troublemakers out tonight

LOOK OUT your windows- if you see a group of teens roaming around please get a good look if you can.

 

Did they actually do anything wrong? Although I suppose it would kind of be insurance to know what they look like in case anything does happen.

 

yes, they caused what will likely be $1000 worth of damage to our house. we are offering a reward for any information leading to the the conviction of the guilty parties- so tell your kids they if hear someone bragging about damaging someone's home around 10pm Thursday night, they should let you know and we will pay if we get the idiots who did this. PM me with any info, anonymous is FINE.

we don't have any known enemies, so I don't think we were vandalized for any other reason except the location of our home being easy access for quick getaways on the trails.

we will find them and i hope their parents are blind and foolish enough to say "little johny would NEEEEVVVVER do that!" if their kid was out roaming around the hood last night around this time, and will be helpful in getting to the truth.

more later- I'd have to pop the F key off of my keyboard to keep typing.

 

ugh what'd they do to the house?

 

You know - one night these hoodlums will visit the wrong house at the wrong time and it will no longer be all fun-n-games,

 

translation: kaosdad will shoot your hoodlum kid, fo realz!

 

it's no joke- we could easily draw down if the situation called for it.

they kicked in our garage doors, and we are offering a $250 reward for info that convicts them. please tell your teens- money talks. they may hear bragging, or know of kids who were out between 9:30 and 10:30 thursday night.

it's not a witch hunt- we want the guilty parties to pay. just because we find out the kid was out does not mean we will assume they are guitly, but they might be able to help us find who is.

 

why are they targeting you? you said your kid wasn't their age yet, right? is it because you're an active member of the community? sucky

 

Well, no. I'd like to think I'm a little more level headed than that. However, I can't speak for everyone in the community. Too many stories out there of a "harmless prank" ending with a baseball bat and amber lamps. Even more so when true vandalism comes into play.

Remeber kids, there is no Castle Doctrine in VA. You cannot defend property with force of any kind. However, if you are truly fearing for your safety or that of your family, well, it's a different set of rules.

IANAL - YMMV.

 

we live near a trail, end of a pipestem- my guess is that we are paying for our privacy.

 

"Your honor, I was feaful for the safety of my family"

 

It seems to me like the punks are getting more brazen with each act....that's it....I am going to go buy a Clint Eastwood mask and walk around the neighborhood....gotta practice the words so they come out right.... "go ahead punk...make my day..."...

I would expect a lot more trouble leading up to school being back in session.

 

Know what? I do know for a fact that some of the police officers do live in broadlands (not saying which street due to privacy concerns) and if these kids are STUPID enough to do this crap to these officers' homes not knowing that they are officers of the law....these kids will be "sh*tting" their pants because these cops probably will be packing some heat when investigating noises or damages around their homes...So these kids should knock it off before someone really gets hurt.

These days, its no longer safe to have "fun" as these kids think of it because some one could come out and hurt someone out of anger.

 

Not that this is a big deal but it is truly is getting annoying. Earlier this week mailboxes along my street (including mine) were smashed and now I wake up to pots and plants being smashed. My 7 yr old daughter's response "that really isn't a very nice thing to do".....she is helping me replant the flowers but she definitely thinks we should keep them in the backyard.

 

i think it IS kind of a big deal. why shouldn't we be able to quietly enjoy a ight with family in our homes, pot flowers to make our lanscaping look nice, not have to spend money replacing mailboxes...

i realize we don't deal with drive bys and prostitutes and homeless people roaming around outside of our homes, but we PAY for that privilege, don't we?

it's not too much to ask that parents KNOW where their kids are and take measures to raise them to be respectful to people and their property. mine is 11 and is by no means perfect, but if you can bet that i will do everything but lo-jack him to ensure that he reaches 18 and becomes a man without vandalizing, terrorizing or disrespcting ANYONE.

 

That's very true, also there are surveillance cameras.

It is hard to get good pics at night, but if you augment with a motion activated flood or other lighting they are pretty good. The other drawback we have discovered is that the night vision cameras (that use IR LED's to light up the area) also tend to attract a few bugs, which then attract the spiders that make a web over the camera. We have some great night footage of a spider in one location...

After we get our system dialed in, I could post some comparison pics if there is any interest. We haven't had any problems, doing this because I'm an engineer and (apparently) can't resist playing around with this stuff.

Just ordered a Panasonic IP camera (Amazon price dropped from $200 to $135), to test the functionality of it's ability to email pics. It has a trigger input (i.e. can connect to a robust motion sensor, I really like the Honeywell dual tec that combine infrared and K-band radar). These (e.g. 7435) can be found on ebay occasionally for $50. Have no illusions that the pic will be all that great, but would be neat to get a pic on my cell phone when a package is delivered.

Have never used the motion sensing features on the surveillance DVR, because it requires port forwarding and I don't know enough about networks to understand the drawbacks of that. Also motion sensors on our DVR are not that useful, if you set the sensitivity to detect motion it tends to also capture trees blowing a little in the breeze. Hard to beat a good discrete motion detector apparently.

Mike

 

Well said, Redon! Couldn't agree more!!!

 

I think it's a big deal too. It's all about raising your kids properly, to be good citizens.

This summer, we've already had to replace both our mailbox and the post. Three weeks after the replacement was installed, someone destroyed it and I had to replace it again.

 

Maybe we should have a neighborhood watch program again? My parents neighborhood has one in Fairfax Station and it worked wonders. Cops have busted many a kid after vandalism calls went up. Parents were lectured at the police station and told that their kids belong in bed not out and around snooping causing problems at 3:30AM. If htey caught the kids again, the parents would then be summoned to court to explain to the judge why they cannot supervise their kids adequately. In fact, some parents (I think if I remember, three families had to pay for the damage to one resident's house to the tune of 10,000 (yes, ten thousand) for damages to their siding (kids spray painted the house!!!!) Parents made their kids work it off by getting jobs to pay for it. Two of the parents no longer were friends with one another because they blamed one another saying "Your kid influenced my kid to do this crap, blah blah.)

One day, some kid is going to end up in juvie court and parents made to pay for the damage...Its going to happen, the police told me that they ( school resource officers) often glean information off of the kids in school and pass it onto the police for evidence. Trust me, this does happen.

 

The solution to the issue is simple and can be instituted by our HOA. There is case law that upholds the HOA's right to institute a curfew. It could be very simple;

Anyone under the age of 18 shall not be allowed out side within the corporate bound of Broadlands with out adult supervision, defined as a person over the age of 21.

At that point, any kid outside after midnight is in violation of curfew and subject to detention & arrest. They can be detained by Neighborhood Watch, private security or any SCOP/LEO in the area. Doesn't matter what they are doing.

This, of course, is one of those slippery slopes. As Ben Franklin put it;
"Those who would give up a little liberty to gain a little security, deserve neither and will loose both."