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E-mail StoryNeighborhood raises $3,000 to fight crime, can't find any takers
| Wednesday, Apr 16 2008 3:36 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Apr 16 2008 3:37 PM
In the middle of the night, thieves stole the tires and wheels off a new Chevy Avalanche pickup truck parked in the Stonecreek neighborhood.
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This Chevy Avalanche's tires and wheels were stolen in the middle of the night as it was sitting in a Stonecreek neighborhood driveway. The neighborhood has raised money as a reward to control crime.
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The thieves left the truck sitting precariously on cinder blocks.
The incident early Tuesday morning was the latest in a string of crimes that has much of the upscale neighborhood up in arms.
So much so that residents have donated $3,000 to start a reward fund to help catch and convict lawbreakers in Stonecreek. The tract in south Bakersfield has 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot homes worth several hundred thousand dollars each.
A group calling itself the Stonecreek Neighborhood Watch Association offered the money to the local Secret Witness program, which offers rewards to anonymous tipsters.
But the neighborhood and its money was turned away.
The Secret Witness program — a a consortium of police, sheriff, media and private businesses — is for more serious crimes such as murder and kidnapping, the neighborhood was told.
If Secret Witness started offering rewards for lesser crime, there would be no stopping people wanting to offer rewards for “minor crimes” like a stolen bicycle or a car break-in.
“I was disappointed in that,” said resident Donna Hazard, the association treasurer. “They are supposed to be here to protect us.”
City Councilman Zack Scrivner, who represents the Stonecreek area, said he has another solution for the neighborhood.
Both Scrivner and Bakersfield Police Chief Bill Rector said if there is a demand to give rewards for so-called “lesser crimes,” then maybe they could be offered through the anonymous tip line on the city’s graffiti Web site.
Scrivner will present his idea today to the council’s Safe Neighborhoods Committee. He already has preliminary information from the city attorney’s staff that it may work.
“I think it could be very successful,” Scrivner said.
The police chief said more research is needed, but agreed that it makes sense to find a way to offer rewards if there is demand in the community.
There certainly is a demand in Stonecreek.
Neighbors say their homes and cars have been broken into, windows have been busted, palm trees uprooted and taken, fences and walls sprayed with graffiti, and in one high-profile case, a foreclosed home was besieged with underage drinkers and stripped of its expensive appliances.
The latter incident took place on March 1 on Whitegate Avenue. Neighbor Matthew Mitchell said he called police four times in a 2 and 1/2-hour period before officers finally showed up to shut down the party.
And then officers didn’t take names or cite anyone, Mitchell complained. Police confirmed they took no action against the partyers.
“The concept of protect and serve went out the window,” he said.
Some other examples from the Stonecreek neighborhood:
• Charla Cormier said both her car and her husband’s truck have been broken into twice since they moved to the neighborhood in 2002.
• Olivia Carmignani said thieves brazenly stole her gardner’s equipment while he was mowing her back lawn.
• Bruce Torgerson was enjoying a quiet evening at home when someone shot a ball bearing through their front window.
Torgerson is now president of the neighborhood association. The group started off as a simple neighborhood watch, but eventually evolved to the point where residents began pooling cash for rewards.
Torgerson said he would hold a meeting next week to discuss how a rewards program might work. He said he also wants to have a watch captain on each street.
“If this thing works in our neighborhood, it can work in other neighborhoods,” Torgerson said.
Flyers, e-mails, phone calls and over-the-fence chats have spread the word in the neighborhood, but still not everyone is aware.
Residents Linda Bowser and Rico Cruz, who live on different streets, said they weren’t aware of the effort. Both initially said they weren’t even aware of a crime problem.
But then Cruz remembered one neighbor having a trailer stolen during the day about a year ago, and another neighbor whose Hummer was stolen six months ago. Bowser said he heard a nearby neighbor had windows broken out of his car a week ago.
She also heard about graffiti and vandalism in the park.
“I would hate living across from that park,” she said. “What should be a positive is a negative.”
She and many of her neighbors talk about recurring problems of cars speeding through their streets, especially from Ridgeview High School, just across Stine Road.
While the crimes reported don’t include violence, several people in the neighborhood didn’t want their names publicized for fear of retaliation.