Home security

Maureen Johnson stood behind a wall of people each standing with their feet spread apart, their heads tilted to one side and their arms stretched out in front of them.

The sounds of repetitive shots filled the small rock quarry, and Maureen looked on as her husband Jeff took his turn.

“Recock…Ready…Gun!” the instructor – wearing a red shirt and oversized headphones protecting his ears – said with authority.

While it’s not uncommon for the Johnsons to spend time at a shooting range, this particular October Saturday was different – and not just for the sunny, 70-degree weather. This time, they were shooting guns used daily by their instructors – Blue Springs police officers.

Maureen and Jeff are part of a select group of Blue Springs citizens picked to spend nine weeks learning more about the department responsible for the safety of more than 50,000 citizens.

“It involves the community,” Maureen said of the Blue Springs Citizens Police Academy, which she and Jeff just graduated from. “It gives us the tools to work with police. It’s really kind of neat.”

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Four years ago the Johnsons might have known who was running for mayor in the community they’ve grown to love in eight years, and they would have voted for one of the candidates. But that was the extent of their involvement. They didn’t really know their neighbors, and spent a lot of time in the comfort of their home.

Not knowing their neighbors was new territory for Jeff, who grew up in a small town in Iowa, and Maureen, who grew up south of Chicago.

In an effort to get to know her neighbors, Maureen started organizing neighborhood block parties, which she does faithfully every year now.

“You’d be amazed how many people a block or two blocks over who didn’t know the people caddy corner from them,” Maureen said.

As the Johnsons started to learn more about their neighborhood, they learned, too, about an alarming amount of burglaries. But it wasn’t until it got a little close to home that they decided to take action.

One October night in 2007 the Johnsons’ neighbors, Amy and Darren Lengyel, and their 4-year-old twin boys were sleeping. Around 3 a.m., the family dog started barking and woke Amy and Darren.

“I thought he saw a squirrel through the window, but he kept barking,” Darren said, adding he got up to see what was going on. “I saw the door between the house and the garage was open, and the dog was outside in the driveway.”

Someone had gotten into Amy’s car and pressed the automatic garage door opener. The burglars entered the house and stole several items. They also went into the twins’ room while they were sleeping.

The perpetrators didn’t harm the boys, but they did take some electronic items from the room.

“It was scary,” Darren said. “It was annoying at first, but when we realized they went into the boys’ room, it was scary that someone would come into our house and be brave enough to go into the kids’ room while they’re there, and while we’re there.”

The next day the Lengyels called an alarm company.

Their story scared Maureen, too.

“It changed everything,” Maureen said. “It put a fear in me that I don’t think I ever felt.”

It didn’t take long before Maureen stepped into action. She started canvassing the neighborhood, telling people about the various crimes she’d heard about – hoping to draw some attention to the situation. What she found was their neighborhood, north of Interstate 70 and a few blocks west of Woods Chapel Road, was riddled with burglaries.

“This neighborhood is really bad because of the easy access to I-70,” Jeff said. “They’re professional crooks. They steal and sell the stolen merchandise.”

People would tell Maureen about their doors getting kicked in while they were gone and all their possession stolen. Some neighbors reported their doors were kicked in while they were home.

“Other neighbors were finding stuff – computer keyboards – in the bushes, just random stuff,” Jeff said. “So we knew it was a problem.”

Having heard enough, Maureen, Jeff and her neighbors asked the city for help. They attended a City Council meeting and asked the police and city officials to attend a neighborhood meeting they were planning at the area park.

Police Chief Wayne McCoy didn’t want to wait for the meeting and invited the neighbors to a meeting at the Community and Youth Outreach Unit.

“They anticipated about 50,” Maureen said. “But we had about 120 people at the first meeting.”

They still held the meeting in the park, and Maureen started collecting e-mails and forming a neighborhood watch program. When a crime took place, Maureen contacted the police and get what information she could to pass on to her neighbors.

What the neighbors learned was many of their burglaries were part of a metro-wide crime spree. Eventually, those burglars were caught.

“That has diminished a lot because someone in the Woods Chapel neighborhood called in a license plate,” McCoy said.

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Maureen’s passion for a safer neighborhood is exactly what McCoy was looking for in potential students for the Citizens Police Academy.

“We invited people who had been critical of the department to come to the academy,” McCoy said. “Someone who has complained will benefit more.”

McCoy said one of the students in the class never complained to the department, but he learned of the man’s story through the newspaper. Now that student is a block captain.

When McCoy told Maureen the department was planning a class in which citizen could get more insight into police operations, Maureen asked to be the first person on the list.

She was. And Jeff wanted to participate, too.

For nine weeks, every Wednesday (except the Saturday afternoon spent at the shooting range), the class met in the CYOU conference room and heard from experts within the department about what goes into their jobs.

“Every class has exceeded my expectations,” Jeff said. “It gives me a completely different perspective when I look at law enforcement. I really see what it takes to be a good police officer.”

Sgt. Allen Kintz organized the class and already has the second session filled with new students and started a waiting list for the third session.

His and McCoy’s hope is the class will not only give citizens some insight into police operations but hopefully open the lines of communication between the department and citizens.

“My idea and goal in this was to give just a glimpse of what it takes to be a police officer,” Kintz said. “What it takes to run a police department. There’s a huge misconception in the public of what a police officer does and why they do it.”

McCoy and Kintz strived to get as much diversity in the class as possible. They chose participants from different police and council districts in the city. The classmates varied in age and race. There were City Council members and business owners as well as average working-class citizens.

During the nine weeks, the students touched on almost all aspects of the department from dispatch and report writing to crime scene investigating and crime prevention.

Each class ended with the students getting to practice what they’d learned. At the end of the crime scene class, students lifted fingerprints off various items.

At the end of one class they did a building search through one of the grade schools in Blue Springs. During this particular exercise, the classmates had the opportunity to portray both the bad guys and the police officers.

The class concluded with a graduation ceremony Wednesday. Each student had an opportunity to speak about his or her experience.

“They really went all out,” Maureen said.

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For Maureen and Jeff the academy was a chance for them to learn more about the department and a way to pass on information to their neighbors.

Now, when a neighbor has a question about the way a situation was handled, Maureen can explain why the police did what they did.

“I never knew how much they relied on the citizens to do their jobs,” Jeff said. “The need eyes and ears. The need everybody’s input.”

She hopes to emphasize what she’s learned about crime prevention and things her neighbors can do to protect themselves and their homes.

“It was really dark, people weren’t putting their lights on,” Maureen said about her neighborhood a couple of years ago. “Now, they’re installing larger lights and motion censors. People are paying attention.”

All of her efforts over the last year are paying off, says Darren and Amy Lengyel, and the neighborhood has enjoyed decreased crime, which McCoy and Kintz will verify. The neighbors communicate with one another better, too.

“People will actually stop and check things out,” Darren said.

And Maureen’s knack for bringing people together played out in the class, too. She and other members of the class are talking about forming a alumni group to further communications between different quadrants of the city.

These days, the community Maureen and Jeff have grown to love over eight years is taking on a new meaning. They’ve started finding different ways to be involved. Maureen is now a member of the Park Board and also participated in the citizens advisory committee for the city’s latest bond election. They also helped organize a debate for the last mayor and City Council elections.

For the Johnsons the best outcome in the whole ordeal is the relationship they have formed with all of their neighbors. They went from not knowing many of their neighbors to knowing most of them.

And Maureen rather enjoys the moniker the children of the neighborhood have bestowed upon her – “Candy Lady.”