The holidays typically bring an uptick in crimes of opportunity.  Be sure to secure your vehicles and garage doors  when unattended and do not leave valuables visible. Alert your contractors and other visitors to do the same as  criminals have been known to roam the neighborhood during the day looking for targets.  We ask that you report anything suspicious to the SP Police at 727-893-7780. 

One of the best ways to promote crime awareness and prevention is by participating in Neighborhood Crime Watch.  Contact Mark at 727-804-3828 or ewinml@msn.com to join today!  We recently purchased some new bicycle signs as we have more patrollers electing to bike the neighborhood.  Keep an eye out for them and all of our patrollers and be sure to say Hi!!

Many crime prevention and reporting tools can be found at www.stpete.org/police.

All Bears Welcome	No Bears Allowed

In this article I’m going to let you know everything that you may have always wanted to know about the Broadwater Neighborhood Watch.  The first thing is that we can always use more volunteers to continue to make Broadwater a great place to live and to keep us safe.  How do you  do that?  Contact me at ewinml@msn.com or text me at 727-804-3828 and become one of the current 42 homes that patrol our neighborhood.  When you think about it, 42 of our 532 homes in Broadwater is really not that many.  Let’s step it up, I know we can do better.  It takes around 1 hour to patrol once or twice a month.

I asked our patrollers to tell me about their patrols and what they would like the Broadwater residents to know. 
Here are the best of the best comments that were provided:

1. We have more cars parked on our streets than in the past
2. If you are out of town let your neighbors know and have them pick up your paper, flyers, packages and mail
3. Cars are speeding and are parking on the wrong side of the street under the no parking sign,
4. We have a few vacation rentals (only 3 rentals less than 30 days per year are allowed)
5. Fewer garage doors are left open, but some homes can use more external lighting
6. Some are patrolling between 4 AM and 6 AM, some during their late evening walks, some patrol whenever they leave from or return to Broadwater, and there you have it. 

So, what did we learn from this? We’re doing better at closing our garage doors and locking our cars to prevent crimes of opportunity.  We have more parked and speeding cars, vacation rentals are up and the best comment of all was, drum roll please “It takes the Broadwater village to keep us all secure!”  Don’t wait any longer to become involved, contact me and help keep our beautiful Broadwater safe and secure!!

If you see something unusual call the Police non-emergency line at 727-893-7780 (store this in your phone)

Remember “DON’T FEED THE BEARS”
Mark Ewin
I’m waiting to hear from you.
Your Broadwater Neighborhood Watch Coordinator