Enchanted Hills residents who had a meeting Monday decided they have a common purpose.

“I believe it’s going to work out,” said Ray Hollis, a seven-year resident of Enchanted Drive. “I thought I was the only one who noticed all of this stuff that’s going on in our neighborhood, and apparently I’m not.”

Hollis was among about 40 people who took the first step in forming a Neighborhood Watch group. The subdivision of more than 100 homes on Shady Lane, Sherwood Drive, Starlight Drive, Enchanted Drive and Moonmist Drive is south of Interstate 20 between Wisconsin Avenue and Porters Chapel Road.

The meeting, coordinated by John Shorter, a 15-year resident of Starlight Drive, followed an anonymous note taped to neighborhood mailboxes on Jan. 23 warning neighbors of increasing thefts and drug activity in the area while urging them to “take Starlight back.”

At the meeting, neighbors agreed that juveniles, for the most part, were responsible for break-ins, drug activities, trash and speeding.

Vicksburg police were represented by Sgt. Beverly Prentiss, who manages the community resource officers, as well as Chief Walter Armstrong and Investigator Jeff Merritt. Kenya Burks, chief of staff for Mayor Paul Winfield, and Marie Thompson, city policy and intergovernmental relations director, represented City Hall.

Shorter, also president of the Vicksburg NAACP chapter, called for more patrol in the area and tighter enforcement of the curfew law, which states any juvenile 17 or younger is not allowed to be out in public unsupervised during school hours and after 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and after midnight Friday and Saturday.

In 2009, 43 of the 663 juvenile arrests by the Vicksburg Police Department were for curfew violations. The 663 is nearly double the arrests in 2007 and 2008.

The residents said they were tired of roaming youths causing problems. “Mainly, I’m tired of the kids not respecting our property,” said Jennifer Hefner, a 48-year resident of Enchanted Drive. “The kids have no respect for anybody in the neighborhood. We’ve had a substantial change in occupancies. We now have punks in our neighborhood.”

Her neighbor, Keysha McDonald, who has lived on Shady Lane for four years, agreed.

“I did notice an increase in teenage presence,” she said. “I got alarmed about that because of the possibility of crime.” McDonald said she had been a victim of an attempted residential burglary by a young person.

“When we came home one night, I saw someone in our backyard, but he jumped over the fence and got away,” she said.

Community resource officers Danitta Reed and Darnisha Cash, on the job for three months, presented a guideline on crime prevention and participation in Neighborhood Watch. Tips and methods were offered. Members of the VPD encouraged constant communication between the city and the residents.

“Neighborhood Watches will work when everybody is on the same page and everybody is informed,” Cash said.

Prentiss, who has more than 12 years of experience overseeing community programs, said the calls she has received vary from different neighborhoods, but said it is up to residents to be involved. “I think the people who showed up are interested in what’s happening in their community,” she said. “They just have to keep it up.”

Hefner said watch groups have been effective in the neighborhood before and it still limits crime near her home, but an increase in rental properties and use of Enchanted Drive as a detour are negative factors.

Wisconsin Avenue will soon be closed between Enchanted Drive and Porters Chapel while an Engineering Research and Development Center construction project is under way. The project will link two segments of the federal preserve by building a road between them, to be topped by a new overpass. For up to a year, Enchanted will have increased traffic.

“If it’s a criminal matter, by all means, give us a call, and we’re going to act on it,” Armstrong said.

While some felt the information meeting was a success, Shorter felt his request to the police department for tighter enforcement of the curfew law was not met.

“They never committed to enforcing the curfew,” he said despite Armstrong’s encouragement to call the police.

As for the watch program, the group plans to meet monthly including the community resource officers.

Contact Manivanh Chanprasith at mchan@vicksburgpost.com