I Love The Internet!

The Internet - Just like going to the library, only cheaper!

For the past few months, I’ve been doing some internet research on the Fort Wayne Police Department. Basically, I began by searching the names of officers I know, or know of. As I check each name individually, whatever stories I find usually lead me to many other officers. I believe I now have the names of just about every current officer, as well as many former ones. Not being from Fort Wayne, I suppose that it should come as no surprise to find that I am discovering a lot of information that is new to me. I suppose some of this is old news to Fort Wayne/Allen County natives though.

For example, I did not know that the 911 consolidation idea has been going on for so long. In 1986, Fort Wayne Police Chief David Rieman proposed merging the city and county call centers. And earlier that same year, Allen County Sheriff Dan Figel actually called for a commission to study merging the city and county police departments entirely. Well, I guess these things take time, so it will probably be another twenty years or so before we get this accomplished.

I also found another interesting story that made me think back to when my home was fire-bombed by drug dealers in 2006. After FWPD Deputy Chief Nancy (Becher) Chamberlin laughed at me about this, refusing to allow me to deliver information about the attack to her department, and telling me I should quit causing trouble, I felt that my home and my property were in imminent danger. My situation became even more desperate after the Allen County Sheriff’s Department made it clear to me that they preferred to respect the jurisdictional boundaries of FWPD, which meant they did not intend to enforce the law in this part of their county.

After my complaint against her was summarily dismissed by the department’s office of non-professional standards (Internal Affairs,) I really felt my back was against the wall. So, in addition to sending my appeal of the dismissal to the Board of Public Safety, I also sent it to several other agencies as well. One of these was the Indiana State Police. I still have the letter that was sent as a reply. The person writing the letter complimented me for doing “all the right things” a person should do in my circumstances. He then went on to say that he knows Chief York and that he has confidence that FWPD can and will properly address the problems I was facing.

That letter was written by Paul Whitesell, superintendent of the Indiana State Police. I had always assumed that his knowledge of Chief York was only scant. It seems logical that the head of the state police would at least have some familiarity with the heads of the largest city police departments within his state. But after reading the article, it appears that there may be a much closer connection than I had assumed. Although the article does not say exactly what years Mr. Whitesell worked for FWPD, or in what capacity, a casual examination of both his and Chief York’s dossiers leads me to conclude that they probably did actually know each other pretty well.

So now I’m laughing, imaging what Mr. Whitesell was thinking when he read my letter. There’s a possibility that he knew exactly where my corner was, and that he knew I was not exaggerating about the problems here. He probably called Rusty up and shared a few laughs with him over the whole incident. Oh well, although the substance of his response was really not that much different than the others, at least he had the decency to write me a formal letter and to not laugh in my face about it.

And finally, the third article really amused me. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t picture Officer Russell York, out of uniform, and buying drugs on the streets. I always gave him just a small amount of consideration based upon the fact that someone as high up as him, and in an organization as complex as FWPD, probably can’t really know what is going on down on the ground. But the fact that he used to be an undercover narcotics officer changes all that. I’m sure things have changed a bit in the past couple of decades, but he probably knows enough from his past experiences to understand what I was dealing with here. And the lousy shit didn’t even have the decency to return my phone call or reply to my letter? - What a lousy bastard!

Well, that’s all for today. I’ll share more FWPD stories with you some other day, but for now, I have a lot of searching left to do.

Thank You Chief York!

Several days ago, a neighbor of mine told me her car had been stolen. She stated that she had filed a police report and was hoping they would not find the car so her insurance would pay her out. In the last two days, I have seen her drive past my house three times in her “stolen” car.

Now, there are several reasons why I find it to be likely that she lied to me about the car being stolen and about filing a report on it. On the other hand, there are several things that make me wonder if she actually did report it stolen. I think it is highly improbable that the car was stolen and recovered in just a few days, so this would mean that she filed a false report with the intent of collecting on a fraudulent insurance claim.

If my city had a functional police department, I would call them to report this information. It would only take a few minutes for them to identify her and find out if she had in fact filed a stolen vehicle report. If not, there really would be nothing lost for checking.

But my police department is extremely dysfunctional. If I did call, I would first probably have to endure the “Who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you bothering us?” routine before I actually got a chance to tell them what was on my mind. Then, they would send a uniformed officer to my house to ask me the same questions that the civilian operator had just asked me. I would offer to show this officer my security tapes documenting the dates and times that my neighbor drove past in her stolen car. He would decline this offer, but take my number so he can contact me later. I would tell him that my tapes have a short record-over period, and that I will not save anything unless I am instructed to do so by his department.

