Jeff took out the dogs this morning and found everything in the back yard, except for the hot tub and trampoline piled in front of the back door.

The trampoline had been drug across the back yard and the legs were bent, there were lighters and aerosol cans in the grill, a solar light was stolen - and the single, perfect apple from my Snowsweet Apple tree is half eaten on top my hot tub.

I cried when I saw the apple. We just planted the tree this year, and I’ve been waiting since June to see what the apple tastes like, so I was really disappointed.

I think seeing me cry is why Jeff called the police.

The cops can’t do anything unless there is a witness to a crime - which I guess makes sense, but it’s frustrating that they won’t even try to find out who committed a crime unless there was a witness to it.

Jeff was a MP so he knows what he would be doing in that situation, and the cops here don’t do that, so he’s getting frustrated too.

It’s hard to know that people can keep harrassing you, and unless you see them the only thing the cops can do is tell you to put in lights in the back yard.

Of course by some strange stroke of fate there is an actual street light in my backyard, that stays on all night - so it isn’t like the vandals were doing this in the dark.

The stupid streetlight probably helped them find all the stuff so they could move it around.

The cop was getting mad - and he yelled at me!

I can’t believe it.

All I did was say “So basically we could commit any crime we wanted to as long as no one saw it?”, and then ask if it was standard operating procedure to send the home owners into the house to make sure there wasn’t anyone who supposed to be in it before the cops went in.

That wasn’t this cop - that was the cop that responded when we came home and found a computer monitor on the ground in the snow.

Yup - he made us go in the house first to make sure no one was in the house while he followed the footprints to see where they led, and told us to give him a call if someone was still in the house.

Seriously - I thought you were always supposed to call the cops and have them check it out since they are supposed to be trained at dealing with intruders, but I guess I was wrong - at least here in Moorhead.

This cop said he didn’t know what standard procedures were for that kind of situation, so I’m guessing he’s not a great cop.

You’d think they’d at least be able to tell you that much if they were, or am I asking too much?

They police didn’t even want to come - but when stuff keeps happening you have to do something to make it stop.

I don’t want to be scared of what I’ll see everytime I open the back door, and I don’t want to worry that my dogs will find something in the yard that will hurt them.

So far in the two years we’ve lived here we’ve had someone shoot out the windows of all the cars parked on our street (fortunately ours were in the driveway), someone vandalized the house 3 times, and then we had the aforementioned computer monitor incident.

It really sucks.

A couple of the times we’ve seen other people vandalized too, but this was the first time that it was just us.

The scary part is that these things started right after our renter who couldn’t pay the rent because he was bipolar (according to his dad) and couldn’t keep a job moved out.

The dad said he had been having serious mental problems and was going to get treatment - but Jeff saw him a few days later so I don’t think he did.

We still have to go over the yard to make sure that the vandals didn’t put anything down that will hurt the dogs, and we are going to drain the hot tub before we use it.

There’s no way I’m taking a chance that they didn’t do something to it.

I hope you haven’t dealt with this, but if you know anyone who has leave me a comment and let me know what they did.

Jeff is looking at security stuff for the back yard - but if we do get more lights they’ll have to be electric - I don’t think the solar lights work when it’s -40F outside.

That will suck - us spending more money to keep the vandals away.

But I guess that’s life in Moorhead.

I don’t think extra lights will help anyway - if they aren’t scared of the streetlights in the front or back yard why would they be scared of other lights?

And if they know that we slept through all of this this time, will they try more the next time?