There is nothing like this in Hamm yet: a sign at the entrance to the town that warns potential burglars of attentive neighbors. A WhatsApp group in Hammer Osten wants to install it in the village.
Uentrop – Burglars in the Uentrop village are said to have a comparatively harder time. And they should know that. Signs at the entrance to town could soon make it clear to them: “Attention! We’re paying attention. Don’t even try, get away.” Basically that is the message.
Such signs hang in the Rhineland, as Uentroper Markus Meyer discovered. “And in September we were in Holland, where they are also widespread. But they don’t exist in our corner yet.” That should change if possible. The basic requirement is met: a neighborhood protection group.
Such signs are intended to increase the feeling of security in the Uentrop village and deter criminals and keep them away. The neighbors who are networked via a WhatsApp group and who are supposed to point out criminals have been keeping an eye out in the Uentrop village for ten years. The warnings certainly cannot be found in official sign catalogs, but they can be purchased online. For example, it shows a masked, symbolized burglar, the warning “Caution” and the note “WhatsApp Neighborhood Protection”. If you want, you can have something customized printed on it; all of this against a green or red background.
The WhatsApp group was started almost ten years ago to the day, on December 19, 2015, as “Uentroper Burglary Protection”, and has grown and become a place of suspicious findings, but also of lost things and clues about lost pets. Markus Meyer came up with the idea and still manages the group together with his wife Heike.
“Signs like this make sense for us too,” he says and once again took the initiative, explaining the idea to Christian Renfert, who, as CDU chairman, applied for the signs together with the district parliamentary group. Now it’s time to let the city administration check and wait for an answer.
Anti-burglar signage for Hamm-Uentrop
The village very rarely experiences a series of burglaries like the one around Christmas 2022. Best not at all. It’s quiet at the moment. But the dark season, when burglaries can be booming, is still a long time away. The nearest police station, which is also manned at night, is far away and the motorway closure for fleeing burglars is close, says Meyer about the area of tension. A reference to neighborhood protection could be helpful and a deterrent.
Wild suspicions from the beginning that the group was a kind of vigilante group have long since been dispelled. Rather, it has become increasingly popular, has earned a reputation for acting responsibly, and has just over 250 members. “It works,” says Meyer, be it to point out dubious strangers to the villagers or to expose acquaintances by calling in the police.
Neighborhood protection in Uentrop: first the police, then the group
The neighbor protection signage is an addition to the group, “it has a purely preventive nature,” says Renfert about the “core idea”, analogous to the media series “Caution! Vigilant Neighbor” from the state and federal police crime prevention agencies. “Maybe one or two burglars can be deterred this way,” says CDU district representative Sabine Dorenkamp, who submitted the application together with him and parliamentary group leader Kai Hatton.
According to media reports, the police view such signs critically, pointing out their official responsibility and data protection. For example with photos of suspects. The Uentropers have been dealing with this topic for a long time. As a member of the group, he always made it clear that the police alone are the law enforcement authorities, says Renfert. That means first informing the police, surveillance and arrests are their tasks, then the group.
