ritaxis: (Default)
ritaxis ([personal profile] ritaxis) wrote2010-03-05 07:57 pm
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Third call to 911 in a week and a half

I don't want to be that awful interfering old biddy who calls the cops all the time. But my friends may recall that there's been several murders in my neighborhood in the last year, one of them being the brother of someone I know.

This is the score:

Last Tuesday early evening. The party at the apartments across Felix from me seemed to break out in shouting and fistfights -- I think I heard someone scream also. I saw the fistfights silhouetted in the light in the breezeway between the apartments. While I was talking to the cops I saw two people run away.

About half a dozen people called besides me: somebody had discharged a rifle at that party. There was another wild party at the same apartment the next afternoon, with people sitting on the patio fence throwing gang signs, but white poser rappers throw gang signs in music videos, and I'm not calling the cops just because people are noisy idiots. It's been quiet since then.


Thursday almost midnight. A single gunshot. I was almost in my bed so I couldn't triangulate the location and there was no more noise.

Tonight. Two guys doing a drug deal in a white American car in front of my house. They're rolling industrial quantities of joints right out in the open with their dome light on. I tried to memorize the license plate before I came in to the house but the cops wanted a description of their clothes. I said dark.

I know, mere marijuana is not a 911 issue. I really don't care about people smoking dope. However. The people who are dealing marijuana on the streets in my town are the same people who are killing the boys and young men in my neighborhood. I have never seen this kind of drug deal on my street before. I think they are here because people on other streets have been calling the cops and getting them chased out.

My neighborhood was until quite recently a sleepy little place you'd choose to raise your children in.

[identity profile] birdsedge.livejournal.com 2010-03-06 02:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Oooh. Ouch. I'm really sorry to hear this. keep calling the cops and get your neighbours to do the same. Chase these bastards out again before they get settled. Good luck.

[identity profile] adrian-turtle.livejournal.com 2010-03-06 02:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Marijuana is not a 911 issue. Violence is a 911 issue. Fistfights and gunshots? Yikes. I think you made the right call. I hope nobody else is hurt.

[identity profile] mjlayman.livejournal.com 2010-03-06 10:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I think the police should, well, police the area regularly.

[identity profile] ritaxis.livejournal.com 2010-03-06 11:10 pm (UTC)(link)
They do. I think the issue is that there was one neighborhood (Beach Flats) which got really bad and they focussed on that, and then the crime sloped off to another neighborhood (River Flats) and they concentrated on that, and now the crime is trying to happen in my neighborhood (which is usually not what they mean when they say South of Laurel, but doesn't have a real name of its own ther than "over by the lagoon").