Grant Park Security Patrol

By Carol Fisk
May saw two pedestrian robberies in the neighborhood. Two restaurant patrons were robbed at Cherokee Avenue and Memorial Drive at 2:00am one morning, and another person was robbed on the 800 block of Ormewood Avenue while walking home in Ormewood Park. No other details of these crimes are available at the time of writing this article. Please be especially vigilant if you are out and about late at night.  
Vehicle larcenies continue to be a problem, mostly in the Memorial Drive/Oakland Cemetery area, but also elsewhere in the neighborhood. There has also been a slight increase in auto theft with no particular patterns.
On the positive side, burglaries have been few and far between.  
If you see anything suspicious in the neighborhood at any time, please call 911. If a Grant Park Security Patrol (GPSP) officer is on patrol at the time, he/she will hear the call and respond. You can also contact Zone 3 commander, Major Reginald Mitchell, on his cell phone at 404-273-8178 or by email at rmitchell@atlantaga.gov.
PARKAtlanta is still working in the neighborhood enforcing all the parking regulations, so be careful how and where you park.
Do you have website or data entry skills? If so, please think about volunteering your talents for the GPSP. GPSP is also looking for volunteers to work with the corporate officers on routine tasks and new initiatives. 
Are you looking for a challenging volunteer position that will make a real difference in the neighborhood? If so, think about becoming the next president of GPSP. The president is responsible for a variety of tasks including writing the monthly The Porch Press articles and the quarterly Crimebuster newsletters; recruiting zone captains; responding to phone and email inquiries about membership and crime issues; representing GPSP at meetings; and originating and organizing new initiatives.
If you are interested in moving into a leadership position with the organization or just have some good ideas for improving GPSP and some time to help implement them, please contact GPSP at grantparksecurity@mindspring.com.  
If you are a member, make sure to notify GPSP if you are changing email addresses. If GPSP does not have your correct address, you will miss crime alerts, invoices, and more.  Members who join online can verify their payments at the Security Patrol section of www.gpna.org and also edit email addresses there.  Otherwise, send updates to grantparksecurity@mindspring.com. Also, remember to notify GPSP if you are transferring your membership to another street address, so the patrol officers’ list can be kept up-to-date.
Thanks to all members for your continuing support. In case you are not familiar with GPSP, it is a non-profit corporation run by volunteers. Membership costs $40 each quarter or $160 annually. GPSP uses that money to hire off-duty police officers to patrol the streets of Grant Park. During each patrol, the GPSP officer will usually pass each member’s house at least three times. If members let GPSP know that they will be out of town, additional attention is paid to their house while they are away.  Since GPSP began over twenty years ago, burglaries in the neighborhood have dropped by 70%. Some of that dramatic decrease can be attributed to the work of the GPSP officers. The more members GPSP has, the more patrol hours can be afforded, so please join! There is now a convenient online payment program. Just go to www.gpna.org, and click on Security Patrol at the top. If you’d prefer to receive a hard copy of the invoice with an envelope to pay by mail, just email GPSP.  If you are already a member, please encourage a friend or neighbor to join.
Thanks to Botwinick and Botwinick, CPAs, APCO Graphics Inc., and Adams Realtors for sponsoring additional patrol hours this quarter, and thanks to Linda Jones of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage’s Intown Office for providing photocopying services this quarter.
For information about joining GPSP, please call Chris Newman at 404 586-9590 or email him at grantparksecurity@mindspring.com, or link to the GPSP site by going to www.gpna.org and clicking on Security Patrol at the top.