Hollywood is obsessed with superheroes. From Iron Man to The Watchmen, comic books are being produced for the silver screen, and now with ABC’s No Ordinary Family and NBC’s The Cape, network television is cashing in on America’s intrigue over masked crusaders. Police and detective stories are already extremely popular as films and television shows and now it seems is the rise of superheroes is growing and meeting us in real life. Is there a new neighborhood watch with citizens patrolling their streets to make their community safe?

“Neighborhood Watch is one of the oldest and best-known crime prevention concepts in North America. In the late 1960s, an increase in crime heightened the need for a crime prevention initiative focused on residential areas and involving local citizens. The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) responded, creating the National Neighborhood Watch Program in 1972 to assist citizens and law enforcement.”

In a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, researchers concluded that neighborhood watch programs do reduce crime, and estimate that “over 40% of the US population live in areas covered by neighborhood watch schemes.”

A group of real life superheroes (or RLSHs) have been make splashes on local and national news, and they hail from Seattle. The Rain City Superheroes are individual citizens disguised as caped crusaders who prowl the city late at night, attempting to fight or derail crime. While this is a colorful story, vigilante justice has a long history in the U.S. According to Bjorn Saemann, “From lynch justice to the New York Guardian Angels, the American history is full of it. The topic also found its way into American literature and film. Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson and superheroes like Batman – The success of vigilantism in fiction shows the fascination of Americans with the matter. It is the discrepancy between law and moral when it comes to judge vigilante justice that makes it such a fascinating topic.“

This type of justice is not exactly the same as neighborhood watch, though there are similarities in the way today’s RLSHs operate. In the words of Phoenix Jones, leader of Rain City Superheroes, "It's a pretty simple message. Citizens need to be more accountable. Calling 9-1-1 is a great start, but it's not the end all to end all," Jones said. "Criminals feel free to just run wild in my city, and I'm not going to stand for it."

But not everyone is happy about RLSHs and intimate that they might not be a substitute for Neighborhood Watch, a proven crime prevention program. Kansas City Chief of Police James Corwin argues that residents aren’t trained to deal with crime: “Police undergo thousands of hours of training and have years’ worth of experience to deal with these situations. The average resident does not. They put themselves at extreme risk trying to deal with suspected criminals on their own. Police will respond to your call as quickly as possible to deal with the situation.”

Detective Mark Jamieson, a Seattle police officer familiar with the Rain City Superheroes, agrees in a statement to Good Morning America: "Our concern is if it goes badly, then we end up getting called anyway, and we may have additional victims," he said.

But there are other types of RLSHs that do have a lot of training, like police officers, and they are giving back in a way that doesn’t requires capes and masks. In Chicago, gun violence, especially among youth, is high and a constant concern for residents and young people alike. In August 2010, NCoC published a blog that highlighted the “From Gun Violence to Civic Health” report by the McCormick Foundation and the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). This report identified an innovative model, “A Whole of City Approach”, which called upon individual, organizational and societal resources to all work together towards the singular mission to combat gun violence.

Leave No Veteran Behind is a Chicago-based non-profit that raises money from the public so that veterans can pay down their educational loans not covered by the government. In exchange for this debt relief help, veterans partner with the Chicago Police Department, Chicago Public School crossing guards and others to “provide an adult presence in the hope that positive engagement with our youth will have a greater impact on our youth than policy security interaction.” This is yet another public-private crime-fighting partnership and gets closer to the “Whole of City Approach” favored by the McCormick Foundation and SAMS.


We want to hear from you! Neighborhood Watch programs work closely with law enforcement and act as extra eyes and ears; calling 9-1-1 is their first priority if they see something suspicious. The RLSHs we met in Seattle carry taser guns and sometimes get into physical altercations. In Chicago, veterans use their training to safely escort public school students to school in violent areas. Discussion questions:
1. Which of these approaches do you think is most effective in reducing crime?
2. Are there ways residents of your communities have worked with police to promote public safety?
3. Do these strategies of citizen involvement in public safety conflict or support one another?


Note: this is the first in a 2-part series. The next “Citizen Superhero” feature will highlight the use of technology to report crime and help citizens respond to emergency situations. Have an example of how this is working in your community? Comment below or e-mail us: info@ncoc.net

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Piece contributed by NCoC.net commentator Karlo Barrios Marcelo, CEO of Karlo Marcelo Consulting, LLC.