WEST SEATTLE—
From the window of her West Seattle home Karen Berge is doing a lot more than just admiring the view."I'll walk over to the window and I'll look out, every once in a while I'll see something a little suspicious, said Berge.
As her neighborhood's block watch captain she's also looking out for criminal activity.
"If it's real suspicious I will get out my cell phone and snap a picture," said Berge.
And, she does all of her block watching without ever leaving her house. Karen and two other neighborhood activists launched the West Seattle Block Watch Captains Facebook page about three months ago.
Deanie Schwarz says the group is taking an old-fashioned crime fighting idea and modernizing it.
"There was a time in this city when 70% of the people who lived here were in a block watch and that's close to 30% participation now," said Schwarz.
Organizer Deborah Greer believes the site is the first of its kind in Seattle linking all of the neighborhood's block watch captains through social media.
"Try to use technology to network all of the captains, so, we could self Identify and let each other know who we were and where we were, so, we could help each other," said Greer.
Through community crime fighting meetings Karen and her group have gotten 20 West Seattle block watch captains to join the Facebook site.
According to Deborah Greer members can hit the discussion boards to talk about trends like car prowls and smash and grab robberies.
"Make them feel that they're not alone that they know that crime doesn't stop just when my block watch stops, but, it might be across the street," said Greer.
More than a hundred people have become friends of the Facebook site. Deanie Schwarz hopes that social networking will encourage more people to start their own neighborhood watches to link up.
"To use that technology to appeal to the younger people in this city to bring back an old concept on the template of technology I'm really hopeful of that," said Schwarz.
For crimebuster Karen Berge she believes technology is already taking the neighborhood block watch by storm.
"I hope other communities decide to do it. So far it's working really well for us," said Berge.
