Neighborhood Watch

River Hill residents interested in participating in Neighborhood Watch are invited to attend a training session for block captains at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at Claret Hall, 6020 Daybreak Circle, Clarksville. Howard County Police Officer Chris Krieger, community resource officer for the Police Department's Southern District, will explain the program and discuss how improved communication in a community can help to reduce crime. The program is designed for anyone interested in starting or helping to lead a neighborhood crime-prevention program.

In the row house-lined streets of the East Baltimore community of Oliver, seven children between the ages of 10 and 14 have been arrested by police in the past month on charges ranging from armed robbery to selling cocaine.The arrests have provoked soul-searching among residents looking for reasons why so many young children are getting ensnared in the drug trade and street crime."It's sad to see young children involved," said Officer Ed Bochniak, a narcotics investigator assigned to the Eastern District's "Zone 4" -- the Oliver community and parts of three adjoining neighborhoods.

Baltimore's very own Trayvon Martin case, at least to some in the community, was thrown into peril on Wednesday when the victim stated from the witness stand he wanted charges dropped. The Sun's court reporter, Tricia Bishop, reports: "I been wanting to drop the charges all the time, I didn't even want to go through [this]. I feel like I was being pressured," said 16-year-old Corey Ausby, who took the stand  with tear tracks staining his face. "In my heart, I didn't want to testify.

At 10 p.m. on a Monday in Northwest Baltimore, more than 20 Orthodox Jewish men are packed into a two-room apartment with a couch and maps of the nearby synagogues, eating kosher chili and discussing how to respond to the next neighborhood emergency. Those gathered here are members of Shomrim, Hebrew for "watchers," and they make up a round-the-clock citizens patrol, complete with matching jackets, radios and a hot-line number that area residents know as well as 911. Members have intervened in suicide attempts, divided the neighborhood into quadrants and fanned out to look for missing people, thwarted bicycle thefts and saturated areas hit by burglaries to report suspicious people to police.

On its own teen-horror terms, Disturbia has the cozy delectability of a flapjack flipped just right. When a disgruntled adolescent cracks open a missing-person case by training his binoculars on a neighbor, The Breakfast Club meets Rear Window. The result should satisfy dating crowds from high school to night school. The intriguingly named Kale Brecht (played by Shia LaBeouf) pops his Spanish teacher after the man asks what his father would make of his general misbehavior. Because his dad died in a car wreck - with Kale at the wheel - an understanding judge sentences him to house arrest, complete with ankle bracelet.

Mayor Martin O'Malley's administration will begin recruiting residents to fight crime at a citywide conference next week aimed at showing neighborhood activists how to get involved without risking their safety. Many city residents have been scared of helping police by what happened to the Dawson family, officials said. The family's seven members were killed Oct. 16 last year in an arson set by a drug dealer seeking revenge for their involvement in fighting crime. Darrell L. Brooks pleaded guilty in August and was sentenced to life in prison.

The guilty verdict against one of two brothers accused of beating a Northwest Baltimore teen cuts through the conflicting accounts of what happened on Fallstaff Road nearly 18 months ago and arrives at an essential truth: When Eliyahu Werdesheim stepped out of his car and confronted Corey Ausby, he stopped being a volunteer on neighborhood patrol and became a vigilante. No matter whose account of the incident you believe, it is clear that he overstepped his bounds. Neighborhood patrols serve a valuable purpose, and Shomrim, the organization to which Eliyahu Werdesheim belonged at the time, has long been lauded for its efforts in Northwest Baltimore.

TURTLE LAKE, Wis. -- What was he supposed to do?It's not a question so much as a challenge. A challenge to anyone who thinks Lenny Miller was wrong to booby-trap his cabin with a shotgun.Three times in eight months, the cabin had been burglarized.His hunting rifles were stolen. His fishing gear, too. And his tackle box. His new chain saw and his leaf blower and his Christmas present, a fillet knife still in its box. His boat had been vandalized. His outhouse trashed. His all-terrain vehicle had been torn apart.