Allen County Sheriff Abdicates Responsibility: October 18, 2006

After being taunted by Officer Marshall, I was at a momentary loss for ideas of what to do next. If it had been a low ranking officer who behaved this way, I would have called the FWPD front desk and explained the situation. But Officer Marshall is a top ranking officer, so this really didn’t seem like a practical option. I won’t mention all the thoughts that ran through my head, but I’m sure you can imagine what my state of mind must have been like at that moment.

So after running through several of the options in my mind, and coming to the conclusion that most of them would probably get me into a lot of trouble, I simply decided to call the police. No, I did not call the useless pricks at Creighton Street this time. I called the Allen County Sheriff’s Department. Officer Blaine answered my call there as I explained the situation and asked if there was anything his department could do to help me.

Officer Blaine first responded with a bunch of B.S. about “Respecting jurisdictional boundaries,” seeming to imply that ACSD had no authority here. When I pressed him on this, he finally did admit that they do have the authority, but that they generally prefer to leave incorporated areas to the city police departments. Officer Blaine suggested that I contact FWPD Internal Affairs to resolve the issue.

At this point, I explained to Officer Blaine that Officer Marshall was a top ranking officer with FWPD. I stated that, due to Marshall’s position, I did not feel that I could rely on FWPD to protect me and my property and requested that the county begin patrolling this neighborhood. I also reiterated that there were drug dealers still loitering about my property this morning, just a few hours after they had tried to burn my house down. Again, I asked if there was anything they could do to help. He simply said that he’d speak with someone in his department and get back with me. I’m still waiting for that call.

So at that point, the situation could be summarized in the following manner; Drug dealers try to burn my house down. Fort Wayne Police Department responds to this by telling me to quit causing problems here. In response to this I request that the Allen County Sheriff’s department act to protect me and my property. They tell me there’s nothing they can (or rather, will) do, and that I am stuck with the asshats at Creighton Street. Again, this is one of those points where I would really like to hear how others would respond to such a situation. Here’s what I did though.

About an hour after speaking with ACSD, I looked out the window and saw four drug dealers leaning against the fence around my back yard. Daniel and Sheldon were among this group and I highly suspected both of them as being the ones who threw the fire-bombs at my house. I was going to call FWPD front desk and report this just to check their response. But I knew from past experience that these guys would most likely be gone by the time the police arrived. I decided to take a picture of them first, but by the time I found the camera they were gone.

I went out on the front porch, camera in hand, to see if the group had moved to the corner. They were all gone, but then Kent came walking down the sidewalk towards my house. As I turned and snapped a couple photos of him walking past my house he just said casually “That’s not necessary. I’ll give you a picture if you want one.” At this point, I suppose that I was intent on provoking a response, so I held up the newspaper I had in my hand and said “But my picture of you has today’s newspaper in it. That proves you were here today, and that’s what I needed.”

Of course, I was talking total bullshit here. First of all, it’s very likely that the newspaper would have been unreadable in my photo. But even if it was, it’s not as if my showing that he was walking down the sidewalk would really prove anything malicious about his behavior. But my attitude alone was enough to provoke him as he then said “You better watch yourself. You don’t know who you’re messing with.” At that point, I called the police and reported this as a threat.

I really didn’t expect the police to be able to do anything even if they wanted to. My only intent here was to test FWPD’s reaction. By this time I knew Officer Marshall was either actively working against me or at least not working for me. But I had a hard time believing that this was truly the policy of FWPD as a whole rather than just one (or a few) derelict officer(s). But I had to find out for sure. If either the person answering the phone or the responding officers had acted in a similar fashion as Officer Marshall did, then that would mean the department, rather than just one or a few individuals, was against me. If this were the case, then I wouldn’t stand a chance.

The officers arrived shortly and questioned Kent. In their report, it stated that Kent said I had insinuated that he was responsible for the attack on my house the previous night, but this is inaccurate. What I said was “I’m tired of people standing around my house selling dope.” When he responded to this angrily, I said “Some motherfuckers tried to burn my house down last night. Was that you? Are you the one that tried to kill me?” So you see, there really was no accusation here, only a polite inquiry. Anyway, Kent stated as his alibi that he was in school at the time of the attack, even though it took place around 11:00 in the evening.

Note: The above incident occurred in October of 2006, when Jim Herman was still the Allen County Sheriff.

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