For Wilshire Baptist Church
I didn’t want to call 9-1-1 on the girls, but that’s the way it went down. And sometimes you just need to start the process to get to the heart of the matter and maybe get someone or something back on track.
It started on Saturday while we were at a funeral and we noticed afterward our Ring doorbell had captured three quick videos of two women on our front porch. We watched and listened as they seemed to be alerting us about something “not moving” in our side yard near the vacant house next door. When we got home, I walked around the yard expecting to find an injured dog or cat and found nothing.
Then on Sunday, we were coming home from church and saw what looked like the same two women walking past our house again. After we parked in the garage, I looked out our windows to see the women walking down the nextdoor driveway toward the backyard. I followed them, and when I got to the back, they were missing but a kitchen window was open just a little. So, I called 9-1-1.
The house next door is vacant and undergoing renovations before being sold. The current owner lives in Oak Cliff, and neither he nor his renovation crew have been there in almost a month. I could have called him, but I chose 9-1-1 because I thought the police could get there more quickly. My active imagination had these women inside checking out the new appliances and fixtures and planning for a big haul; I thought their video performance on our porch the previous day was just to see how attentive we were. The end of the last video shows one of them walking toward the back.
After calling 9-1-1, we sat down to lunch but with our eyes glancing out the windows, and within a few minutes we saw the women coming back out of the backyard. Afraid they would get away, I stepped out on the porch and asked, “Ya’ll been inside that house next door?” They hemmed and hawed as they continued walking and said something about looking for a friend, and just about that time the police rolled up. Watching from inside our house, we saw the officers get out, talk to the women, pull out their report books and start asking questions. After a while, another woman walked up and the three of them walked away.
A while later, the officers came to our door and we went out to get the details: The two women were actually teens – one of them 15 and known to the police as “troubled” and “homeless” at one time – and the third person was one of their mothers who came to get them and walk them home. So what were they doing? The girls confessed they had been inside “smoking weed,” a claim apparently confirmed after one of the officers went inside the house.
I’m grateful our Garland police are both attentive to these types of calls and also not quick to haul someone away for what is often called “youthful indiscretion.” Our police department is tough on crime, but they also are big on social services, including having a homeless task force that goes above and beyond to get homeless persons off the street and in contact with agencies that can provide guidance and help. And they seem to do a good job of separating hard crime from youthful indiscretions and asking parents and guardians to gain control before things spin out of control.
I’m still sorry I had to call 9-1-1, but sometimes you have to do what you need to do. As the coordinator of our loosely run neighborhood Crime Watch group, I was somewhat required to make the call. And as a neighbor to other neighbors, I needed to make the call because we’ve had other problems with homeless persons getting into vacant or transitioning houses.
I’m grateful it worked out the way it did where the girls got a chance to go home and perhaps have second thoughts about those types of bad decisions. Meanwhile, I called the property owner after the police left and he sent a man over to lock up the house. I took the opportunity to urge him to finish the renovations and get the home sold and occupied. We need good neighbors next door.