Police and community leaders are urging near North Side residents to stay vigilant against crime both on their streets and in the courts.

Shaken by a recent string of violent robberies and “mob actions” involving groups of offenders that resonated throughout the city’s lakefront area, neighbors in the North Side neighborhood met with community police from the 19th District and Ald. Michele Smith (43rd) on Monday night to discuss the finer points of crime prevention in their ward.

At the meeting, Sgt. Karen Lemon stressed that residents shouldn’t worry about “being a pest” when calling in suspicious happenings in their neighborhood.

“When you want a car to come, it’s 911,” she said.

Lemon said that people can call when they see strangers walking up and down their street, looking into windows or even rummaging through the trash.

“Homeless people often have warrants, so that helps us to pick them up,” said Lemon.

She suggested that neighbors use their dog walks as a chance to keep an eye on the neighborhood — a trick that she called “positive loitering.”

Giving thorough descriptions of suspects is a big part of making convictions, said Lemon.

Another way to help put criminals behind bars is to become a court advocate, said Judge James Shapiro, who also spoke at the meeting.

Court advocates are trained courtroom attendants who represent a community’s interest in a conviction by being present at a suspect’s hearing.

“Community involvement is part of the justice system,” said Shapiro, who serves in the Cook County Circuit courts.

Shapiro said that many court advocates are retired individuals or people who work evenings and are able to attend the hearings. Defense lawyers will often try to delay a hearing when court advocates are present, he said, making it important to have an open schedule when advocating.

The meeting, which drew around 40 residents, was held in the wake of a number of attacks and robberies that have occurred over the past few weeks in the downtown and North Side areas.

In Lincoln Park, a series of robberies got the attention of residents who await the seasonal crime that visits their ward in summer.

At around 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, a woman was robbed at gunpoint by a group of four men and one female suspect in the 2600 block of North Dayton Street. The offenders made off with the woman’s purse, according to news accounts.

A series of robberies were also recorded in the area during the previous week in which the attackers used pepper spray to disable their victims. In one instance, a 61-year-old woman had her purse snatched after an unknown suspect sprayed her while she was walking in the 400 block of West Arlington Place.

Ald. Smith said that she and downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) had been in talks with the Chicago Police Department’s new superintendent Garry McCarthy about how to stem violence in their territories. Smith relayed her support for the police chief’s plan, which she referred to as a “broken window policy.”

“When you have no tolerance for the kind of crime that makes our neighborhood uncomfortable … like people who break windows and do graffiti … you nip in the bud an awful lot of serious crime,” she said.

The alderman, who took office last month, echoed Lemon’s appeal for citizens to be proactive about calling police.

“If everyone in the neighborhood has suffered something but no one has called about it, then it doesn’t exist, as far as the police are concerned,” she said. “Call 911 at the drop of a hat, or the drop of a weird sound in your alley.”

Smith disclosed that she is currently a court advocate for a resident who had recently been attacked and attested to the effectiveness of the practice.

“If there is a case here that you really want followed in the community, I will go with you to court,” she told the audience.

The CAPS meeting was hosted by the Wrightwood Neighbors Association at the New Life Community Church, 1110 W. Lill Ave.

After the meeting, WNA member Brad Hart said he expected to see more residents in his neighborhood getting serious about crime prevention as the warm-weather violence get closer to home.

“The more involvement the community has on issues like this, the more it will make for a safer neighborhood,” said Hart, who serves as the crime prevention chair for the group. “When people sit back and don’t do anything, they become victims.”