Pearsall residents interested in helping police deter crime will now have an opportunity to play an active role, as the police chief and Justice of the Peace Susan Belding are prepared to train interested citizens.
“When I first arrived [in Pearsall],” Chief Humberto Torralba II said, “I stopped by and visited the judges and Judge Belding was one those stops. We spoke about introducing the program for our citizens to learn what to look for when they need to report suspicious activity.”
The police department and Belding will host the neighborhood crime watch community meeting at City Hall beginning at 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 18. The organization is structured to have detectives as liaisons for ‘block groups’ and provide guidance to help each neighborhood watch group make informed decisions.
In 2017, the city council passed a citizens’ patrol program to help curtail criminal activity and increase neighborhood policing. The idea behind the program was to have citizens assist in patrolling the city in marked vehicles. Participants would not intercede in police work but would undergo police training such as identifying suspicious activity.
All calls would still be filtered through dispatch; only two local residents showed interest when the program was started. Prior to the pandemic, JP Belding had established a neighborhood watch program in her neighborhood and now hopes to encourage residents throughout the city to do the same.
