Community Corner
A Chance to Meet Your Neighbors and Fight Crime at the Same Time
One highlight of this week in Albany is Tuesday's National Night Out, the annual opportunity for residents to organize block parties and other get-togethers to share food, get to know each other better and strengthen neighborhoods against crime.
National Night Out this Tuesday offers an annual opportunity to get to know your Albany neighbors in a fun, relaxed get-together and help prevent crime at the same time.
There's often a chance to meet Albany police officers and firefighters too.
The event, observed in communities around the country, involves local neighborhoods organizing block parties or other outdoor get-togethers to build connections with each other. Last year featured a record number of 31 such gatherings registered with the city.
The accompanying photo shows one of the Albany block parties in 2011, and was featured in a Patch photo gallery of National Night Out in Albany that year. If you know who took the photo and where it was, please let us know in the comments. (The caption and credit were inadvertently detached in the switchover to our new Patch platform.)
And if you take photos at this year's National Night Out, you are welcome to share them as an "Announcements" board or blog post. We'd like to see them.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Naitonal Night Out, begun in 1984 by Matt Peskin, Executive Director of the nonprofit National Association of Town Watch.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for communities nationwide to promote police-community partnerships, crime prevention, and neighborhood camaraderie," Peskin says on the National Night Out website. "While the one night is certainly not an answer to crime, drugs and violence, National Night Out represents the kind of spirit, energy and determination to help make neighborhoods a safer place year round."
The website also describes how widely the event has spread: "National Night Out now involves over 37 million people and 15,000 communities from all fifty states, U.S. Territories, Canadian cities, and military bases worldwide."
It takes place between 6-8 p.m. Those who'd like more information about Albany's participation can contact Karina Tindol at the Albany Police Department at (510) 528-5755 or ktindol@albanyca.org.
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