His girlfriend agreed.

She said they had walked outside only after noticing the damaged car.

I looked at the phone still in her hand.

One officer noticed it too.

“Were you recording?”

She lowered it.

“No.”

The officer looked at her.

“I saw you holding the phone when we arrived.”

She hesitated.

“I was just texting.”

The son interrupted.

“She didn’t record anything.”

That was his second mistake.

The officer asked whether he could see the phone.

She refused.

Then he looked toward the surrounding houses.

“Anybody around here have cameras?”

That question changed the neighborhood.

At first, nobody moved.

Then an older man across the street slowly opened his front door.

“I do.”

Another neighbor stepped out.

“My doorbell camera might’ve caught something.”

Then another garage opened.

Within ten minutes, people who had been watching silently were suddenly checking phones and security systems.

There was doorbell footage.

Garage-camera footage.

A camera mounted above somebody’s side gate.

Then a delivery driver who had passed through the neighborhood that morning returned after one neighbor called his company.

His dash camera had recorded part of the street.

Every angle showed the same thing.

My neighbor’s son walking toward the Lamborghini carrying paint.

The footage was worse than I expected.

He had not lost his temper for thirty seconds.

He had spent almost ten minutes damaging the car.

He poured paint slowly across the hood.

He used a brush to form the word.

He stepped backward to admire it.

His girlfriend moved around the car recording different angles.

Then he kicked the side mirror.

Once.

Twice.

The second kick cracked the housing.

Afterward, he posed beside the hood.

But the worst part appeared in footage from across the street.

His mother was standing on her porch.

Watching.

She had been there almost the entire time.

At one point, her son looked toward her.

She clapped.

When the officer replayed that section, nobody spoke.

The mother finally shouted that the footage was misleading.

Nobody answered her.

There was nothing to answer.

The camera had done what the neighbors had been too frightened to do.

It had spoken plainly.

Her son’s face changed when one officer told him to place his hands behind his back.

He looked toward his mother.

“Mom?”

She immediately stepped forward.

“You cannot arrest him.”

The officer told her to stay back.

“This is ridiculous. He’s nineteen.”

“Ma’am, stay back.”

“It was paint.”

The officer looked at the Lamborghini.

Then at her.

“That’s going to be for the court to decide.”

Her son finally stopped laughing when they told him the repair value could make the charge much more serious than he expected.

His girlfriend started crying.

His mother did not.