Prime Burglary Season Is Coming!

Prime Burglary season will soon be here again as the summer days approach. It is time to assess our homes and businesses to make sure that we are secure and we have a record of our belongings. It is also time to consider joining a Neighbor Watch program.

Neighborhood watch, block watch, town watch, whatever the title, initiatives are one of the better ways to prevent crime, attend to home and personal security, address the safety of our children as well as reduce fear and isolation. Civic involvement and collaborative problem solving helps neighborhoods reduce crime by significant numbers. Our citizens are our eyes and ears in Montgomery County and you are the ones who help catch these criminals who are out there to prey on you. We have solved many crimes because of a concerned neighbor who saw something out of the way and called us.

In early 1972, the National Sheriff’s Association created a model program to today’s neighborhood watch program. At the time Police Chiefs were searching for ways to attack the increasing burglar rate across the country and recognized that communities able to secure the assistance of their residents in observing, recognizing, and reporting suspicious or criminal activities were better able to keep the burglary rate down and reduce other crimes. Today, neighborhood watch is the largest single organized crime prevention project in the nation. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office is active with Neighborhood Watch Associations to educate neighborhoods on the importance of these associations. We teach the importance of communities becoming and remaining involved in their community to reduce crime because together we can make a difference!

Several communities in Montgomery County have neighborhood watch programs. They are: Eastwood Villa Association; Grady Association; Mount Carmel Neighborhood Association; Narrow Lane/Mcinnis Neighborhood Association; S.W. Snowdoun Chambers Road Association; Sprague-Ada-Legrand Association; the Timberlake Association; Lagos Del Sol Neighborhood Association and the Knollwood Homeowners Association. Of course there are many other such organizations in the City of Montgomery. If you are interested in joining or starting a Neighborhood association, please contact Lt. Clarence Brannon at: ClarenceBrannon@mc-ala.org or call our community services division at 832-1369 or email MCSOSupportservices@mc-ala.org.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office will check your home for you while you are away on vacation. Deputies will check your property, you windows and doors to ensure that they are undisturbed. If you live outside of the City limits, please call 334-832-4980 to set up a vacation home check if you are going to be gone. If you reside in the City of Montgomery contact the Montgomery Police Department at 241-4800. If you have any question, contact support services at 832-1369 or email MCSOSupportservices@mc-ala.org.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office also offers a free Business and Church watch program. This program allows us to get in contact with your authorized personnel and key holders of you facility in a faster manner in the event of an emergency at your business or House of Worship. Our deputies often encounter unsecured doors while on patrol and this program allows our dispatchers to notify you by phone of the problems they have found. If you enroll in the program, your building will have a gold colored Sheriff’s Office sticker with a special decal number that is posted on your door. This decal number is unique to your business and enables us to determine who to call in case of an emergency. It is important that you update your information every six months to keep you information current. To enroll, you can email MCSOSupportservices@mc-ala.org,or call 832-1369 for an application.

Not everyone has cellular service so the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office has added 4 kiosks for the public to use in the case of an emergency.

The kiosks are simple to use, just push a button and it dials straight in to the MCSO dispatch center in order to get help to a rural location quicker. Some of the kiosks are equipped with a camera. You can find these emergency call boxes at the Ramer substation, the K-9 kennel on highway 331 just outside of Snowdoun, the Pike Road town hall and in the parking lot of Sikes and Kohn on highway 231 in Pine Level.

We plan on starting another session of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office’s Citizens Academy early next month. The Citizens Academy was founded to teach the citizens of Montgomery County how the Sheriff’s Office is operated. Every phase of operation is carefully examined, giving our citizens an insiders look at the nuts and bolts of law enforcement. We are proud to offer the Academy as a public service and we are confident that it promotes public safety by keeping Montgomery Citizens informed about our laws, why we have them and how they are enforced. The citizens Academy includes members from all communities of Montgomery and Montgomery County. It meets for six weeks, one hour per week at our office at 115 S. Perry Street. We guarantee that our students will have fun learning about patrol, K-9, Sex offenders, Civil process, warrants, the detention facility, investigations, and the last meeting will be at our training facility where we will have a cook out. You will have a chance to fire our weapons and a chance to use our shoot-don’t shoot simulator. For information, call 832-1369 or go to our web site at:

montgomerysheriff.com. Get informed about law enforcement and sign up today.