I’m out on the balcony not ten minutes ago (midnight eastern), taking in some night air 'cos I can’t sleep. I had the cordless out with me since Valkyrie had left the modem plugged in and I figured I’d check for voice mail.
All’s quiet, and suddenly I hear the sound of glass breaking. Not the odd beer bottle being thrown, but a large piece of glass being shattered. I look over my balcony and damned if I don’t see someone’s car being broken into! Two guys in a large 4X4 have parked right behind someone’s car and have busted into it.
Barely thinking about it, I dial 911 and start yammering into the phone. Fortunately I was clear-headed enough to get the description of the vehicle across and a couple officers were dispatched. Not two minutes later, incident still in progress, a cop shows up and starts hollering at them to get out of the car. The two guys jump into the 4x4 and aim for the gap between the parked vehicles and the cop car. The cop jumps out of the way, the 4x4 sideswipes a couple vehicles, and he assumes the firing position. I heard it go off - two shots - and the operator apparently hears this 'cos she says “shots fired”. The cop car backs out and takes off, and that’s the end of it.
The operator asks a couple more questions for informational purposes, confirms that a bunch of cops are now in pursuit, compliments me on a job well done, and the call is over.
Fuck if I’m getting to sleep anytime soon. I might as well go have a beer. Valkyrie is still asleep… I probably should wait until tomorrow morning to tell her.
It’s dark, of course, and I had all my lights off. And I am on the 10th floor. I think if they’d actually heard me they would have taken off sooner instead of waiting for the cops to show up.
I don’t wanna be Super Citizen, but at the same time I can empathize with the poor shmucks whose cars just got severely whacked because of this. I’d hate to lack wheels completely for some amount of time because a couple punks decided they wanted whatever CDs were in there at the time.
When I lived on Corcoran Street I was in the shower one morning when I heard screaming from outside. I jumped out of the shower and IMMEDIATELY called 911. The cops caught a guy attacking a woman. She’d been walking to work wearing headphones and he came up behind her and dragged her behind my building. Fortunately she was relatively unhurt and they recovered her money from the perp. I sometimes hear the kids next door shrieking, and I always check to make sure it’s just play-shrieks of fun. You DO need to get involved, even if you are in a big city - I’d hate to think I sat on my ass while some poor Kitty Genovese got attacked.
Well, I had to stay up to talk to Arlington’s Finest and fill out a statement; apparently a detective will be in touch because of the gunfire involved.
Hey, at least I get to be Valkyrie’s hero out of all this
My Saturday night consisted of me getting extremely intoxicated at my friend’s house, and then deciding that I wanted to walk home by myself at around 1am in the morning, while unable to see clearly.
I ended up getting followed by a person in a car, and so I hid in some bushes to see if they would drive off. They didn’t, so I ran home, then realized that I was locked out. I had to crawl through a teeny-tiny hole in the fence to get in. Finally all was well.
Pretty mundane. Home from uni’, washing to be done, bomb in local graveyard, main road into town sealed off, that sort of thing.
Kudos to someone who actually gives a damn about crime though. Cops always say the best thing you can do is phone it in rather than sit there and say “Gee.”
I went to a Dopefest. (WEE!Read all about it in the thread.) and I graduated from Sunday School at my church. (You turn 20, they kick you out. bastards. My sister picked out a hymn that made me cry. Brat.) So I have laughed and cried and, after I get to the gym, it’ll be better than cats.
Thank you all for your kind support. I admit I was a little torn about calling the cops, since around here they’re known for nastily retaliatory behavior but damned if I wanted the same thing to happen to my car.
Pushkin - bomb in a graveyard?! The hell they wanna do, hold the dead hostage or something? “You come any closer I’ll kill him, I swear - oh wait, never mind.”
I just also want to add that your Spock quote is probably the most marxist thing I’ve ever seen come out of Star Trek. Way cool!
Good job! You had the presence of mind to call the cops and not try the vigilante thing. In our neighborhood, 9 cars had their tires slashed, and one car was set on fire. I slept through the whole thing, dangit. I wanted to be a good citizen too!
(Maybe now they will listen to me when I demand street lights!)
