Grant Park Security Patrol

By Carol Fisk
July was a problem month for vehicle larceny and auto theft. We have reports of several car break-ins at the following locations: Grant near Memorial, the Mattress Lofts, Woodward Avenue near Cherokee, and inside the gates of Oakland Cemetery. The suspects at Oakland were a young black male and a young white male who were driving a silver Dodge SUV. Please do not leave any items in your vehicle that might tempt a criminal.
Thanks for your continuing support of Grant Park Security Patrol (GPSP). A new quarter will start in October, so please pay your dues by the end of September to make sure you stay on the patrol list for the spring quarter. The quarterly payment is $40 per household and the annual payment is now $160. It’s easy to pay online but 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.
As a reminder to all members 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 your new email address to grantparksecurity@mindspring.com
Major Barbara Cavendar has been promoted to commander of Zone 3. Please leave messages for her at the Zone 3 precinct.
In case you are not familiar with GPSP, it is a nonprofit 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 a member lets 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%, and 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. Please let GPSP know how easy/hard or useful you find the online system as it is regularly being tweaked.
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 email Chris Newman at grantparksecurity@mindspring.com, or link to the GPSP site by going to www.gpna.org and clicking on Security Patrol at the top.