What a strange car looks like..........

[DavieBoi]

There are many vehicles in our community that I have never seen before - and some of them are not the latest models, and appear 'run-down.'

Believe that it is not really appropriate to determine if someone lives here by their appearance, either. How fair is that! So, if I tinted my hair purple - should I not belong here?

Look in the archives of minutes from previous HOA meetings to review the cost of a guarded-booth entering our community. I believe this was a hot, burning topic at the beginning of Mountain Cove.

Thanks.

[29Mossdale]

We moved into our community in December 2002, and my wife and I just thought we were paranoid, or defensive, or we were being un-neighborly, because of the challenges we would receive, just walking about our community, asking us why we were here. The challenges seem to increase when we walked or biked the trail surrounding or community.

We kindly reply we live here, most of the time mentioned our address, and sometimes, when the person loitered around us, we kindly wait until the person left, before we resumed our activity.

I'm an advocate for being cautious and observant, but I think there is a very fine line between being cautious and seeing a potential suspect everywhere. I think we have crossed that line with this topic and the "strange man entering daily..." topic, and are advocating and encouraging profiling.

I don't drive a pristine Mercedes, BMW, or a Jaguar, my car is a late model Toyota. When I go out for walks, I prefer to wear crumpled, comfortable clothes, accessorized with my disintegrating shoes and a faded baseball cap. Also, I doubt I would fit the profile of someone living in Duarte or Bradbury, so that's another strike (or hit on the profile sheet) against me.

Do I need to start wondering that I'm being profiled as a suspect (outsider who does not belong at Mountain Cove), to "case the community", every time I leave the house?

If our community is being cased for future criminal activity, and beyond our gates lies a sea of criminals ready to harm both persons and property, then have the following been observed:

• Have there been an increase of reported crimes in Azusa to the Azusa PD?
  
• Have there been an increase of crimes (break-in's, robbery, etc.) in Mountain Cove?
  
• If crimes are occurring in Mountain Cove, then wouldn't the Azusa PD have notified us?
  
• Are any of the suspicious vehicles license plates being recorded and reported to the Azusa PD?
  

Safety should not a have a price, but it should also not cause us to go broke, plus we should not confuse safety for security measures. No matter how many security measures we implement, it is not going to provide our community 100% safety.

In my opinion, discussions of strange cars, suspicious strangers, spike strips, guard shacks, roving guard patrols, and keep out signs is turning our community into an exclusion zone, plus it's separating us from our larger community -- the City of Azusa. My son made the perfect comment, when I discussed and read my response to this discussion, while my family ate our dinner together, are we turning Mountain Cove into a prison to keep everyone out.