'Eyes on the street' in Cleveland Heights

A favorite saying of Jane Jacobs, author of the 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was “eyes on the street,” which is the activity taking place in city streets that keeps the movement and security of the street intact. 

A recent incident on the sidewalk in front of the house next door to mine has shown that my immediate area has eyes on the street. 

One late morning I went out the front door to unhook our dog, Jax, who was in the backyard, and return him indoors via the driveway and front door. Though I had just left the house the same way a couple minutes earlier, this time there was a toddler alone on the sidewalk in front of our east-side neighbor’s house. I halted and held Jax firm on the leash. For a few moments I stood wondering what to do about this little boy on the loose. I couldn’t go up to toddler with rambunctious Jax on leash and expect to help.  

Then, I was saved from thinking any more about what to do. An older woman, a neighbor I’ve seen before, came into my view from the west and went up to the little boy and started talking with him. I stood there with Jax and, within two minutes, from out of the house across the street came a lady and her daughter, holding an infant. “Call 911,” the lady said to her daughter. I took Jax inside and went back out to the sidewalk, where half a dozen women were now gathered. 

When the toddler bolted away from the group, the lady who was first on the scene ran after him, saying, “No, no, no,” and brought him back.

A few minutes later, the first police officer to arrive was a detective in an unmarked car. He picked up the little boy, held him in his arms and walked west on the sidewalk, in the direction the child had come from. At each house he stopped and asked the boy, “It this your house?” Three or four houses down the way, the boy said yes, and the detective and boy went to the front door and knocked. By that time, four or five more CH police cruisers had arrived.

The mother wasn’t aware the child had taken off. The detective returned and said the mother was beside herself that this had happened.  

A couple days later, I encountered the boy and his mother on the sidewalk. His name is Joseph.