[StBernard] St. Bernard neighbors on the lookout

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard neighbors on the lookout
Sunday, June 17, 2007
By Paul Rioux
St. Bernard bureau 
Less than three months after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to St. Bernard
Parish, Kenny Desselle took a break from shoveling muck out of his Meraux
home and walked down the deserted street, where he spotted a man rummaging
through a neighbor's house. 

 
Confronted by Desselle, the man said he had been hired to gut the house, but
didn't know the owner's name and had no demolition tools. 

Desselle said he might have let it go if he hadn't noticed a woman's ring
with a pink gemstone jammed on the man's finger. 

"When I asked him about the ring, he said, 'Aw, that's my girlfriend's,' "
Desselle said. "I told him, 'Well, you're going to have to try to explain
that to the police because I think you're back here looting." 

Desselle, a mechanic at the Domino's sugar refinery in Arabi, called the
Sheriff's Office, which sent a deputy to investigate. 

"I don't know if the guy was arrested, but it made me realize that we have
to look out for one another, because there aren't many of us back here," he
said. "It's a matter of survival." 


Couple take action 

After that, Desselle and his wife, Nina, began patrolling the Lexington
Place subdivision on foot, on bicycle and by truck. They look for anything
out of the ordinary, or at least what counts as ordinary these days in the
storm-ravaged neighborhood, where most of the houses sit empty. 

"We would go for walks before the hurricane, but we wouldn't be this nosy,"
Desselle said as he stopped to assess the height of weeds growing outside a
gutted house. "I have no problem asking people questions about what they're
doing." 

The Sheriff's Office is trying to recruit more residents such as the
Desselles to restart the parish's Neighborhood Watch program, which like
virtually everything else in St. Bernard was washed away by Katrina. 

St. Bernard had 175 Neighborhood Watch groups that covered about two-thirds
of the parish before the hurricane, said Lt. Charles Borchers, who is
working to rebuild the program block by blighted block. 

"All you need is two concerned citizens who are willing to band together to
help us protect their neighborhood from crime," Borchers said. "The
Neighborhood Watch program is more important than ever, because there are so
many unoccupied homes that we need all the extra eyes and ears we can get." 

Borchers said he's received about 15 calls from residents interested in
starting a watch group. 


Looting angers residents 

Ginger Mays, who lives in the Angelique Estates subdivision in Violet,
called Borchers last week to get information about the program after she
came home to find a neighbor, whose house had just been burglarized, crying
in the street. 

"I was so angry. How dare they come into our neighborhood and violate us
like that," Mays said. "We all need to be more vigilant and watchful to
protect our homes." 

On Wednesday evening, Borchers met with 30 members of a newly reconstituted
watch program in Chalmette's upscale Corinne Estates subdivision, an oasis
of meticulously restored homes and lawns in a sea of blight. 

"Neighborhood Watch is nothing more than getting back to the simple things
in life: Getting to know your neighbors and their schedules," he told the
group. "You might think I'm asking you to be nosy Rosies, but maybe that's
what we need." 

Borchers urged the residents to not hesitate to call deputies if they think
something is amiss in the neighborhood. 

"We would rather come out and have it be nothing than to come out after the
fact and have to write a report about a stolen vehicle," he said. 


Community survives 

St. Bernard has always been a close-knit community where people looked out
for one another, but Katrina's shared hardships have made those who returned
even closer. 

In Lexington Place, where about 150 of 850 homes are occupied, the storm
blew down wooden privacy fences, helping the Desselles to become close
friends with neighbors they had never met before. 

"People always talk about St. Bernard as a place where everyone knows
everyone else, but now that's really true, at least in our neighborhood," he
said. 

Desselle, who is president of the Lexington Place homeowners association,
encouraged a retired couple in their 80s to move from a less populated area
in the subdivision to a house a couple of doors from his. 

"I've sort of adopted them and wanted to be able to watch out for them," he
said. 

With most streetlights in the subdivision still not functioning, Desselle
installed a light on a wooden pole outside his and the elderly couple's
homes. 

"With all the blighted houses, it's pretty spooky out here when it's pitch
black," he said. "Lighting gives you a greater sense of security." 

Even so, the couple maintain a heightened state of alert after dark. 

Whenever a car passes by at night, they step to the window to look. If it
goes by a second time, they usually go outside to investigate. 

"You get to know pretty quickly which cars are supposed to be here and which
aren't," Desselle said. 


'Watch' makes comeback 

Borchers said tips from residents have helped deputies arrest suspects
accused of stealing everything from copper to garbage cans to palm trees. 

"Criminals might have thought we were easy pickings after the hurricane, but
I think they're finding out the hard way that that's not the case," he said.


Desselle said that before Katrina, the subdivision's Neighborhood Watch was
essentially a social organization that spent as much time planning the
annual National Night Out block party as it did on crime-prevention
initiatives. 

Convinced the parish's recovery hinges on keeping crime under control, he
envisions the watch group, which is in the process of coming back,
maintaining a higher profile by expanding the patrols he and his wife
started. 

"People have had to work so hard to come back and rebuild what the storm
took away, " Desselle said. "If someone breaks into their house and steals
the TV or the washing machine, it could be the last straw that causes them
to leave for good." 

Anyone interested in starting a Neighborhood Watch group in St. Bernard can
call Borchers at (504) 278-7628. 

. . . . . . . 

Paul Rioux can be reached at prioux at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3321.