‘Stand tall’

By Jon Campisi
Times Staff Writer

A lesser man may have been turned off to his civic duties after what happened.
But not Paul Costello.
In fact, the car accident he was involved in while patrolling his community only fueled his desire to work harder in seeing to it that his Holmesburg neighborhood remains a vital place to live and raise a family.
Costello, a father, husband and disabled postal worker, was injured alongside his friend, Tim Rogers, during an early morning patrol June 28 outside of a bar on Frankford Avenue. The two were volunteering their time as part of a work detail for the Tacony Town Watch.
In an ironic twist, Costello and Rogers were patrolling looking for drunken drivers when a suspected drunken driver slammed into their vehicle, leaving Rogers with cuts and bruises, Costello unconscious, and Costello’s 12-year-old son, Shawn, whom they had just picked up from a friend’s house after he fell ill, shaken up. Their account was detailed in a report in last week’s Northeast Times.
"I thought the neighborhood was going downhill, but I never realized how bad the neighborhood needed some help," Costello said during an interview in his Holmesburg home.
This is the precise reason why Costello decided to get involved with Town Watch, a program in which a neighborhood’s own citizens essentially become the eyes and ears for the police department on a whole host of issues plaguing communities.
The problem for Costello is that he lives in a vortex of sorts, an area not covered by any existing Town Watch group. So he opted to join the nearby Tacony Town Watch, a group headed by veteran community activist Angel Cianci-Hartman. After becoming certified to patrol his streets, Costello wanted to start his own Town Watch group in Holmesburg, but after consulting with Cianci-Hartman, decided to pool resources instead.
Now, the two have essentially teamed up, and the goal has been to expand the Tacony group’s coverage into Holmesburg, and hopefully solicit more Town Watch members from Costello’s community.
"If I had a vehicle right now, I’d be out there this weekend," Costello said of his dedication to Town Watch.
Unfortunately, Costello’s wheels are on the fritz, thanks to the hit-and-run driver who stopped only briefly to check on the vehicle’s occupants after the accident — asking, with slurred speech, if they were OK — before fleeing the scene. Costello and Rogers believe the driver had been drinking, since they spotted his Lincoln Navigator parked outside of a nearby bar moments before the crash.
The trouper that he is, Costello doesn’t really think about how the accident has inconvenienced him. Instead, he is bothered by the fact that he can’t patrol the neighborhood and has difficulty getting his son to doctor’s appointments; Shawn Costello was born with spina bifida.
Nevertheless, Costello is determined to press on.
"I believe if you fall off the bike, you get back on the bike and keep going," he said.
Costello believes in keeping the neighborhood safe, hence his strong involvement with Town Watch. Cianci-Hartman, president of the Tacony Town Watch, said more people like Costello are needed if citizens aim to reach their ultimate goal of making city neighborhoods places in which people are proud to live.
"Our goal and mission of Town Watch is to educate and inform," said Cianci-Hartman, who was interviewed alongside Costello at his home.
As for her own group agreeing to expand patrols to areas such as lower Holmesburg, where Costello lives, Cianci-Hartman said it was a no-brainer; neighborhoods are truly linked by the people, and oftentimes geographical boundaries are meaningless.
"(As) Tacony residents, we have an interest in Mayfair and Holmesburg for many reasons," Cianci-Hartman said. "They’re the adjoining neighborhoods, but at the same time whatever happens here spills into our area and vice versa."
Cianci-Hartman attributed a lack of Town Watch participation among Mayfair and Holmesburg area residents — and lower Holmesburg in particular — to not enough people taking the initiative to get involved.
"A lot of people wanted to be a part of (the group), but didn’t want to make any efforts to organize," she said. "You still need a leader."
Cianci-Hartman praised Costello for his leadership qualities, and for taking the reins, so to speak, when it came to standing up for his neighborhood in this manner.
"He (Costello) is establishing his membership, utilizing our membership as well …," Cianci-Hartman said.
There are other reasons why people might not want to get involved in Town Watch, Costello and Cianci-Hartman acknowledge. Take, for example, the fear of retribution — who wants the aggravation of worrying about getting the tires on his vehicle slashed because he called the cops on folks? Or the more practical matter of simply not having enough time to volunteer in one’s community in this busy day and age.
Then there’s the fact that Town Watch members work on a strictly volunteer basis. And when the average Town Watch patrol vehicle (personal vehicles, mind you) puts on around 40 miles a night, not getting reimbursed for gas, especially in today’s economic climate, can be somewhat of a turnoff.
But for those like Cianci-Hartman, who began getting involved in her native Tacony neighborhood from a very young age, nothing compares to the feeling one gets from performing a community service.
