MOUNT VERNON — Township Crime Awareness is an initiative by the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to keep residents informed with timely information about crime details.

“We want the Township Trustees and the Clerks Association to partner with us,” said Knox County Sheriff David Barber. “What we are trying to do is on our sheriff’s office Web site to put a Twitter page or a Facebook page or some type of vehicle where people who follow one of those sites can be alerted to any timely information we have about crimes in the county or even road and weather conditions during winter.

“We also want to use the township trustees to disseminate some of this information. That’s what the initiative is. People were coming up to me after the Crime Awareness Seminar in Bladensburg last January and asking what they should be looking for and how could we get the information to them. That’s when I came up with the idea of using the townships as one way to get information out. If there are burglaries or break- ins around Knox Lake and we’re looking for a certain vehicle, why is that a concern for people who live in Gambier? In talking with some of the trustees, Andy Sims was telling me about all this Twitter stuff. He said the schools do this and people get alerted on their computers or cell phones or whatever. And I thought, ‘What a neat way to send out the snow emergency levels.’ People don’t have to check with us. If they are following our page they will just get the information,” Barber said.

The other part of the initiative would be to use the township trustees as a voice for the sheriff’s office. Barber said he or some of his employees could attend the monthly township meetings to hold crime prevention presentations.

“We would leave it up to the township trustees to publicize it to the residents of their townships,” Barber explained. “We can talk about things like protecting your home and your property from burglaries or thefts. Or we could talk about identity thefts or whatever topic is current or is affecting the residents; things that are going on like the Nigerian banking scams and things like that.”

The idea of making these kinds of presentations to the different townships seems to be getting a favorable reaction from several of the trustees.

“I’m sure the people here would be interested,” said Jim Braddock, Wayne Township trustee. “We’ve had a lot of break-ins up here about a year or so ago. It seemed like every other day you’d hear about someone who got broke into. So, yeah, I think there’d be a lot of interest in something like that from the sheriff. And not just here but everywhere. I’m sure people would want to know what the sheriff is doing about things, too.”

Clay Township Trustee Bruce Conard agrees the township crime awareness initiative is a good idea and would be of interest to residents of the township.

“I think the people here would be interested in this just because of all the stealing going on last year,” he said. “The sheriff talked about it at the meeting in Mount Vernon last February. And he said something at Bladensburg at the school about having township watches. But I don’t think they have enough deputies to do something like that. Those people at Bladensburg that night were either mad or scared. And I’m mad because I was one who got stuff stolen. I think the people in the township would be interested in it.”

Conard also likes the idea of using the social networking Web sites such as Facebook to alert people to what is going on.

“That’d be like Amber Alert,” he said. “And the word can spread fast and they’ve proved it. I’m all for it. I think it’d work. Having more eyes and ears in the county would help a lot.”

Barber did not indicate when he expects the initiative to be up and running.