About a week later, another officer would call me back to tell me he heard that I wanted to report a stolen car. After explaining that what I was actually trying to report was the possibility that someone else had filed a false report of a stolen car, he would then tell me he will call me back later about this because he needs time to analyze this new information. I would remind him that my tapes of the incidents are very close to being recorded over. He will give no response to this.

Next (about a month later this time) another officer will knock on my door. He will explain that he is here to investigate my stolen car incident. After we straighten this out again, he will then chastise me for giving his department a contact number that is no longer in service (which is his excuse for having taken so long to get a hold of me.) When I ask what number he has, I will realize that somehow the idiots have pulled an old number of mine out of their system, and managed to replace it for the current number which I had recently just given to three different people within their department. He will get very upset at me when I inform him that my video tapes have long since recorded over the incident I reported on.

Finally, about a month later, a detective will call me. He will first ask if my car has been recovered yet. After I explain that my car was never stolen, he will then ask if I have received compensation from my insurance company for the stolen car. After I again explain that my car was never stolen, he will tell me that this type of crime is usually a low priority for the prosecutor’s office, and he really doesn’t want to put forth the effort to investigate something that will not be prosecuted. He will recommend that if I am able to get compensation from my insurance company for the stolen car that it would be best to just let it drop.

At this point, I will fake like I am putting him on hold to take another call. I will then come back and tell him that my insurance company has just called to tell me that they are cutting me a check for my stolen car. I will thank him for his time, apologize for not having saved the video that his department never asked me to save, and apologize for his department having switched my phone numbers (because, for some reason, he is really pissed at me over this) then hang up. I will then wonder why in the hell I even called in the first place.

And the next day I will read in the paper that Chief York is concerned about the increase in vehicle thefts. He will mention one particular case which sounds very similar to my neighbor’s “stolen” car. The Chief will be quoted in this article as saying that the reason his department can’t get this problem under control is because citizens refuse to cooperate with his department. He will then state that some people act this way because they don’t care, while others do so because they are scared. And just after admitting that there are groups of criminals who are strong enough to intimidate people and keep them from talking with the police, he will reiterate that Fort Wayne does not have a gang problem.

But I don’t have to go through this type of ordeal now, because I’ve already been through it several times in the past. I already know that whoever answers the phone will probably not have a clue about much of anything. And I know that either I will be quickly dismissed or several officers will ask me the same questions, yet still manage to lose or confuse the answers I give them. And ultimately, I know that however they may word it, their final message to me will be “Please don’t bother us. We’re cops, which means we really don’t want to hear anything at all from you fucking moron civilians anyway. Please just leave us alone and let us do our job - whatever the hell that might be.”

Anyway, I suppose the basic point of this post is to thank Chief York. After all, being an upstanding citizen who pays attention to his surroundings and reports suspicious behavior to the police takes a bit of time. And in neighborhoods like mine, it can be downright exhausting. But Chief York’s mismanagement of the police department lets me know that any such efforts on my part will probably be wasted. With this department, there really is no compelling reason to try and cooperate.

So thank you, Rusty. Thank you for telling me that it is okay for me to ignore felony crimes taking place around me. Thank you for telling me it is all right to not put forth the effort of being a good citizen. I get a lot more yard work done by not having to waste my time calling your department to report crimes that you really don’t want to investigate. Thank you Rusty!

A Matter of Perception

Last night, I attended my neighborhood association meeting. We were presented with a series of questions and asked for our opinions on them. The first question was “What do you like about the La Rez Neighborhood?” My first response was the sense of community here. While I have said many times that this is the worst neighborhood I have ever lived in (because of the uncontrolled crime), it is also the best because of the genuine neighborliness of many people here. Several others at the meeting echoed my sentiments on this. One man said that the neighborhood was very quiet, and I had to control my laughter.

The next question was “What do people outside of this neighborhood think of La Rez, and where do they get those perceptions?” All of the answers given here were negative and included dangerous, poor, and the people who live there don’t care about it. The reasons given for these perceptions included rumors, the news media, and reality. All of these answers came from people other than myself. There seemed to be a schism of sorts between those who think this neighborhood is really a dangerous place and those who simply think it is being unfairly maligned. I fall squarely in the first camp, while the man who earlier commented that it was quiet seemed to fall in the second.

When the moderator pushed us to give some positive perceptions, not a single person in the group had anything to say. That is to say, we all felt that outsiders all thought this was a bad neighborhood. The “quiet” man went on to talk about how the newspaper had published a story about someone who said they will not travel through this part of the city without carrying their gun with them. He pointed to this as an example of how the media unfairly biases people’s opinions.

