Brookline business owner creates neighborhood watch group "Boulevard Bouncers"
BROOKLINE (KDKA) - A business owner in the South Hills has seen enough people causing chaos on his street, so he has decided to create a neighborhood watch group to keep his street neighborly.
Tom Swartz has had his business Steel City Craft Emporium in Brookline for about two years, and he's seen kids throw stuff at his store and even steal from it.
"It's just gotten to a point where now it's the fact that people are getting hurt," Swartz said.
He started the idea of the Boulevard Bouncers. Essentially, it is a neighborhood watch group to deter and report issues as they arise. It comes after a week when the nativity outside the Tree of Life Open Bible Church was vandalized.
"The camel's head and neck was broken and was dangling. One of the life-size wisemen was crumbled up and was broken," Tree of Life Open Bible Church Lane Rhoads said.
Across the street from there, an employee at a dry-cleaning business was attacked during an attempted robbery.
"We just have to take more precautions. We're getting a security service coming in," Chuong's Cleaners owner Elaine Chuong said.
Swartz said the idea would be to get people in shirts that say Boulevard Bouncers and have QR codes in windows for people to scan when they see something happen. This way it can be reported safely and proper authorities deal with it.
"We want to keep them safe, but we want to be visible," Swartz said.
This plan has been in the works for about a month but there is more to be done before it goes into effect. Currently, there is a Facebook page for the group.
