As the year draws to a close, there’s one crime statistic Washington Police are celebrating: the number of community watches established in the city in 2014.

“It has really taken off,” said Washington Police Community Outreach Coordinator Kimberly Grimes. “We are very pleased with the outcome that we’ve had so far.”

In 2013, three neighborhoods signed on to create community watches; in 2014, the number has grown to 12. And the system of neighbors meeting their neighbors, knowing their neighbors and looking out for neighbors is paying off in not-so-obvious ways.

“It’s the knowing of each other. It’s the restarting of communities. Those are the intangibles that you would never be able to quantify, but you when you have those things, that’s when crime goes down,” said Washington Police and Fire Services Director Stacy Drakeford. “When they have ownership then people tend to stay away from those types of neighborhoods where people are invested.”

Case in point is the Oak Crest neighborhood off 15^th and Market streets. A medium-sized neighborhood, one community watch popped up in one section of the neighborhood, a second, in another area. But that didn’t last for long.

“They teamed up together,” Grimes said. “They have 50 members strong,”

What that means is that for each homeowner in the Oak Crest neighborhood, there are 49 other people who are looking out for their best interests — ready to make a phone call if something doesn’t look right.

“The biggest thing I’ve gotten out of it is that some of these people have gotten out and met their neighbors for the first time,” Drakeford said.

In another, smaller, community watch neighborhood on Bonner Street, a new community watch has already curtailed some questionable activity, according to Grimes.

“There were kids in the street, people walking in the middle of the street, traffic stopped in that area. Now, the police are there more often,” Grimes said.

Grimes said there are two community watches pending this year, but she has no intention of slowing down her recruitment.

“My goal is to get as many as we can get to be willing to take responsibility for their community,” Grimes said. “If I could have one in every neighborhood, that’d be awesome.”

For more information about establishing a community watch, call Kimberly Grimes at 252-943-1715.