A Novel Idea: September 2006

I came home from work and saw a small plastic baggie setting on the steps of my front porch. I started to walk past it when I realized it had something in it. I looked closer and realized it was pot, although just a very small amount. I just brushed it aside and started to go on inside the house. I had just finished a twelve hour shift at the factory and I really didn’t have the energy to deal with this bullshit. Then Arlen called to me and motioned for me to come to him.

I walked over to his porch and he said “I got something to tell you. Those boys are using your yard while your gone again.” I told him what was in the baggie that I had brushed aside and asked him what he thought I could do about it. His first suggestion was to shoot them. We talked for a few minutes about why this really wouldn’t be a good idea. His next suggestion was to call the police, and we both agreed that this would probably have no impact on the problem.

I was about to walk away when Arlen told me that he sometimes sees them taking my chairs off the porch and setting on them on the sidewalk. I told him I could tell things had been moved around sometimes. I joked that I was lucky, I suppose, that they at least had the courtesy to return them when they were done. Then Arlen mentioned that they sometimes stash their drugs in my mailbox while setting on my porch.

At this point I could easily go off on another tirade about how FWPD seems to ignore the illegal activities here, but I’ve done that numerous times already. I’ll just give the short version and say that it is amazing that after so many years of trying to communicate with the police about what is going on here, and ask for their help, they still allow these guys to set on chairs on the public sidewalk and set on my porch while selling their drugs. It’s really difficult to believe that the criminals here would act so brazenly if they weren’t being sanctioned by at least certain members of FWPD.

After talking with Arlen for a while, I decided that I’d go ahead and call FWPD to report what I had found. I needed to get stuff like this on record in case I came out to get the mail one afternoon and ended up unknowingly holding a bag of crack or post. At this point, almost all the only cops I had met were a bunch of assholes. Hell, they’d probably love to pin a bogus drug charge on me because it would make their job so much easier without me here to complain about what was going on.

Officer Powell was the first to arrive at my house and he recognized what was in the bag even before he reached down to pick it up. I told him I wanted a report filed for this and I wanted to get a copy of it. I felt this was necessary because by this point I was convinced that a lot of what FWPD does here does not go on the record. As Officer Powell was waiting for a control number, we spoke about the situation here.

Officer Powell seemed genuinely concerned as I told him what I knew about what was constantly happening on and near my property, but he really didn’t have any useful advice to offer. Of course he said I should call whenever I see something going on, but what about what happens when I am not here. Is there no way to notify FWPD that drug dealers are using my home as a front for their activities, other then to tell the officers one-by-one as I happen to meet them?

I brought up the subject of a no-trespass order and Officer Powell didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. I stated it as clearly as possible. I explained that I think a lot of officers just drive past these guys because they assume they live here. In a high crime area such as this, there should be a way for a resident to officially notify FWPD that drug dealers are frequently trespassing on their property. With this notification, the police would then be able to question people here without suffering charges of harassment. Officer Powell agreed that this sounded like a good idea, but had no idea how to implement it.

Evidently no one else knew how to implement it either because Officer Powell went back to his car and spent the next ten minutes speaking with someone on his radio about this. While this was going on, Officer Rogers pulled up and parked beside him. You might recall that he was the cop who tried to blame me for not doing enough to fight the drug activities here earlier in the year. I couldn’t hear all of their conversation, but I did hear when Officer Rogers looked my way and asked “Why doesn’t he just put up a no trespassing sign?” What a novel idea, I wonder why I never thought of that.

A no-trespassing sign alone is meaningless if the police aren’t clued in to what it means or if they‘re not on board with helping to enforce it. I could have a hundred signs up and the police might still assume that the drug dealers out front lived here and had put them up themselves. The police are always more reluctant to question someone when they are at a house that looks like it is occupied, rather than on the street or standing in an empty lot. So for these drug dealers, standing on my property really was safer for them than standing on the sidewalk. I would need more than just a sign to change this. I would need actual communication between myself and FWPD.

Officer Rogers left and Officer Powell came back to my porch to speak with me. Up to this point, I wasn‘t even sure if such a thing as a no-trespass order even existed. I had suggested the concept to Officer Marshall back in 2003, but it was he who called it by that name. He promised to get this form for me, but he failed to follow through on it. Every time since then that I’ve mentioned this to another officer I get a crazy look as if they’re wondering just what the hell a no-trespass order is. Officer Powell’s instructions to me seemed to clear up the confusion though. This is, verbatim, what he said after he got done talking on the radio. “Okay, I spoke with my dispatch, and they said what you need to do is go to the front desk at the police station on Creighton and request a no-trespass order for your home. They’ll take care of you.”

Officer Powell then said that I needed to put up a no-trespassing sign on my property also. He said this was for legal reasons because if they searched someone on my property they could claim they were not warned to stay off. This was looking pretty good now. I found another cop who seemed to give a damn and didn’t have his head up his ass. I was going to put up a sign to notify the dealers to stay away, and FWPD was going to respond to these signs by notifying their officers that they should question or search people that they find on my property.

Two days later I stopped at FWPD headquarters. I walked up to the window and told the lady there I needed to get a no-trespass order for my home. She had no idea what I was talking about. She called two other ladies over and I explained the situation to them. They called a man out and after the four of them conferred for a few minutes they gave me a name and number to call. Great, more bureaucracy in action. I was told to go to the station, but once there I was told to go home and make a call. But at least I was one step closer to finally getting that order in place.

The next morning I called the number and said I needed to get a no-trespass order. The person I spoke with had no idea what I was talking about. After I explained exactly what it was I needed, she said “I don’t even know why they’d send you to me for something like that. This is the property room.”

Okay, this is just comical now. I went in to request a no-trespassing order. That would be a legal document that authorizes the police to question people on my property. And I asked for this specifically because I was instructed to do so by an FWPD officer. Yet the people at the front desk had no idea what I was talking about so they sent me to the property room. The best sense I can make of this is that they thought I was looking for a no-trespassing sign, which of course can be purchased at any hardware store for a buck.

At this point I basically pleaded with the woman I was speaking with. I explained how bad things were at my house, and the problems I was having in communicating with FWPD. I asked if there was anything she could suggest that might help. She put me on hold for a few minutes then came back and said she had just explained my problem to an officer and here is what he said I needed to do. “You should draw up your own no-trespassing order, authorizing our officers to question people on your property, and send it to Chief York. Give him a little background information about what is going on there so he will be able to understand what the problem is. Make sure and sign this paper and send it by certified mail.”

I had to give this some thought now. I needed to figure out a way to explain the situation here concisely. I had to say enough so that Chief York would understand me, but not so much that it would be burdensome to understand. I knew it would take a while before I could get to this. But there was something I did first. A few days later, I tacked up seven no-trespassing signs on my house and shed.

Note: I remind the reader that I am using pseudonyms to identify the people in this story. While these names may at times coincide with real persons, such as Officer Rogers here, that is merely a coincidence. I have assigned the names here randomly.