CANTON, Md. — It's one thing to love where you live. It's quite another to acknowledge its problems and still love it enough to want to make it better.
Amanda Bourgeois is a perfect example of that. She's lived in Canton since 2001.
"I'm that person that if you see something and you think, oh why isn't anybody doing anything about that? I think, well if not me, then who," Bourgeois said.
Her latest effort, as president of the Canton Community Association, is getting cameras to go up in Canton Square - both to catch criminals, and to encourage them to stay away.
"It's a bit of an empowerment feeling, you know, this is something that we can do. We're not all running around with badges. We can only do so much, but this is something we can do," Bourgeois said.
Last week, we told you about some disturbing vandalism targeting Canton Games.The vandals left a package filled with human feces at the door, and threw things like fish parts at the store for days on end.
The business did have its own cameras, but the vandals got wise to where they were..And figured out how to avoid them. The owner had to go knocking on doors to get footage from other home & business owners.
It's incidents like that - that make this a worthwhile endeavor.
"It's a cumulation of things over the many years. There was no single event that made us think of this idea," Bourgeois said.
Surveillance can be a pricey investment for small businesses. But thanks to a grant, the state is footing the bill this time.
"Obviously, we can't put one on every building. And so this might be phase one, hopefully there might be more funding year after year that we can maybe say, alright well this worked here, we can get some more, apply for some more in other spots," Bourgeois said.
Bourgeois says, while some people may see the need for more security as a sad sign of the times, she prefers to focus on the positive. For example, the fact that a group of volunteers work together to make this neighborhood the best it can be.
"The crime, yeah, it can be heartbreaking at times but then the neighbor next to you reminds you why it's not the thing to focus on," Bourgeois said.
