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\u201cTell me about the theft,\u201d said the policeman at the station, getting out his pad and pencil.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell\u201d I began, \u201cWe have a neighbor named K, white guy, looks kind of twitchy\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n
The police officer immediately supplied K\u2019s last name. \u201cWhat\u2019d he steal this time?\u201d he asked brightly. \u201cA lawn mower or a weed eater?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA bicycle,\u201d I said, not skipping a beat.<\/p>\n
The man had come to our house pushing a lawnmower and asked to mow the lawn for pocket money a few times. I was desperate to prevent another showdown with my paranoid neighbor<\/a>, so I gave him what I had in my purse. Later, he asked if he could leave his mower on my porch as surety while he borrowed Rosie\u2019s bicycle to go and buy gasoline, and I said yes, because the mower was more expensive than the bicycle so he\u2019d have to be a fool to be pulling a bait-and-switch. He took the bike for an hour, then came back and said he was mowing my lawn right away, but actually pushed the mower down the street and came back to mow in the late evening two days later. These shenanigans went on for six weeks. He showed up at my door at one o\u2019clock in the morning with no mower, asking for cash, and I determined not to hire him anymore. Then, over Memorial Day weekend, he came knocking at the door offended because my husband had mowed the lawn himself. He asked for a few dollars, and I truthfully said there wasn\u2019t a cent in the house. I noticed the bicycle was out there at that time.<\/p>\n Less than an hour later, when Rosie went out to play, it was gone.<\/p>\n I called the police non-emergency number, only to find it was disconnected on weekends. I wasn\u2019t going to call 911 for a bicycle, so I waited until after the weekend to file a police report\u2013 just so there was something on paper saying it happened.<\/p>\n The bike is gone for good, I\u2019m sure. The policeman explained that K had surely traded it to someone else by now. He is always stealing things off porches and trading them; he\u2019s done it for years. I don\u2019t expect to see the bike again.<\/p>\n Michael walked that bicycle home for Rosie last year, five miles from the Wal Mart because he couldn\u2019t take it on the bus and didn\u2019t know how to ride a bike himself. Lord knows when we\u2019ll be able to afford to buy her another. Our money was perilously tight even before I shelled out to get the lawn mowed.<\/p>\n I went home frustrated, even though I knew this would be the result when I went to the police in the first place.<\/p>\n My friends and I commiserated on Facebook.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd they just let him wander the neighborhood stealing things?\u201d said one.<\/p>\n Not exactly. He\u2019s been in prison for larceny before for just this sort of thing, but there\u2019s a limited amount of time you can put someone in prison for stealing items that cost about a hundred dollars each.\u00a0And all other things being equal, I\u2019m glad of that. I\u2019d far rather live in a place where bicycles occasionally disappear than in a gulag. There shouldn\u2019t be long prison sentences for twitchy men who steal things off porches. Still, the slap-on-the-wrist sentence didn\u2019t seem to do anything to reform him.<\/p>\n We started bantering about what would actually work. Stocks? Lashings? Unpaid manual labor? Three Strikes and You\u2019re Out laws? Three Strikes and we get to run you out of town?\u00a0How do you make a man not misbehave anymore? What kind of penalty could you inflict on someone that would really make them stop being a bad person?<\/p>\n It is fun to think of what I\u2019d like to do to the thief, don\u2019t get me wrong.<\/p>\n Then again, sometimes I think that part of the reason our society has gone so wrong, is that we\u2019ve been asking the wrong questions.<\/p>\n And sometimes I think I\u2019ve glimpsed a more excellent way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Friendship Room<\/a> is on the opposite side of downtown from the police station. They have bicycles as well, bicycles that they had donated and refurbished. They lend them to people, to help them get around, and I assume a percentage of those bicycles don\u2019t come back. They have a free library with two shelves of books you can borrow as you walk by, stocked by donors, and I\u2019m sure most of those books disappear forever when they\u2019re borrowed. They place clothing donations on the porch that get taken away, no questions asked; they leave sandwiches and water on the porch for when they\u2019re not open, and surely those clothes and sandwiches and water sometimes fall into hands that didn\u2019t really need them. Many mornings they open up to homeless people sleeping on their porch. Some of those homeless people got the way they are through absolutely no fault of their own, but some surely have a history of inexcusable bad choices that led them to this point. The Friendship Room takes them in, feeds them and cares for them without asking questions. Sometimes this turns out to be dangerous\u2013 sometimes police have had to be called. They\u2019ve been taken advantage of many times, and it will continue to happen. But they keep helping people.