Well, there goes the neighbourhood!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
I flew to the window to see a guy ducking in the parking lot, calling his dog over in a hurry. The guy got on his cell phone right away. And after giving it a few second to make sure everything that was going to happened was done happeneing, I ventured outside to make sure no one needed immediate help.
Neighbours were peeking out, but everything seemed to be over. The guy with the dog disappeared, so when the police came everyone shrugged and guessed that someone had tried to shoot his dog (a happy-go-lucky pitbull).
I didn’t see anything, but I gave the cops descriptions of people I saw who had been out there in the middle of it all. (I think the best witnesses would be in the Driver’s Ed car that left the scene.)
Eventually the guy reappeared with his dog. The cops were dubious about his claim that two guys in different cars were shooting at each other across the parking lot – I think that with so many people guessing that someone was shooting at his dog, they were inclined to think his dog had frightened someone.
But that did match what exactly what I’d heard (squealing tires near the front of my building, gunshots near the back.)
There is a Bad Neighbourhood[sup]TM[/sup] not too far away, and this has been the second incident that has happened in the surrounding areas. (There was shooting just to the west of the BN[sup]TM[/sup] several weeks ago. We’re several blocks north.) Our neighbourhood is full of pensionners and children. I hope something like this doesn’t happen again.
BTW - that dog was disgustingly cute and sweet (“love me! love me! love me!”)
Ugh. It sucks when your neighborhood starts taking a turn for the worse! It’s even more horrible when you are no longer startled by it. I used to live in some pretty shitty areas. I look back and think how sad it is that I was acclimated the way I was.
[hijack] When I first moved into one of the aformentioned places, I had a very, very sweet Pit Bull puppy. Someone stole him right off of my front porch. They didn’t even need the leash- they left it and his collar on the porch- and he didn’t bark once. The cops figured that he had been taken for fighting. 
[end hijack]
Must’ve been the night for it. I woke to a volley of shots around 01:30 or so this morning. I was awakened again by a similar volley at about 02:45. I didn’t hear any people, and the arrangement of the buildings in this area bounce the sound around so that the shots could’ve been fired anywhere. I’d estimate that the shots came from at least half a block away.
Just a thought: If someone is shooting a gun outside, it’s probabkly best not to run to the window.
No worries. There’s no way I would’ve gone to the window had I thought I was any where near the “action” (lest a ricochet comes my way). And I listened first to make sure it wasn’t some kind of prolonged chase-and-shoot. (It was sort of a drive by.)
In this case, it was pretty clear that the shots were coming from around the back of my building, drive-by style, and I’m up on the fourth floor front side. I wasn’t at all worried that something might bounce up my way, but I did want to try to spot anything useful (like someone running away) and make sure that no one was hurt.
Had I been on the ground floor or nearer to the back of my building I definitely would have just ducked and stayed the hell away from the windows.
My building is as long as the city block, so the shots were actually quite a ways away. But the layout of our neighbourhood means that I stood a good chance of seeing someone flee. Had I gone to my front window, instead of the side, I would have been able to catch the licence plate of one of the cars.
Nah, this is a great neighbourhood. (No, really!) I go to the coffeeshop up the street and I’m almost always guaranteed to spot someone famous, the delis are amazing. This is the heart of the yuppie and double-income-no-kids homes, with some significant “heritage features”. I just bought a UK magazine that had my neighbourhood as a “must visit” spot in a tourism article.
That’s what ticks me off – if there were gunshots in this neighbourhood, no place is safe! There is quite a great sense of community here. I know the locals enough to say “hello” to almost any passers by, and even the more… uh… unusual characters can rest assured that someone’s keepng an eye out for them.
People keep an eye out and any hint of danger and you can be confident that half of the neighbourhood is calling the cops and the other half is getting ready to charge out and come to your rescue. Last summer, some big guy, (not a local) tried to beat up the guy I call Rooster Man (he always wears a brown bathrobe over his clothes so he looks like a Obi Wan Kenobi, and he makes rooster and crow noises) and at the sounds of a scuffle a bunch of the army vets from the building next door came charging out and chased the bad guy off. Rooster Man was unharmed.
I have no fears at all walking in my neighbourhood alone at night.
I think the police have really stepped up their presence in the Bad Neighbourhood, and so some of the unsavory characters have had to migrate several blocks into the surrounding neighbourhoods to “conduct their business”. I hope the cops take that into account and remember to visit our neighbourhood more often.