Category: Neighborhood

I think I irked the local police today. Oh well, so be it.

When I got home from work after 6 pm (worked late) today, I was inside my car, cleaning the windows, while three 10-year-old boys rode around the parking lot on their bikes. I overheard them talking about “getting this car” or something. Then as they passed my car, single file, I popped my head up just as the last kid in the line threw something that bounced off the car next to me with a loud ping.

So I went inside and called the police.

Was I overreacting? Perhaps. But keep in mind that about a year and a half ago my car, as well as several others, were vandalized in the same parking lot and it cost over $400 out of my pocket to get my car repaired. So if I feel that some punk-ass kids are acting disrespectful around other people’s property, I’m going to try and stop it.

After talking to the kids, the officer came to my door and pretty much treated me in a condescending manner. He tried to make me feel bad for telling on kids that were, as he put it “just ten years old.” Um, wasn’t it a 10-year-old boy who shot his own father this month? Uh yea, it was. So don’t try to treat me like I’m being ridiculous.

The officer informed me that the boys claim they were throwing crabapples at one another and hit some cars “by mistake” and that they were sorry and wanted to apologize. One of the kids’ parents was outside as well. I told the officer just to tell them to be more careful. He asked me if I wanted him to string them up by their ankles and beat them. He was totally poking fun at me. You had to be there. It really pisses me off thinking about it. I just explained to him what had happened with the cars getting keyed in the past and that these kids needed to respect other people’s property. It starts out innocent now, but who knows in a few years.

If it was even ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t have done anything. But the world today is different, and when you read in the news about gangs of kids who jump people just for the “fun of it” and some of those kids are as young as 7-years-old, you don’t think of 10-year-old little shits as innocent kids anymore. A man was shoved into the street by a group of kids and now he’s dead. So I didn’t really appreciate the way that officer treated me.

I really can’t wait until we move and I can put my car in the garage and stop worrying about it all the time. Now I’m going to have to check it carefully tomorrow. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I worry those kids might do something to my car to get back at me. That’s the primary reason I didn’t go back outside to talk to their parents; I’m hoping they don’t think it was me that called the cops on them. And if they really were innocent and I misinterpreted the situation, at least now they might watch their actions more carefully.