Mr. Gorlitsa and I are big believers in the broken windows theory of sociology. The basic idea is that if the government focuses fixing broken windows, cleaning up littering, and enforcing minor laws, people tend to respond by being more law abiding, and so more significant crimes are also reduced.
Mr. Gorlitsa gets to practice this nearly every day as a bicycle cop. He’s out there on the streets, able to deal with things as he encounters them, rather than being sent on calls. It’s a nice gig. Almost everyone in the neighborhood knows that he is a cop, and we occasionally get random knocks on the door for advice. Luckily we live in the county, not the city, so we can just tell them to call the Sheriff rather than getting involved ourselves.
Most people seem to like having a cop on the street, but a house a few doors down doesn’t. The get a lot of foot traffic, especially right after school gets out. The kids walk back down the street in a rather different state of mind than when they walked up. (If that wasn’t obvious enough for you: they sell pot)
We can only assume that the neighbors (or more likely, one of their customers) are responsible for this.
I like to think that the tagger was out of ideas. “TTE” is the first three characters of our license plate, which is right next to the trash can. Mr Gorlitsa noticed the tagging, and went out for spray paint right away.
All better. Let’s hope it doesn’t come back.
