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Area neighbors keep watch
By Ed Runyan
SOUTHINGTON
Suzette Shafer says 3,000 to 3,500 people per day read the dozen or so Facebook pages she and friends created to help various areas of Trumbull County fight crime.
It started a year or so ago when her neighbors on Herr Fieldhouse Road were being victimized repeatedly by break-ins.
In a one-mile radius of her home, 14 of 16 homes experienced a break-in, and there were two arsons, she said.
Shafer created a Facebook page called SNAP, which stood for Southington Neighbors are P-----. The goal was to allow neighbors to share information on the type of crimes being committed and methods the criminals were employing.
For example, there were young people knocking on the door, attempting to sell floor-care products. Shortly thereafter, the home was robbed, Shafer said.
Residents of the street went from being helpless victims to effective crime fighters, Shafer said.
Word of mouth spread outside of Southington to other communities being hit by break-ins, and Shafer set up Facebook pages to help them do the same thing.
In January, however, SNAP’s plans hit a snag.
A SNAP block-watch member, seeing a suspicious vehicle parked in a location Shafer says is frequently used for criminal activity, confronted the 17-year-old Southington boy inside.
The block-watch member had a handgun with him, and he held it to his side as he shined a spotlight at the youth and asked the youth what he was doing.
In an interview on 21 WFMJ-TV, the boy said he pulled into the driveway to text on his cellphone and found the block-watch member’s actions to be overly aggressive.
The boy’s mother, Patricia Len, said she was part of the SNAP Facebook page at the time and communicated her displeasure with the block-watch member’s actions, then talked to a deputy with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office about it.
The incident took on even more meaning, Len said, after she learned about 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was killed in Sanford, Fla., a month ago by armed block-watch member George Zimmerman.
Len says the block watch should stick to reporting suspicious activity to police, “not to go around with a gun and approach” people.
Shafer said she has deleted the SNAP Facebook page in response to the negative publicity surrounding the Len incident. She believes SNAP served an important role, even if it wasn’t perfect.
Maj. Tom Stewart of the sheriff’s office said it has advised SNAP that members need to “be careful. Watch what you do,” especially in relation to what they do with weapons.
“When they first started, they were pretty aggressive,” Stewart said. Deputies also reported feeling uncomfortable when SNAP members sometimes would get to crime scenes at the same time the deputies did.
In the Herr Fieldhouse Road area, the break-ins and problems have “slowed down,” in the past couple of months, Stewart said. More recently, the break-ins have hit Bazetta, Fowler and Kinsman townships.