Citizens’ Crime Watch recently held its 37th Annual Board meeting and the election of its officers. There are not too many non-profit organizations out there that have been around as long as we have, but thanks to you the residents of Miami-Dade we are still going strong.

The 2012-2013 board members elected were: Irving Heller, president; Naim Erched, vice president; Sam Harte, treasurer; Anna Carazo-Johanning, secretary.

The members at large are: Richard Masten, Miami-Dade Commissioner Joe Martinez, Tammie Clearfield, Annie Ross, Terri Guttman Valdez, Priscilla M. Rivera, David Ward, Craig M. Dorne, Sofian A. Zakkout, Meg Garza, Jill Sanchez, Gerald Kitchell, Manuel Orosa, and Guillermo Diaz Rousselot.

Our budget and staff have remained the same this past year, and no truer is the saying, “Doing more with less” than this past year. Our request for service grew tremendously. That’s good because one of the reasons why crime rates have dropped is that there are thousands of volunteers who are the “eyes and ears” of our local law enforcement.

Now here are just a few things we accomplished this past year:

Neighborhood Watch Program:

Established more than 351 new Neighborhood Watch groups countywide as well as revitalizing 276 old groups. These new groups, revitalized groups and safety events reached 28,000 residents.

Responded to more than 2,100 inquires through our newly designed website www.citizenscrimewatch.org from around the country, South America, England, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, Philippines, France, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Brazil. We also developed our own Facebook page, thanks to the University of Miami School of Business students. Visitors to our website averaged 3,400 a month.

Coordinated Senior Crime Prevention programs reaching over 724 seniors.

Youth Crime Watch of Miami-Dade Program:

Although the funding for this program was limited, our three coordinators served more than 34,000 students. Our coordinators distributed 45,000 pieces of crime prevention literature to the students, parents, teachers and school police officers.

Our McGruff program participated in classroom presentations, school assemblies in topics such as anti-bullying prevention, sexting, Internet safety, drug awareness and reporting crimes in their school.

So you can see that we had a very busy year, and already starting a new fiscal year, we are booked to the max!

In closing I want congratulate Miami-Dade Police Sgt. Joseph Bermudez, who recently was awarded the “Crime Prevention Officer of the Year” by the Florida Crime Prevention Association. He richly deserves this award because he is one of those officers who gives 110 percent to our community.