MUSKEGON, Mich. — It’s more than just bad manners. Folks in one Muskegon neighborhood are fed up with children fighting, staying out past the 11 p.m. curfew, and damaging people’s property.
Those are all things Bob Moore says is happening in the Oakview neighborhood where he lives. He says the culprits are children between the ages of 6 and 16.
“They egged the window on the house last summer,” Moore said. “This summer, they’ve egged the windows on the truck. The poor neighbor over there, they egg her. She gets it about every night. The neighbor across the street there, that you see the blue lights he’s got at the end of the driveway, they’ve stole probably three or four lights out there. Just kids being punks.”
The neighbor Moore said is getting egged every night is Jennifer Alfugaha. She's a mother of four who tells FOX 17 it only took two months of living in that area to realize something needs to change.
"A few days after we moved in, there was a riot out here, and then I called the cops, and then a couple minutes later I kept seeing kids walking all up and down through here 'til one o'clock in the morning," Alfugaha said.
She now has an even bigger problem to worry about. Over the weekend, Alfugaha says, some kids damaged her van.
She points at glue on her van. "This whole side of my van was covered in what looked like curdled cottage cheese."
It was a $500 dollar fix. Now, Alfugaha and Moore are saying they've had enough.
FOX 17 contacted the Muskegon Police Department to see how many citations have been given out to parents whose children were caught after curfew. Those were not provided to us by 10:30 p.m. on Monday. However, in an email from Capt. Shawn Bride, he said his department put out extra curfew patrols over the last eight weeks of summer.
Since April, according to the City of Muskegon's website, the Oakview neighborhood where Moore and Alfugaha live, there has been eight reports of property damage. That doesn't include the month of April.
While it's not clear if those account for this particular situation, Moore said he has a message for parents: "Keep your kids at home, ya know, 10 o'clock they should be indoors. They shouldn't be out terrorizing the neighborhood."
