Merry Christmas!

Times are tough, and I don’t have a lot of money. I couldn’t even afford a Christmas tree this year, so I prayed for help. Ask and ye shall receive! God (or maybe it was Santa Clause) sent me not one but two trees a few nights ago. Seriously, they just magically dropped down from the sky. They just happened to land right on one of my favorite parking spots too, but I was parked in front at the time, so I guess someone really is looking after me.

Well, I didn’t want to seem ungrateful for the gift, so I threw some garland and ornaments on to claim them as my Christmas trees. It looks real pretty when it’s lit up at night. Laugh all you want, but I didn’t pay a damn thing for them. And I’ll bet my trees have caused more people to smile than that one you’ve got hidden inside your house. Eat your heart out Charlie Brown. My tree is every bit as ugly as yours, but a whole lot bigger.

The strange thing is that the trees hanging over the house look half dead, yet not a single limb fell there. But the trees on the side of the house appear to be young and healthy. Go figure - maybe someone really is looking out for me. We actually had quite a few limbs fall in this neighborhood, but as far as I can see no home or auto damage occurred.

I kept hearing what sounded like small explosions all night long, and by the time I went out Friday morning, the empty lot across the street was half covered with fallen debris. By Saturday, the lot was totally covered.

I was outside around nine in the morning when a large limb fell just to the north of me. It covered the street so precisely from curb to curb that it almost looked like it had been placed there. You’d think this would have completely stopped traffic, but a few cars (and at least one city bus) just drove on the sidewalk to bypass it.

A neighbor came over and asked if I’d help him move the branch out of the street. I told him I actually thought that having traffic slowed down here was a good thing, so I’d just leave it. He thought about what I said for a second then added that he saw my point and it sounded good to him.

About an hour later, two guys hooked a rope to it and pulled it out of the way (sort of.) They actually left it in one lane of the street and right along the side of my house. That pretty much finished blocking off the parking on the side of my house and I felt compelled to say something to them at first. But then I figured they were just trying to help, and there really was no good place to put it, so I just let it pass. I’m betting it will be after Christmas before the City gets around to clearing this road. Sure hope so, because I don’t plan to take the tree lights down until after that.

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Well, I hope all of you survived the storm, and I wish all of you a merry Christmas.

Sory I'm late honey...I accidently locked my keys in the car!

I was driving home early this morning at a little past midnight when I saw something that caught my interest. The police had pulled over a vehicle a couple blocks away from my house, which in itself is not really that unusual. However, what first caught my attention about this scene was that there were three officers and only one patrol car. There were no other police cars in the area. Usually there are one or two officers to a car, but I have rarely ever seen three in one car. Anyway, as odd as that fact might be, it was not really at the heart of the story here, just something of interest to take note of.

I parked for ten minutes and watched as the driver of the car was handcuffed and taken by two of the officers back to their patrol car. The third officer then began searching the car, including the trunk. At one point he appeared to be dumping the contents of the ashtray on the ground, then went back inside the car. I know he turned the ignition key, as I heard the engine squeal, but I’m not sure if it actually started.

After a few minutes, this officer joined the others and all three stood there with the handcuffed man and talked a bit. The officers then let the man walk back towards his car, and they all three got in their car and drove away. I watched as this man stumbled around in the dark beside his car for a few minutes, and became more curious as to exactly what was going on. I decided to pull up behind him and ask if everything was okay.

His initial reaction was a bit startling. If I am standing out on a dark street in a high crime area of town, and another car pulls up on me, I am going to do one of two things. Either I am going to walk towards that vehicle (most likely with my hand on my gun) or I am going to walk away from it. Instead, what this man did was to just stand there, with his head hung low, and not move an inch. He remained this way for at least thirty seconds and I finally realized he probably thought I was another police officer. He was simply afraid to move or even to look up at me.

I called to him, asking if he was okay, and he then approached my vehicle. I asked why the police had stopped him and he said he had been talking with a girl. I said “You mean there was a girl in your car?” He responded “No, she was walking and I stopped to talk to her.” He then told me that the officers had locked his keys inside the car. I was seriously considering offering him a ride, just because I didn’t think it was safe for him to be walking this neighborhood in the middle of the night. The look of concern must have shown on my face because he then said “I’ll be okay, thanks.” He then began walking home.

Now that you know the story, there’s a couple things to consider here. First of all, this incident supports my belief that most patrol officers really would rather simply stop a problem from occurring, rather than to arrest someone. This guy looked a little inebriated, and if he’s going to be driving through this neighborhood in the middle of the night and calling out to strangers who are walking around then he probably shouldn’t be behind the wheel. I think what happened was that these officers assessed the situation and determined that this guy hadn’t caused any real harm, but that he had the potential to do so. Basically, they disabled his vehicle for the night, and let him go on his way.

