Barbecue Aims At Recruiting Volunteers

Community policing volunteers in the NevadaLidgerwood neighborhood will be the hosts to a neighborhood barbecue from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. tonight along the Heatherwood Lawn.

The effort is aimed at recruiting Block Watch volunteers and educating neighborhood residents about child safety and community policing.

A special effort is being made to involve residents of the Heatherwood and Summerwood apartment complexes, said Debra Wittwer, president of Neva-Wood COPS.

The Heatherwood Lawn is across from Tidyman’s between Addison and Standard.

Sponsored by Tidyman’s, volunteers will cook hamburgers and hot dogs, and residents who attend are asked to bring non-alcoholic beverages, a lawn chair or blanket. They can also bring a dessert or a side dish.

This is the second year of the event. Last year it prompted two wings of an apartment complex to start a neighborhood watch effort, said Chris Berntsen, manager of the 143-unit Heatherwood complex.

Organizing apartment residents into a community is often difficult, Berntsen said.

“It is a bit more difficult, as opposed to being in a neighborhood where you meet your neighbors a lot,” he said.

“They might see their neighbors and meet their neighbors, but they don’t have a lot of community activities.”

Berntsen said the community policing efforts have been good for residents, whose average stay in the complex is a little more than one year.

“One thing I can say is there are more people here meeting other people because of this,” he said.

, DataTimes