The third question was “What will it take to make people from outside of this neighborhood want to live here?” Again, the issue of crime vs. just the perception of crime came up, and it was beginning to appear that the “quiet” man and I were living in two completely different neighborhoods. After the formal business was concluded, I introduced myself to the quiet man and we talked for a few minutes. I told him some of the reasons for my comments, including having my home fire-bombed by drug dealers. He just smiled and said “I’m from Baltimore.”

Okay, I know when I’ve been beat, and my stories probably pale in comparison to his own. So I suppose that if we are to use Baltimore, Detroit or Gary as the standard, then Fort Wayne really doesn’t have a problem with crime. Of course, the question about how outsiders perceive this neighborhood was, I believe, referring to people who live in other parts of this city and surrounding areas. And compared to most other neighborhoods in this city, mine has a very serious problem with crime.

When drug dealers openly sell and smoke their crack cocaine on the streets here, we have a problem. And when a drug dispute causes a man to have gasoline thrown in his face, to be lit on fire, and then have a screwdriver plunged into his head, we have a problem. And when a man walking through this neighborhood declines to buy drugs from the gang on the corner, is then told “Then get your punk ass off their block”, and is then shot and nearly killed for his transgression, we have a problem. And when these drug dealers tell the police to their faces “We ain’t afraid of you, when were out on the corner we’re ready to die, we’re soldiers.”, we have a problem. And when a law-abiding citizen has Molotov cocktails thrown at his house for asking the drug dealers to stay off his property, and then the police department laughs about this and tells the citizen he should just calm down and quit making noise, we have an extremely serious problem.

But of course, that’s just my own perception of the matter. It’s not like people are firing shots into the police parking lot (anymore). And the number of people being shot while standing right across the street from the police department is extremely low in the past couple of months. I actually know of several houses on my block which have never had a problem with drug dealers trespassing there (usually because those houses are owned/rented by dug dealers who choose to sell away from their house.)

A prominent member of the local news media was in attendance as a trustee of the church where the neighborhood association meeting was held last night. The church was located only a block away from my house. He did not take part in the discussions, other than giving a brief introduction, but I couldn’t help but wonder what his perceptions of this neighborhood were. He doesn’t live here, and most of his time here is probably spent among large groups of other church-goers or safely tucked inside his fortress rather than standing alone on the street. He didn’t offer his opinion on this, but something tells me that as a member of the established media he would be inclined to tow the City’s official line of propaganda by saying the reality is far better than the perception. Of course, the fact that his own church and parking lot lies protected behind a six foot steel barricade leaves me inclined to think that he really knows the truth about this neighborhood.

This meeting brought up another difference of opinion between certain groups of people - those who participate in the system and those who don’t. The neighborhood association represents the most basic level of governance. All of the constituents are within walking distance of each other, and even the official leaders are far more likely to be accessible than any one else in government. And, we are told by the associations themselves, “The best way for the City to hear you is for you to channel your message through the associations.” So, what possible reason could a citizen have for not belonging to such an association?

That very question is one that is asked frequently by the leaders of these groups as well as those higher up in the chain. I am not an insider, and those who are usually are too clever to reveal their true thoughts on the matter, but I get the impression that those who don’t participate in their associations are largely written off by the city. Their impression seems to be that those who don’t participate really don’t care and therefore do not matter. And I am sure that with some that is the case.

Of course, there is another perspective. It comes from the person who does attend and is asked such ridiculous questions as “If you had an endless pot of money, what would you do for this neighborhood?” And when people don’t give the “correct” answers to the questions, they are then prompted by those running the meeting to give better answers, just after those very people stated that they do not want to prompt the group in any specific direction. And this perception comes from the person who at the end of the meeting asks “When will all these ideas we gave you be implemented?”, and is given a reply of a pause, followed by a muted laugh, followed by the vague suggestion of “You’ll have to come to the future meetings to find that out.”

This perspective sees these meetings as largely a waste of time - not in theory, but in practice. The idea of neighbors associating to decide what they need from their government, followed by that government then listening and implementing these ideas, or at least giving a reasonable response as to why they can’t be implemented, is a good one. The City sees the large number of people who do not attend as evidence that the people just don’t care. And the people who do attend often come to the realization that the City usually does not hold up it’s end of the bargain by truly listening and honestly engaging them. About the only time a citizen’s input really is listened to is when it supports the predetermined plans of the City.

I think it’s really nice that the City has installed antique lights and brick paved sidewalk ramps in my neighborhood, and I think the neighborhood associations are very effective at getting these kinds of things (the minor details) implemented. But when it comes to things that really matter, like dealing with criminally controlled streets and an incompetent police department, they really don’t have much usefulness. I think those who run these associations realize that issues this big are decided at a level far above their heads, and any input from a few individual citizen’s will probably have very little impact upon them. But hey, that’s just my perception.