The Boston Police Department has launched a crime awareness website for Jamaica Plain to raise neighborhood crime awareness and encourage friendship between residents, city officials said.
The BPD asked Jamaica Plain resident Joseph Porcelli to create the E13/Jamaica Plain Neighbors Network after the success of a neighborhood watch group he started in Charlestown in 2006. More than 500 Charlestown residents joined the site and contributed to a 16 percent decrease in crime, according to a press release.
Jamaica Plain residents can join the website to receive information about neighborhood crime and to communicate with neighbors. Since its launch earlier this month, the website has gained more than 140 members Porcelli said.
“We can’t be face-to-face with everybody all at once,” he said, “It allows us to really reach and communicate and offer really valuable information from our computer screens.”
The moderators of the site verify the addresses of Jamaica Plain residents who request to join the network. Once accepted into the network, members choose the information available to their neighbors in order to ensure member privacy, Porcelli said.
Jamaica Plain neighborhood coordinator Colleen Keller said the site is not a foolproof way to combat crime and that other crime prevention efforts should supplement it.
“Some people are just not computer savvy and won’t sign up for it,” she said. “You have to use every mode that you can.”
City Councilor John Tobin of Jamaica Plain said the biggest challenge for the site is keeping members engaged. Members must continuously update the site to ensure its success.
“If people go to a website one day, and then they come back two days later and the same information is there, it’s tough,” he said.
Allston resident Devin Kelly said a crime watch website would be beneficial to off-campus students, and she encourages BU to adopt a similar program.
“If it was easy to check — like something off of the BU home page, I would check it more often,” Kelly, a College of Arts and Sciences junior, said.
Kelly said college students would check the website more frequently than other Boston residents because they are online more often.
“College students check MySpace, Facebook and websites like that more regularly than residents of the Boston area do,” he said.
Kelly’s roommate, Phil Benjamin, a College of Engineering senior, said a similar site for BU students could have helped prevent a burglary at their house last fall.
“They broke into our house the same way that they broke into other houses earlier in the week,” he said. “If we had known about [the other neighborhood robberies] beforehand, we would have been more prepared for it.”