Clinton - Thanks to one woman's efforts, Clinton residents are now banding together to help local law enforcement make their neighborhoods safer.

Ruth Mattson has lived in Clinton for the past 10 years. She says lately she's noticing things taking a turn in the wrong direction. "I've seen over the last few years the teenagers tend to have a little bit more free time on their hands and getting into a little bit more mischief," said Mattson.

Now Mattson, who holds a degree in criminal justice, has decided to do something about it. She recently started the Downtown Clinton Neighborhood Watch Program, a program that thanks to word of mouth and Facebook, has begun to pick up steam. "The area we cover has approximately 148 buildings," Mattson said. "When we first went through to do recruitment we had about 60 people show interest in getting the program started."

Stacey Reed, a Clinton mother of two, heard about the neighborhood watch program and signed up. "There's a lot of issues, especially in the park itself. Especially where I have my two younger children," Reed said. "Their grandparents live right across the street, cars fly through there."

The neighborhood watch could be a big help to a Clinton police force that's been working hard lately. According to Clinton Police Chief Craig Johnson, in the past 2 1/2 months they've responded to around 1100 calls ranging from domestic violence assaults to burglaries. That's with a total of three officers on staff. "They're going to be helping us out being an extra set of eyes and ears reporting to us," Chief Johnson said. "We're a very small police department so every little bit will help."

The program's volunteers will mostly be window watchers. There's one law enforcement liaison and four block captains. "The block captains are each assigned a different area," Mattson said. "So the people that are in their area, when they notice suspicious activity that is not an immediate emergency, they'll contact the block captain so we can keep record of it."

Those records are passed on to the law enforcement liaison who will regularly meet with Clinton Police. "Anything that they feel warrants checking out a little bit further, they'll start paying attention to now that they have more information that goes on," Mattson said.

The next neighborhood watch meeting is scheduled for August 2 at 6:00 at the Clinton Town Hall. All Clinton residents are encouraged to attend.

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