Neighborhood Watches in New York, Far From Trayvon Martin Case Walking home in Astoria, Queens, one night this month, Daniel Rutkowski, 52, noticed a darkened stretch of sidewalk and looked up to see that the streetlight was out. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed, and said to the person on the other end, by way of introduction, "Here is my number," rattling off a confidential identification code. The results were quick. "I tell you, the next day there was a guy working on it," Mr. Rutkowski recalled. Mr. Rutkowski is not a high-ranking boss at City Hall who gets action when he snaps his fingers. He works in publishing. But as of May 23, he is one of 26 newly minted members of the block watcher program in the Police Department's 114th Precinct. After a training session, each member was assigned an identification number, to be given to the police and hot-line dispatchers when making a report, as Mr. Rutkowski did, to 311, about the light. Neighborhood watch groups have felt closely watched since George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin on a rainy February night in Florida. But the shooting did not appear to dampen enthusiasm for block watcher programs in New York City, which is, after all, worlds away from a gated community with armed civilians and Stand Your Ground laws. "Just a group of citizens who like to keep the quality of our life in a positive direction," Mr. Rutkowski said. "I guess it's basically a gesture, "Hey, we need some help here." " Bibi Burke, 49, joined at the same time. "I had noticed the neighborhood start to decline," she said. She has not called with her code number yet. "They did tell us we can't call for anything frivolous," she said. Summer is here and there's a lot of stuff that goes on. I'm sure I'll have an opportunity not too long from now. In 1973, a group of 63 volunteers - "doormen, building superintendents and business executives," The New York Times reported - were sworn in as block watchers, trained to give fast, accurate eyewitness accounts of crime. Some neighborhoods gave the watchers silver whistles or walkie-talkies. The program flourished in the 1980s, with a reported 81,000 block watchers in 1983, up from 30,000 five years earlier. With the major drop in crime in the last two decades came - predictably - a drop in block watchers. The program has sputtered to life a few times since. Larry Berkowitz, 60, of Forest Hills, was a watcher in the early 2000s. "It just kind of fell apart," he said. They didn't give you any updates anymore and they didn't update ID cards. The first new set of 32 block watchers were certified in March in the 100th Precinct in the Rockaways. Three other precincts followed, also in Queens, part of a pilot program that now has 110 watchers on the rolls. They have made 34 calls to 911 and a number of calls to 311. Future groups are delayed until the current crop is evaluated in the months ahead and any "kinks" are worked out, said Deputy Inspector Amin Kosseim of the Community Affairs Bureau. "We'd like to top 100,000" volunteers, he said. Heidi Chain, president of the 112th Precinct's community council in Forest Hills, said residents had "begged" for a chapter. Mr. Berkowitz and others attended a training session last month, learning how to describe a suspect and different types of vehicles, and the direction in which someone fled. He picked up his ID card on Wednesday night, one of 28 new watchers. Another new block watcher is a woman named Ella, 58, who lives near a hotel that she said was seedy and a site of prostitution. "Normally I would never think about joining something like this," she said. I don't normally join groups. She said she had felt ignored in her past complaints about the hotel in the neighborhood. I suppose because it's middle-class, we don't get the attention that we deserve. Many volunteers skewed older, like Erika Smeraldi, 74, who has lived in Forest Hills for 40 years. She said she distrusted teenagers she sees loitering near her Queens Boulevard subway station. "I can call 911 and I say I am from the 112th Precinct and this is my number," she said. After the shooting in Florida, which prompted a change to the name of an upcoming comedy film that had been titled "Neighborhood Watch," similar thoughts crossed minds in Astoria, said Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., who represents the neighborhood. "We toyed with the idea of calling it something else," he said. The shooting was not mentioned in training, the new block watchers said, although they were warned against confronting suspicious people. "We were told," Mr. Rutkowski said, "not to get directly involved."