Furlong Neighborhood Watch in Mendota Heights Marks One Year

While Night to Unite has become a popular social event in Mendota Heights its original purpose is rooted in neighborhood watches and a spirit of public safety.

The Mendota Heights Police Department will be visiting about a dozen neighborhood groups and associations across the area Aug. 2, including Mendota Heights’ only neighborhood watch located in the city’s Furlong neighborhood.

Formerly known as National Night Out, Night to Unite is sponsored by the Minnesota Crime Prevention Association with the help of local law enforcement agencies across the state and business sponsor AAA of Minnesota/Iowa.

Residents who live in the Furlong neighborhood, which is west of Lake Augusta and Lake LeMay, formed a neighborhood watch in the summer of 2010 following a series of car break-ins.

Denise Urmann, crime prevention officer for the Mendota Heights Police Department, is coordinating this year’s Night to Unite events and said the reason the watch organized is fairly typical. “It’s a personal attack—something’s happened to them,” Urmann said.

Margaret Swenson, who serves as the Furlong neighborhood watch’s block captain, said a “major crime spree” had struck the area during the summer of 2010, causing the group to form.

“We had people going through our neighborhood almost nightly... a couple of times a week for a couple of months,” Swenson said. “They were breaking into cars, they broke into my home, and so we wanted to get together to get more information about what was going on. I realized we didn’t talk to our neighbors very much.”

Members of the neighborhood watch met with Urmann in June and will meet with officers again next Tuesday. Crime related to the Mendota Motel, located at the northwest corner of Victory Avenue and Highway 13, was a primary concern at the June meeting.

“It (last summer’s car break-ins) was the motel. People at the motel and people going in and out of the motel,” David Hines, a Furlong resident since 1981, said bluntly. While Hines didn’t think the neighborhood watch had been effective yet, he remained hopeful that it would have an impact.

“I think it (crime in the neighborhood) is going to get worse again,” he said, “but I think we’ll gear this thing up quite a bit (when break-ins start happening again).”

Urmann reported that, of the 46 police calls for service to the Furlong neighborhood between June 2009 and June 2010, sixteen were for the Mendota Motel directly. Statistics for this year were not available, although residents remained hopeful that it will subside following repeated visits from the police.

Urman stressed the importance of neighborhood watch groups like the one in Furlong and said she wishes more neighborhoods maintained them. She urged every Furlong resident should continue to be proactive and alert.

“We need them to pay attention to their neighborhoods, to their little neck of the woods, and come together as residents so we have more eyes out there. Because there’s not very many officers per resident (in the area),” said Urmann. “We can’t be everywhere at once, so that’s why we need residents. To help us help them.”