Crime & Safety
East Lyme Police Partner With Virtual Neighborhood Watch
With Nextdoor, East Lyme residents can create private neighborhood websites to share information.
The East Lyme Police Department is partnering with Nextdoor, the private social network for neighborhoods in an effort to increase safety and communications with residents.
This partnership will enable East East Lyme Police to communicate with residents online and facilitate virtual neighborhood watches.
“Having the ability to easily communicate with residents is extremely vital to not only maintaining, but also increasing safety and reducing crime within the East Lyme community," said Detective Mark Comeau. "With Nextdoor, we can help empower neighbors to keep their communities safe and connected and give them the ability to collaborate on virtual neighborhood watch efforts."
Nextdoor has proven to be an essential and well-adopted tool, both locally in East Lyme as well as nationally, with more than 40-percent of neighborhoods using Nextdoor across the country, police said.
East Lyme residents can create private neighborhood websites to share information, including neighborhood public safety issues, community events and activities, local services, and even lost pets.
The East Lyme Police Department will be able to share helpful information with Nextdoor members, such as important crime alerts, emergency notifications, safety precautions and tips, details for events and crime watch meeting, and updates on activity affecting the local area to Nextdoor websites within East Lyme.
The East Lyme Police Department will not be able to access residents’ websites, contact information, or content.
Nextdoor is free for residents and the East Lyme Police Department. The town has been broken down into nine zones and each neighborhood has its own private Nextdoor neighborhood website, accessible only to residents of that neighborhood.
Neighborhoods establish and self-manage their own Nextdoor website. All members must verify that they live within the neighborhood before joining Nextdoor so they can be accepted into the zone appropriate to their residence. Information shared on Nextdoor is password protected and cannot be accessed by Google or other search engines.
"We currently have 271 members in our community already using Nextdoor so those interested in joining their neighborhood’s Nextdoor website can visit and enter their address," police said.
Anyone with questions may visit the Nextdoor website.
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