Page One

Marcella Williams wants her neighborhood to be “more like a family.” Ron Casimere wants to scare off criminals and beautify his stretch of Alcatraz Avenue. Tracy Washburn hopes her neighbors in the Berkeley hills will be prepared to help each other if a natural disaster strikes. 

Each lives in a neighborhood that will participate tonight in Berkeley’s 17th Annual National Night Out. From 7-10 p.m., residents are encouraged to lock their doors, turn on their porch lights, and come out into the streets to spend time with neighbors and law enforcement officials. 

Founded in 1984 by the National Association of Town Watch, National Night Out is observed on the first Tuesday of August all over the United States and in Canada and on U.S. military bases around the world. According to the Berkeley Police Department, more than 34 neighborhood groups are planning outings including parties, games, musical entertainment, and more in Berkeley this year. 

Police and fire department staff show up wherever they’re invited, contributing suchcrowd-pleasers as McGruff the Crime-fighting Dog or a display of emergency vehicles, motorcycles, or a fire truck. 

“We make as big a show of it as the neighborhoods do,” says Officer Ross Kassebaum, who is this year’s NNO coordinator with the Berkeley Police. 

This year, residents of Alcatraz Avenue will celebrate the recent installation of new streetlights between the 1300 and 1600 blocks with a “Stroll Down the Avenue,” repeated several, times over the course of the evening.  

One of the event’s organizers is Ron Casimere, a member of the Alcatraz Neighborhood Association, which organized in 1995 to combat a serious drug problem. “Every day from noon to five a.m. you had drug dealers conducting their activity right out in front of the houses. It got so you almost hated to leave to go to work in the morning,” he says.  

Casimere and his neighbors tirelessly petitioned the City Council and the police for better law enforcement, and today the drug dealing has been sharply curtailed. In recent years, as new neighbors have moved in – “younger people, with a desire to better the place” – the situation has further improved, he said. 

“Now you can stroll the avenue; there are some nice little stores where you feel safe letting the grand kids walk to ... and people feel safer parking on the street.” 

A recent triumph is the installation of streetlights to discourage crime after dark. “Now at night, it’s bright as day,” says Casimere. 

Just one block over, Neighborhood Watch block captain Marcella Williams is planning an all-out party at the 63rd Street Mini-Park between California and Martin Luther King streets. There will be music, a potluck, a live snake demonstration by snake handler Vincent Seymour, kids’ games, and more. 

Williams, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1974, but only recently got involved with Neighborhood Watch, has seen crime problems wax and wane over the years. In the old days, she says, “Everybody knew everybody. It was like a big family here.” 

Even when local teens were dealing marijuana themselves, they looked after their neighbors, chasing off Oakland dealers who tried to come into the area with hard stuff like heroin and crack. “They’d tell them, ‘There are a lot of little kids in this neighborhood, and they could get hurt,’” Williams remembers. 

Today, while the drug problems have abated, Williams says the residents in her block don’t know each other very well. Like much of the East Bay, the neighborhood is in transition, and Williams sees a cultural divide between older, African-American residents and newer Hispanic arrivals. She hopes tomorrow’s party will help break the ice. “I’d like to see people relax and get to know each other.” 

Tracy Washburn of the Northeast Berkeley Association has similar reasons for promoting National Night Out. She’ll be celebrating tonight in the cul-de-sac on Ajax Place with a kids’ parade, barbecue, and other festivities.  

While her neighborhood bordering Tilden Park does not have the crime rate of the city’s south and west areas, Washburn sees a real need for neighbors to turn out and interact with one another.  

“We really need more neighborhood watch groups in the hills,” she says. “The police call this area ‘Alaska,’ it’s so big.” Washburn says it’s especially important for her neighbors to be aware of one another so they can come to each other’s aid in case of an earthquake or wildfire. 

For more information on National Night Out, call the Berkeley Police Department’s Community Service Bureau at 644-6696.