After suspicious incidents in the area, Emmons residents and groups are working to set up a community watch to better communicate with each other and law enforcement.

Jason Taylor, a police officer with the city of Albert Lea and a resident of Emmons, is helping the community start a neighborhood watch. Taylor called Emmons a safe town, but after some property crimes, suspicious activity and some potential drug activity, community groups like the Emmons Area Development Group held a meeting where a neighborhood watch was discussed.

Taylor said suspicious activities and crimes aren’t reported as often as they should be, especially in a small town.

“Small towns, we tend to kind of internalize. We try to internally deal with the problems that we’re facing,” Taylor said. “A lot of times people don’t want to get involved, or they just feel it will just sound ridiculous if they phone in a complaint. And really, having a background in law enforcement, I know how important it is that even the smallest things really do make a difference as far as combating crime and other concerns in the neighborhood.”

Emmons is patrolled by the Freeborn County Sheriff’s Department, and Taylor said he’s working with the neighborhood watch in Emmons as a citizen. But he does bring his experience with community policing in Albert Lea, which he said is similar to a neighborhood watch. Taylor said such programs all have a similar goal of getting members of a community active in determining how law enforcement interacts with the community.

Taylor said the neighborhood watch in Emmons is currently at an informational stage, and he said people in town are discussing how intense of a neighborhood watch to start. The intensity can vary, as Taylor said some communities set up neighborhood patrols, while other communities focus more on communication and working to get citizens to know their neighbors better, so they can notify them and law enforcement of suspicious activity.

“Essentially, it’s kind of a means of getting from where crime is detected, all the way up to reporting it to those who need to know,” Taylor said. “It can be as complicated as having people roaming around town making patrols and things like that, but I don’t feel that’s probably necessary for a place like Emmons. But then it can be as simple as creating a phone tree or calling tree or texting, having kind of an organized way of notifying people if something comes up and having a way of contacting law enforcement to make sure these issues are reported.”

For example, if there’s a suspicious vehicle parked in town or if there are people loading and unloading something from a home, then Taylor said someone would call that resident to see if there’s a reason for this. If there is no response, Taylor said citizens would notify law enforcement.

“The main thing is that people feel comfortable contacting law enforcement,” Taylor said. “If they’re not comfortable, they need to have a way of notifying someone who would be comfortable making law enforcement aware of what’s going on.”

Relationships with neighbors and being able to freely contact them is also an important part of the program, but Taylor said he believes a town like Emmons is a step ahead of many communities.

“Small towns like Emmons, we have caring community members that larger cities would be envious of, so we’ve kind of already broken past the first stage, which is getting community members to know one another. And now it’s just a matter of figuring out how much work they want to take upon themselves to make this happen,” Taylor said.

The next step, Taylor said, would be to hold another meeting for further discussion where things like block captains and phone trees could be set up.

Taylor said it’s up to the community to determine where the process goes, but he hopes to see things like neighborhood maps of who lives in each house. That way, citizens will know where people live and who to contact if something is out of place before they contact law enforcement.

Taylor said his experience as a police officer allows him to see the many benefits of something like a neighborhood watch.

“I see the benefits to law enforcement. A lot of people don’t realize it benefits us to have that communication …” Taylor said. “From the law enforcement standpoint, we have all these resources available and often times it’s a struggle to find out how to best focus those resources. And when we start getting some tips from the public, anonymous or not, it helps us to better focus our patrols, to better focus our other resources on those issues. That’s exactly what community policing is trying to do: better use of resources, better service to the community.”