Open-Thread Thursday: What’s on Your Mind, Neighbors?

I heard some part of Othello was out too, for a while. Actually Seattle Times reported spotty outages all over this morning.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010302989_weboutage18m.html

(Copy of my post from seattlecrime.com)

My house was broken into last week. I live by myself and was shaking and scared standing by my back door when I called 911. The house was dark and I honestly didn’t know if someone was waiting for me in there. My dogs were freaking out.

The 911 operator just said she’d “get someone out there”.

Fortunately, the response time of my friends is much better than the police. About 10 minutes later we walked through the house and took stock of the damage. An hour and half after my initial 911 call my friend called 911 and asked if anyone was ever going to show up. The response from the operator was “are you still standing by the back door?”(thinking she was talking to me)

WHAT?? They are so casual about the whole thing that they were content with leaving me sitting by my back door alone and scared? Nice one, SPD.

At the same time, another friend who was en route (an hour and half into it) pulled up next to a cruiser a few blocks away. He was just tooling along on MLK — no real destination. THANKS, SPD!

Another hour later (now 2.5 hours after my initial call) 2 cops showed up. They were friendly and I found out there had just been a shift change. So, basically, I could have been assaulted in my own home because the cops on duty at the time were too goddamn lazy to fill out another report before the end of their shift.

It’s disgusting. Makes me realize I’m really on my own out here in S. Seattle and will be solely responsible for my safety.

One of my co workers accidentally left his wallet in his car parked on Holden St. right off of Rainier Ave. and a group of 5 or 6 kids broke his window and stole it, at the same time they broke the antenna of another co workers truck and another woman’s window. They then proceeded to Jack in the box and a store at South Center with his credit cards.

Tiffany,
This is out of whack – contact the precinct Capt and Chief Kimmerer in regard to this. The response did not meet department guidelines – dispatch screwed up. Go to the South Seattle Crime meeting. We had a similar dispatch error and the SPD disciplined the dispatcher. It doesn’t help with what happened but it may in the future. I would also suggest going to the McGinn town hall and bringing this up to the mayor elect. Its a good opportunity to show he cares about South Seattle.
Best regards,
Tom T

So Tiff, you wonder if they’ll be back…Well, a sordid tale you’ve stumbled upon my friend.

ahow’s repeated (could that be related?) incidents that felt somewhat like getting cased. I’ve told this story here before, but what the hell itsa good one so it’s worth repeating.

When we moved into our home, we used one of those big box storage crate delivery services. So we had several conspicuous crates parked in front for a couple days. B I G M I S T A K E…

Our neighbor actually chased off some kids snooping around our loaded crates, in the middle of the night before we’d had a chance to unload them. Then it seemed a sort of “chump alert” bat-signal went up for all the ‘hood to take notice, and we were getting scanned…

For the next several weeks we were called upon by various people selling “things”, but never with those “things” apparently in hand. Cleaning supplies. Magazines. Need to use the phone. Want to have trash “hauled away” (yeah, sure…trash…)

Anyway, because I was evidently pregnant with an elephant I was home all the time and answered the door (again, “recovering chump” here.) One time (the last time), with my dog. She’s big and imposing. And she didn’t like this particular dude, selling cleaning supplies (sans said supplies, of course.)

See dude didn’t notice my dog at first. I had strategically jammed my rather rotund self- blocking the doorway. I had her by the collar behind me (and I can hide a bus when I’m pregnant), but when she went for him that forced her up onto her hind legs. Well that put her quite suddenly eye to eye with cleaning supply dude.

He made off pretty quick wondering aloud, “Do that dog eat dark meat?” (Yes…he was black. His words, not mine…people)

Well maybe it was a coincidence. But the bat signal was decommissioned and we weren’t bothered again by these, “vendors”.

We were a little spooked though, and got an alarm. Things settled down. Then next time I was gestating, we had what seemed to be a -open the window, hear screaming alarm, run away- incident (the one I refer to in my last comment.)

I don’t want to trigger anyone’s OCD or anything. And I’m sure there are plenty of people who will tell you an alarm don’t mean squat. But it was clear to me with our one potential break in incident, the sound of the alarm caused a sudden gut check for our “visitor”.

And our previous experience with the “vendors” left me feeling like there was something systematic going on…

So to answer your question (in my usual loquacious manner), yeah. I’d get an alarm.

But then again, I’m no expert. And ’round here we’ve had a rash of home invasions (and a police impersonation!) recently. So the criminals appear to be upping the cajones factor a bit, in my mind…

I dunno. But stay tuned for the next installment of “RVP Street Walkers”. Not sure we’ll make a difference, but hell we’ll get drunk on spiked tea tryin’…

I guess if you have a block watch, you could ask your leader to invite SPD to your next meeting. They’ll show and answer ?’s, and you can ask them what they think of alarms. Probably, “PITA, mostly false alarms anyway…” but it couldn’t hurt.