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Business Watch Forum

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Ever wonder how you can protect your business from theft and burglaries? Or maybe identify a suspicious person who has been hanging out near your business?

Today, knowing how to protect your business can be just as important as locking the doors, setting the alarm, and making sure the surveillance system is working before leaving for the night. At the Ukiah Police Department (UPD), we want to help you understand how to protect your business from danger.

Last month, we launched a program called Business Watch to help local businesses connect with UPD and each other with the goal of reducing crime in our community. The Business Watch program includes an online crime prevention forum that establishes a communication network among local businesses, merchants, and the Ukiah Police Department.

Along with regular online conversations, UPD will hold the first of many in-person meetings to keep businesses connected and working to reduce crime in Ukiah. Our first in-person Business Watch community meeting is scheduled for Thursday, June 25—we hope you can attend!

From 11:00 am until noon in the Ukiah City Council Chambers, UPD crime prevention specialists will discuss the Business Watch program, help businesses sign up for the online forum, and review the latest crime trends and scams occurring in the Ukiah area.

This meeting is a chance to meet other business owners participating in the program, and to talk with UPD officers about ways to prevent crime from impacting your business. We will be sure to leave time at the end of the meeting for questions and answers, and for you to meet our detectives and crime prevention specialists one-on-one.

We know that criminals are opportunists, and we want to help business owners and merchants decrease opportunities for illegal activity.

Modeled after the highly successful Neighborhood Watch concept, the Business Watch program is designed to help facilitate relationships among business owners, employees, property managers, and law enforcement. Getting to know the people in neighboring businesses and forming a community that looks out for each other significantly improves law enforcement’s ability to maintain safer businesses and commercial complexes.

The Business Watch program is a program we hope every business in Ukiah will consider joining. It is a voluntary program offered at no cost to businesses, and members are invited to attend free training seminars, schedule business security surveys and be part of our crime prevention communication network via an online forum.

The online crime prevention forum is designed to establish an electronic day-to-day communication network among local businesses, merchants, and the Ukiah Police

Department. The forum helps members of the business community take an active role in reducing crime by raising awareness and discussing commercial crime trends. The Business Watch forum also offers community news updates.

Along with the forum and regular in-person meeting opportunities, Business Watch members will receive regular crime prevention brochures to assist business owners and managers as they train employees about how to recognize suspicious activity and report crimes. Also, Business Watch members can request training seminars at their business from UPD personnel on topics such as workplace violence, internal and external theft, robbery prevention, fraud and identity theft, and improved building security.

For more information about the joining the Business Watch program please contact UPD’s business liaison, Community Service Officer Nancy Sawyer at (707) 467-5708 or nsawyer@cityofukiah.com or visit our website, www.ukiahpolice.com, and click on the Business Watch tab.

Once you’ve joined, we hope you’ll proudly display a Business Watch sticker to let others know you’re connected with UPD and other business to prevent crime in Ukiah. We are very excited about this new program, and we hope you can join us on June 25 from 11 am until noon in the Ukiah City Council Chambers for a chance to learn more, and sign up to participate.

As always, our mission at UPD is simple: to make Ukiah as safe as possible. If you have suggestions on how we can improve please feel free to call me. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cell phone and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website: www.ukiahpolice.com.


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