San Marino Police Officer William Liev prepares a family to try dunking Police Chief John Incontro in the dunk tank last week during National Night Out in Lacy Park.
San Marino was spared from a nearby thunderstorm as the city hosted its first National Night Out recently in Lacy Park.
National Night Out is an annual event hosted by law enforcement agencies nationwide to help build a stronger relationship with their communities and raise awareness about crime and safety. San Marino Police Chief John Incontro, who spearheaded the event here as one of the responses to increased residential and commercial burglaries in town, said the inaugural outing was a success, with room to grow.
“There are some areas to improve and we’ve started talking about it already,” he said. “We’ve gotten some great feedback from the community. From the comments we received, it seems like we achieved what we wanted to.”
Incontro said he estimates between 800 and 1,000 residents stopped by throughout the evening.
Mayor Dr. Richard Sun said the event is important because it reached substantially more residents than could attend a City Council meeting, allowing for a bigger audience to learn and contribute.
“Security and safety are always the No. 1 priority in San Marino,” he added.
San Marino Police Department coordinated the event and had much of the department available to meet with residents. It also presented an opportunity to raise money for the Pink Patch Project, the proceeds of which go to City of Hope, through buying T-shirts or tickets to try to plunge Incontro and some of his officers into the dunk tank.
There also were booths set up for San Marino Fire Department, Chinese Club of San Marino, Rotary Club of San Marino, California American Water, San Marino Recreation Department, San Marino City Club, Post Alarm, San Marino Security Systems and New York Life.
A hot dog food truck was on hand to feed hungry attendees and kids were treated to a showing of the animated musical “Sing” near the end of the event.
Incontro said he plans to make National Night Out an annual event for the city and Sun also said he believes the community will get more involved at the future event.
“It brings people together,” said Alan Chen, president-elect of the Chinese Club. “It’s a small community and I think the closeness unites the community. I think this is so much more grassroots and that’s great. We only have so many of these events a year and I don’t think we have enough of these opportunities for the community to come out and get to know each other.”
