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It's 10 p.m. on a Thursday, and Silver Spring resident Dave Evans is where he usually is at this time: driving around his neighborhood in his enormous black Hummer H3.

In the back seat is a black bag with night-vision goggles, pepper spray and a stun gun. A police scanner is in the front seat, with a remote control to operate two spotlights: one mounted on the car, and another that watches over the basketball courts in the middle of the neighborhood.

Evans puts in about 30 hours a month on neighborhood patrol and rarely needs to use all his gear. Regardless, Evans knows his 820-residence Tanglewood community is safer because of one of the most intense Neighborhood Watch programs in Montgomery County.

"If you go out at 3 a.m. and shine the spotlight near the townhouses, about half the time someone will jump out running," said Evans, 55, a regional sales manager for an Eastern European porcelain company, and director of the watch program.

When the program started in 1995, Evans said a car was stolen in the neighborhood every 11 days. Now, with eight teams of two residents patrolling the neighborhood on a rotating schedule, Tanglewood only loses a couple cars per year.

Few neighborhoods use the extreme vigilance that Tanglewood does. It is the only watch program in the Silver Spring area that uses the "Citizens on Patrol" method, according to police. But at the same time, many neighborhoods are taking safety issues into their own hands, dedicating substantial time and effort as the "eyes and ears" for police in Neighborhood Watch programs.

Getting trained

A small group of residents must go through a three-part training session given by police to start a Neighborhood Watch program.

The roughly 20 residents who completed training in March at Good Shepherd United Methodist on New Hampshire Avenue learned everything from obscure tips – like the best information to give police is what shoes a suspect is wearing because he's unlikely to change them – to common sense, like most vehicle break-ins result from people not locking their cars.

"You get complacent, you don't think its going to happen to you," said Lisa Arrington, president of the Hamptons Homeowners Association, which initiated the training and provided most of the attendees.

Residents learn how to hold safety meetings and how to identify gang members, and are even shown a grainy old video of a professional burglar divulging his secrets from jail.

"James," who admitted to committing more than a thousand burglaries, said if you can't get a home alarm, "a burglar won't mess with a dog."

"Being a good witness on your Neighborhood Watch is the most important thing," said Community Service Officer Joy Patil of the county police's Third District, a fast-talking encyclopedia of community policing who conducts watch training. "We'd rather get 10 calls for nothing than not get one for something." Patil said she knew residents who would put a big bowl of water or a large pair of muddy work boots just inside their front door, even if they didn't have a dog or a burly husband, to ward off intruders.

At the end of training, police will provide neighborhood watch signs for $75. The rest is in the hands of the residents.

Time commitment for watch programs is generally minimal, but the rise of tenant turnover rates, more families with two parents working full time and language barriers in diverse communities have made neighborhood watch participation a struggle, Patil said.

At the New Hampshire Estates community in Silver Spring, there are 50 less participants now than in 1993, when the program started as one of the first in the county, said Martha Waddy, president of the neighborhood's civic association.

Evans said participation in his program has dropped by half since it started.

Even Kris Kumaroo, a retired Navy Seal who started a watch program in Glenmont and schedules neighborhood watch events in military time, admitted it was difficult to get people involved.

"It's very burdensome," said Kumaroo, who has enlisted 74 of the Glenmont Civic Association's more than 700 homes in the watch program since completing training in March. "It takes a lot of time and the majority of a representative area to get it up and running."

Crime stoppers

The roughly 50 watch programs in the Third District vary greatly, Patil said. Active duties consist mostly of safety meetings, block party events and recruiting walks to inform residents of the program and safety tips.

However, the raised safety awareness taught in training does allow neighborhoods to stop actual crime, Patil said.

In October, residents in the Woodside Park neighborhood of Silver Spring used an online listserv to inform people about a suspicious red van, posting witness accounts, police contact information and the license plate number. The van's owner turned out to be a convicted sex offender who had failed to register, and police arrested him for an outstanding traffic warrant within four days of the van's first appearance.

"There are people who might not step up otherwise, but are willing to do it on e-mail," said Connie Raab of the Woodside Park Civic Association's safety committee.

At Tanglewood, Evans said he has interrupted about 20 vehicle break-ins and has actually chased suspects through the neighborhood.

Earlier this year, a woman saw some teens in Tanglewood setting a dead tree on fire at about 8 p.m. She called Evans first, then police. Evans and the woman's husband chased the youth between houses until police arrived.

As the police were handcuffing the teens, a truck flew by the officers, nearly hitting one. The officers tracked down the truck and arrested a man for drunk driving, Evans said.

"I feel like the police commissioner of Tanglewood," Evans said. "I'm not here to come down on residents, I'm here to protect them."

Patil said it's difficult to gauge if watch programs decrease crime statistics because they generally lead to more arrests. But it's those stories that illustrate the true worth of Neighborhood Watch, she said.

The watch program in the 262-unit townhome community of Oak Fair near McKnew Road started partially because of an incident that could have been prevented, said Dale Roan, a property manager at Oak Fair who initiated the watch program.

In January, as he was pulling into his driveway, a resident saw a suspicious man knocking on the door of a female neighbor. Before the woman answered the door, the suspicious man and two others noticed the male resident, beat him up and stole his car, Roan said.

Forty people came to a subsequent community meeting with police, said Roan, who is now trying to schedule Neighborhood Watch training programs for residents this month.

"In today's world, most of us don't know our neighbors, and that leads to anybody can come into a house and you would never know," Roan said. "… You need to meet your neighbors."