Joining Neighborhood Guard

Posted on March 24, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

Only organized neighborhoods can join Neighborhood Guard as members.
Individual persons are encouraged to volunteer in the organization.

Typical member organizations include:

Home Owners Associations (HOA)
Neighborhood Watch Groups
Other Crime prevention Groups such as:
- Crime stoppers
- Block Parents
- Crime watch
- Montclair Organized Neighborhoods. (MONs)

Signing up and getting started.

Request a presentation using the “Presentation Page“
Setup your organization if needed
Make a budget and collect the money Continue reading →

Enrollment Form

Posted on March 24, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

Link to Neighborhood Guard Bylaws

Your enrollment will not be completed until your enrollment fee has been paid in full.

Location, Location, Location of Camera

Posted on March 23, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

Nothing is more important that the right location for your camera.

No-one can place a camera perfect on the first try, plan to move it a couple of times until you get it just right. Make temporary installations at first; once the location has proven that it can do the job then make the installation permanent.

Place the camera at natural choke-points, that is where cars naturally slow down. PS. a stop sign is not a natural choke point, fleeing burglars will blast through the stop sign.

Place the camera on the outside of a curve to get the license plate from most angles, Never place camera on inside curve as your will only get the side of the vehicle

Place the camera on the outside of a curve to get the license plate from most angles. Never place camera on the inside curve as you will only get the side of the vehicle

Continue reading →

Neighborhood Guard going Non-profit!

Posted on March 22, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

Hi Friends of Neighborhood Guard.

We have been doing a lot of soul-searching here lately, and Wednesday evening the Interim Board of Neighborhood Guard unanimously decided to turn Neighborhood Guard into a 501(c)3 Non-profit instead of a COOP as originally planned.

Why this change?

A non-profit is easier to understand when we explain it
Tax deductible donations (Yeah!)
Simpler bylaws, less accounting headaches.
Closer spiritually to our core values of Community, Security and Volunteering.
We had already agreed to stay out of politics (a requirement for 503(c)3 non-profits) Continue reading →

Help get Crime fighting value from Code for Oakland

Posted on March 19, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

Code for USA has made Oakland one of the cities where they are helping this year.

Code For America works for you.

Oakland is soliciting feedback from its Citizens on which programming tasks they should assign to these young and talented programmers who have dedicated a year of they life to make Oakland better through software and Open source ?

There are 3 suggestions online that will hopefully help reduce the crime problem in Oakland, PLEASE vote all of them up NOW (click “I love it!” for each of them)

See the full subject on engage Oakland

Don’t Live in Oakland? vote anyway, the resulting code should be given out in Open source, and can benefit your city as well.

Is the 10 x more expensive Piedmont Cameras better?

Posted on March 18, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

City of Piedmont: 120 Vista Avenue, Piedmont, CA 94611 | (510) 420-3040

The City of Piedmont, CA is sharing the same problems as the communities that has joined Neighborhood Guard: A high rate of burglaries and violent home invasions. Like the members of Neighborhood Guard they want to use modern Security Camera technology to aid solving crimes. But this is where the similarities end.

Tasked with getting a quote for a camera system the Piedmont Chief of Police came back with a 1.1 Million proposal, that does neither include Operations (power and Wireless fees) nor Installation. The proposal is for 57 cameras, which gives a per camera price of $20,235 ! ($1,153,416 / 57 cameras).

Comparison:
Neighborhood Guard $2,200 per camera site
City of Piedmont $20,235 per camera site

Why is Piedmont’s solution so more expensive than the Neighborhood Guard solution?

Is it the installation? No, while Neighborhood Guard is based on volunteer DIY installation, the Piedmont quote does NOT include installation which will be a considerable additional expense. Continue reading →

Camera Tampering alarm and notifications

Posted on March 17, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

Vandals might try to disable your camera

The Axis P1347 Camera has Tamper detection.

Enable Tampering detection on your camera

It can detect if the camera lens is covered (spray paint, baseball cap etc.)

You can use the tamper detection to send an email or run a siren.

Continue reading →

Great Infographics on Break-ins.

Posted on March 12, 2013 by neighborhoodguardadmin

In January the nice folks over at eLocal asked us here at Neighborhood Guard for feedback on a new idea they had for a burglary related infographics. Today we can proudly present the result of our collaboration (eLocal doing all of the work and deserving all the credit).

Read and Learn.

eLocal’s infographics on Break-ins.
Click to see full version

Thank you Jaclyn Nicholson from eLocal.com

Neighborhood Guard

Community Crime Prevention Advice

Monthly Archives: March 2013