Updated at: 11/19/2009 11:33 PM

On Patrol

Every day, Pam Kleinschmidt keeps an eye on students as they arrive and leave Lincoln Piedmont Elementary School. Their community police officer said the school needed help. "He said 'well, you know, there's some issues of bullying. We've got some older kids picking on younger kids. If you guys can just be around the school," said Pam. That's when members of the Citizen Patrol stepped in and took that responsibility, and the school has seen a difference. "The children feel very comfortable with them. They know them by name, they stand with our crossing guards. Kids know that if there's an issue, they can go talk to one of those adults," said Cher Obst, Principal at Lincoln Piedmont school.

Working at area schools is just one of many duties for Duluth's Citizen Patrol. With nine groups is in the city, they each tackle problems that are unique to their neighborhoods.

George Palo believes their patrols have helped fight drugs in the Central Hillside. "They're not doing it out in the open and they're not being as brazen about it," said Palo. But measuring that impact is difficult. Though they are not broken down by neighborhood, narcotics arrests in the city have been stable over the last 5 years, with a slight drop in 2007. Deputy Chief Mike Tusken says he believes in the group's effectiveness. "There's no doubt in my mind that they make an impact, however, for me to say statistically what that is, we'd have to remove them to see what crime came to," said Tusken.

Tusken says with the signs and flags on their vehicles, the citizens have the same effect as a police squad driving through a neighborhood. "If you're somebody who's thinking about committing a crime in that neighborhood and you see a bright, chartreuse shirts go through the neighborhood, it's the same as seeing one of us," said Tusken.

The Citizen Patrol does not solve crime. They simply call police when they see it. In fact, the number of 991 calls in the city of Duluth has increased significantly over the last 4 years. Again, police say there's no way to tell if that's a result of Citizen Patrol work, but Deputy Chief Tusken says, even if patrols are the reason the calls have increased, the police are happy to respond when something is not right. "I think opportunities to have people out there looking for issues that are suspicious or public safety risks, that call us and alert us to it, we're able to respond and abate these things," said Tusken.

Although it can't be proven that the Citizen Patrol has affected drug and 911 calls, graffiti is a different story. "One of our initiatives is to abate graffiti, so they've had a tremendous impact. Our graffiti reported crimes are down tremendously," said Tusken.