3:30 AM Prank

My husband and I were awakened by our dog barkly furiously at 3:30 am this morning. Once we got downstairs, my husband looked out our front window and saw both our porch chairs sitting out in the street, along with our watering can! We both ran out to fetch them and put everything back. Guess whoever did it thought it would be funny to have a car down the street and smash them. Was wondering if anyone else had any pranks like this last night?

 

At about 11:30 Brassey reported that it felt like a sledgehammer hit the back of our house. I checked, nothing going on.

 

About 10:30 last night there were a group of boys sitting on the curb down from our house talking loud. I kept looking on and off but they were just sitting there talking....not causing any trouble.

 

Guess kids are getting bored, time for school to start. I noticed this morning going to work a house was tee peed on Vestals.

 

I heard something happened to the pools the other night. Anyone know the details?

 

Last night on the corner of Sleepy Hollow and Cloverleaf there were teenagers making TONS of noise at 10, 1030, and 1100. They almost caused two accidents that I saw. Was ready for the worse when the white SUV (or SUV crossover) came down Cloverleaf with a teenager standing up through the sunroof, but he managed to live another day.

 

On Monday night a few houses on our street were TP'd, including ours. We're behind the construction across from Sunoco - guess you can't call it a hill any longer.

My wife woke up about 11:30 because she thought the kids were turning the hall lights off and on. Got up and looked around, checked all doors, and nothing - all clear. Went back to bed and thought we saw a flashlight coming through our bedroom window for a split second. Checked again and looked outside but still pretty quiet. Was hard to determine if it was a flashlight, someone's motion triggered porch light, etc.

Next morning, Viola! Took about 2 min to clean up but still....

 

when we t'p'd in high school- it was kids we knew, and it was kind of a cool thing to be t'p'd- meant you werent being completely ignored... lol

do you have a teenager?

 

We don't live in Broadlands-we're off Ryan Rd so not too far away but our neighborhood has had a few things happen. The main thing is a few houses have been egged over the last couple of years. Ours was about 8 months ago. We are on a corner and it's an easy escape due to woods and the streets. It ended up costing us over $200 to have the egg scraped off windows and some repainting done around our front door. We rarely use the front door so I didn't discover it until about 9 hours after the fact. I remembered hearing something around 6 am but I thought it was just a car door shutting or something. The biggest issue we had was it was done the day before the first snowfall in Dec and it was very cold so we couldn't wash it off either at that point and had to wait til it warmed up in the spring to have it cleaned up. Anyway, point is, I'd take tp'ing any day over eggs. And our kids are grown and we haven't had any run ins with anyone so it was totally random, but what a mess. We used to tp houses when I was in HS (30 yrs ago) and even our parents thought it was funny, but we never would have egged anyone's house. Having your house tp'd meant you were cool.

 

Our kids are 12 and 10 - maybe my daughter's friends are just showing some early potential. Certainly better than eggs or outright vandalism.

 

I'm curious, do you leave your outside garage and porch lights on all night?

 

The funny thing is, the "lamp post" light was the only light on until we got up and looked around - but yes that's what we usually leave on.

After getting up, we turned on the porch and garage lights and went back to bed. I guess we made it easier for the TP'ers to see what they were doing.

 

Ridgeway Drive / Teens @ Midnight

Folks-

Tonight is nearly midnight and I see three teenagers hanging out on Ridgeway Drive....Im keeping my eyes peeled just in case they try anything funny with any of the houses/my neighbors...I have a camera near the windows as well to take any pics if any of them try anything funny. This will be good evidence to turn over to the Sherriff if they do anything stupid to damage property or the like.

Just letting you all know that its the weekend and bored kids are up and about at this hour of the night..(for many of them, the night is young!)

 

"The camouflaged face at the window is mine."

 

Re: Ridgeway Drive / Teens @ Midnight

3... that's the magic number....

thanks for that cap. time to check into the nieghborhood watch more closely...

 

From Leesburg Today:

Teen Curfew Idea Dropped, Surveillance Cameras To Get Trial Use
By Erika Jacobson

(Created: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 11:19 AM EST)

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County supervisors this week backed off of a proposal to consider implementing a teen curfew in the county, after hearing feedback from members of the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office.

Members of the ad hoc committee on the Potomac-Sterling Community Outreach Project stopped discussion about imposing a curfew for juveniles after hearing Tuesday morning there is little belief that such tactics work. Instead the committee voted to have the board's Public Safety/Human Services Committee examine the expanded use of the trespass notification program already being used by the sheriff's office. The public safety committee specifically will look at whether there are resources available to communities that do not fit the existing requirements to enter the trespassing program.

Capt. Ricky Frye, who will command the sheriff's office Eastern Loudoun Substation when it opens this year, said an entity, such as a homeowners' association, a proprietary or a business, can grant the sheriff's office power of attorney to act as its agent, giving the sheriff's office full authority to bar individuals from a property. On Ashburn properties there have been 175 arrests on trespass notices and in Sterling, with 23 programs in place, there were 239 arrests in 2008.

