Living with criminals in old time, and modern Phoenix
I've spent my whole life living around criminals. We all do. And it's just a question of how much criminal behavior we'll accept. Speaking for myself, I'm fine living with people who have library books which are overdue, or people who park the wrong way on the street. However, I draw the line at a certain point, and that's what I'm thinking about this morning.
Historically, Phoenix has been a law-abiding town. It began with a lot of banks which held the gold being found nearby, and from very early on there were people like Henry Garfias, who were good with a gun, and would remind you, very clearly, that you shouldn't do certain things, like robbing banks. Of course, he wouldn't gun you down if your dog license had expired (not that such a thing existed in Phoenix at the time!), but simply seeing him walk down the street would remind you that you were in his town, and you needed to follow the laws.
I'm a fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizen, not because I've ever even looked a law book, or ever read my HOA rules, I do it by looking around at what other people are doing. And yep, that's the way it works, and it brings me to the concept of "implied consent".
When I moved into my little neighborhood here in Glendale about thirty years ago, I wondered what it would be like when I was in my retirement years. I pictured cars driving up and down the streets with tommy guns like the days of Al Capone, and packs of ferocious dogs terrorizing the children. It didn't happen, this is still a nice, quiet neighborhood, and I've had time to think about why this is, and it has to do with people like me, and maybe you.
Like I say, I can't be bothered with petty criminal behavior. If your garbage can is out at 5 pm, instead of at 6 pm, I really don't care, and if you bring up the subject I'll just wander off. But I do draw the line, and for me it happened about ten years ago.
On a beautiful day as I was puttering around in my garage, and young man walked up to me, bruised and bleeding. He had confronted some people who had moved into the neighborhood recently and were selling drugs. I listened to him, and I understood his anger and frustration, but I told him to go home, and not even look in the direction of the house where he had visited. I made arrangements with the city of Glendale, and they took care of it, in a way that has always reminded me of calling for pest control. I distinctly remember hearing that the criminals would be gone by December, and they were.
And around the same time another neighbor of mine visited me to ask if anything could be done about some abandoned cars. It wasn't something that I had noticed, but the city took care of that, too. I don't recall if anyone ever asked me about someone with overdue library books, but they might have, and I just let it go.
So the question for you is: what do you turn a blind eye to? For me, it's stuff that I consider trivial, just part of living with neighbors. But implied consent is a very powerful thing, and if you see something that's genuinely bad, and you say nothing, you have given them permission to do that thing, and chances are very good that there will be more.
Yikes! I have an overdue library book!
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