A couple weeks ago I got an email inviting me to the Ninth Ward Community Awards ceremony, letting me know that Trail Watch was nominated for a Community Service award. Unfortunately, I got the invite too late to attend. We didn't win the award (The Midtown Greenway Coalition's work on the Excel Hiawatha Project did, so I guess I can't be too upset about it, right?), but yesterday I received a Certificate of Appreciation from Council Member Shift for all of Trail Watch.

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this here, but along the Midtown Greenway we did not have one reported assault against a trail user in 2010, and that is largely down to the work Trail Watch has done. (We had some issues on the Hiawatha LRT Trail, but the Police have told me the group of individuals involved shouldn't be a problem anymore, so with any luck we can have a perfect record for 2011!)

So, for any of you who have ridden Trail Watch, and who are not on my email list for some reason (let me know!!!), I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your hard work, and for making this program such a success!!!! For those who haven't ridden Trail Watch, come out, ride with us, and help keep the Greenway safe!


Gabriel

That is pretty sweet.

It is incredibly cool, though I will admit there is a bit of a semantic play to that. There were two stabbings, but they were non-random incidents involving people who knew each other. I only worry about things against random people, since that is what makes it unsafe to ride. I also did say REPORTED. I have no idea about things which weren't reported. Still, on the whole, that is a HUGE improvement over the past few years, particularly 2008.


Gabriel

You guys have done great things with the trail watch and it has to continue. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Ida Wells, Wendell Phillips and a host of others, the price of safety on The Greenway is eternal vigilance. There will always be a new crop of wanna-be bad guys that will see The Greenway as a good place to rob or assault someone. The trail watch is the perfect way to show that the only people The Greenway isn't safe for is the bad guys.

Certainly there will be further assaults. No place is completely free of random crime but it is nice to see that it can be a really safe place. Maybe a future goal is to work on getting 100% of the crimes reported?

Agreed.

Also, I guess bottle kids don't count as assaults because I've definitely reported a few of those myself!

Its true, I'm not including bridge throwers, only the major knocked down and robbed kind of assaults. But those are what Trail Watch is designed to work on.

That being said, we've had very good results in the bridge areas too. There were rashes of problems on two specific bridges last year where we got good results. One was a group of kids who were part of the Mosque in Phillips. We worked with the leaders of the Mosque, and worked to help the kids understand the seriousness of what they were doing, and we stopped having problems with that group of kids. The other one was closer to the Uptown area, and was an older group of guys. Trail Watch started doing regular ride-bys of the bridge in question, and it ceased to be a problem. One Trail Watch group reported hearing them say, "look, its the bike cops!"

And there were a couple other smaller bridge issues we had some success with as well, so we've been more effective there than I had expected to be possible.


Gabriel

Something scary happenned to me about 3 days ago.

on the greenway at about chicago ave bridge, I heard gunfire at approx 12:30AM on my way home from cub foods with a huge load a groceries.

It was close, I could hear the bullets whipping through the air around me. 5 shots in all.

I hauled ass out of the area as fast as my legs could take me then called 911.

I would not suggest that nightwatch riders should deal with gunfire in any way at all! but, I feel its necessary to warn you all.

Keeps your wits about you and your finger on the 911 button.

I used to live in that neighborhood. There's a reason I don't live their any more.

Yea I wasnt really surprised to hear gunfire in that hood, but it did surprise me that i could hear the bullets whipping through the air. Thought it was possible the culprits were aiming at me. Have to say i achieved a speed higher than I ever could normally while escaping, and had to really convince myself to slow down and stop and call 911. I just wanted to keep pedling at 28 mph forever to get away.

I could barely talk at all when I did manage to stop and get out my cell phone. I didnt give the cops my name or location before I hung up, because i was so far from the scene by then, but I gave them the approx location of the gunfire while breathing heavily.

I at least hope they sent several patrols to the area and kept it up all night, any cop in the area would have also heard the gunfire plain as day even with windows rolled up.