In the past few weeks, Ghent Square and the surrounding community has experienced unusually high incidents of vandalism and petty theft. It is important to know that we live in one of the safest communities in Norfolk and these recent incidents are way above what is normally occurring in our community.
The GSCA HOA Board of Directors will continue to coordinate with community leaders, local civic leagues, and the city of Norfolk to engage on this matter and ways to deter these crimes.
We have received feedback from several residents to deal with this problem, such as the use of residents’ security cameras and roving patrols. While these are good suggestions, all approaches to crime prevention require good lighting. A patrol on a darkened street only puts the officer at risk with a small chance of seeing a crime in progress. The same is true of cameras. The low-light images are poor.
Most, but not all, of these crimes occur in the cover of darkness and there is a correlation between street light outages and crime. In Ghent Square we have many streetlights that have been non-operational for quite some time. Even though residents have been diligent in reporting the outages to Dominion Power, little has been done to correct this problem. As a community, we need to significantly increase the number of calls to Dominion Energy to report streetlight outages.
To report a streetlight outage, you will need to obtain the numbers on the streetlight. To do this, in the early evening, when the streetlights are supposed to be working, walk your neighborhood and take a picture of the numbers on the streetlights that are not working, or tag the streetlights with painters’ tape and go back during daylight hours and write down the numbers on the streetlights that you tagged.
Then refer to https://ghentsquare.net/streetlights to determine if the lights in your area are Dominion Energy streetlights or watch lights that belong to Ghent Square.
If it is a streetlight, report the outages by calling Dominion Power by calling 866-366-4357 or report online at https://www.dominionenergy.com/virginia/report-outage-or-emergency/streetlight-and-watchlight-outages.
If it is a watch light, email the letters/numbers to lrattan@communitygroup.com or call 757-627-5757 to report the watch light outage.
Additionally, we ask that ALL vandalism and petty theft, no matter how small, be reported through the Norfolk Police non-emergency numbers or on their website. The more incidents reported, the more likely Norfolk police will increase patrols in our area. The non-emergency numbers to report these crimes to are 757-664-7000 or 757-441-5610 or use the website at www.norfolk.gov/3089/Citizens-Online-Reporting-System.
Thank you,
Ghent Square Board of Directors