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Using a free social network designed to get real-life neighbors to connect on the internet, Asbury Park residents have created an online neighborhood through Nextdoor.com.

Nextdoor’s mission is “to bring back a sense of community to the neighborhood,” according to Nextdoor.com’s main site.

The Asbury site was started with the idea to be able to proactively address crime from a community standpoint, said Heather Jensen, a resident and one of the site’s “lead” account holders.

The lead members act as administrators on the site. For instance, they can delete any posts that may be considered “offensive.” They are indentified by the word “lead” in all capital letters under their profile picture. One of the lead accounts is held by new council member Amy Quinn.

Since inception, the site has become a community database of sorts. It allows members to suggest a good dentist, find a recommendation on a good carpenter, post a notice about a lost dog or swap furniture.

The Asbury Nextdoor site has been active for about six months and just reached its 500th member.

There are several ways to join the Asbury Park Nextdoor community – the only requirement is that you live or own a business in Asbury Park and have a physical address in town to prove it.

“There is a verification process on Nextdoor,” said Stefan Microutsicos, another lead account holder.

Members who are already verified on the Asbury community site can send an email invite to anyone they know who has an address in Asbury, like a business or private residence. The person invited would then accept the invitation, sign up for a Nextdoor account and put in their address in to be verified by one of the leads.

If you don’t know anyone already on the site that can send you an invitation, you can sign up yourself and choose to be mailed a postcard. The post card arrives to your Asbury address with a special code to input on the site to complete the registration process.

Those who are impatient can opt to pay a penny to get their billing address verified instantly via credit card.

A last option is to sit down with one of the leads.

“We can verify you through tax records or some other way of knowing you live here,” said Joe Zanna, another Asbury Nextdoor lead account holder.

Once a verified, the member can participate in the online community. Participation includes, but isn’t limited to, starting a conversation or posting documents. Some current categories of conversation threads include classified ads, crime and safety, and lost and found.

To make better use of the crime and safety thread, several lead account holders of the Nextdoor Asbury site met with local police officials to discuss their possible involvement, according to an informational post made by Jensen.

It was decided the Asbury police department will use the site “for informational purposes only,” according to the post.

The two groups hashed out guidelines for use that are outlined on the site since police officials don’t want the site to be confused as a way to report a crime, which must be done through calling 911, APPD directly, texting anonymous tips to MONTIPS or using the anonymous AP tips line to report a crime, according to the post.

Police officials are not expected to push out alerts on the site.

“This is a probationary measure as we figure out the best way to support our objective of strengthening our community,” Jensen’s post states. “We have high hopes for a collaboration with the police department, but we also respect our members’ privacy and freedom of speech.”

The lead account members are pleased with the site’s progress so far.

“We’re feeling this out as we go,” said Microutsicos. “We aren’t claiming to be experts, we are not claiming to know everything. We want to work with everybody and figure this out as a community. I think that was the whole premise of this: let’s figure this out as a community.”

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