Neighbor Sarah, your valiant crime correspondent and local liaison to the SFPD, encourages you to attend an Oct. 24 workshop at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center that will provide valuable tips about protecting your personal safety and residential security:

It’s a fact: Crime (especially robberies and burglaries) spikes in the winter, often shortly after Daylight Saving Time ends. Last winter’s robbery spree was especially frightening, but it was not an anomaly — robberies continue to be a problem around SF, and they are consistently more violent than they used to be. This is a great time to think about personal safety, especially because many of us will be commuting to/from work in the dark.

Moreover, there are concrete steps we can take to improve the security of our houses and the lighting for pedestrians on our streets. Furlishous Wyatt from SFSAFE will be leading the session, and he’s great – he’s been doing this for 30 years and is extremely knowledgeable. Someone from SFPD will be on hand to answer questions as well. Let’s make Bernal as unappealing to criminals as possible.

For those needing additional enticements, there will be food and drink, and we’ll be raffling off a new Dropcam Pro, which is a wifi-enabled home security camera (I have two and can vouch for them).

The workshop is free, but we only have room for 90 Bernalese, so we encourage people to sign up ASAP to reserve a space.

To RSVP, send your name to info@bernalGOteam.org.