Toward the goal of safer streets, volunteers from the Windsor Green Home Owners Association in Greenbelt East have been the “eyes and ears” on the ground, reporting suspicious activities to the Greenbelt Police Department for the past 23 years. Recently when Judith Thompson retired from leading this activity, she passed the torch to Matt Rodriguez, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Family Science at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
Having recently moved from McKinney, Texas, Rodriguez jumped at the chance to volunteer as the next coordinator, seeing the work as an opportunity to apply to a real-life community the knowledge he acquired at the university. So far, he has coordinated several meetings with residents of the Windsor Green community and the Greenbelt police.
One of those meetings occurred on Thursday, June 20, when over 20 Windsor Green residents, along with Greenbelt Police Lieutenant Timothy White and four of his officers, discussed how to ensure their community remains safe. At the start of the meeting, Rodriguez outlined the purpose of the Static Watch Committee—which is the form this neighborhood watch effort has taken over the last six years, wherein residents observe rather than patrol—and thanked the 66 volunteers on the committee that watch over 24 courts in the community.
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