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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | APRIL 2023 33 Wow, what cold weather we have had in the past couple of months, but now we head into April. Hopefully it will bring us some April showers that lead into May flowers, but for sure, it will bring "tax season." Our Beaumont police put out a community advisory on March 1 on mail theft. They listed excellent points to minimize mail theft so it is worth mentioning here. Already there have been mail thefts reported to the Beaumont Police, and those reports have increased as tax season arrived. The continued rise in online shopping has made mailboxes an easy target for criminals. Criminals have easy access to your personal information through your bank statements, credit cards and more. The "porch pirates" can even take packages containing valuable items from your entryway. Beaumont police suggest a few tips to keep your mail and packages safe: • Check and empty your mailbox everyday. • If you are going on vacation or out of town, you can request a vacation hold from the post office. • Take outgoing mail directly to the post office, or in our case Four Seasons, place the outgoing mail in the appropriate mail slot at our mailboxes on the day mail is delivered. This way your outgoing mail will not be in our mailboxes overnight and your risk of theft of checks, payments or other items of value is minimized. • Sign up for "Informed Delivery" by USPS. It is free and allows you to preview incoming mail, track packages, set up delivery instructions, reschedule deliveries, etc. • If you are not home to receive packages, have a trusted neighbor receive the package in person and not have it sit at your home's entryway. • Report suspicious vehicles to the Beaumont Police Department's non-emergency line at (951) 769-8500, and call our management office to relay the information on the suspicious vehicle. The Beaumont Police Department has provided these tips so that we can keep our mail, personal information, and other items safe from theft not only in tax season, but for the entire year. Our next Neighborhood Watch meeting will be on April 12 at 10 am in The Lodge Ballroom. Our guest speaker will be from the city of Beaumont. Jack Huntsman, the Environmental Compliance Manager will present information on fats, oils, and grease awareness and proper disposal of those items. Please mark your calendar and plan on attending the presentation. Beaumont Police will also be present to discuss briefly any current criminal activities in the Beaumont area. Please be careful driving in our community. The speed limit on Four Seasons Circle is 30 mph, 25 mph on residential streets, including Green Creek Trail, and 15 mph in the alleys. Thank you to our Block Captains and all our Neighborhood Watch members for all that you do to keep our community safe. ~ Jerry Monahan, (951) 212-8898 Curious about our safety in our Four Seasons Community, especially in light of reported increasing violence in surrounding communities, I sought information from our Beaumont Police Department and other sources to find out if my high sense of safety is valid. In an informal, quantitative survey, I asked residents, on a scale of 1, low, to 10, high, how safe they felt in living in our Four Seasons community. From about 100 responses, roughly 90% felt exceptionally safe at 10, 4% felt highly safe at 9, 4% felt strongly safe at 8, and 1% felt safe at 7. Thomas Olsen, living on the southern side of Four Seasons commented, "Sometimes in the open-spaced unincorporated area, I hear gun fire from folks doing target practice; but it doesn't really affect crime behind the gates." Marcedes Cashmer, Beaumont's police information officer, provided reassuring criminal statistics. In 2022, Beaumont had three homicides, 13 robberies, 118 felony assaults, 130 burglaries, 282 larceny or petty thefts (i.e., bikes, purses, wallets, tools, and other stolen items), and 83 vehicle thefts. Compared to other cities, these crime rates are relatively low. According to the most recent data from the FBI, the total crime rate in Beaumont is 1,872 per 100,000 people. That's 20.20% lower than the national rate of 2,346 per 100,000 people and 27.47 lower than the California total crime rate of 2,581 per 100,000 (homesnacks.com/ca/ Beaumont-crime). Some long-term residents noted that during the completion of Four Season's phase five development, construction workers were coming and going. Sometimes the Breckenridge gate would be left open and many workers and other non-residents had access to the gate code. With phase five's completion in 2020, and the transition from digital- coded gate access to transponder-code gate access for all three Four Season gates, access to non-residents without authorization has been mitigated. According to reliable sources, no reported murders, physical assaults, or home invasions have been reported since Four Seasons sold its first homes in 2005. It's been rumored that one owner left their keys in the car and the car was stolen. General Manager Eric Zarr states, "The gates are a privacy feature, not a security feature. Crimes of opportunity happen. It's important to lock the doors of your vehicle and home, and to keep your garage door closed when unattended." Our security company, Securitas, conducts a patrol every night. In addition, our Safety committee has worked with the Beaumont Police Community Outreach Program to produce an effective Neighborhood Watch Program. After researching the safety of our community of 1,853 homes, I am encouraged by what I learned; and I hope this information is reassuring for you as well. ~ Karen Burton, karen@imaginomics.org Neighborhood Watch & Community Awareness FOUR SEASONS SAFETY

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