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Solomon/Plains Jr. High School participates in Marywood honors band

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Bill Jones: Spread ‘gift of reading’ to area children via the Imagination Library

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Ted Langhorne is surprised at how many people are awake in the middle of the night.</p><p>He&#8217;s got a reason for being awake &#8212; he&#8217;s a security guard at Universal Protection Services. As for others, Langhorne can&#8217;t say why they&#8217;re awake at night, but he gets responses to his posts on the Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Facebook page at all hours.</p><p>Call it a perk for working the graveyard shift. Langhorne does double duty on the job, voluntarily policing the crime watch page and riding herd while adhering to a Jack Webb &#8220;just the facts&#8221; policy for posters. The 44-year-old married father has administrator status that allows him to input events as they happen, providing a public service and alerting residents of police and fire activity, road closings, power outages and lost dogs.</p><p>Admittedly, his connection started out of boredom two years ago. During an Internet search, he typed in &#8220;Wilkes-Barre&#8221; on Facebook.</p><p>&#8220;Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch was the first thing that popped up,&#8221; Langhorne recalled.</p><p>He read it and wasn&#8217;t impressed.</p><p>&#8220;A lot of the stuff they were posting wasn&#8217;t exactly right,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Langhorne contacted Charlotte Raup, president of the Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Coalition.</p><p>&#8220;She didn&#8217;t make me an administrator right away,&#8221; he said.</p><p>But she did eventually and Langhorne, who spent 25 years as a volunteer firefighter in West Pittston, has been conscientious in his role to the point where he was recently rewarded at the coalition&#8217;s Christmas dinner with the title of &#8220;Evil Administrator.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I never figured I&#8217;d be actually working with an organization like crime watch,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Raup was thrilled he&#8217;s volunteered with the group.</p><p>&#8220;Honest to God, we don&#8217;t know what we&#8217;d do without him,&#8221; she said.</p><p>People depend on the page originally created to alert crime watch members to meetings, she said.</p><p>It has evolved, growing to 12,225 members from Wilkes-Barre and surrounding municipalities. That&#8217;s a formidable number to reckon with if called upon to fight crime, said Langhorne. &#8220;We&#8217;d be an unstoppable force,&#8221; he said.</p><p>That&#8217;s all the more reason to keep the page orderly and eliminate chatter. One of four administrators, Raup said people who want to comment or start a discussion are directed to the Wilkes-Barre Just Sayin&#8217; Facebook page. She tries to send them there but people pay attention when Langhorne lays down the law.</p><p>There are rules - no cursing, no racial slurs - and limits as to what gets on - no domestic disputes, no suicides, no photos that might jeopardize a police operation.</p><p>Specific addresses are not mentioned, either.</p><p>&#8220;We use a common sense approach for that,&#8221; Langhorne said.</p><p>Here&#8217;s a post from 2:33 a.m. Dec. 17 regarding shots fired in the 300 block of Hazle Street:</p><p>&#8226; 1 caller stating 3 shots unknown direction where they came from</p><p>&#8226; Officers arriving</p><p>&#8226; Units cleared unfounded at this time.</p><p>The last entry was made at 2:34 a.m. and, within a minute, Langhorne wrapped it up with the basics of what, where and when.</p><p>He&#8217;s cautious for a couple reasons.</p><p>&#8220;From a safety standpoint, if there&#8217;s something going on, we don&#8217;t want somebody walking out their door and walking into it,&#8221; he said.</p><p>And he knows what goes out over the law enforcement and fire department frequencies is public.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not only the good guys that listen to the scanner,&#8221; Langhorne said.</p><p>Wilkes-Barre police officer Phil Myers, another administrator, urged restraint in a post from August 2014: &#8220;On behalf of the law enforcement community, I ask that you please refrain from posting pictures of our officers that are conducting operations as well as our current or past location(s). Social media is a very powerful and useful tool for exchanging information but these types of posts really can jeopardize criminal/undercover investigations, plain-clothes status of officers and, most importantly, our safety. Thank you for your cooperation, support and helping us do our job!&#8221;</p><p>The police scanner, along with the Wilkes-Barre Police Department&#8217;s Facebook page, serve as his source for information. He posts the official reports from police on the crime watch page and often there&#8217;s a time lag between his entries and those of the police.</p><p>&#8220;He gets it out there so quickly,&#8221; Raup said.</p><p>The posts pay off sometimes, too, with tips from people who recognize a person in a photograph or with information about an incident, she said. Raup encourages those people to call the police department.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">With the police scanner plugged in, Ted Langhorne listens for reports to post to the Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Facebook page. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/web1_TTL122315Langhorne2.jpg</photo0><caption0>With the police scanner plugged in, Ted Langhorne listens for reports to post to the Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Facebook page. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/web1_TTL122315Langhorne1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Ted Langhorne, an administrator of the Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Facebook page, listens to the scanner through headphones while posting an update from his residence in Wilkes-Barre. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/web1_TTL122315Langhorne1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Ted Langhorne, an administrator of the Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Facebook page, listens to the scanner through headphones while posting an update from his residence in Wilkes-Barre. </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jerry Lynott</p><p>jlynott@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Prolific poster Ted Langhorne polices Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Facebook page