Things the Police tell you about your neighbourhood.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hello good People,

My local police know more about criminality in my local area than I do, that’s their job.

What I never realised was how much they know my area, ‘Parish’ in Londonese, better than I do.
An example: I live on a street that runs directly from a Tube, Subway, Station, my local Neighbourhood Watch Officer mentions the local crack houses.
I look a little bemused but take a look anyway. Lo and behold the houses that back on to me: broken windows, pipes, needles, aluminium foil, roof tiles, poor bemused loss looking people, sh1t in gardens and discarded and dirty furniture in the road.

Either I’m blind to what my neighbours do or, as one of my Metropolitan Police Service friends put it: ‘you are stuck at the end of a Borough with two others adjoining and also stuck between three adjoining Police Stations, none of whom want to take financial resposibility’.

Do your local Police or representantives deal with life better?
Peter

2

Since the OP is asking about personal experiences, this is best suited to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

3

The police in my area are remarkably receptive to the needs of the new people moving into my neighborhood. It’s going from an old Italian neighborhood that was fairly well maintained to a young educated couples neighborhood that is even better maintained.

The headache now is parking; one house used to have one car, now a house will have two or occasionally 3 cars needing street parking. The old immigrants feel the space directly outside their house is theirs. The police do a good job of gently explaining that it’s not to the old residents.

Police are now “on” landlords who allow their tenants to not pick up trash and other yard debris. I appreciate that immensely.

My neighborhood now has more targeted parking enforcement due to the surge in cars (and peoples’ ability to pay). Rather than having parking enforcement in every neighborhood, they just hit the top 5 wealthiest/youngest neighborhoods. Mine’s in that grouping.

The reasoning is this: why give a ticket to someone whose credit is already trashed and won’t pay?

4

I don’t know any police personally and I do not talk to them when they’re cruising around in my 'hood. However, there was this one cop who hated the fact that I kept my truck parked in front of my house on the street. One day, I saw his car out there and he’s out of the car, walking around my truck, closely inspecting it.

I came out of my house and asked him if there was a problem.

“Is this your truck?”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. It runs just fine.”

:: Points to cobwebs around the back tires:: “You never drive it.”

“Oh, I drive it a few times a month when I need to haul mulch or something, but yeah, I don’t drive it much.”

“Well, you have to move it.”

“Why, did someone complain?”

“No, but you can’t have an abandoned vehicle parked in the street.”

“It’s not abandoned. It’s parked in front of my own house, not bothering anyone. The tags, insurance, and registration are all current. Is there some ordinance that says parking in the street is illegal?”

“Actually, there is. [Pause while he checks out my registration and insurance, which is fine.] You have to move the truck around. Just park it in a different spot so it looks like you drive it.”

“Well, I park in the exact same spot because it leaks oil and that way, I don’t have a huge oil slick all over the street, just in that one spot.”

“Well, move it to your driveway and put a piece of cardboard under there to catch the oil.”

Fine. I had to move my car out of the way, park it on the street, then get out, fire up the truck, pull it into the driveway, and then go back to my car and pull it in behind the truck. It sat there for a week or so until I needed to use it, at which point I had to play musical vehicles again. Which is why I parked in the damn street in the first place, so I didn’t have to move a vehicle every time I wanted to use the other one.

This cop stopped by about twice a week for a couple months just to inspect my truck to make sure it wasn’t parked in the exact same spot for more than a couple days. Every 3-4 days, I’d start it up, move it like three feet, and then go on about my business. It was the stupidest power struggle ever. I was furious that this stupid cop had nothing better to do all day than monitor where my 17-year-old truck was parked. I wanted to ask him, “Don’t you have criminals to go chase somewhere or something?” But I didn’t dare get cheeky with a cop.

Anyway, that’s my local neighborhood constabulary story. Note: He stopped bugging me about it after a couple months and I stopped moving my truck. I just sold it last month to a guy who owns a head shop, so it’s doing the Lord’s work, bringing bongs to the (college-age) children and it’s not my problem anymore.

5

The police chief lives right around the corner from me. My office is also located in the same building as the police department and I make sure to keep the chief and the detectives well supplied with candy, so I get to hear all the gory details.

I live in an older neighborhood that is probably 2/3 double blocks owned by out-of-town landlords and 1/3 single family homes. The absentee landlords don’t really give a shit about property maintenance and the police don’t like to bother so my town has 2 code enforcement guys who are responsible for citing people for stuff like property maintenance, mowing lawns, trash on the property. There’s also been a lot of trouble with big drug busts over the past 10 years.

6

:smack:

Candy!

I should keep candy (or donuts) around the house to bribe the truck police! Wish I’d thought of that…

7

Mine prefer Rollos, Starbursts, or (in season) jelly beans. Peanut butter anything is usually a hit, too.

Maybe you can get the new owner park the truck (full of bongs of course) in its old spot for a day or two just to watch the police go spastic :wink:

8

What a fantastic suggestion! I like the way you think. :smiley:

9

It seems like you’re aware of the law, but you still seem to phrase the problem as capriciousness on the part of the cop, rather than him doing his job. Why?

Many municipalities have laws about this sort of thing, because otherwise there’d be no recourse against truly abandoned vehicles. Usually you have to move it every 72 hours or something like that, if it’s parked in the street. It usually also has to be in good working order. The reason these laws exist is because citizens don’t like to be told things like “well I know that vehicle has been parked in front of your house for 6 months and all the windows are broken, but there’s no law against parking it on a public street”.

Don’t like it? That’s cool, but don’t blame the cop, who is tasked with enforcing the laws in effect. I certainly don’t want to give police officers the power to decide which laws are in effect; that’s the legislature’s job.

10

My mother was once a “Special Officer” (crossing guard) for the local police. I’d make cookies and she’d bring them into the station making sure to tell them I made them. I got out of two speeding tickets in that town and when my car was broken into the chief himself came to investigate (it was a small town).

11

Wasn’t this the beginning of Shawn of the Dead? You may have bigger problems than you realize.

12

Well, actually, I wasn’t aware of any law that said I can’t park on the street. Even if the car runs, you’re not supposed to park on the street here. Why did I not know this? Because every house on my block has a car parked in front of it! So I thought the cop was being capricious because he wasn’t bugging any of my neighbors. He singled out poor Daisy (I named my truck) because she was an old beater truck and not shiny brand-spankin’ new. The windows weren’t broken, the tires weren’t flat, but she had a little bit of paint cancer (no rust however). Aside from cobwebs around the back tires (and those spiders wove new webs within hours of me driving and parking that truck; I think they lived underneath it somehow), there were no outward indicators that my truck ran any better or worse than any other vehicle that was also parked on my street at the same time. The neighbor across the street had a newer white car that* didn’t* run, and which she never drove, but its paint job was pretty, so he didn’t say a word to them about their car.

I don’t mind the cop doing his job, and he was basically polite to me about it, wasn’t aggressive or belligerent in any way, but I think he had much more important things to do than wander around looking for broken cars. During that time frame, when he was jacking me about Daisy, there were two incidents when some little kids almost got snatched from the elementary and middle schools at the end of my street. In one case, a teachers’ aide stepped in and chased the perp off and in the other case, the middle school student managed to get away and run back inside the school. I’d rather the cops focus on watching the kiddies and making sure they’re okay than, say, worrying about whether Daisy will start up. I have spoken to all my neighbors since then and to this day, I am the only person who had a vehicle parked in front who had to take any shit for it.