neighborhood hoodlums

[HABU]

I just came in from pounding out the mailbox. It seems some local hoodlums have taken to smashing mailboxes and slashing tires (two of which were mine). This is the third time our mailbox has hosted batting practice. I almost went out last night and hid in the bushes, now I wish I would have. My son is 14 and willing to introduce the offenders face to his fist as no doubt its kids pulling this crap.

I want to be packing in case I confront these little bastards and they pull a weapon on me. On the other hand, I can hear some POS prossecuting attorney making his case for first degree murder because I was waiting in the bushes so I could shoot a teenager. Im not anxious to shoot anyone, but am willing to protect myself.

I have called the cops, but we all know that even If someone does catch these kids that they will have to confess to a prior crime (like the stabbing of my tires) for me to receive any satisfaction. They will only get busted for the offense they are commiting at the time of capture, then they will probably only get a slap on the wrist. Afterall, its only a mail box and a couple tires.

What's your take on this situation?

 

[PATH]

Wait and capture little S#*%ts but do not confront them with a pistol.

 

[HABU]

Originally posted by PATH
Wait and capture little S#*%ts but do not confront them with a pistol.

The only time the pistol will come into play is I have to defend myself against a deadly weapon. I would feel pretty dumb if said S#*%ts pulled his gat on me and there I was with my face hanging out and my pistol in the safe.

 

[AZTOY]

Fill the mail box with clement.

 

[Jorah]

I'd fight back using braces or something to

strengthen the mail box.

The legal fees to defend yourself will be far, far worse than buying a new mailbox or putting a welded cage over it.

I feel anger when stuff like that happens to me, but my own take on it (having been burned once or twice) is that reacting as you'd like tends to end up bad.

Any chance you could get photos of the car doing the drive-by?

We had people stoning our house for several years when I was a kid; police were sympathetic, but told us that unless we could get ID on the car, there wasn't anything they could do. (Really, I suspect that the cops themselves would have had to have seen it happen before they'd have done anything!)



My dad wanted to put a rock through the windshield of their truck; excalating the situation to assault and battery probably would have gotten HIM in jail, not the other way around.

People around here build iron-bar cages around their mailboxes... other people put heavy posts on each side of the box...

 

[Sisco]

Latest fad here is to shoot out car windows with a pellet gun then fire paintballs into the car through the missing window.
Two LEO's came to my house Thanksgiving morning to tell me about the broken window in my daughters car.

(That's almost a story in itself, was waiting for buddies to pick me up to go hunting. Heard the car pull up, grabbed my shotgun and headed for the door. Saw who it was, put the shotgun away!)

I told them that apparently the Neighborhood Watch sign wasn't working too well and that I wanted to replace it with a Neighborhood Vigilante sign.
The officer informed me that vigilantes were hard to catch.

 

[George Hill]

When I was a punk kid, I played mailbox baseball from the window of a car driven by friends.
Until one day I was pitched a mailbox made from cast iron.

OUCH!

Never did that crap again!

I suggest finding something armored.

 

[Chris Rhines]

Don't even think about confronting the punks. A mailbox, tires, and your injured pride aren't worth it.

Instead, be smart.

1.) Get a large mailbox and a small one. Also pick up a bag of ready-mix concrete.
2.) Remove the door from the small mailbox and stand it up inside the large one. Mix up the concrete and fill the space between the two. Let it set.
3.) Mount your new mailbox on a heavy post.
4.) Next twit who takes a baseball bat to your mailbox will most likely learn his lesson.

- Chris

 

[Wakal]

Chris's idea is elegant...I'd go that way, were I to do it again.

Mine was more work. Welded up a mailbox out of 1/2" steel and used a few yards of concrete to set the drill rod as a base.

Ouch.



Alex

 

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

My brother used to have a similar problem out in the country with his mailbox. Little idjits would take the tall 4wd and just drive over the top of it, post and all. He resolved it by implanting a piece of oilfield casing (heavy gauge exterior pipe for an oilwell) in a hole roughly 5 feet deep, securing said pipe with concrete. Affixed on top of the pipe was his USPS-approved cutesy little mailbox.

Within a week he had impaled a truck full of inebriated teens with 2 mailboxes from down the road inside said truck. No persons were injusted, just extremely unnerved when that pipe came through the floorboards when they set the hookat 2 AM tat fateful morning. I just love night fishing.

Took 2 tow trucks to lift that Chevy off the pole. I bet someone's daddy was pissed.

Some folks just can't discriminate an easy target from a hard one.

Regards,
Rabbit.

 

[telewinz]

Being employed by Corrections, be real careful. Why not just settle to get their license number and shoot them with a camera. They will still get nailed but you won't!

 

[Zundfolge]

Chris Rhines' method is the best.

Back in highschool I knew a guy who bragged about playing "Mailbox Baseball" (among other forms of vandalism).

His mailbox baseball career ended abruptly upon hitting a mailbox exactly like Chris described.

