Our games cover a couple of miles of almost unoccupied property. But teenagers don't always make the best decisions and sometimes treat others' property as their own. It can be super disconcerting to have somebody dressed all in black climb over your back fence, run across your porch and disappear around your garage.
Even when you make a clear rule that you can't go past the power line and into the neighborhood, somebody sometimes does.
Do you really want the police to ignore a distress call of prowlers trampling their tomatoes?
Imagine a scenario where some kid is apprehended by a police officer and brought to face the angry homeowner. Restitution cannot be made by having the child buy a new plant to replace the damaged plant. So the child has to buy two ripe tomatoes a week for four weeks to provide the homeowner with some compensation.
No court hearing. No criminal record. Parents involved, but nobody too worked up. Just a valuable life lesson about respecting others and taking responsibility. The angry homeowner still hires the kid to mow their lawn. No hard feelings.
Do we really want our police to be judge, jury, arbitrator, and parole officer?
Well, in this little sketch of Mayberry, my answer is yes. If only we could always exist in the sunny side of Mayberry. It only takes one person in this story to take us out of Mayberry. Fortunately, there are millions of people who do their part everyday to maintain some sense of Mayberry in their community. Some of them are even police officers.
You may have a bit of a caricature of America - the stories you here are generally exceptions, not rules, if they were mundane everyday American life, they won't be news.
It'd be a bit like me seeing a biography of a French alcoholic and riffing on it with "Tbf if I lived in France and I was out to eat [in their fabulous elaborate traditional gourmand cuisine], I'd buy at least one bottle of wine with a meal.
Not a huge fan of people drinking too much, but needs must when it comes to your country I suppose."
Even when you make a clear rule that you can't go past the power line and into the neighborhood, somebody sometimes does.
Do you really want the police to ignore a distress call of prowlers trampling their tomatoes?