A few weeks ago, an item in the police blotter gave me a pang. Honestly, I don’t expect a lot of good news when I read the blotter, but I much prefer the stories of police rounding up loose pigs or catching pumpkin thieves to the ones about break-ins, drug busts, identity theft and car prowls.

The item that got me was about one of those car prowls — a resident spotted someone walking along the street, checking car doors to see if any were locked. Why did it bother me? Because it happened on “my” street, not at the recreation parking areas, where tourists, not people I see every day, leave expensive electronics in plain view on their back seats and forget to lock their cars, or in areas close to the freeway, that see a lot of traffic.

Someone was looking for a crime of opportunity, and, according to the report, he was scared away by a witness who’d been watching him check the car doors, then went outside to yell at him.

It’s scary, if you stop to think about it. Worse, many of us, maybe all of us, actually encourage these opportunistic thieves, because we just don’t take the responsibility. I’m at fault, too — where I grew up, people not only left their cars unlocked, they left the keys in the ignition.

I’ve heard police officers from every department in the Valley talk about this. People don’t lock their house doors, even when they’re at work. They don’t put their children’s bicycles in the garage at night. They leave their purses or laptop bags in their unlocked cars because they’ll just have to carry them back out to the car the next morning.

It’s because “this is a small town,” and “it’s safe here,” and plenty of similar reasons. They’re right, too – for now. We still have a bunch of small towns in the Valley,  which are still pretty safe, but that can’t last if we don’t work to preserve it.

Yes, that word was “work.”

It takes some effort to maintain the idyllic and (almost) care-free lifestyle that many small towns have, and not just by the local police. Everyone has a part to play, in keeping themselves, their belongings and, by extension, the community, safe.

While I don’t have to lock up my ladder at the end of a day — and I don’t want to because I have to finish a project tomorrow — I do it, because I really don’t want some kid to get hurt doing something on the ladder they stole from me as a prank.

I don’t want to give just anyone easy access to my second-story windows, or my neighbors’ either. I’m pretty sure they appreciate my effort.