Shattered his Louisville Slugger and his right arm ... I don't think he ever regained 100% use of it

 

[piccolo]

solved a little problem like that some time back. Ask me again in a coupla years when the Statute of Limitations passes by.[]

 

[cratz2]

If you're technically minded, get a little camera and aim it where the cars are parked. Record the feed until something happens.

For the mailbox, those polymer boxes do a pretty good job resisting changing their shape.

Luckily, I've never had a problem with kids in our neighborhood. Both of our cars are parked in the garage 99% of the time but I think if the tires started getting slashed, I'd report it at first then consider it a threat the second time it happend. Of course, the type of person that I am, I'd be in the window FOREVER waiting for the little s**t to show up again. And I'd throw every little pocket knife, hunting knife and kitchen knife (that cost less than $20, of course) at them.

But that's just me.

 

[pax]

We've used Chris' method. Right up until a lady from our church lost control of the pickup truck she was driving to town one Saturday morning, and ran over the whole shebang. Felt a little bad that our extra sturdy mailbox gave her an extra large dent in the front of her truck. Didn't feel like going to all the work of reconstructing the durn thing, either.

Mostly, though, we just got tired of playing the game. In the race between better weapons and thicker armor, weapons always win. *shrug*

Got a P.O. box instead. Let 'em try to knock that over!

pax

There are more fools in the world than there are people. -- Heinrich Heine

 

[sonny]

.......................VIDEO CAMERA!.......................................

 

[sonny]

Hidden of course! ......with a motion sensor....not as expensive as you may think.....get a cheapo mailbox till you get the little rascals on tape.

 

[HABU]

I like Chris' idea. Working in construction, concrete is easy to come by. I'll let the plant mix it (readymix, BAH!). I better do something about the 4X4 post though. I can see someone teeing off on the box, getting rung up by the concrete and kicking the post over.

 

[sonny]

I like Chris' idea too ,but for some funny reason I get the feeling that those punks could end up suing you for something or another.What do you think?...Any lawyers out there?

 

[Dogsoldier]

Hello, my name is Dogsoldier and I too am a victim of mail box baseball thugs.

My wife liked to paint the mail box to "pretty it up". The last one she did looked like a cat sitting on the post. I warned her...

WIthin a week, it was smashed. I straightened it, it got smashed again. This time, the badguys pushed over the 4X4 post it was sitting on.

I put a section of heavy walled 4X4 steel square tubin in the ground and filled the hole with about 100 pounds of cement. Then the cavity of the steel tube was filled with sand that I packed down.

Out came the mig welder. I made the mail box out of some 3/8" plate. Then it was welded to the post. Went in to the house and told the Mrs. to go paint the mailbox. Another kitty sitting on the post.

About a week later we heard a scream from outside. I went outside to find a 16 year old goof ball rolling around in the driveway crying holding his hand. His buddies were standing there all confused. Kneeling next to him was some little doxy that I took to be his girl friend, whom Tarzan was trying to impress. Yep, this was the guy smashing my mail box. Apparently to impress the girl he punched the box.

Never had a thing happen to the mail box again.

 

[Preacherman]

There's always the South African version... Guy I know had this problem. He fixed it with a little creative thinking and application of his Special Forces dirty-tricks repertoire. He put a thunderflash (what I've heard called a "flash-bang" over here) in his mailbox, and in front of it, a plastic Zip-loc bag filled with fluorescent orange paint. He then took off the screws of the mailbox door, so that it was simply resting on the mailbox by its rim, and would fly off freely when the thunderflash went off and pumped all the paint out. The final touch was a detonator in the thunderflash, wired to four contact fuses, distributed strategically on the top and sides of the box. Then he waited... That evening at about 11, there was a thunderous explosion, the screeching of tires, and a loud crunching sound. A carload of teenage punks had been driving down the road, with one of said punks bashing boxes with a cricket bat (think of a rectangular-cross-section baseball bat). Punk hit maibox: mailbox went BANG!: paint flew out of mailbox into open window of car, drenching all four occupants and making daddy's expensive car seem rather hippy-ish inside: driver lost control while trying to get paint out of his eyes: and car ended up in rock garden of neighbor across the road, from where it was eventually extracted (at considerable expense) by a tow truck, observed by owner of car, who had already administered wonderfully detailed thrashing to his son and was threatening to find the other three idiots and do worse to them. Now and again, good things do happen to bad people...

 

[sm]

Went through mailbox baseball years ago. On my short street We all removed our mailboxes for about a week (postman as a neighbor and a retired LEO) Kinda surprised the youths. Duh whats up ?? No mailboxes ??
Even more surprised when LEO was waiting and caught underage youths with alcohol...in a dry county.

 

[Mike Irwin]

Do what friends did.

Had a mailbox fabricated out of 1/4" cold rolled steel. Looked just like the real thing, until someone tried to hit it with a baseball bat.

Day later a neighborhood kid showed up with a cast on his arm...

 

[Zorro]

.22 Cal Pellet in the Ass out of a gun I do not posses.

And never talk about it.

 

[WilderBill]

I don't have a mailbox by the street, but I like Sonny's motion detector activated camera idea.
Wish I'd had one when my car got the tires stolen!