The flower pot is in shards, the gravel bed is cast asunder, the back gate latch is bent to the point of uselessness, and a parking lot concrete beam is leaning against the fence, and there are many telltail signs of their unsuccessful (thank God) attempt to hoist it over the fence and send it crashing into our basement windows below.

So continues the saga of the church parking lot...It all started 3 months ago...when a few kids started gathering there at night, making noise and causing a ruckus...and no one from the neighborhood would call because they were afraid. My bedroom is on the opposite side of the manse, on the opposite side of the church property. In other words...I am not well situated to oversee our parking lot.

Still I have a decent view of the alley adjacent to the parking lot...(the garage and church building block my view of the lot iteself.) It was there that about three months ago I saw them smoking crack...5 teens, all white, all speaking Polish (that was open window season). That was also police call number 1.... (the neighbors started talking to me at that point, once they saw I was willing to call...and I heard of thier suspicions that one of the kids was dealing in our lot....call #2)

There have been 5 since...drugs, noise, a fight, a car break-in in the making (not in the lot, but the street adjacent)...and then the valdalized truck.

This was a month ago. A truck was left in our parking lot on a Thursday, with a note that said, "please don't tow, I will pick it up on Tuesday." I thought it might have neen one of our Narcotics Anonymous guests, so I said, "cool" and left it there. Turns out, it belonged to one of the kids...and the rest of them vandalized it on Saturday night, with obscene graffitti and racist epithets...(with friends like this...)
Only this time...I caught them...and saw them drive away...(if you can call driving six houses down the alley "away") and when the police arrived, I walked into the alley and pointed at the kid standing behind his own garage talking on his cell, no doubt to his co-horts who sped away when the police car arrived....He saw me point him out, obviously. At the suggestion of the police, I let them tow the truck away...I didn't want those obscenities in my church parking lot on a Sunday morning...Come Tuesday afternoon, he cursed me but good.

And we thought they were scared away....We were wrong. They began gathering again last week...but I haven't seen or heard them do anything until last night...

We've never done anything to these kids...I've tried reaching out to them in the past....

And now it escalates...Admittedly, there is much they could have done that they did not do....especially to our church's five figure air conditioning unit, which their gate crashing gave them access to.

And now we have to decide what to do...put chains across our parking lot?...put a fence across the alley way?...install still MORE lights with motion sensors?...All of those options seem to make us into a fortress...It's just so depressing...