PROBATION OFFICERS SHOW OUT IN FORCE AT NATIONAL NIGHT OUT
2008 COMMUNITY EVENTS

Stephen Allsopp, Middlesex County Juvenile First Assistant Chief Probation Officer, officiates tournament game as Cambridge Police Officer Frank Greenidge looks on.

Timothy Skaggs, Middlesex County Juvenile Court Assistant Chief Probation Officer, explains tournament rules to participants.

Probation Officers from several courts throughout the Commonwealth were on a different mission when they went into the community on Tuesday.

Instead of visiting offenders’ homes, doing curfew checks, or tracking down warrant evaders, Probation Officers took part in a 25-year tradition, National Night Out.

National Night Out is a community celebration, established during the summer of 1984, which brings neighbors, law enforcement agencies, and social service organizations together on the first Tuesday in August to celebrate the neighborhood. This celebration started as a coast-to-coast stand against soaring crime which led to the establishment of neighborhood crime-watch groups. Today, most celebrations are community festivals which feature live performances, food, and carnival rides for the children.

Nearly 50 Middlesex County Probation Officers turned out in force at the National Night Out 2008 festival in Cambridge at Rindge Field. This event has been sponsored by the North Cambridge Crime Task Force, a law enforcement and community group in which the Cambridge District Court Probation Department is an active partner. Probation Officers from Cambridge District, Middlesex Probate & Family, Middlesex Superior, and Middlesex Juvenile probation departments all volunteered at the event which marks its 14th year at Rindge Field.

“It was a great event. A lot of the community people commented that it was so nice to see so many probation officers and they had a lot of questions,”said Timothy Kelleher, Cambridge District Court Assistant Chief Probation Officer.

This year’s festival also featured the second annual basketball tournament, an event coordinated by Cambridge District Court Assistant Chief Probation Officer Ronald Layne and Probation Officer Justin Brennan which drew about 200 players from across Cambridge. The tournament draws on the city’s rich high school basketball tradition which produced professional basketball players such as Patrick Ewing, a retired New York Knicks player and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Layne, a former Rindge Technical High School basketball stand-out as well as high school and basketball coach, said of the tournament, “The response was very positive. The participants were happy to be part of the program.”

The competitors, ages 11 to 16 years old, were given the chance to show off their dribbling, foul shooting and other basketball skills in the high energy games. Tournament winners were rewarded with items donated by Nike such as sneakers, basketballs, t-shirts, water bottles, and jump ropes.

In Suffolk County, Probation employees donned tee shirts and jackets with the word Probation in large white letters and patrolled the Night Out celebration at Franklin Park Zoo. The seven Probation employees from Boston Municipal Court-Roxbury Division included First Assistant Chief Probation Officer Jocelyn Covington, Assistant Chief Probation Officer Marcia Scott, and three Probation Officer II’s: Mary Ball, Donald Mumford, and Maria Merlo-Sousa. Also on hand were Probation Officers Edie Alexander, and Vilma Riquelme.

“An evening like this is very important. When we have Probation Officers walking in the neighborhood and events like National Night Out, it gives them a chance to see that we are out here and we are watching,” said Covington.