Rural has worked well. In 6 years, our neighborhood has has zero crime that I know about... That pales in comparison to any suburban area I've ever lived where you're in trouble if the garage door stays open.
So that changed. I came home from vacation to find a neighbors exterior lights shot up, various planters shot up around the perimeter, and one security camera that has been shot.
Example:
The camera was shot from a 90 degree angle and I don't have another camera that covers it, but I spent a number of hours going through a month worth of video.. After watching for about 3 hours, we spotted something..
This is what I found:
Kids walk right past the camera with a rifle of some type.. And have the nerve to actually shoot the camera from the front!
I've never seen these kids before, we don't have very many kids out here... But I manage to track one of them down via a combination of social media and local moms. I debate what to do for a while.. I was a dumb kid once. I don't want to get them arrested, but I can't let them walk either, so I go to the parents of kid #A, which is the only one I've identified.
Kid A's mom says that he wasn't out with any friends that day. Kid A says that he didn't do any property damage (that's what I told his dad). Basically the parents say that it wasn't him. So I provide video. The kid then changes the story. His friends were shooting things, not him - matches the video. It was the other kids. I've only got video of a single kid doing the shooting, even though 2 were carrying.
I get an in-person apology 24 hours later and the phone number of the dad of the "shooter". I simply tell him that "they" (all the kids) need to figure this out and that I was giving them 24 hours to call me with what happened, otherwise I'm going to take it to the local sheriff. I get a call from kid B's dad that evening. Kid B's dad says that his kid was over in my neighborhood, but his kid didn't remember any property damage. I promise photos and dad tells me if they match that Kid B will be over the next morning at 10:30 AM to pay for a broken camera and repair the light as he just got paid. 10:30am comes and goes. I call kid B's dad at 3pm. Apparently the photos helped kid B's memory quite a bit and it is his kid, but he was "unavailable" to come over - he was staying at a friends house (what?).. And he won't be by to take care of any of the damage until for another week or so because he doesn't get paid until then (what?).
Kid B and Kid B's dad have different last names. And I know that Kid B just got in some trouble at school, so I don't think Kid B is a particularly good kid... And maybe "dad" doesn't have a handle on him. If I land Kid B in jail, that's mainly going to be a burden on the parents, so I'm not sure that I want to do that.
I remind kid B's dad that I don't want to make legal trouble for his kid.. And I remind him that most of my neighbors are armed and that had this stuff occurred at night, it could have had very serious consequences. I'm the *least* xenophobic person in the neighborhood - lots of 20+ year neighbors that live there for the privacy... And they take stuff like this very seriously.
All 3 of these kids are on the varsity football team.
I don't entirely get it.. Had I lied to my father and damaged property, my rear would have been hauled in from wherever I was world-wide...
Suggestions for next steps?
