The Cape Coral Police Department said they found four kids smoking marijuana in an empty home by Northwest 16th Place and Chiquita Boulevard Tuesday night.
The neighborhood has a lot of homes under construction. Gabriel Perez says he sees kids hanging out at the sites all the time.
"There's been a lot of things going on. Kids stealing bicycles, kicking doors. Cape Coral has gotten crazy in the last, I'd say two years," said Perez.
Last month, Perez saw a group of kids kick down his neighbor's door. Perez yelled at them, and they ran away.
"It's about four or five of them going all over the place at nighttime. You see them riding e-bikes with their lights off. So they're always up to something crazy at night," said Perez.
Breaking and entering is a felony. However, Cape Coral police say, last night, the homeowner decided not to press charges.
"So we charged them with loitering and prowling, which is essentially a charge for they don't have an explanation for where they are in an exact time frame and they're not suppose to be there," said officer Mercedes Simonds. "They're lucky they got a misdemeanor charge and not a felony charge. It could have been a lot worse for them.
CCPD says this story is also an example of being a good community member. They say it was a neighbor that alerted police about the break-in.
“From there, we can go investigate. maybe something's not wrong. Maybe something is wrong. But we'd like to be the ones to go get there quickly, determine what else going on, what we can help with, and what crime we can prevent,” said Simonds.