Block watches start in Warden

WARDEN — When citizens crowded into the Warden City Council Chambers following a series of robberies and shootings in the city, Kayla Kight got an idea.

She decided to start a block watch.

Several people mentioned a sign advertising for a block watch at the November meeting. Mayor Roldan Capetillo explained the sign was from 2000, before he was on the council.

Kight, who moved to the area in 2007 from Kettle Falls, Wash., said she’d never done anything like this before.

“I thought there was something that could be done,” she said. “So I approached the officers, talked to them and started doing it.”

After organizing it with police, she started having meetings on Feb. 15 and has four blocks organized to keep an eye out for crime in the area.

“Your own neighborhoods watch out for one another,” she said. “If one tenant sees something they call 9-1-1. As (Warden Police Officer Mike Martin) says he’s looking for them to be the eyes and ears for the police force.”

She said the challenge for people is changing their habits, so they pay attention to what’s going on outside of their residence.

“The challenge is to get the community to want to help one another, to be there to look out for each other,” she said. “That to me is the challenge to me, to getting them to participate and see what’s going on. A lot of people just like to stay to themselves, so if we can get them to see that this is their community as well and that they need to be involved with watching out for one another.”

She said she and other members are going door to door and talking to people. While the response hasn’t been as good as Kight would like, she said it was still good.

“We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to keep doing this as long as it takes,” she said.

Since the block watch started in Kight’s apartment complex, she said graffiti stopped.

“So if we can get everyone else to see the example of that, I think they’ll start coming around,” she said.

Roger Kight, Kayla Kight’s husband, said if people get involved it deters others from committing crimes.

“It’s also good because an officer (can) call me and say, ‘Hey Kayla, we’re having tagging in certain areas or gas is being siphoned out of a car,’ he says ‘Call your block captains and inform them of the situation going on.’ So, it’s getting information from the police department into the community,” Kayla Kight said. “One of the quotes I really have liked that I heard was, ‘Help us, help you, take a bite out of crime.’”

For more information, contact the Warden Police Station at 509-349-2022 or Kayla Kight at 509-349-2679.