Hi Everyone!

I am new to the site. I am looking for any suggestions people out there might have for teenagers vandalizing our home.

In the past 8 days our home has been hit with eggs 5 times. We have called our local police department to make a report each time. My husband chased (on foot) and identified one of the boys. Of course when the police officer went to his home he denied. We are pressing charges anyway. I am so tired of dealing with this. It happened again at 12:45 a.m this morning. The officer arrived I told him that I did not see anyone but I assume it is the same boy(s) and gave name(s). The officer came back to my house and found the one boy, that I mentioned, and two of his friends. Since they all had the same story (officer talked with them separately) and denied egging our home (like they are going to actually admit to it) he only arrested for curfew since they are minors (15 or 16 years old).

Please give me any suggestions to catch these kids on my property? It seems that the police really don't do anything unless you see them. Thank you!

(Question moved from Introductions to more appropriate topic area in order to get the most exposure to those best able to answer the question. The Introductions topic area is for introducing yourself and we try not to ask questions in that area. Thank you!)

Thank you!

Hello mountain:

I'd install a camera with a motion detector to set if off. Once you have recorded them, the cops'll throw 'em in jail and you can sue their parents.

excon

Next not only press charges, but sue the parents of the child for damages, cost of cleaning and so on.

But excon hit it on the head, camera to catch them in the act.

And you are lucky it was only eggs, I had to deal with baseball bat breaking my storm door and cracking my main front door.
And then had to deal with "children and family services" after I used force to stop a 15 year old from doing it.

The eggs are not going to be taken rather seriously, I'm afraid. Cops see it all the time. It is rather annoying to have to clean this off the house though. If the cops didn't see it, it didn't happen period. If you didn't see it happen you cannot just accuse someone of doing it even if you have good suspicions of just who it may be. The camera thing is all well and good if you can get it working but once you do get the little jerks on film the prosecutor is not going to do much with this. Sorry. Been there, done that. The most you can get is the parents having to pay for the removal of the eggs. If you cleaned it up yourself there is no cost involved to bill back. If you had the eggs professionally removed, different story on collecting anything. Vandalism is vandalism. These kids are probably going to escalate in the future. Whatever you or a family member did to them to anger then must be looked into and addressed. If you know where they live, go and talk to the parents and stress to them this activity must cease immediately.

Thanks twinkiedooter for your advice.

Must depend on the State - in NYS a videotape gets the attention of the Police and they get the attention of the DA.

I'd have an Attorney contact the parents - confronting them yourself (depending on the situation) might only make it worse.

Unfortunately in a lot of cases the parents have no idea what's going on and even less control.

Absolutely agree on the professional removal - now there's a cost involved in it all. Also I'd want to know why the kids were doing this to my house.