If you live in a neighborhood that has a neighborhood watch program, you know how it works.
Neighbors look out for neighbors and local police or sheriff’s department officers hold community meetings with neighbors to help them with ways they can make their homes safe.
This week’s incident in El Cajon involving a bad guy who tried to rob an armored car and then slammed a hammer into the head of a police officer shows that sometimes, neighbors and just regular people help police in unexpected ways.
As this guy ran off, a bystander saw him and saw him get into a fight with El Cajon police and when he saw the guy take a hammer to one of the cop’s heads, as he put it to a Fox 5 TV reporter, “that’s enough.' I just grabbed him by his neck, took him down and held him down, and that’s when the police swarmed us."
As we’ve reported to you, the bad guy is in jail, the cop will be okay, and the bystander deserves lots of thanks for what he did. It may not be something that cops want private citizens to do because police work to make sure innocent people don’t get hurt.
But in this case, it sounds like it was the right thing to do at the right time to help the people in uniform who help us every day.
(Photo credit 10News)