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Residents of Knollwood Estates and Hillandale Gardens in Adelphi hope a revived neighborhood watch program will cut down on what they suspect is drug activity in their community.

Knollwood resident Nancy Randall took the position of neighborhood watch coordinator in early August and has been spending the last month enlisting volunteers and assigning block captains. She said she currently has eight volunteers signed up.

Randall said the neighborhood needs to show that crime will not be tolerated.

"My street, Geranium Avenue, started having problems in 2004," she said. "The neighborhood had a transition, and there is drug activity. I haven't been able to verify this but there is also what we believe to be a halfway house on our block."

Randall has been holding meetings among the block captains and has a training session for all participants scheduled for Sept. 24, where they will go over proper procedures for reporting suspicious activity and emergencies.

She said she sees strangers coming and going from Geranium Avenue all the time, which she suspects is due in part to drug activity.

"We are just a dead end street," she said. "There is no reason for traffic to drive through. We notice strangers driving into the neighborhood. They go up to a contact person, turn around and leave."

Police failed to respond to multiple requests for crime statistics in the Knollwood and Hillendale Gardens neighborhoods, but Cpl. Kevin Carter of the Dist. 6 station in Beltsville said the new program will help police identify drug activity and halfway houses.

"What they believe is drug activity may not be," he said. "But, they need to let us know, because they may be right. We can investigate."

Knollwood resident Oswalt Vasquez said there have also been problems with automobile break-ins on his street.

Vasquez, who has lived in Knollwood for 10 years, said he would be willing to help with the neighborhood watch.

"It's probably just kids or something like that," he said. "There are a lot of new homeowners, and [a neighborhood watch] will prevent crime and make it a better neighborhood."

Knollwood resident Jerri Hunt said that vandalism has been a problem, especially when children are out of school.

"Years ago, when [University of] Maryland would let out, we'd have incidents with cars," she said. "My son's tires got slashed one summer. It's stuff like that."

Hunt said just the presence of a neighborhood watch can deter criminals.

"No place is totally safe," she said. "If people know that we're on guard, you may not get a lot of this funny stuff. There are a lot of new neighbors, so it couldn't hurt."

Randall said that the District 6 police station in Beltsville has been urging the Hillandale Gardens Homeowners Association to restart the watch program for the past few years.

"Over the last few years it's been a transient neighborhood," Carter said. "This is a way to bring them together. Right now it's easy for [criminals] without a neighborhood watch."

Randall was originally a neighborhood watch participant when it started up 18 years ago. She said as people moved away, the program simply dwindled down until it was inactive.

She said there are other advantages to an active neighborhood watch, aside from crime prevention.

"I think it will work well with emergency preparedness, should there be an emergency in this area," she said. "The police will have a contact person and that contact person will have a captain. It's not just crime. I think this will help in any emergency."

E-mail Jonah Schuman at jschuman@gazette.net.