Weird News on the Block

Happy Halloween, everyone!

It may or may not be appropriately scary enough, or maybe it is.  I'm going to describe something that happened last week. 

Our doorbell rang at 2 AM.  I wasn't very sound asleep since our dog Cari had gotten me up a while earlier to go outside--possibly because she'd been awakened by some noise, as it turned out.  Still, who would ring the doorbell at that hour?

Turned out to be two cops.  There had been a break-in on our street, not the house across from us that always had issues when it was rented out to difficult tenants, but one next door to it.  The neighbors who live there had let the cops know that we have security cameras--which my husband installed thanks to the former awful renters across the street.

Of course we invited the cops in and my husband showed them our security footage.  Sure enough, there were a couple of young guys, one on a bicycle and another on a skateboard.  Our cameras didn't show their attempted break-in, but at least one of them got close enough that the logo on his hoodie was identifiable.

The cops took pictures of our footage.  Others had already apprehended the bad guys around the corner, but I figured what they'd gotten here could help identify them if they were prosecuted for what they'd done.

And what did I tell the cops as they left?  That I write mysteries and I might use this in a story!

Cut to the next day.  We received a phone call that another cop was coming to record what was on our security cameras.  We'd been told that might happen.  He was a nice guy, too, in plain clothes, and even gave us a short lesson in saving our security pictures.  Plus, he told us the name for that kind of break-in -- "hot prowl."  I already have a story idea using that...

I do like our cops around here--but wish we didn't need to see them in this way.