| National Night Out | |
|---|---|
 A band plays on the Mississippi River during National Night Out in downtown Minneapolis in August 2010 | |
| Type | National |
| Significance | community-police awareness-raising |
| Date | First Tuesday in August |
| 2022 date | August 2 |
| 2023 date | August 1 |
| 2024 date | August 6 |
| 2025 date | August 5 |
National Night Out is a community policing awareness-raising event in the United States, held the first Tuesday of August. [1] Texas celebrates on the first Tuesday in October. [2]
National Night Out was established by Matt Peskin in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and has been held annually since 1984. In the United States, the event is sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch. [3] National Night Out began simply with neighbors turning on their porch lights and sitting in front of their homes. [3] The first National Night Out involved 2.5 million residents across 400 communities in 23 states; National Night Out 2016 involved 38 million residents in 16,000 communities across the United States. [4]
The event is meant to increase awareness about police programs in communities, such as drug prevention, town watch, neighborhood watch, and other anti-crime efforts.
The events are typically organized by block watches, nonprofit organizations, companies, and police departments. These events can be as simple as backyard cookouts or as complex as full-blown festivals like the one on the west side of Columbus, Ohio. [5] The South Central Hilltop Block Watch in Columbus organizes one of the largest, which includes live music, food, and entertainment.
In Oxnard, California, neighborhoods such as Sycamore Senior Village have cookouts, live music, dancing, and visits by police officers, fire fighters, and paramedics with safety demonstrations, exhibits, and projects for all residents. [6]
National City is a city located in the South Bay region of the San Diego metropolitan area, in southwestern San Diego County, California.
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Thousand Oaks is a city in the northwestern part of Greater Los Angeles, approximately 15 miles (24 km) from the city of Los Angeles and 40 miles (64 km) from Downtown. The second-largest city in Ventura County, California, it is named after the many oak trees present in the area.
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McGruff the Crime Dog is an anthropomorphic animated bloodhound created by Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising executive Jack Keil through the Ad Council and later the National Crime Prevention Council to increase crime awareness and personal safety in the United States. McGruff costumes are used by police outreach efforts, often with children. McGruff was created in 1979 and debuted in 1980 with a series of public service announcements educating citizens on personal security measures, such as locking doors and putting lights on timers, in order to reduce crime. His name was selected as part of a nationwide contest in July 1980.
Neighborhood watch is a citizens' organization devoted to crime prevention within a neighborhood.
A neighborhood watch or neighbourhood watch, also called a crime watch or neighbourhood crime watch, is an organized group of civilians devoted to crime and vandalism prevention within a neighborhood.
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Crime Stoppers or Crimestoppers is a community program that helps people to provide anonymous information about criminal activity. Often managed by non-profit groups or the police, it operates separately from the emergency telephone number system or other standard methods of contacting police. This allows a person to provide crime-solving assistance to the authorities without being directly involved in the investigation process. Founded in the United States in 1976 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Crime Stoppers later caught on in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
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