Newly appointed police commissioner Edward Davis said decreasing the record-high crime levels is his Number One priority, and in doing so has summoned Boston residents, churches, social organizations and crime watch groups to marshal the effort.

While he has not publicized the specifics of his strategy, groups have taken the initiative to step up their own anti-violence campaigns.

Davis said at his induction ceremony earlier this month that one of his paramount roles as police commissioner will include managing the department’s Neighborhood Crime Watch Unit, an organization that encourages neighbors to create community groups of their own to reduce crime.

Neighborhood Crime Watch Unit coordinator Judith Wright said her four-member team helped launch more than 1,300 crime watch groups since its inception 11 years ago, although only about 700 are still active. The unit adopted the mantra “positive activity displaces negative activity,” pledging that community events including block parties and park cleanups are as effective as neighborhood watch groups in fighting crime.

Wright said the number of watch groups is growing fast, and predicts twice as many groups will be formed in 2007 than there were this year.

“We tell them to have some sort of social act,” Wright said. “Each group works it out for themselves.”

Wright mentioned a South End neighborhood group that observed a woman with a baby carriage often meeting strangers in a park. Neighbors suspected the woman was dealing drugs and decided to pick up the litter in the park. After talking to the woman during the project, neighbors reported the woman did not return.

Wright said her department does not try to force the groups to stay involved but encourages them to take the initiative themselves.

“We don’t go to a neighborhood and say, ‘You have to start a neighborhood watch,'” Wright said, admitting her unit nevertheless urged a group of Charlestown residents to create more watches to clean up their community.

“I would like to see every block of the city have a crime watch,” she said. “We’re getting there.”

Charlestown Neighborhood Watch coordinator Lynne Levesque said the difference between outright crime watches and community groups is becoming blurred as neighbors find easier ways to balance their own busy schedules with keeping their neighborhoods crime free.

“If they see issues going on, they’ll call the police,” Levesque said. “But we’re not vigilantes and we don’t pay people to watch the street.”

Levesque said neighbors often feel safer by simply agreeing to turn on their porch lights or petitioning the city to add more streetlights to their block.

Although Charlestown is less violent than other areas, drug use has been heavy, Levesque said, adding she has heard her area called “the heroin capital of the northeast.”

Levesque said her organization is making progress, estimating that about half of Charlestown is currently protected by a crime watch group.

Still, she added her group “would be nowhere” without the assistance of Wright’s unit and police officers patrolling the streets. Both community groups and police are vital to fighting crime, she said, noting crime watches are formed by volunteers who hold full-time jobs who feel there are too few police to patrol every street at once.

Wright’s unit serves a vital role in linking fragmented neighborhood groups citywide, Levesque added.

“Often, when you start a neighborhood watch, it moves the crime to another neighborhood,” she said. “We don’t want it moving street-to-street. We want it out of Charlestown.”

Boston Police Department Neighborhood Crime Watch Unit officer Joseph Porcelli — who serves as a community organizer and is a member in Wright’s unit — founded Neighbors for Neighbors, a group that organizes everything from block parties to safe walks, after two of his friends were robbed, one at gunpoint.

“One thing we know is that when people get together they’re more apt to care for each other,” Porcelli said.

Although the group was originally founded to bolster neighborhood safety, Porcelli said it has expanded its focus beyond fighting crime.

“It’s now more than a neighborhood watch group,” he said. “They’re getting together for the sake of getting together.”

Since its creation two years ago, Neighbors for Neighbors, which is currently filing for nonprofit status, has grown to include 1,400 members, Porcelli said, adding most activities are social ones.

“Our accomplishment is that we’ve kept people together after the threat is gone,” Porcelli said.

After moving to Allston, Jason Gould and his wife helped form a crime watch to monitor Ringer Park because he said, “It makes sense for people using the park to be stewards of the park.”

Gould said watching the park is not as demanding as protecting more violent neighborhoods, and his group most often notifies police when members witness people writing graffiti, smoking marijuana or getting into fights on the basketball court.

“For the most part, the park is very safe and the [crime watch] is committed to keeping it that way,” he said.