The city council in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the home of the University of Michigan, voted unanimously earlier this week to remove hundreds of neighborhood crime watch signs, arguing that the crime watch program promotes “race-based hyper-vigilance.”
The Ann Arbor City Council voted 10-0 to direct city employees to begin removing all neighborhood crime watch signs by July 15 in an effort to become more “welcoming and inclusive,” according to MLive. Neighborhood crime watch programs have been commonplace in American towns for decades, organizing residents to be on constant alert, and warning potential criminals that any suspicious activity will be reported to the police.
According to the all-Democrat Ann Arbor city council, however, the signs reinforce “race-based hyper-vigilance and suspicion particularly toward Black, Brown, and other marginalized residents and visitors.”
“These programs were often rooted in assumptions about who did and did not ‘belong’ in a neighborhood,” the city council stated, adding, “This dynamic encouraged informal surveillance practices that disproportionately targeted people of color and contributed to patterns of exclusion under the guise of public safety.”
Overall, the city’s crime rate has dropped in 2025 compared to last year, but in downtown Ann Arbor, authorities have seen a 9% increase in total crime in 2025 and an 11% jump in violent crime.
City officials said that the neighborhood watch programs in Ann Arbor are already defunct, arguing that removing the 600-plus signs throughout the city is the next logical step.
“The neighborhood watch signs that still stand across Ann Arbor really come from a different era,” said Councilwoman Jen Eyer. “They’ve become furniture, just part of the background. I drive past one every day entering my neighborhood and barely registered it until this issue was raised to me.”
But Eyer argued that a major reason for removing is that “evidence suggests that signs and practices rooted in constant vigilance can actually reinforce fear and erode neighborly trust, promoting a myth of safety rather than safety itself.”
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Councilwoman Cynthia Harrison criticized the “culture” of neighborhood watch programs, bringing up the case of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who was shot and killed in Florida in 2012 by George Zimmerman, who was a volunteer for his neighborhood watch program.
“Many of us could not talk about this culture without remembering Trayvon Martin, a young black teenager walking through a neighborhood he had every right to be in, yet perceived as a threat simply for being there,” said Harrison.
Zimmerman confronted Martin and accused him of suspicious activity in the neighborhood before Martin attacked him. Following a trial that gained national attention, Zimmerman was acquitted by a Florida jury on all charges, including second-degree murder and manslaughter.
Harrison argued that Martin was killed because neighborhood watch programs focus on surveillance over building relationships, according to MLive.
“Neighborhood watch was built on an old idea that heterogeneous neighborhoods create danger,” she said. “Ann Arbor is built on the understanding that diversity creates strength.”
Ann Arbor and the surrounding Washtenaw County are one of the most liberal places in Michigan. Recently, the Trump administration accused Ann Arbor authorities of obstructing federal immigration operations. Ann Arbor leaders rejected the Trump administration’s labeling of Ann Arbor as a sanctuary city.
“While Ann Arbor is not a sanctuary city, we are proud to be an inclusive and welcoming city,” Mayor Pro Tem Travis Radina said earlier this year. “We know diversity is a strength and believe in protecting the constitutionally granted rights of all our residents.”
Washtenaw County also elected a new sheriff last year who wants to focus on “environmental justice.” In a phone interview with The Daily Wire earlier this year, Sheriff Alyshia Dyer, a Democrat, said that she wanted to drastically change the department’s outlook on environmental issues. She also discussed her plans to implement an “Environmental Crimes Unit” in her first term, which would focus on looking into “air pollution, water contamination, and hazardous waste management.”
“The sheriff’s office historically hasn’t been necessarily a strong champion in this work, but there’s no reason we can’t be,” Dyer added.
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