A sad but true fact - too many of us have firsthand experience of crime. Either we've come home to find our house has been broken into, or that someone's smashed the car window and stolen the stereo. Crime in the community is a real problem - whether it's domestic burglaries or door-to-door con-men calling to rip off pensioners. But there's something we can all do to help protect ourselves - join forces with people in our neighbourhood and the police. Norfolk Constabulary, the county council and all seven district councils are behind a scheme called HomeWatch. "The members of HomeWatch are actually informed of crimes that have occurred or potential crime risks and crime intelligence by way of ringmaster system," explained Ted Gill, the co-ordinator in North Norfolk. "It's an automatic telephone dialling system that also incorporates e-mail and faxes, so any message that needs to be got out to the membership can be done at the rate of 160 messages per hour." Community support
The HomeWatch scheme is well supported by the community and the project has its own website with details of the 120 schemes in North Norfolk and others in the rest of the county. The website also has details on how to get in touch with your local co-ordinator. "The scheme was pretty well moribund and I heard through the parish council that the police had said if the scheme wasn't rejuvenated it would probably be crossed off the list," said Ken Freeman, co-ordinator for the HomeWatch scheme in Edgefield near Holt. "I went round 180 odd properties in the village, enquiring of their level of interest, got nearly a 100% response, so we now have a 185 members, 21 co-ordinators and a very active scheme." 
 If you want to reduce crime then HomeWatch is a very good way of doing it. It increases awareness to people who are vulnerable, it increases the understanding awareness between the members of the police and brings people together to face a common enemy.
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- Ken Freeman
HomeWatch project
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Residents in Edgefield were keen to praise the benefits of the project saying it helped to focus their awareness of the need for safety and community feeling. "One of the difficulties with so much happening is actually deciding what is important and what is not," said Ted Gill.
"Generally we want to keep the impetus of HomeWatch members alive and it's a matter of warning them in subtle terms in some cases obviously because we don't want to frighten them. "But because North Norfolk is one of the lowest crime areas in the whole of the country, there is a lot of complacency." Breaking down the barriers The HomeWatch schemes are often perceived to be the domain of older people - so work is in hand to make the information appeal to the whole community through the use of text messaging. "By making it available in a simple text message format, which we hope to do in the next couple of months, hopefully it'll attract the youngsters to receive this information and act on it," said Ken. | 
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