Here is a picture of your neighbor! He is his late teens or early twenties, hooked on Cocaine, Crack, Heroin, LSD, Methamphetamines or Oxycontin, and perhaps one or more club drugs including Ketamine, MDMA, Quaaludes, Rohypnol and Xanax, along with the old favorites of Alcohol and Hashish. His habit can easily cost a hundred dollars a day or more.
The question is, how does he support his habit? The answer is he steals! He is the guy that steels cars and copper. That's bad enough, but when he pulls up his hood to rob a store or invade a home, the crime can quickly accelerate from worrisome to life threatening!
Last month, we introduced a program called HelpNet, based on the concept of community volunteers working together to create a strong and effective response to disaster situations as well as serving the everyday needs of crime prevention, care for each other, and proactive networking.
One of the programs included in the HelpNet plan is called HelpAlert. This is a program specifically for small merchants in strip shopping malls, establishments in close proximity to each other with a particular emphasis on stores with only one or two employees.
The basis of HelpAlert is one of providing instant communications between participating merchants and law enforcement to address the increasing threat of robbery, both by gang professionals and those whose motive is to support a drug habit. Nearly 20 million of our neighbors in the USA are in this later category. Law enforcement resources are simply overwhelmed by hit and run robbers ranging in age from the late teen to early twenties; many of whom live in your community.
