Myrtle Hilton awakened to the sound of someone frantically ringing her doorbell at midnight Wednesday morning.  She said the person then started to knock “furiously” on the door of her Newton home.

“It’s a scary thing,” she said.  “Most people would have probably opened the door.”

The next morning, Hilton said she was walking her dog when she realized some wiring had been pulled from at cable TV box near her home and the door to her crawl space was open.

The Newton Police Department is already in the preliminary stages of organizing a community watch in East Newton around the area of Caldwell Avenue and First Street East, Newton Police Chief Don Brown said.  It’s an area that he said has historically been a higher crime area with drug activity.

He said community watch programs establish a relationship between the community and the police department, so that neighbors feel more comfortable with reporting suspicious activity in their neighborhoods.

Hilton said she’s seen how community watch programs make a difference first hand when she lived on Emerald Isle Drive in Sherrills Ford. She said there had been problems with crime in the area.  Then, she helped form a community watch and posted signs around the area so people would know the area was being watched carefully.

“It worked out real well,” Hilton said.

Not only did it help dissolve the problems in her neighborhood, she said it also restored her sense of security.

“I think they are effective because it gets more people involved,” Brown said.

He said it helps with crime prevention and solving crimes because there is a better flow of information between the residents in the area and law enforcement.

“Hopefully they see things we don’t see, because we’re down the street in a black and white (patrol car) with uniformed officers,” Brown said.

Officers also can’t be everywhere at one time, so residents are more likely to see something than and officer would. Brown said it increases the chances that suspicious activity will be reported, possibly even before a crime is committed.

“Anytime you can prevent a crime as opposed to responding to one, that’s better,” Brown said.

The police department has already purchased community watch signs and the Newton Public Works department has agreed to put them up.

Newton Police Officer Joann Pope is in charge of the community watch programming and will be working with any communities interested in setting up a program in their neighborhood.

Two meetings are set up to discuss the beginning of community watch programs in East Newton and the Historic District in Newton, Brown said.  The meeting for East Newton will be held on March 17 at 7 p.m. and the East Newton Recreation Center on Ervin Avenue.  The meeting for the Historic District will be held at Newton-Conover Civic and Performance Place on April 21 at 7 p.m. in the lobby.