Does neighborhood watch actually reduce crime, or is it just a way to make us feel safer? I've lived on a street with an active program for three years, and our burglary rate did drop from 12 to 4 incidents annually. But I can't tell if that's correlation or causation—maybe the local police presence doubled at the same time for unrelated reasons. What's your take: do you think visible community patrols deter offenders, or do they just displace crime to the next block? I'm genuinely torn because my anecdotal evidence points one way, yet the data from other cities looks messy.