I don’t fault this guy for being a self-appointed “crime watch” person.
When I moved into this neighborhood 25 years ago, it was sleepy and quiet, and stayed that way for a long time.
A few years, a woman of color moved into the neighborhood across the street from us, and brought probably six kids of all ages ranging from 2 to 17 with her, no father.
The oldest kid in the family was creepy, looked and dressed like a gang-banger, had strange people of various ages coming and going at all hours.
The oldest kid broke into the house next to them (an elderly couple in their late seventies) while they were home, and the poor woman went into her bathroom and found the oldest kid (probably 18 at the time) hiding in the shower. He was arrested and disappeared.
Another time, I came home from work in the middle of the day, and found six police cars in front of my house. It is a strange feeling to walk up to the cops and say “Excuse me...I live in this house. What is going on?”
He said they had reports of a kid running through people’s back yards and climbing over fences, etc. He was last seen disappearing into my back yard by my neighbor who was just driving up, saw the kid run across the street into my back yard, then saw him climb the fence into someone else’s yard.
So he called the cops.
They found a piece of paper in my backyard near where he climbed the fence that had a bunch of first names and phone numbers on it. There was snow, so they brought in a dog and followed the footprints all they way through a bunch of yards, through some woods, and eventually to the back door of the house across the street. There was a pair of mud covered Nikes outside the back door.
One of the detectives was telling me this while the other cops were standing around. He said he rang the bell, and after a while, one of the older boys came to the door (he was the only one home) and the detective told him there were reports of someone running through yards, and did he know anything about it?
The kid said no, so the detective asked him “If you weren’t running, why are you sweating?” and the kid said he had just washed his face. The cop reached over and put his hand on the back of the kid’s head and said “Your whole head is wet...did you wash the back of your head as well?” (The other cops started laughing and one of them said “Ughh...you touched his sweaty-ass head???”)
The detective said they tracked prints to his door and pointedly asked if the shoes were his. The kid said no, so the detective said, what are you going to say if your mother says they ARE yours?
Bottom line, I don’t just sit in my house now. I look out the windows when I hear something, and have no problem calling the police station directly now. Does that make me a self-appointed “crime watch” nut bag?
I think it is something that people USED to do in their neighborhoods, because it was the RIGHT thing to do. Perhaps if I lived in a neighborhood like that one, I might be inclined to be more aggressive and vocal and vigilant towards people I don’t know who are on my street.
Maybe that is coming to all of us.
You're right. Our society has been duped into enabling criminal behavior because being called "snitch" by a criminal has become widely accepted as being contemptible.