If It's Thursday In Fort Wayne...
It MUST be a bad weather day.
I can't recall when the last time we put our trash out (today is our pickup day), and the weather DIDN'T SUCK.
Seems to be a pattern here. Quick, call out the conspiracy theorists!
And what better way to pass some of those hours than to turn on the POLICE SCANNER!
Here's a link to the FWPD radio codes:
http://www.fwpd.org/faqs.html?ID=faqs1166474761
If you don't believe the police get called out on some of THE MOST RIDICULOUS things, you "just ain't been listenin' in, friend".
Recently had a code *48* (suspicious person) that happened to be INSIDE the caller's house.
Well, the C.P. said they INVITED HIM IN, but now wanted him to LEAVE.
WTF???
And in MY part of the city (S/E division) we ALWAYS hear of a code *101* (open door).
Kinda makes sense with all the VACANT houses sitting idle, doesn't it?
Makes for an easy pickin' time for those SCRAPPERS.
But sometimes the house IS occupied, which IS a cause for concern.
Then again, I've seen open doors on houses that go UNREPORTED for DAYS!
So much for people looking OUT for one another, right?
Community-Oriented Policing?
Don'cha need a real COMMUNITY FIRST to make THAT happen?
We've got some trashy neighbors (they pretty much ALL are anymore, and yet they refuse to jump in the SERV-ALL truck when they come to collect the REST of the trash...go figure) across the street that take their POS pickup out and leave the GARAGE DOOR OPEN all damn day. Granted, there's nothing in there to take, but it DOES offer access to the back yard, the tool crib, and the back door to the HOUSE.
Security? We don' need no steenkin' security!
There is the principle of the situation. DON'T give crime a place to play.
I learned from experience.
Some years back, we left our garage door open for ONE F$CKING HOUR (and I was home at the time, too), and I found myself "relieved" of my tool box and a small microwave oven we had stored inside. Luckily my CAR was left the hell alone.
I "guess dem ole white folks gots mo tuh steal", huh?
(hope the perp dies of a festered asshole, btw)
Never did find out who took the stuff, and the police took the incident report OVER THE PHONE, instead of coming out. Yeah, that went a LONG way to help the city's budget back then.
(At least when we were burglarized at Willow Creek Crossing, another fun place to have stuff stolen, the FWPD brought out a detective w/ a forensics kit - never found anything, although fingerprints were lifted, and they weren't ours).
Gave me a bad taste in my mouth for a while over that, and that was when we still had a few more of those GOOD neighbors around.
I can kiss THOSE days good-bye.
Another call you hear a lot of on the scanner (down here) is the good old code *46* (domestic disturbance).
Yes sir, there's nothing quite like knocking the old "ho" around any old time you feel like it, because you need to re-establish your alpha-male manhood. Sad part is these women KEEP going back to these jerks time and again. Talk about co-dependency!
I like the code *48* myself (suspicious person). That pretty much covers most EVERYONE I happen to see in MY neighborhood...LOL!
Usually it's someone acting furtively along a street, but it can also be people looking into windows, skulking about a property (to case the place, probably), or can be people sitting in a car (and in my area, that means waiting for the drug deal to go down).
I posted last year about 2 white (trash) males sitting in a car out front of my house, and when I called it in, it resulted in the police finding a nice size stash, scales, several cell phones, and 2 "cuff n stuffs" being hauled off to the hoosegow. That made my month to NO end.
But you have to remember, that things like this are ONLY possible when people WANT to get involved, WANT to keep their neighborhood from devolving into a ghetto, and WANT to make a difference.
Ask ANY police officer that works the "badlands" in any city, and they'll tell you that getting ANY relevant information regarding a crime is like pulling teeth (when you can find the teeth, that is).
People will inherently LIE out of fear, or to misdirect the cops from a suspect. They will feign ignorance when asked questions , and I can tell you that since ignorance is bliss, I've met some of THE MOST BLISSFUL people on the planet, right here in "River City"!
Take for example the story of the latest Eden green shootings. The person they had on camera was talking about the crime in the area (next to the POLICE STATION), and was almost SMILING as she related her "concerns". That to me, speaks VOLUMES as to how certain people view such behavior. There is an air of acceptance, not even of resignation. You see resignation in the older eyes of the citizenry.
One of the most common calls in my area is a code *40* (alarm). Now this can be an AUDIBLE, PANIC, FIRE, BURGLARY, or SILENT type, depending on the application and type of system used. There's not ONE day goes by, that you don't hear SOME alarm going off.
Curiously, many happen to be residential alarms (wonder why THAT is?), because there are those that want YOUR stuff to become THEIR stuff. Others are false "trips", due to carelessness, or something that can be preventable.
On Friday nights, (just like when I was young and TV was something "new") we have the FIGHTS. That's a code *55* or can be connected to a code *43* (disturbance).
The best time to hear these is on the FIRST WEEKEND of the month (welfare weekend).
Yepper..."gots my gub'ment money...AND my CO-vosseeayyy". Time to flex my testosterone.
I guess stupid really IS forever in some cases.
But you do gain insight into what all the police deal with every single day.
Still, when one lives under a constant pall of being assaulted, or burglarized, or racially-slurred (oh, yes, that DOES happen to white people living among the black trash of the "hood"), or vandalized, it makes sense to be on guard as much as possible.
The life you protect is usually someone under your roof!
In the final analysis, the city needs to held accountable for it's LACK of concern over the DECADES, because this is not something that just "came down the pike"...it's been an ongoing process of disenfranchisement for one part of the populace (who unjustly were driven from their homes to somewhere else), while it's been a process of entitlement to those who are "given" these empty houses for them to trash.
The city plans EVERYTHING. And so it is down here. They have PLANNED for this to occur.
What they DIDN'T plan for are those few of us that feel WE are being unjustly vilified for STAYING PUT (as long as possible), having to endure reverse racism, disrespect, and blatant anger from the "locals", while all the time having to pay unfair property taxes to make it possible for some to get a "free ride", as we watch the area devolve into something not fit for animals.
If people want CHANGE, perhaps DOWN HERE would be the BEST place to start?
It does have the novelty of never having been tried...yet.