When I first moved here, I got a lot of "what the..." looks when neighbors saw me arriving and departing wearing dress shirts and ties every day. They mostly don't even work at all over the counter, and instead choose crime for their income.
Living like this can be a bit of a Catch-22, because you're torn between wanting to fight crime and not wanting to be a snitch. If you ignore the crime, you allow things to happen that jeopardize your family's safety; whereas being a snitch/rat/tattletale can just as easily jeopardize your safety.
So, I have to take each situation I witness and determine whether it's something that my family needs to worry about, or if it's an emergency for someone else. I've only reported three things in the last year in a half living here, despite the fact that I could report at least that many things per week if I wanted to. For example, an intoxicated driver hit a family member's parallel-parked car in front of the house just after the birth of my daughter and then ran, leaving what was later determined to be around $1900 in damages. I reported that and the person was caught. Luckily the person didn't retaliate. The other two incidents involved drugs too. An incident involved someone really high checking under our cars and asking me a lot of odd questions, then began eating chips and drinking soda in the middle of a somewhat busy intersection, so I reported it to keep him from either getting hit or doing something stupid to us. Also, a drugged and drunk driver rolled off the side of the road and down the mountainside with two passengers after hitting the rock wall on the other side of the street. This was maybe a hundred feet or so up the road from us.
