Philadelphia's Fairmount Community Looking To Form Town Watch Following Uptick In Crime
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Fairmount residents are sick of the violence. The latest incident, a police-involved shooting outside a bar, has the neighborhood taking action.
The rise in crime is a big concern all throughout the city, from armed robberies to carjackings. A community meeting Tuesday night was meant to be the first step toward change.
"A guy came down across the street, just looked at me, said something funny then all of a sudden started hitting me," Bennett Bookstein said.
Harrowing experiences that are happening more and more often.
"My face, my chest and I then I got up and I found out from some other runners that I was stabbed also," Bookstein said.
Bookstein described the moments he was assaulted while running in Philadelphia on Christmas Day.
"I wanna see what else and what else the next step is," Bookstein said.
Tuesday night, he and about 80 other people joined a community town watch meeting in Fairmount to be a part of the change.
The meeting was organized by residents comes hours after two police officers shot an armed man in the area.
"Town watch organizes neighborhoods and an organized neighborhood impacts on the quality of life, it helps to prevent crime," Anthony Murphy said.
Here's how it's designed to work. According to Murphy, who trains town watch teams throughout the city, neighbors are meant to start a communication chain where they will notify one another of suspicious activity if they are unable to reach 911.
In Philadelphia's 9th Police District, which includes Fairmount, aggravated assaults are up more than 70%, while armed robberies quadrupled.
"I know it's one block at a time. That's how we have to look at it," Bookstein said.
Residents say town watches sound better than doing nothing.
"We're gonna get our neighbors together and see how we can share this information," a woman said.
"We've always loved Fairmount, we always thought it was a great neighborhood, a very safe neighborhood. So again, I think it was kind of a surprise," said new residents Hannah and Lily.
It's move-in day for Hannah and Lily, who were not happy to hear about the shooting Monday night outside Krupa's Tavern -- less than a block away from their new home in Philly's Fairmount neighborhood.
"You know that there's crime everywhere in the city, but I think moving here, that wasn't the first thing we expected to hear. So it's definitely unsettling," Hannah and Lily said.
Murphy says town watches are a tried and tested tool, and some residents say they're willing to give it a shot.
"There's not a lot of fear in people that might be taking part in some of these crimes. So I think having that level of 'there is somebody that's looking out so you have to like be more careful' is a great idea," Murphy said.
Officers from the 9th District were also at the meeting. They encouraged residents to attend police service area neighborhood meetings.
CBS3's Ross DiMattei and Jasmine Payoute contributed to this report.
