December 17, 2025

SO YOU’VE DEFUNDED THE POLICE. WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP? Here’s why ‘Neighborhood Crime Watch’ signs in Ann Arbor are going away.

There are hundreds of them throughout Ann Arbor and they’ve been around for decades, but “Neighborhood Crime Watch” signs may be a thing of the past soon.

City Council voted 10-0 Monday night, Dec. 15, to direct city staff to remove all neighborhood watch signs in the city by July 15 as the city strives to be more welcoming and inclusive.

“This is so important,” said Council Member Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, D-3rd Ward.

Neighborhood watch programs emerged in the 1970s during a period of national anxiety about crime and social change, but research shows they don’t reduce crime and often reinforce racism, council stated in a resolution.

“These programs were often rooted in assumptions about who did and did not ‘belong’ in a neighborhood, reinforcing race-based hyper-vigilance and suspicion particularly toward Black, Brown, and other marginalized residents and visitors,” it states.

“This dynamic encouraged informal surveillance practices that disproportionately targeted people of color and contributed to patterns of exclusion under the guise of public safety.”

Despite neighborhood watch programs being defunct, more than 600 such signs remain throughout the city, officials said.

Fortunately, America’s Newspaper of Record isn’t taking any chances:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll