Apathy, the Mother of All Crime

November 15, 2012 — 5 Comments

fledgling hawk at the condo village

We know there is fraud and corruption all around us. We are aware that we pay these highly disputed tax dollars to government employees less than interested in serving the public. We know laws are broken all the time because there is not even a tiny itsy bitsy effort to enforce them. I am not sure why we have so many (but that is another subject) if they are all just recorded somewhere in case lawyers need to use them. The public believes that somehow having cops is having law enforcement, but this highly simplistic notion is every criminal’s best friend. People allow bold and disgusting crime to happen before their very eyes without trying to stop it just because apathy is so strong that they are basically controlled by it. There is no expectation that our surroundings can be kept crime free, but rather a new normal of home security and paranoid, anti social collection of weaponry.  Full disclosure, I live in Arizona, so I am speaking about my own ‘hood.

I live in a condo village that looks like a fake Taos Pueblo in central Tucson.  There are only 30 homes, a pool, a jacuzzi and a small guest parking area.  For the last 10 years the HOA board has had the same two members every year.  They return to office, even though they are not even known to most residents or owners by keeping completely out of touch.  They meet without any interaction with the other homeowners, send a paper newsletter with vague and meaningless report of the meeting in the mail, and  continue to survive in this isolated way because they discovered apathy.  When one of them celebrated the death of her father by stealing $50 from our dues money and making a donation to a hospice in her father’s name, I called to inform her stealing dues money  is both disgusting and illegal.  She hung up on me.  I learned by asking for neighbors to help get them out of office that the most important element of life for them is denial and ignorance about what is happening in the real estate market and in their surroundings.  I reported the theft of the $50 to the attorney general of AZ who responded that they did not handle such cases.  I inquired at the city council office to locate the office that could handle this crime.  The real estate department no longer helps HOAs with crime infested boards, and the fire department is now in some way attached, but there is no resolution other than to get the homeowners to get the stolen money returned. The homeowners’ prime goal was continued apathy, so that was not workable.

They continued in office and started running a charity scam in our public areas.  They solicit food, money , and any kind of junk to their keep the homeless outside campaign.  They do not believe in supporting the existing shelters and non profits that serve the homeless community.  They believe in trashing the environment of their neighborhood, and some other neighborhood with a public park, in order to feed the homeless outside like animals.  They think they are entitled to run a charity scam blocking our driveways and driving down the price of our real estate value because they know that apathy will protect them.  They have run this operation for years in broad daylight begging on the internet for donations.  I have reported the crime to the IRS, AZ revenue, the County Health Dept, the Ward 3 council office, and of course the TPD.  None of these entities cares if we have a charity scam operating in our neighborhood.  Neither do the owners of the homes that have lost more than half of their value while these board members made this special jurisdiction for themselves in our public areas. The neighborhood watch cop tells a story of neighbors watching a house be cleared out by thieves, but never report it because nobody knows their neighbors.  Here, the homeowners sat silently inside their own homes while their very own property value and quality of life  was willfully destroyed and decided that it must be fate.  I own a lot across the street from the HOA property with a rising value, while these home values have sunk like rocks. Foreclosure has come and stayed.

I do not believe in competing unfairly with legitimate non profits that need all the help they can get today.  It is easy to pitch in, volunteer, or donate to many worthy and wholesome programs that assist the homeless, rather than demean them ( and possibly give them food poisoning) in a public park.  I would think that most people would be grossed out by this, but strangers drive through and donate junk without thinking, “What am I doing in a residential condo village blocking the fire lane to do my charity work ?”  But then, those people are just dropping off a few old socks they no longer want.  The homeowners have been willing to loose their socks just to stay apathetic.