The city of Idaho Falls has over a dozen Neighborhood Watch programs. You've probably seen the signs everywhere.
The concept of Neighborhood Watch is a good idea, but how effective is?

We went to three different neighborhoods, a high income, low income, and a middle income, all three have active Neighborhood Watch Programs.

We rounded up five people and told them to act suspicious, mean while I waited to see how long it would take for someone to call police dispatch. The Idaho Falls Police Department knew when and where we were going. The whole time we were out there, we kept in touch with them.

Someone's watching. That's the message these signs are sending out.
But just how closely? Well let's test it out.
Meet our production staff, trading in their day jobs to become "suspicious trouble makers."

First stop: upper income, Shamrock Park.
The warning eye is everywhere.
There were plenty of people out and about, we thought it shouldn't take too long for someone to spot us.

For forty five minutes my "suspicious people" tried to get someone's, anyone's attention. But nothing.
First, they parked in front of different houses and waited. But that didn't do much.
So they decided to try their luck on foot.
They started wandering up and down the streets. But no matter how many times they went back and forth, people kept doing what they were doing, not looking our way once.
And if they did happen to glance in our direction, they didn't seem to be too concerned.

Our last resort-we parked in front of this house. We figured someone here had to notice.
Everyone was out in the front lawn, kids were playing, it seemed like a slam dunk, but believe it or not, nothing.
Nothing on the police scanner. Nothing was reported to dispatch.

Stop two: lower income, the lettered streets.
By the time we got here, it had started to get dark.
But people were still around.
We circled the streets and alleys for about an hour. But nothing happened. Not one call.
No one stopped us.
No one seemed to care.

Stop three: middle income, the numbered streets.
In this neighborhood, there weren't as many people out, but there were plenty of cars on the street, so people were definitely home. My new set of "suspicious people" were determined to see how far they could take this whole thing.
They went beyond the streets and hit up the alleys, peered over fence, even started looked into cars.

Only ten minutes had passed, when we got more than just a phone call to dispatch.
We had company.Three guys started to follow us, then they started to yell.

Things started to get intense. So we decided before it gets ugly we should let them know what we were up to.

Araksya Karapetyan: "We started walking towards you, what was going through your head?"
Josh Croft: "They just got this girl to get out of her car, to go give me an excuse, then you said we're going this for the news, and I was like no…I took a step back and I was like no, get out of here."


Karapetyan: "What happened. What did you guys notice at first, what made you get suspicious?"

Croft: ":We heard his dog braking, up in the living room, so we raced up there, and we see him and her circling around cars and peering in."

Andrew Chester:"They came out of the house about the same time we did. I was like did you see that, it looked weird. He was like let's follow them down the street. It was just really really out of place."

Mission accomplished here.