The St. Joseph Police Department is urging area residents to get to know one-another.

“When I was a kid and when most of us were kids we had a neighborhood and people knew what was going on and they knew the guy next door and they knew what the neighbor’s drove so when they saw a different car in the driveway they knew it didn’t belong there,” said Sgt. Greg Gilpin, Crime Prevention officer with the St. Joseph Police Department.  “Anymore and it’s not just St. Joe it’s all over the place we kind of got just a group of homes where people go to work, come home, pull in the garage and don’t come back out until it’s time to go to work or school or something.”

The department even took to social media to try and combat “Neighborhood Isolation.”  In a Facebook post the department asked residents to try and get out this summer to visit their neighbor’s and get back to knowing who lives around them.

“How well do you know your neighbors…I mean really know them? Do you know them by name, what they drive, where they work, and when they are usually at home? Unfortunately many people would answer no,” the post said.

Gilpin said he feels technology has been a big factor in the change over the years.

“I kind of think of that Tracy Lawrence song ‘If the world had a front porch like we did back then,’ you know when people sat on the front porch and got to know people,” Gilpin said. “But everybody’s so busy with technology that instead of talking to them they just send them a text.  They never really talk to somebody face-to-face.”

He said getting to know your neighbors can be a big factor in security.

“If you look over at your neighbor’s house and you see a red truck backed up to a garage and some guy loading stuff up out of the garage to an officer driving down the street that might not look suspicious but if you know that that neighbor is usually at work this time of day and that he drives a brown 4-door car and that doesn’t look right to you pick up the phone and give us a call,” Gilpin said. “I think just people had a better idea of what was going on around them because they spent more time outside.”

So Gilpin is asking residents to make an effort to get to know their neighbor’s this summer.

“I’d just like people to get outside, and meet people face-to-face and introduce themselves,” Gilpin said. “If somebody new moves in, walk over and say ‘Hi’ and introduce yourself.  That’s kind of the way neighborhood’s used to work.”