Posted on 05/26/2006 7:16:26 AM PDT by 54-46 Was My Number
Pinging the collective wisdom of Free Republic here . . .
The Issue
Punks are setting off "Bootleg Cracker" fireworks outside my home -slash- my neighbor's homes, beneath city-owned trees that line the sidewalk. These are the evil devices:
Now, they may not look like much in this picture, but they're about the size of a can of Pringles potato chips, and inside, they're stuffed with 200-250 firecrackers fused to go off within 2 to 3 seconds. So what you get is one big, elongated explosion, and since the city-owned trees are no more than 10 yards from our homes, what you get is one big, elongated explosion that sounds like it's coming from your living room.
And the little bastards are smart, too. Using cigarettes as delay devices, they place these things beneath the trees and are long gone when they go off. We've yet to catch someone in the act of leaving one behind . . . and since we can only rouse the cops to come to our neighborhood after one of these things goes off, there's nothing they can do to stop it from happening again.
It seems to happen between 1930-2100, intermittently, throughout the late spring, summer, and early fall. I would love to camo-up, hide out, and ambush these guys, but short of that,
I ask you, Freepers:
That's even better. Love it!
I can sympathize! My poor folks. They're not wealthy people, but they worked hard all their lives and paid off their home. They never asked for a dime from anyone else.
And here the county moves this "family" right next door. The first thing those kids did, too, was break into my parent's shed and steal tools. The whole lot of them terrorize the neighborhood. Everyone is frightened of them.
They're part of a "home ownership" program in which the government subsidizes their mortgage. I've tried every angle, called every county office imaginable, and there's no way to have them removed.
Call the county and state police if they aren't already on it. They're a lot more likely than local police to have an organized effort to deal with illegal fireworks. They're often tracking down the distributors and retailers, and cutting off the supply, as well as trying to trace the worst users (like the ones terrorizing your neighborhood) through these sellers. In Long Island a couple of days ago, county police stopped a truck that was illegally carrying 18,000 pounds of fireworks, enough to flatten a whole block. Just what we need bouncing through the tunnels to Manhattan!
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--fireworksseized0524may24,0,4986716.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork
We had a run of "mailbox jousters", who would hang a 4x4 out of a car window and joust mailbox's off of their posts. I know one guy who put a small mailbox inside a large mailbox, and filled in the empty space with concrete, and set it with a steel post into more concrete. A week or so later, his mailbox was hit. Sure enough, one of the high school parking lot punks came to school with a broken arm. No more mailbox jousting.
ping
Doing nothing never solved anything.
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