Normally, I would be writing on a crime prevention issue that would affect a large number of people, but today I’m writing about just one individual or a small group of individuals that make a huge difference. The people I’m talking about today are the Crime Prevention Officers or Crime Prevention Practitioners who work within your communities. They could be police officers, security officers or ordinary people who volunteer their time and to make a difference in the neighborhoods in which the live. For whatever reason they’ve become involved and they are the back bone of crime prevention all over the country. Speaking from experience, when I was a young patrolman, my Police Chief asked me to handle a neighborhood meeting. I told him “sure” but asked “what would I do.” He said that you could just listen and listen I did. First it was the person having a problem with kids cutting through his property and another person was complaining about excessive noise coming from a nearby garage at all hours of the night. This started my lifelong adventure into crime prevention. I worked on the issues that were raised and then started a small neighborhood group, an early form of Neighborhood Watch. Back then there wasn’t any training on crime prevention and you had to fly by the seat of your pants. This was in the early 80’s about the same time the National Crime Prevention Council was formed and really put a face on crime prevention. Thirty years later and the rest is history. Recently the National Crime Prevention Association (NCPA) launched a new program just for all of these hard working individuals called the National Crime Prevention Specialist certification. Finally, a national certification program to recognize the training, education and hard work of a select few experts. No more just being a crime prevention person, now a program that shows everyone that we’re Certified Professionals in Crime Prevention. I would like to thank the NCPA and NCPC for developing this program because it gives long overdue recognition to an already valuable profession specialization.
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