A virtual neighborhood watch is providing another way to keep the St. Joseph community safe. 

Commander Mike Wilson with the St. Joseph Police Department said the virtual groups were started in the area about a year ago through the website Next Door. 

“What it provides is in your neighborhood you can start your own virtual neighborhood watch group,” Wilson said. “You can put information out (such as), ‘Hey I need a babysitter’ or I have this or that, but also it’s used to communicate with your neighbors about things going on in your neighborhood that could be related to crime. Also we use it to put out general crime information in different neighborhoods, if there’s increased activity, maybe suspects prowling the neighborhoods or cars or things like that.” 

Wilson said there are nine traditional watch groups in the area which often meet once a month. As of last week, there were 71 virtual groups in the area. Wilson said the virtual option is often more convenient and easier to be involved with than the traditional watch groups. 

“I think a lot of people’s lives are busy so sometimes they don’t have time to maybe take a couple hours in the evening to make it to the traditional group,” Wilson said. “With this virtual group, it’s kind of like Facebook, you can sign on and look and see who’s posted what and things like that at your convenience, so it gives more opportunity, more of a day-to-day communication resource to use.” 

This week, representatives from Next Door are in St. Joseph training district officers on on how to get engaged with the network. Wilson said while this changes the way neighborhood watch can work, he said he doesn’t think it will completely replace the traditional groups. 

“It’s also still good for us to meet face-to-face,” Wilson said. “It’s one thing to know somebody’s profile, but who is that person? It’s always important to have that connection face-to-face with people. Sometimes we’re always so busy and we don’t take time to time to do that, to just sit and meet and talk to people, but there’s a lot of really good people who are in our neighborhoods, there’s a lot of good people where we work and I think that connection is really important.” 

Wilson said, so far, the virtual groups seem to be helping get information out to neighborhoods and officers that they might not otherwise receive. 

“Anything that you see in your neighborhoods and pass it on to us, it really helps us out,” Wilson said. “The community, the citizens, they’re our eyes and ears. We can look at our statistics and we can take reports, but sometimes people see things that sometimes they might not realize that it’s connected to something. So this takes us closer to (making) our community a safer place for everyone. With the watch groups and with the virtual groups, people that maybe see something or somebody suspicious in their neighborhood they can pass that information on. I think the big picture is hopefully that we’ll be able to connect more of these dots together before something becomes, like a major burglary spree, maybe we can stop it at the earlier stages.” 

For more information about the virtual watch group or to sign up, go to nextdoor.com.