You're not making a strong case for continued late night magic teh gatherings at your place...

Because everyone keeps getting shot at, and we started complaining, and the supervisor's office contacted us, and then we met with the captain, and then... long story.

In short, though, we're pretty happy with our elected district supervisor about helping out with this, and with the police sergeant who drove us around. He was really impressive: monitoring radio traffic, answering our questions, driving around, spotting suspicious people, etc., all at once. The ridealong was super informative, since I had basically no idea how a police department worked.

Also, the advantages of having a neighborhood watch group or other similar organization have become clear. We're getting on that now, to try to at least keep our couple blocks from being ground zero in the gang war.

and you're going on a ride-along because... ?