What is troubling about this, however, is the potential for something to go wrong. As I have said before, I see a lot of police activity here that never even gets reported on FWPD’s daily activity report. It seems that to allow a situation where an officer can detain and handcuff a person, while leaving no record of the event, is an invitation for abuse to occur. Now it might be that some internal documentation is actually done in such cases, but of course there is no way of knowing this.

In the past two years, I have directly led police to discover illegal drugs here three times that I know of. The first two times were in December 2006, so there is no on-line record for comparison. But in March of 2007, I called FWPD to report drug activity here. A short while later, there was scanner traffic that appeared to be related to my call. Then, several patrol cars swooped down on the place and the officers grabbed one of the guys as he was running. They found several rocks of crack cocaine on the ground where he and his friends had been standing, so they handcuffed him and sat him down on a neighbors steps. As two of the officers were arguing with the suspect and his mother, Officer Jefferson (a member of the FWPD Command Staff) arrived to negotiate the situation.

No arrests were made that day, but a report actually does appear to have been filed on this activity.

http://www.fwpd.org/daily/display/20080326.html
08F042877 14:08:57 99 NARCOTICS 25XX WARSAW ST & SUTTENFIELD ST E

If anyone is able to get their hands on that report, it should state that four or five rocks of crack were found on the ground that afternoon. I really doubt if this report would be released publicly, but if it was, it might be interesting to check and see if they handle drug busts here in the same style as Indy (officers skimming off the top.)

Anyway, I’ll have to wait until Monday afternoon to check and see if the traffic stop I witnessed a couple hours ago even appears on their activity report. It seems doubtful since the guy obviously hadn’t yet done enough to warrant being arrested, but then the officers went ahead and purposely locked him out of his car. Which makes one wonder - what if it had been a pretty young woman who was stopped alone (by three men with guns) on that dark and desolate street, or what if the officers had found a large amount of drugs and cash in the car? If they can do nice things off the record, then couldn’t they just as easily do bad things?

I certainly can appreciate that allowing police officers a certain amount of discretion can often be helpful to both the people they stop as well as the communities they serve. But if this discretion is so wide as to allow them to simply act without any record being made, then there is simply no way such a system can fail to eventually corrupt some officers, if it hasn’t already.

So remember to check the FWPD activity report after it is released on Monday afternoon and look for something similar to this posted there.

http://www.fwpd.org/daily/display/20081213.html
08F190xxx 00:10:00 30 TRAFFIC STOP 4XX CREIGHTON AVE E & WARSAW ST

Actually, now that I think about it, this was early enough in the morning that it might have been initiated at the end of the previous night. Regardless, the rest of the details are unchanged so it shouldn't be difficult to spot.

If you don’t find it, then it’s just one more example of the police acting off-record. If you do find it, then at least my predicting it before it was published will perhaps add more credibility to my reporting here.

Should Drugs Be Legalized?

Robert Enders has a post on the Libertarian Party web-site calling for an end to America’s “War on Drugs.”

I would like to direct your attention there, as I would really enjoy hearing other people’s thoughts on this subject.

If you wish to comment on this please do so at the Libertarian site, rather than mine, since they originated the discussion.

http://allencountylp.blogspot.com/2008/12/december-5th-is-repeal-day.html

Whoops! - I Forgot To Give This One A Title

I was driving home a little before 3:00 this morning when I noticed a patrol car at my intersection. He was pulled a bit past the line, so I stopped and blinked my lights to let him know I was waiting for him to pass. He didn’t budge, so I went forward and turned to park in front of the house. As soon as I parked, the car passed through the intersection and stopped beside me as I was getting out of the truck. I figured at that time of the morning, and in this type of neighborhood, he was just suspicious about me. I wasn’t drunk, and I didn’t have any crack in my pockets, so I wasn’t concerned. I just figured it would be an opportunity to get to know one more FWPD officer who patrols my neighborhood.

I was wrong though. It turns out I have already met this particular officer twice before. The first time was earlier this summer when I shouted profanities at him as he passed by my house. You might recall that I was impressed at the time because Officer Hull stopped and politely asked me what the problem was, rather than throwing my ass to the ground and arresting me. He also mentioned that he had a copy of my letter to Chief York in his car, to let me know that he and other officers were in fact aware of the problems I am having here. You’d think all that would be enough for me to remember him, but I guess that passion does a lot to fog the mind.

The second time I met Officer Hull was a month or two later, when a man was shot across the street from my house this summer. I was actually speaking with him and another officer for a few minutes before he mentioned our previous encounter, and of course I was especially embarrassed then for not having recognized him. At that time however, he told me his last name, and it was easy to remember since it is the same as one of the “famous” local families here. I even joked at the time, asking him if he was related, and this was enough to cement his name in my mind.

