Crime fighters open link to police

By Doug Murphy Staff Writer

Ahwatukee Foothills crime fighters and Phoenix police have joined up to make it easier for residents to help make the community a bit safer.

People have always been able to call and request additional police patrols to watch a house while the owners are on vacation, but the process involved filling out cards by hand and was prone to errors.

Starting today it will take just a few computer clicks to ask Phoenix police to provide a vacation or patrol visit.

"This is a first for the Phoenix police," Sgt. Dave Norton said of the electronic request system.

By logging on to www.afinfo.org and clicking on Police Partnership, vacationers can fill out an online and encrypted form that provides all the information police need while a homeowner is away.

"It saves time for them and saves time for us," Norton said.

The Internet-based system was developed by Web-Strata for the Ahwatukee Foothills Crime Prevention Task Force.

It can also be used to request a patrol watch, which is a request for additional police patrols when a residence or business has a specific problem like vandalism, prowlers or suspicious people lurking about.

"It puts officers in places where they need to be in their spare time," Norton said.

He emphasized that officers fulfill requests for both vacation and patrol watches only when they are not responding to radio calls for immediate service.

The online forms use a secure server connection, according to Charlene Leland of Ahwatukee Foothills-based Web-Strata, "So nobody else can intercept that data while it travels around the Internet."

The idea for the system came from crime prevention task force co-chair Mary Conant, who wrote a grant request in January that the city of Phoenix approved in July.

Funding from the city allowed the crime prevention task force to provide half of the $1,500 needed to set up the system. Conant said the rest of the money comes from the Ahwatukee Board of Management, which has been a financial supporter of the task force for years.

For people without a home computer, Norton said they can either use the public computer at the Ironwood Branch Library, or they can call the Phoenix police at (602) 495-5807.

He said that depending on the time of year police have between 20 to 50 vacation watch requests and 10 to 20 patrol watch requests at a time.

"We're excited about the feature and expect that it will streamline the process for us and the community," Norton said.