A group of teenagers ran riot in a small park in Karpoš 4 - they smashed rubbish bins and toppled an ornamental lamp post, and the whole scene ended up filmed and shared in the residents' group for protecting green spaces in the municipality. According to residents, these were ninth-graders from the nearby school.

The municipality responded with an appeal to parents to watch where their children are in the late evening hours, when incidents like this most often happen. One resident posed the question that really hangs over the whole story: "What are we doing as parents?" - a question with no easy answer, but without which nothing changes.

It's easy to file the whole thing under "kids these days" and close the subject. But a smashed lamp post and overturned bins are not a generation's problem - they are the problem of someone never learning that public space is theirs too. The lamp post they toppled was paid for by every citizen, and they'll pay for it again when it gets repaired.

Residents are asking for police patrols in the evening hours, and that's understandable. But a patrol can't stand behind every tree in every little park. The difference between a city where things last and a city where the same thing keeps getting repaired isn't made by the police - it's made by habits learned at home, long before the playground. The question isn't only who will pay for the lamp post, but who is even being taught not to knock it down.