For those of you that have been following my neighborhood's little crime saga, I had an update over the last couple days.

Yesterday, I was sitting out on my front deck, programming, writing, blogging, and working my butt off on the phone. I noticed a guy ride up our street on a bicycle and proceed to ride around in circles in the cul de sac, looking at each of the houses as he went around over and over again.

A couple weeks back we had two break ins in the neighborhood within 4 days, and evidence suggested that more than one burglar was involved and that one or more people were keeping a look out while the home invaders burglarized.

So I saw this guy, who appeared to be a teenager or twenty something. I hadn't seen him before and I tend to pick up on things since my kids play in the same area. Finally, I decided that I was better safe than sorry so I called the non-emergency number for the police and gave them the information and a description. Just then the rider went down the street and out of site.

Five minutes later he was back, circled the cul de sac several times and now I was really curious. I was just getting ready to phone again, when he got off his bike and walked down the drive way to my neighbors house across the street, and walked right in the house.

I suddenly knew who the guy was. He was my neighbor! He'd been wearing a helmet, which made him look about 20 years younger. I couldn't see his face clearly because of the helmet nor the slight balding areas above his temples. I called the police back and told them it was a false alarm.

Today, however, I had a much different experience. I was walking my dog back from a circuit around the subdivision and noticed two guys in a maroon Ford Ranger parked across the street from a house that I knew they did not live at. It was a four seater type of truck and one guy was in the drivers seat and the other guy was in the back seet(small little area) crammed in behind the driver.

Something seemed weird about them so I detoured walked past them and got the license number. I went up the street one block, circle back and walked by them again. As I walked past them this time, the driver gave me a strange knowing smile and the guy in back made a weird gesture and then they tore off out of the neighborhood at a abnormally high speed.

I phoned 911 and gave them the license and descriptions. They had a cruiser patrolling the neighborhood in 7 minutes. I walked up the street, called one of my neighbors to make sure they were home and stopped by my bicyclist neighbor. I mentioned to him what I'd seen as he had driven by shortly after they left. I als mentioned that I'd called the police on him the day before and we had a good laugh together.

I'm glad we had the luxury of laughing off the situation today and not being concerned because inaction had made it easy for a couple criminals to invade someone else's home. It goes against human nature to speak up and point out something is wrong when we are together in a large group of people. This is part of the reason why atrocities were able to proceed unchecked during WWII and even more recently in Abu Grahib in Iraq. Its important for people to not ignore life but take it on and deal with it directly. I didn't confront the guys myself or anything like that, just showed them that our neighborhood was watching and paying attention and that if they wanted to nab something it wasn't going to be easy.