Survey Update

Last month we asked Virginia Highland residents to participate in a brief survey. We conducted a longer survey back in February of this year, and wanted to assess the impact of changes made to the program in the past six months.

A total of 58 individuals responded to the survey and the mix was about 2:1 of members and non-members. The critical question for this survey was:

How likely are you to recommend FBAC (Fight Back Against Crime) the Virginia Highland Security Patrol to another resident?

The results show that 84% of members were somewhat likely, likely or extremely likely to recommend the program. Perhaps more interestingly, 30% of non-members fell into the same categories. In addition, our Net Promoter Score (NPS) increased from 15 to 21. 

This changes appears to come from neutrals that have been converted to promoters, hopefully reflecting our better communication efforts. If you would like more information on NPS, a brief description is included in the full report, and more information can be found online.

Three questions were raised by respondents. One resident suggested a referral program whereby a neighbor that brings in a new member gets some number of months free membership.

While this type of word-or-mouth advertising can be quite effective, we don't yet have that level of flexibility in our billing. We are working on automating our billing process, but at the present time the process is manual and adding this layer of complexity is just too much for one volunteer to keep up with. Hopefully in the future we will be able to consider such marketing ideas to increase membership.

Another resident asked about using bait cars and undercover officers to catch the people breaking into cars.

In fact, at the NPU F meeting on September 22nd, we heard from Major Hobbs that Zone 2 is trying this very tactic. So far it is making his statistics look bad, but they have been able to arrest several individuals. Keep in mind that thieves do not recognize neighborhood boundaries, so some of the people being caught in Morningside and neighborhoods to our north are also the ones who have been victimizing us. If this technique proves out in Zone 2, we would not be surprised to see something similar tried in our Zone 6. We do believe that this sort of initiative is best handled by APD using on-duty officers.

Finally someone asked, "What do you recommend that we can do as residents (politically or otherwise) to deter or prevent violent crimes in the neighborhood"?  

This resident was specifically referring to armed robberies and carjackings. First of all, we would like to recommend that every resident review the safety tips found on this website. Find links to this information here. We also encourage residents to volunteer in the neighborhood for public safety related initiatives like Keep Virginia Highland Beautiful and FBAC. It is also important that we participate in Citizen's CourtWatch to let our judges know that sentencing of repeat offenders and violent criminals matters to us. Finally, members of the Virginia Highland Public Safety Team maintain close ties with Atlanta Police Department and will pass along recommendations as we hear them.