Increases in theft and burglaries during COVID-19, prompted a group of concerned residents to request a meeting with the Alpine Mayor and leadership including the council member serving as Police Commissioner. During the discussion, residents expressed significant concerns and requested for improvements in security. Pushback from leadership was significant and instead of identifying tangible next steps towards improvement, boro leadership recommended residents to "get a dog". There was no desire to embrace forms of modern technology e.g., IR sensors, motion detection, CCTV, drones, AI license plate readers, etc.
Lack of responsiveness motivated me to become more involved in the overall safety and concerns of our community. Since then, I have been active in engaging our elected officials, voicing issues in community safety meetings, attending boro budget planning meetings and presenting questions in council meetings however, unfortunately, most questions continue to go unanswered and the tone leadership utilizes during these interactions remains unnecessarily hostile.
