Boston homeland security plan relies on watch groups

In Boston police's new antiterror strategy, some of the frontline recruits will be neighborhood watch groups.

Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole is planning to spend federal homeland security money to help watch groups spot possible terrorists -- an initiative designed at the same time to rebuild the city's once nationally recognized community policing program.

''There's no bright line between terrorism and ordinary inner-city crime," O'Toole told the Globe. ''The federal government has made it very clear that if we launch homeland security initiatives that also have some benefit via ripple effect on other aspects of policing, then that's OK."

The Department of Homeland Security advises the US Justice Department on a program called Citizen Corps, which includes a national neighborhood watch program incorporating terrorism awareness education with crime prevention. ''It serves as a way to bring residents together to focus on emergency preparedness and emergency response training," said Steven Llanes, a Homeland Security spokesman.

However, O'Toole said she believes her concept for Boston is more extensive than what has been tried elsewhere in the country. ''It won't be an intelligence czar in Washington who recognizes something peculiar happening in Boston," she said. ''We're developing a curriculum so we can go out there and teach people living and working in our neighborhoods what to look for, and let them know how . . . they can be our eyes and ears."

Mayor Thomas M. Menino's homeland security director, Carlo Boccia, declined to discuss the strategy.

O'Toole said the Boston Police Department will use the grant money in part to hire outside consultants to put together sensitivity training designed to ensure that the initiative does not ''create a community of vigilantes or people who are going to go out there inappropriately and single out certain ethnic groups."

But some civil rights leaders questioned the plan, saying that Arab-Americans already feel discriminated against in the post-Sept. 11 world.

''They can do sensitivity training . . . yet the policies themselves are based on racial profiling," said Merrie Najimy, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee based in Boston. ''I think it's trouble and will create fear and hysteria."

O'Toole said her proposal is a necessary response to federal spending cuts, which have starved the department of officers.

There are 239 fewer officers on the street than six years ago, when Boston had 31 homicides. This year, there have been 22 homicides in Boston as of yesterday.

While Boston received millions in federal homeland security grants last year, the money cannot be used to hire police officers. O'Toole has said that the city received $32.1 million in federal community policing grants in the three fiscal years prior to Sept. 11, 2001, compared with $12.6 million in the three years after the terrorist attacks.

The number of neighborhood crime watch groups has also dropped dramatically. There are 200 to 300 active community watch groups in Boston, compared with 1,100 in the heyday of community policing in the city during the mid- to late-1990s, O'Toole said.

O'Toole said that most crime watch groups average between 25 and 30 members. If she reaches her goal of getting 1,100 groups operating again, then 30,000 people could be involved with police on community issues in Boston.

''Whether it's guns, gangs, drugs, or terrorism, we're going to build whatever we do on the backbone of community policing," O'Toole said. ''To enlist all of those people in our homeland security initiative will be just extraordinary."

Some community leaders hailed the idea, calling it innovative and a boon to the diminished neighborhood crime watch network.

''The police need more numbers," said John Barbour, the president of Project RIGHT, a nonprofit in Grove Hall that oversees more than 40 neighborhood crime watch groups. ''It's just a different way to skin the cat."

O'Toole said that in addition to strengthening community policing financially, she hopes the idea brings new people into contact with the police.

''For people in certain neighborhoods, it may be more attractive," O'Toole said. ''Especially in neighborhoods where there's a stigma associated with working with the police."

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.