Arrange a Neighbourhood meeting.

If you are the first person from your neighbourhood looking to utilise this site then you need to first establish the wide area Central control fora as per the example below:

• Hout Bay Central forum
• Hout Bay Central Incident Log
• Hout Bay Management Committee Forum
• Hout Bay Sector Leaders Forum

This can be done by going to "Options" followed by "Start a new community"

Then you or other sector leaders can add all the sub sector fora as per local small area neighbourhood names plus sector policing numbers.
i.e. Hout Bay Scott Estate Sector 10

(Police services in many countries divide neighbourhoods into numbered sub sectors).

Direct residents are to apply to their specific sector fora to become members.

This can be done by going to "Options" followed by "Join an existing community"

A person becoming a member of Hout Bay Scott Estate sector 10 will automatically have access to the Central Forum and Central Incident Log. The administrator may decline applications for membership. Communication to all the listed members is made easy via the group e-mail facility.

After your inaugural meeting the need to get patrols out there on the street is the next big step.

Create a patrol schedule within your sector specific forum.

Advise members to go to the schedule and to log themselves into the time slots that they are prepared to do. This self managed system takes some of the pressure off of the patrol coordinator as he now only has to look for and contact additional patrollers to cover times that have not been voluntarily taken up. Members may edit the schedule up to two days before a scheduled patrol at which point the schedule is locked and patrollers may only unscheduled themselves by explaining to the Patrol coordinator why they cannot meet their commitment. It also allows the scheduler time to find additional patrollers.

The Wide area Operations coordinator will be able to monitor all sub- sector patrol schedules in the Wide area forum

To facilitate this process of gathering and sharing intelligence, use the neighbourhoods Central Incident log. This way the data you collect will benefit you and all the sectors around you. Incidents that have already occurred can be reviewed by members who may recall seeing something around the same time the incident occurred. The member can add this additional input to the log thereby helping the investigating officer in his task to apprehend the perpetrators.

A further benefit of using a combined Central Incident log is that it creates a post incident analysis. This information that identifies routes into and away from an incident site, numbers of individuals involved, perpetrator descriptions and a host of other detail that identifies criminal activity trends, is critical detail that helps you and law enforcement services identify and implement systems and procedures to counter-act and suppress crime.