The Citizens on Patrol Program in Portage la Prairie has been reaching out to businesses to help try and prevent some crime.

The volunteer-based group has 27 members locally that will patrol the streets at night to watch out for any criminal activity.

Rose works with COPP and says they report suspicious persons and activities to the RCMP.

"Well, it was brought up at one of our meetings that there was a lot of problems with some of the businesses having break-ins and all that kind of stuff," says Rose. "So, we talked about environmental design and it was decided that while we were out on patrol, if we would pay attention to some of the businesses that have some lights out or places where criminals could be hiding, that we could report that to them and they could maybe take care of it."

She says they want to be the eyes and ears of a community, watching for anything that could aid someone in committing a crime.

"Mostly their lights that aren't working around their building," says Rose. "It's very important to have it well lit because that is a definite deterrent -- bushes that are hiding places for them. We've been doing a lot more patrolling on the back lanes so that we can pay attention to that as well."

Anyone wishing to apply to join COPP can contract the local RCMP.