GROUP SEEKS CITY GRANT TO HELP WITH CITIZEN PATROL
Byline: By Ryan Konig, Staff writer
Each night before the TV news comes on, James Hintz and a few neighbors head out of their
homes and work to keep their community out of the headlines.
Hintz and the others volunteer to patrol the Marcos de Niza projects and surrounding areas in south-central Phoenix. They call police if they see suspicious activity.
The Block Watch group is among 320 neighborhood groups applying for up to $10,000 in a city grant program to make their neighborhoods safer.
Most applicants seek money for Block Watch training, youth
activities, neighborhood newsletters, installation of motion-sensitive lights for homes
near alleys and equipment to paint over graffiti.
The money comes from Proposition 301, which voters approved in October 1993. The measure
increased the city sales tax by 0.1 percent.
Most of tax money is being used to hire 200 more police officers and 70 more firefighters. Five percent of the money goes to the neighborhood grant program.
This year, the tax will raise an estimated $600,000 to $700,000 for the neighborhood grant program.
Last year, the Phoenix City Council approved 51 of the 200 applications filed by local groups for grants.
Richard Fox, president of the Phoenix Block Watch Advisory Board, said he is pleased that several neighborhoods applied for money for after-school programs to keep children and teenagers off the street.
''That's really what this (grant) program is all about -- making neighborhoods safer through innovative ideas,'' Fox said.
Hintz's group wants to buy bicycle helmets and hand-held two-way radios for use during bicycle patrols. ''We have never come into confrontation. But we just figure having a radio will make it a little safer for us, so we can radio home to have someone call police,'' Hintz said.
''Otherwise, we have to wait until we get to the nearest phone.''
Hintz, his wife, Carolyn, Edward Markham and others began patrolling about two years ago. They cover the area bounded by Central and Seventh avenues, Buckeye Road and Pima Street.
The group has no way of knowing how many crimes their patrols have deterred, but they helped save a baby from dehydration and possibly death.
On a hot night last summer, the patrollers found a baby abandoned in the back seat of a car parked at a convenience store.
They called police and got the 9-month-old boy out of the car.
''He was getting dehydrated. His bottle was empty,'' Hintz said.
A woman bought diapers and changed the baby. Others gave it something to drink.
A clerk said she remembered seeing the car pull up about two hours before. Hintz doesn't know why the baby was abandoned or who now is caring for him. ''The police told us that if the baby had been left in the car another hour, he would have had to have been hospitalized,'' Hintz said.