A PACK, NOT A HERD: PROTECTOR OF THE STREET:

When it comes to fending off post-hurricane looters, sometimes it takes a village.

In Callaway it took one man with a stockpile of weapons, a love for his neighbors and a vigilante earnestness so strong that it landed him — not the looters — on the wrong side of the law.

In this Panama City suburb of about 15,000, the tight-knit neighbors and their array of shotguns have kept looters at bay during an uptick in crimes of opportunity across Bay County. On Fox Avenue, credit goes to Carl Kuhn, the self-titled protector of the street. . . .

Before the storm, Kuhn said he made the rounds with his neighbors and asked if they were armed. Nobody was.

“I gave him a gun, I gave him a gun, I gave him a gun,” he said, pointing to the three homes across the street from his.

One of his neighbors, Steven Strassberger, said Carl gave him a .22 rifle.

Strassberger’s partner was in Pensacola so he weathered the storm in his modular home alone — along with his two parrots, Dino and Baby, Lucy the cockatiel and five dogs.

A couple of days later, he spotted flashlights bouncing off the wrecked home across the street. Looters, he thought, and called the police.

“They basically told me I was on my own because they were stretched so thin,” he said.

That happens.