The Virginian-Pilot has an article about how the residents in Cradock are taking their neighborhood back. The activism has caused a 49% decrease in property crime when comparing the first five months of 2007 with the same period in 2008. The article: Cradock residents encouraged by drop in crime
Tim Smith, Talbot Park resident, wrote in with the following:
Someone needs to contact this man and find out how he did this and how we can do the same here in Wards Corner and the neighborhoods around.
I said it before, get 25 to 50 people together and with a pair of uniform police officers, pick random Friday & Saturday nights each month and walk back and forth from Wards Corner to Southern Shopping Center (through the neighborhoods)from sunset to sunrise.
Write down ALL license plates of cars entering and exiting; make yourselves seen and show the people that live in this area that we are taking our streets back. Force the criminal element to move out of our area cause their customers will not want to be seen by us.
As the story shows below, IT WILL WORK but people need to get involved. We have enough civic leagues in the Partnership Area we would only need one or two deticated people from each neighborhood to be willing to work together. We could even move around the Partnership Area after we clean up the hot spots, keeping the criminals off guard like they do to the police.
I live in Talbot Park, contact me at timsmith114@cox.net.
Remember, we are the only ones that have our best interests in mind and developers do not like to invest in declining neighborhoods. No back room deals; no vote for this & I’ll vote for that; no Ward boundries, just our actions; in our neigborhoods; our results; our rewards.
Wards Corner Now - Wards Corner, Norfolk, Virginia 
Thank you Tim Smith. Appears that you have taken on the task of contacting this guy. We need vigiolantes like yourself to work the neighborhoods. You are right, it worked in San Francisco and in Washington DC. They did, however, involve the civics leagues, the churches and the schools. Thanks again.
Eric,
I would never consider myself a “vigilante” in discribing my actions to help displace the criminal element in the Wards Corner Area.
A vigilante works outside the rule of law that a civilized people have agreed on. I have been trying to get a small group of people together to assist the police in their efforts to displace the criminals in Wards Corner.
I have said many times before, we need to get involved. Sitting in a meeting once a month and just talking about what should be done will accomplish very little.
Actions will always speak louder than words and I am done talking. I can not act alone to accomplish what needs to be done to turn Wards Corner around. Only as a group will it work.
Since we have police officers at our Partnership meetings, let’s make this a discussion point at this month’s meeting. I’ll bet we could get a couple of volunteers from each civic league to walk with the police officers, as you suggest. Or maybe the officers will have some additional ideas.
Our civic league has made repeated attempts to get our neighbors to band together and work the hot spot areas but we can get very few people to volunteer thier time to make thier neighborhood better on a regular basis. I think it is great that this man is taking charge. I hope his neighbors appreciate his work and join in to help.