Issue of Residential Security

Fear of crime in the cities and suburbs has led to increased attention to residential security, and many communities have made security a major element in their structure. Individual residents pay attention to security with alarms, patrols, bars on windows, and other security devices, and some communities have become gated communities in order to keep crime out as much as possible. In Southern California, there are a number of gated and protected communities, some of long standing (the Malibu colony), some patrolled but not really closed (such as Bel Air), and some newer and more controversial (such as the communities in the Hollywood Hills that have tried to use gates to keep people out, to the consternation of neighbors only a few yards away). Many of these efforts have been opposed as showing elitist sensibilities and in some case racist sensibilities. Still, security concerns increase as crime rises, demographics change, and police forces become more overburdened.

Indeed, one of the sources for much community effort to control crime is the police department, which in large cities recognized some time ago that the crime problem was too great for the police alone and that community involvement was essential. The result has been neighborhood watch programs in which residents patrol their own neighborhoods or simply watch out for unusual occurrences and report immediately to the police. The degree of involvement of such groups varies as widely as the groups themselves,

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