Another Tale of Two Cities*
Neighborhood Watch:  from Ann Arbor to Baghdad

Sandra L. Arlinghaus
Fall, 2007
The Actors

Applets offer direct interactive visual evidence of pattern. An applet is a dynamic object that represents the stability, or lack thereof, in a system. Scramble the applet; does it settle down to a steady state? The size of the bounding box helps to determine the steadiness of the system--there are many parallels to these ideas in human systems. Move the red "start" box--try moving it to the lower right corner of the display. Move other parts of the applet as you wish, to expose names or structure. 

In the Ann Arbor Neighborhood Watch structure, notice the strong linear, hierarchical pattern centered on Neighborhood Watch Coordinator, Adele ElAyoubi.  She is directly linked, via e-mail, to hundreds of individuals.  Those without e-mail are linked to someone who is directly linked to Adele.  Thus, in the applet below, Adele is linked to many individuals directly.  Each of those represents an e-mail connection between Adele and a trained background-checked Neighborhood Watch block captain.  In a few cases, there is direct outreach from block captains to other block captains (who are not directly linked to Adele).  Those patterns represent connection patterns between Adele and block captains without e-mail (using as an intermediary a block captain with e-mail).  

In the applet below, the members of the Original Neighborhood Watch Advisory Board (later "Panel") are shown as at its first meeting, October 18, 2001.  The name of the police chief is as it was then, as well.

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The pattern in Baghdad is not yet well-formed and information is difficult to find.

At the top of the hierarchy is a man from Northern Ireland, apparently, who led the effort to implement crime prevention using established methods.

Others, whose names appear in recent references are:
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