Block Watching

In a recent article, woman revealed that her car was vandalized in her drive way. She immediately came to the conclusion that it was young individuals who were responsible for the mess. She claims that the damage to her car represents anger, since amateur psychology is so accurate she must be correct.
In the article it mentions she did not see who had done it however her immediate response was to teenagers and more than likely she believes MALE teenagers are responsible, although this is not mentioned in the article. This is another way individuals in society respond to moments such as these. They use stereotypes to interpret the event. The media negatively portrays teenagers, therefore teenagers must be responsible. It could not be a drunken adult. It could not be someone she had angered at one point or time. It MUST be a teenager.
Furthermore the article goes to cite someone else from the neighbourhood. This person goes to say that events such as these happen in a pattern that seem to ebb and flow. Thus by this statement, this sort of thing happens often enough that it can be charted and patterned it would seem. Once again with this kind of thinking the problem is focused on the young, as what respectable adult would damage another persons property. Once again ignoring the examples cited above. However another interesting thing is the term neighbourhood. This term is vague in its definition, as it does not define how large the area of the neighbourhood is, how many people live there. It is a simple designation that people use to imply that unity or how close to events occurred, such as this. Why this is important is simple. This event could have happened blocks apart, however due to the designation of neighbourhood, it may as well have bee a next door neighbour that was vandalized. Thus this creates a higher rate of frequency in an area that is actually true.
Finally the solution presented in the article is to be involved in a block watch. A block watch is a group of individuals who get together and police their own block. However studies have shown that people are unable to keep this program alive and it eventually parts and thus the block is more vulnerable as it lacks the safety net that everyone believes that they have.


Here is the link for those who are interested.
http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/story.html?id=e70fe38b-ce80-45e2-99db-6daf49b7e4de&k=19787