"It's a wonderful tool," Frye said. "It's great to be able to say: 'you're intoxicated, you've just had a fight, you can't come back here any more.'" Frye said once a person has been given a trespassing notice, business owners can call the sheriff's office if that person shows up again and have the individual arrested. In addition, Frye said people with the trespassing notices can be arrested if they are simply on a property, like a common area in a community, that they have been barred from, even if they are not breaking a law at the time.

Only the Leesburg Police Department and the Prince William Police Department have a curfew for teens, but they are not enforced regularly. Leesburg only arrested eight people for curfew violation in 2008.

"One of the reasons we don't use it on a regular basis is the deputy's time," Frye said. "We have to take a deputy off the road to sit with that child until an adult can be located. It would drastically affect our manpower, especially in the east."

Supervisors said they were pleased to see that the sheriff's office did not want to move forward with the teen curfew option, as they were not sure it sent the right message.

"I think it's a vote of confidence for our law-abiding youth," Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac) said. "I would prefer to invest the funds in positive activities. I think there's a lot we can do for the youth in the community on the positive side."

One strategy that is moving forward is a pilot program for surveillance cameras at crime "hotspots" in the county, something Frye said the sheriff's office has the resources to do now with little additional cost.

"My instinct tells me that it would be a valuable effort in determining if we want to move forward," he said. "If we could monitor that I think we would get some good information out of a pilot program, without fiscal impact."

But supervisors said they wanted to see the program tried out, with Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) saying some stores owners in Sterling have already said they would welcome being a part of such a program.

The benefit, Frye said, would not come from 24-hour monitoring of the cameras, but from being able to go back and get more information about suspects from the camera footage once a crime has been committed.

"What we can enhance is tags, clothing descriptions, how many folks were involved, race," he said. "I do know that here in Loudoun County we have made cases based on tags or partial tags taken from a vehicle."

McGimsey questioned whether a vgovernment placing surveillance cameras in public places was done by other jurisdictions, raising the question of privacy and freedom, but Frye said since 9/11 many jurisdictions use such technology for public safety measures.

The Board of Supervisors' public safety committee will also be reviewing the possibility of using between $10,000 and $20,000 for an assessment of crime statistics and program objectives in relationship to how they relate to performance benchmarks in public safety.

Supervisor Susan Klimek Buckley (D-Sugarland Run) said she was opposed to the assessment because she believed that there was a better use for the money.

"I want to see it out on the street," she said. "I don't think the report is going to tell us things we don't already know. I am talking to some groups that are in great need of $10,000 or $20,000."

When McGimsey and Delgaudio supported the motion and Buckley said she was opposed, Supervisor Stevens Miller (D-Dulles) chose to abstain from the vote so it could move forward, but said he was "conflicted" about the proposal.

"One of the things that really came through to me when we went to Sterling on both occasions is we're reacting," he said. "[Residents] would say you don't need to study it, we've got people shooting at us. The people of Sterling, they're telling us what we need to know. I suspect that cops on the street could probably tell us what they need."

Budgeting also was discussed as part of the proposed strategy to enhance civilian staffing at the eastern Loudoun substation. In March 2007 three positions, administrative assistant, records clerk and crime analyst, were removed from the budget of the substation for $166,906 in savings. But Frye said that, without those positions, the substation would not truly be full service.

"Without the civilian staff we would be hard pressed to even open the station to the public. We would still be sending folks all the way to Leesburg to receive routine services," he said. "The building would essentially be morphed into a roll call station for the deputies."

The only new benefit that would remain would be the video magistrate for deputies, Frye added.

Supervisors asked that Frye put together a cost-benefit analysis of the positions and the money spent in fuel, vehicle maintenance and deputies' time when traveling from Leesburg to eastern Loudoun.

Supervisors suggested looking at using volunteers for some of the civilian positions, but Frye said there are things a volunteer cannot do, including criminal history checks and accessing records. Frye will work up the cost-benefits analysis for the February meeting of the ad hoc committee.

 

Why are these kids out at 3:30 anyway? Any parent that lets their kids out at 3:30 in the morning is just as liable as the kid that did the prank.

We don't need the law to enforce a curfew if you kept your kids at home at night instead of letting them roam wild all over the place. Reel them in people and do your kids a favor.

 

My problem with the prank they pulled on us was that it could have turned out worse due to them putting our rockers out in the middle of our street, I feel their intent was to have a car run over them. Thank goodness for our alert dog.

 

There is no substitute for a good watch dog. I agree with you tyger31. People may think these are harmless pranks but there is a thin line between harmless and harmful as you point out.

 

After reading this story I don't see where it helps us at all. We are not having problems with people hanging out at Broadlands plaza getting in to fights. We have a problem with juvenile pranks. Surveillance cameras in businesses and trespass orders on commercial or common property isn't going to stop any of these pranks.

And the argument that the Sheriff uses is ludicrous. So what happens when they encounter a juvenile on a trespass warning? Aren't they also going to have to wait for the parents of the juvenile to come pick them up as well and thereby taking a deputy out of service in the mean time anyway?

When you have crimes committed by juveniles at all hours of the night, I don't see how a curfew can't work since it targets exactly the people committing the crime.