<\/p>\n I actually visited the Friendship Room before I went to the police station yesterday. I was heartened to see that the Little Free Grocery cupboard had been generously stocked over the weekend\u2013 on Friday, it was empty<\/a>. Tuesday there was shampoo, soap, toothpaste, all name brands. There were cans of chicken and fish and beans, and there was peanut butter and pasta. I am sure that that food is gone by now, and I\u2019m sure that some of it was taken by a person too lazy to get a job and buy their own groceries, but I am also sure that most of it will go to desperate people who are already working as hard as they can. And regardless, I have hope that kind strangers will keep putting groceries into it, so that anyone who comes by can take some whether they strictly need it or would like to.<\/p>\n After I visited the Friendship Room, I walked down Fourth Street, where there are businesses now. When I moved to Steubenville almost 13 years ago, this area was a dangerous ghost town, and it\u2019s still not anything like a nice place. But little by little, life has been coming back. There\u2019s a deli now with ice cream and sandwiches\u2013 I like to buy grapefruit soda there when I can. There\u2019s a coffee shop that smells beautiful. There\u2019s a cute little hippie boutique where you can buy essential oils and vintage sunglasses. This all started happening a little after the Friendship Room was opened downtown.<\/p>\n Am I alleging that the Friendship Room caused that to happen? No. I don\u2019t know that it did. But I did witness this correlation: I live in a cruel, nasty, sadistic little town in the Ohio Valley where people are constantly bickering about the best way to punish criminals so that crime will stop and the neighborhoods will not be so wretched. I\u2019ve heard people from all social classes one-upping each other about how ruthless to be with criminals. The rich people at the end of LaBelle want to run them out of the neighborhood<\/a>. Bus drivers want to refuse addicts Narcan<\/a>. The last thing anyone wants to offer is mercy. Mercy has been viewed as a defect by all sensible people for as long as I\u2019ve been here. Nothing good happened for the longest time.<\/p>\n Then, into the middle of it, someone went downtown and opened a house that cared for everyone in need, without stopping to ask whether they were worthy. And a little after that, some things started to get better.<\/p>\n I get the impression that we have been looking at things all wrong.<\/p>\n Maybe we\u2019re not supposed to ask how we can inflict violence on people until they stop taking away our bicycles. Maybe we\u2019re supposed to ask how we can show mercy, in places where there is no mercy, so that mercy may come back to us\u2013 or, perhaps we\u2019re not even supposed to look that far ahead. Perhaps we\u2019re just supposed to be merciful and leave it at that.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t like that answer, but there it is.<\/p>\n (image via Pixabay)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u201cTell me about the theft,\u201d said the policeman at the station, getting out his pad and pencil. \u201cWell\u201d I began, \u201cWe have a neighbor named K, white guy, looks kind of twitchy\u2013\u201d The police officer immediately supplied K\u2019s last name. \u201cWhat\u2019d he steal this time?\u201d he asked brightly. \u201cA lawn mower or a weed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":9066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1738,22,626,501,897,5192,1869,2154,2146,330,756,181,2039],"tags":[6250,3180,277,8778,93,262,8772,8521,279,522,1610,6189,8775,4334,426],"class_list":["post-9063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-appalachia","category-christian-idenitity","category-compassion","category-cry-of-the-poor","category-culture","category-empathy","category-friendship-room","category-human-dignity","category-mercy","category-mystery","category-politics","category-public-face-of-catholicism","tag-bicycle","tag-community","tag-crime","tag-cruel","tag-culture","tag-help","tag-larceny","tag-little-free-grocery","tag-mercy","tag-police","tag-porch","tag-punishment","tag-sadistic","tag-stolen","tag-violence"],"yoast_head":"\n