COURTESY GOES HAND IN HAND WITH SAFETY

Over the past two days, I have been visited by police officers on two separate occasions. Both incidents were 'required follow-up' to two complaints by the same neighbor:
#1: accusing my son and another classmate (not of this sub) of ringing their doorbell and running away. My son and the other boy were accused based on the eye-witness testimony of another neighbor by pointing out their pictures in a school yearbook, where the pictures were nearly two years old. My son and the other boy were with other people at the time of the alleged incident.
#2: [reason withheld from me] after my conversation asking the neighbor for the name of the eyewitness and an apology for wrongly accusing my son.

I am expecting to fully participate in keeping our neighborhood safe. I find ding-dong ditching, egging, toilet-papering, and saran-wrapping to be frustrating and annoying. I imagine the people doing these things to be bored and disrespectful.

I am also expecting to be treated courteously. Ringing a doorbell doesn't seem like a crime to me. Conversing with a neighbor doesn't seem like a crime to me. I expect that neighbors with issues with me or my family contact me directly to verify what is presented as 'fact'. If this is done before the police are involved, I'm thinking the police can be more appropriately involved.

We're all neighbors with a common goal of keeping our neighborhood safe. We have a better chance of succeeding if we are cooperative.