an aberration, or this whole knowing-your-neighbor thing really works.

Larry Gamino, an outspoken resident of the oft-maligned Southside, says he’s also trying to get a Neighborhood Watch group on its feet to complement the Southside Improvement Association.

“There really is a core of people who it’s easy to build on once they find an organization that they can relate to,” he said Wednesday. “We’re going to bring back the community center, the Guadalupe Center, to hopefully revive it and make it a center for child care, counseling, all that.”

The effort should pay off in the long run, bringing law-abiding residents out of the shadows and driving ne’er-do-wells into them.

“I think of criminals as I do cockroaches,” Rose said — they don’t like the light, and they don’t like it when people are around.

The lesson is timely.

The police department is gathering public input through a survey and meetings for its five-year safety plan. But as residents fire off suggestions for making the city safer, know that the solution might entail more than just police protection.

To make our neighborhoods look like Rockwell’s sketchbook, it’ll take more than sirens, guns and fences. It’ll take people who use their public places.

Time to unwind

For the next week, I’ll be trading the office for the Big Sky Country of Montana. I’ll return July 28, with the next Second Thoughts scheduled for Aug. 1.

Until then, enjoy the Central Valley summer.

• Leave a message for columnist Jon Mendelson at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or visit his blog for another round of Second Thoughts.

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written by what? , July 19, 2008

Have fun in Montana!

They dont have problems like this in Big Sky Country. I am from Montana. It is a very special place!

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written by amy , July 19, 2008

You will love it in Montana. Have relatives living in Billings, Montana, beautiful state, but cold in the winter, as bad as NY! So get heavy long johns on sale!

-amy

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written by amy , July 19, 2008

Sorry, just in case you return in the winter!!!

Beautiful weather at this time, you will miss the heat?

-amy

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written by amy , July 19, 2008

The closer the community knits, the more they know of each other, their children would be aware that other adult eyes would be on them. The humanity gets warmer when commonality is found in a group, those are the things you do not find in this electronic/digital age. Old values that proved to work best is making a come back.

Sure hope to see lot more of this in Tracy, soon. The event sounded like a great success, congrats!!

-amy