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A Montgomery neighborhood is taking steps to fight back against thieves committing property crimes in their community. McGehee Estates is planning to add more Flock cameras to the 16 they currently have after a rash of car break-ins. Surveillance video captured the sound of a gun being used to shoot out the window of Drew Woods’ neighbor’s vehicle. “We’ve noticed an increase in weaponry, we’ve noticed an increase in the use of that weaponry in our neighborhood and that’s unusual. Very unusual,” said Woods.
Woods is president of the McGehee Estates Neighborhood Association, which includes almost 1,000 homes in Midtown Montgomery. “We are also trying to encourage other neighbors to use surveillance at their house to share that video with us so that we can create a more accurate timeline of events from night to night, so that we can track criminals. And we can track crime when it happens as soon as it happens and provide that to law enforcement,” said Woods. Woods says he’s frustrated that the City of Montgomery’s Crime Mapping System doesn’t list property crimes accurately, even if a police report has been filed.
“There very much appears to be a discrepancy in the reporting of crime. We have a lot of neighbors who will report that a crime happened at their house with video surveillance, yet there is no searchable crime database that we can provide. I was just looking at Montgomery’s crime database today and there’s not my neighbors incident where a rifle was shot through their window two weeks ago. It’s not there, so we feel like there’s a pretty large discrepancy between what’s being reported and what’s actually happening to our neighbors in McGee Estates,” said Woods.
According to MPD, three cars were broken into early Monday morning on Allendale Place, yet only one report is listed in the Crime Mapping system, and even though a car was shot multiple times, the incident is categorized as vandalism. Residents also told Action 8 News that as many as 14 vehicles in the area were broken into and ransacked.
“I hear concerns all the time in McGehee Estates from neighbors who are afraid at night and they’re afraid of the gunshots they’re afraid of what’s happening when they’re not looking outside and that’s just not tolerable and so we are taking active steps in our neighborhood to combat that crime and to try and create a neighborhood that is hostile towards crime,” said Woods. Woods says he is planning a neighborhood meeting in the coming weeks and he encourages all residents to attend. As a side note, Drew Woods is an executive at WCOV which partners with WAKA Action 8 News for newscasts.