Shots Fired: October 2003 - Part I

Getting back to the original story now, the next several posts will cover October of 2003. You will see that during this one year alone, I probably had more contact with various police officers than many people do during their entire lifetime. All I wanted was for FWPD to be aware that mine was not a drug house, and to react accordingly, and I figured this contact with them would have established that firmly. Apparently I was wrong.

Saturday, October 4: Late in the evening I heard a gunshot outside. I stepped out on my front porch and saw Bernie and three other guys coming from his back yard carrying what appeared to be a towel-wrapped shotgun. They placed it in the trunk of their car and left. I walked over and looked in his back yard to see if there was anybody lying on the ground. There wasn’t, so I assumed they were just getting their kicks by shooting off the gun. I didn’t get the license plate number, and they were gone now, so I didn’t waste my time calling the police.

Friday, October 10: Mayor Graham Richard was up for reelection and Linda Buskirk was his Republican challenger again. The Fraternal Brotherhood of Police union (FBOP) had endorsed Buskirk, who’s husband was a FWPD officer. I had recently read an article where a representative of the union explained why Buskirk was good for cops, or rather why Richard was bad. FWPD uses a quadrant system with the city divided into four districts. Each district has it’s own Deputy Chief, and patrol officers are generally assigned to work in one specific quadrant. From it’s inception, it seemed that many of the officers felt it was overly restrictive and inhibited their ability to perform their job well. Now, the FBOP was claiming that it inhibited public safety. Officially, it seemed that the main reason the union supported Buskirk was because she was not in favor of maintaining quadrant policing. The fact that her husband was a high ranking officer probably didn't hurt her prospects either.

I was going to visit the Frost Illustrated newspaper again, and FBOP was just across the street, so I walked in and was greeted by Officer Frelinghuysen. I talked about my neighborhood and asked him if the FWPD’s inability to effect the problem had anything to do with the poorly organized quadrant system. Frelinghuysen answered “Yes, there are too many cops setting at desks and doing paperwork, instead of being out on the streets.” He went on to tell me how the unnatural quadrant barriers just created another level of bureaucracy. He said that was the reason the patrol officers did not have time to talk and get to know people in the neighborhoods they patrolled. He said that their supervisors were so buried in paperwork that they could not effectively do their jobs either.

He suggested the name of an officer that I should speak with about the problems here. It was Officer Marshall. At that point, I told him I was having a little trouble understanding Marshall. It had been three weeks now since I last heard from him (September 19), and that was when he said he’d get back in touch with me on the following Monday. I told Frelinghuysen about the miscommunication Marshall and I had earlier, adding that I was reluctant to call him for fear that I would seem like a pest. I told him that I was trying to be patient, but things were really getting crazy around my house. He said Marshall was a really good cop, and he probably had just gotten busy and was unable to get back to me yet.

Officer Frelinghuysen allowed me to elaborate about the problems, and I closed by saying that I would really like to obtain a copy of the incident report (September 8), and get the no-trespass order put into effect. Officer Frelinghuysen said he’d try to look into the matter and would get back in touch with me soon. I then walked over to Frost and spoke with Vic. I updated him on the situation in my neighborhood and with the police. I asked if he thought he would have better luck than me in getting a copy of the incident report. He said he’d look into it.

Saturday, October 11: Vic left a phone message; “Got some calls in, haven’t heard anything yet.”

Tuesday, October 14: Officer Frelinghuysen called in the morning and left a message; “I’m talking with some people. It sounds like you’re on top of things there. I’ll be in touch with you.”

As I read my journal to make my blog entries, I am sometimes surprised by what I read. There is a lot of information there, and my memory alone seems to just blend it all together. But reading the details in the journal is a bit strange. Looking at events from a reflective perspective, some of them seem far different than they did when I actually experienced them. I suppose it might be something comparable to a veteran watching a film about the war that he was actually engaged in. It's the same, but it's different too.

When I recalled exactly how I reacted to Bernie and his friends shooting the gun that night, I was a bit shocked myself. I had become so jaded that I did not even call the police when a group of juveniles were shooting a shotgun into the air in the middle of the night. But really, what would have been the point? I had checked to make sure no one was hurt. The only thing the police would have done beyond that would be to keep me awake an extra hour to fill out their report - a report that would just be filed away to have nothing ever come of it.

But as dire as things seemed at times, I was beginning to feel more confident about the situation. The newspaper was looking into things, and a police officer was returning my calls now. I figured it could only get better from here. I’d soon come to realize how mistaken that notion was though.