Now, when you consider that the first time we met involved me verbally assaulting him when he had done absolutely nothing to deserve it, and the second time we met I didn’t even recognize him, you might think that Officer Hull would rate me pretty low on his list of people he wants to be talking with. But that was exactly his reason for stopping here this morning. He said he had been trying to catch me for a while now to get a chance to talk about how things were currently going in the neighborhood.

We spoke on that subject for a few minutes, then Officer Hull gave me his business card. He made it clear that he would always appreciate any information that I could give him. He also added that he probably wouldn’t reply back to me on each individual call, so I should request that in the message if I felt it was necessary. Basically, it was an invitation to a dialogue.

This is certainly not the first such invitation. First of all, there is Officer Rice, who I have mentioned a few times before. He just came into my story here in the summer of 2006, and I have only progressed up to early November of that year on this blog, so you really haven’t understood the full impact of his presence here. For quite some time, he was one of the most active officers in this neighborhood, and there has been a lot of useful dialogue between the two of us here during the past couple of years.

But I always felt that Officer Rice’s rank as a patrol officer left him unable to effectively deal with some of the issues I am facing here. This is not a slight against his capabilities in any way, just a recognition that in a bureaucracy such as FWPD, the lower level employees are often not given the necessary means to conduct the business which they are expected to do.

I have also had in depth conversations with two members of FWPD Command Staff. I met and spoke on the phone several times with Officer Marshall in 2003. I worked with that until it became clear to me that he simply did not give a damn about the problems here and was just lying and trying to throw me off course by acting as though he was getting involved.

Then, there was Officer Jefferson who I met just this year. He seemed very sincere and I really thought he would be useful in getting to the heart of the problem here. Of course, that notion quickly dissipated the day he told me that the issues I was bringing to him were ones that I should present directly to his Vice and Narcotics Department. When I began to explain that I have tried to do exactly that, several times, but was always rebuffed there, he suddenly had to end our conversation. I’ve never heard back from him since that day, so I presume he either doesn’t give a damn or just realizes he can’t be effective on the problem - which is a scary thought, considering that he is a member of the Command Staff.

I guess I’m just going to have to accept the fact that the upper echelons of FWPD do not want to directly communicate with people like me, who are trying hard to do exactly what they claim they want me to do. And although the patrol officers certainly have many restrictions placed upon them by these very same knuckleheads, it is obvious that they are the only ones I have any chance of building some type of functional relationship with.

I have a means now for contacting two patrol officers who I consider to be extremely competent and professional. And the fact that they work on different shifts is an added strength as it gives me broader coverage. I guess that the practical thing to do at this point is to concentrate on this strength of the FWPD, and simply ignore the weakness that exists at the top. Granted, due to their rank, there is a lot that these two patrol officers probably won’t be able to do. But at least it seems like they want to help. And that is far more than my experience has led me to conclude about the Command Staff.

I’m currently working on installing better cameras, and I am repositioning them to get better coverage as well. I am certain that as soon as warm weather comes around again, the drug activities in this neighborhood will reignite to some degree. But I am also hopeful that between my cameras and the help of good FWPD officers such as Rice and Hull, it will not be as offensive towards me and my property as it has been in the past.

On another subject, last week I heard someone kicking against my retainer wall on the side of the house. This was just a day or two after my window had been busted, so I was still a bit on edge. I grabbed my gun and was about to walk outside with it in my hand, but for some reason decided to tuck it first. So I went out, expecting to hop the porch rail and be getting in someone’s face, when I discovered two young girls (probably around ten or twelve years old) setting there. They were a bit surprised, but not running and screaming, so I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t have the gun in my hand.

I asked what they were doing there and they replied that they were just waiting on the bus. They asked if I wanted them to leave and I told them it would be fine for them to set there. I told them that sometimes the squirrels make a lot of noise here, and I thought that’s what the noise was. In reality, it was just these two kids swinging their feet as they sat on the wall. I told them they were pretty big for squirrels, and they both got a laugh out of that.

This place really is kind of like a war zone at times, with all the shootings, arsons and other assaults which regularly take place here. And then there’s the decent people like Arlen and many of my other good neighbors. And of course there’s also a lot of innocent children. And this contrast really confuses things sometimes. Too much contact with the good elements here can lull one into a false sense of security. When neighbors bring me flowers to plant in my yard, or invite me to eat from their grill, it is easy to start thinking that I no longer need to keep a gun tucked in my waistband when I am mowing the lawn in the middle of the afternoon.

And of course, the opposite circumstances affect me just as profoundly. I simply walk out to check the mail, and get drawn into a confrontation with the drug dealers who are trying to take over my home. Or I set down to watch TV, and some asshole throws a rock through my window. And next thing you know, I’m screaming at the salesman who comes to my door and threatening to kick his ass if he doesn’t immediately remove himself from my property, or I almost get into a situation where I am drawing my gun on two young children.

All I can say is that if war were every to come to the streets of America, I think I will be more psychologically prepared for it than most. And I’ll have this wonderful neighborhood to thank for the training.