"At thirteen, (my mom) said, ‘you’re not doing anything but going out on Town Watch,’" Cianci-Hartman said, referring to the orders she received from her mother, Mary Cianci, a well-respected community activist in her own right.
Cianci was responsible for starting the city’s original community policing program, which was sort of a precursor to Town Watch.
Approaching age 40, Cianci-Hartman said she is proud to have had a mother who was so involved in the community. And the fact that nothing bothered the petite woman — she wouldn’t hesitate to take on local drug dealers and the like — served as an even greater inspiration to her daughter.
"I am one of a few people in the city of Philadelphia who has been doing this this long," Cianci-Hartman said, referring to her Town Watch experience.
As for the new Mayfair/Lower Holmesburg contingent, Cianci-Hartman encouraged anyone who feels neighborhood pride to get involved. The areas covered by the newly expanded Town Watch will be between Frankford Avenue and the Delaware River and up Rowland Avenue (including Lincoln High School), and between Cottman Avenue and Rhawn Street. These were areas that were previously overlooked during Town Watch patrols.
While the general purpose of Town Watch remains the same, the mission has expanded slightly in recent years. In addition to being on the lookout for drug transactions and curfew violations, Town Watch members are also checking the communities for graffiti and other acts of vandalism, as well as keeping an eye out for prostitution.
"This is detrimental to the quality of life of the neighborhoods," Cianci-Hartman said. "We want to start taking back our streets, we want to take back our neighborhoods. It’s an initiative."
So, just what is Cianci-Hartman’s message to those who aim to bring the communities down?
"We’re going to be out here and we’re not leaving," she said.
Involvement among younger people could be beneficial in that it could inspire other younger generations to get involved in things like Town Watch, taking on sort of a domino effect. The Tacony group recently certified an 18-year-old to do patrols — the minimum age to be a Town Watch member — but he ended up moving with his family to a different neighborhood. However, he vowed to once again become involved if he ever moves back to the area on his own, Cianci-Hartman said.
Cianci-Hartman’s group also has members who are in their older years; at least one member of the patrol team is 68.
"There’s a lot of different ways you can help," Cianci-Hartman said of the different positions within Town Watch, including drivers, block watchers and site officers.
Members of Town Watch are in constant contact with one another, linked up by wireless radio, and contacting police to report suspicious activity is just a phone call away. In addition to calling 911, Cianci-Hartman said she has the personal cell phone numbers of the top police officials in her district.
One of the nice things about Town Watch, Cianci-Hartman said, is the close working relationship members have with the police department. The volunteers also help to make officers’ jobs easier by being trained to give accurate descriptions of suspects, so that when police arrive on scene, there’s no confusion as to whom they must question or search.
"There’s a lot that goes into being the eyes and ears," for the police department, Cianci-Hartman said.
Cianci-Hartman said all of her recruits for Town Watch go on a six-patrol training regiment with experienced members before they can be certified. They are also given a tour of the 911 center to see how calls are placed and prioritized.
Town Watch’s mission has evolved even further and includes keeping an eye on abandoned structures with stray animals on the properties, or buildings on which nobody has paid taxes for years but that still have working electricity.
"Town Watch has taken on a new role," Cianci-Hartman said. "We’re just going to keep moving forward."
Because of the nature of its seemingly ever-expanding mission, Town Watch no longer only works closely with the police department, but also other city agencies and organizations such as the Department of Licenses and Inspections and CLIP, the Community Life Improvement Program. Town Watch also has developed relationships with Philadelphia school police and SEPTA police, Cianci-Hartman said.
But no matter how involved Town Watch members get in the community, they are still mere volunteers, and Cianci-Hartman and Costello stressed that nobody looking to join up should fear that they are putting their lives on the line for the sake of the neighborhood.
"We do everything we can not to put ourselves in danger," Costello said. "We need to get the message out there on what Town Watch is about and what Town Watch is not about."
However, Cianci-Hartman and Costello both continue to play up the virtues of Town Watch, and the satisfaction each gets from doing this type of volunteerism.
"Every block has a story," Costello said, before Cianci-Hartman added, "You can change it by getting involved. You can get rid of that abandoned house, you can get rid of those squatters. There needs to be strength."
For Costello, his only hope is that others will see how dedicated he has been to his community, and they will be inspired to do the same. After all, he took a major hit for the benefit of his neighborhood — literally.
"We’re just looking for some more people to come out and help us stand tall for the neighborhood," he said. ••
For more information about Town Watch Integrated Services, visit www.phila.gov/townwatch. To learn more about the newly formed Mayfair/Lower-Holmesburg Town Watch contingent, e-mail hlmtw@hotmail.com
Reporter Jon Campisi can be reached at 215-354-3038 or jcampisi@phillynews.com