Bells Corners turns to Watch group to quell crime jitters

Bells Corners signalled its desire to restore order to its neighbourhoods at a spirited meeting about community safety on Monday.

Only weeks after a bizarre car-ramming fatality, a pair of shootings and an apparent hate crime, about 150 residents turned out to lay the groundwork for a Neighbourhood Watch program that would encompass the whole west-end community.

Though technically a meeting about the eyes-and-ears program, worried residents used the opportunity to ask Ottawa police about the loss of their community police office, a perceived decline in patrols, and the possible location of drug houses or gang activity in the area.

The cluster of shootings, the unusual homicide of Nick Hickey, 17, and the slapping of pro-Hitler posters on the area’s mosque — all within two weeks — clearly had some people on edge.

“I’ve been in Bells Corners for about 25 years,” said ward Coun. Rick Chiarelli. “I can tell you, this is not Bells Corners.”

Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod credited Nick Hickey’s mother, Tracy, for sparking the drive for the Neighbourhood Watch program.

“Make no mistake, when we leave here this evening, I want the rest of the city of Ottawa to know that Bells Corners is a safe community where neighbours stand up for neighbours, and we’re going to get over this very dark period,” she told a standing-room crowd at Collège Catholique Franco- Ouest.

“She doesn’t want Nick’s legacy to go unanswered, so she’s asking and appealing to all of you to be part of the solution.”

Neighbourhood Watch is established when a minimum of 50 per cent of households agree to join. Block captains are assigned and information about security or criminal activity is funnelled to co-ordinators and police, while alerts are sent out when crime sprees — like break-ins — crop up.

The meeting also heard about the value of using Crime Stoppers, an anonymous tips line that directs information to police. It has helped take more than 450 guns off Ottawa streets since its inception, and in 2017, it accepted more than 5,000 tips, while giving out some $16,000 in rewards.

Ottawa police Sgt. Maria Keen told the audience the community office, now closed, was only bricks-and-mortar and that there are adequate patrols in the area, an assigned community constable, and extra officers when the need arises.

“It does work,” she said of Neighbourhood Watch, “but it only works if you make it work.”

The spate of unusual trouble in Bells Corners peaked on Jan. 17 when Hickey, still in high school, was out for one his regular walks through his neighbourhood when, homicide detectives allege, he was deliberately run over.

Only days earlier, shots were fired on Priam Way, followed by an early morning drive-by shooting on Hammill Court, only steps from where Hickey was struck and killed.

Thus was Monday’s meeting quickly organized to re-instil a sense of safety. The Watch program appeared to be off to a solid start, judging by the way sign-up clipboards were being passed along the rows of concerned residents.