Free Clothes - Better Check The Pockets: October 10-13, 2006

I had been watching a group of people on the corner and sometimes in my yard for a couple hours in the evening. This was only a few hours after Chief York had been out here to investigate the neighborhood himself. I was trying to be patient with FWPD. Even if they really were trying to address the problems here, I still realized that it would take time to make a plan for countering these activities. I took York’s appearance here as a positive sign from FWPD, so I decided to give them a break tonight. I would just go out and talk to the guys out front myself.

I decided to shake things up a bit by going out the back door. I was going to walk between the houses and surprise them. Doing this, I would most likely have actually caught them when they were still in my yard, which would make their claims of “We’re just standing on the sidewalk” void. I opened the door and looked down to see something lying on my back porch. I turned the light on and realized that it was a very large pear of sweat pants. I picked them up and tossed them inside the house.

I walked out the back again, but the light had alerted the guys that I was coming and they were already a half block away when I got to the front yard. Lying in my grass was a black leather jacket. I picked it up and started to take it inside the house too. Then, realizing that it could easily have drugs inside the pockets, I just stuffed it inside the trash can instead. The trash was already setting out at the curb, so I figured I couldn’t be blamed for what might be inside of the jacket.

I got in the car and started heading to meet some friends, a bit late already because of the laundry problem. It was ten in the evening, and I was going to a local bar. I knew it would probably be pretty late by the time I got home. This was similar to what had happened in 2003, when my house was broken into, and I really didn’t want a repeat of that. These guys had seen me leave, and they probably figured then that the yard (or anything else they wanted) was theirs for a while. I had almost arrived at my destination when I decided to turn around.

I came back to the house, expecting to see the group back there. The way I felt at that moment, if any of them had been in my yard then, I probably would have drove right across the sidewalk and parked in my front yard next to them. But when I got to the house, it was quiet. I drove the block a couple times just to see if anyone was lurking about, but it was all clear. Now I was getting even more pissed. I was almost an hour late by this time, and I still didn’t feel comfortable leaving my house. And a big part of this discomfort was because I knew that if those guys did come back, and the police happened to drive by, they probably wouldn’t even give them a second look.

So this time, instead of driving to meet my friends, I drove to the police station on East Creighton Ave. I really felt like just going inside and cussing out the first person I encountered. I was really getting tired of all these overpaid pricks with badges, pretending that they were serving the public, when in actuality they just don’t seem to give a damn. But I also knew that my first contact would probably not even be a police officer. In fact, it would probably be a white-haired little old lady.

So I waited till I calmed down a bit. As I went inside, I had a copy of the letter that I had recently sent to Chief York. I was going to try and be as civil as possible but basically, I intended to demand that FWPD respond to my complaint. Anything would suffice at that point - yes, no, we didn’t know about this problem, we don’t have the manpower to deal with it, fuck you - anything that is except the silence of a non-response, which seems to be FWPD’s basic M.O.

When I got to the front desk, I saw something that truly amazed me - a uniformed police officer. I explained the situation to him including the letter, Chief York’s appearance here earlier in the day, and the guys who were still selling drugs in my front yard and leaving their clothes there. I held up the letter to the window as I was speaking and he asked to see it. Officer Marcy actually acted quite professional that night. He didn’t get angry at my agitated behavior, and he truly seemed to sympathize with my situation. He asked if he could have the letter and as I handed it to him he looked me straight in the eye and said “I will personally see that Vice and Narcotics gets this in the morning.”

As my blood pressure was lowering to the point where I could begin to see clearly and think rationally again, I realized that Officer Marcy looked familiar. I would not bet my life on it, but I think he might have been the plainclothes officer I saw back in 2003 when Bernie was caught hiding his gun in my bushes. I didn’t mention this to him, as I thought that might make him nervous if I was right. And besides, FWPD still refuses to release a copy of this report to me, so officially he was never really here.

Three days later, on Friday, I re-installed my set of outdoor lights. This was the 100’ cord that had a bright bulb every 10’. I just wanted to make sure everybody, including the police, could read my no-trespassing signs.