The continuation…

Ok, so I told you I’d finish the story… here it is:

3:18 am Saturday morning, two punks (er… I mean… people loved by God who just don’t know it yet) smashed our living room windows with bats (as evidenced by the lack of bricks in our living room). NOT COOL. This just so happens to be my biggest fear in life. AND to top in off, before we went to bed that night, we watched Dateline which featured the Charles Manson story (thanks, hubby- I wanted to just go to bed!) which was the cause of me not being able to fall asleep in the first place. We even had a conversation in bed about a break-in being my biggest fear (besides the obvious of something happening to my husband or children) and prayed about it. Dan told me the next day that he even had a weird feeling that night and didn’t share it with me because of my fear that he spent time in silent prayer over asking God to protect our family- which He did, thank you Lord.

So this all leads me to my next thought. I wrote a post HERE last week about my thoughts on an article done by Forbes in which they describe our city as one of the fastest dying cities in America. Well, I must say my thoughts have changed a tad since I wrote that. Industry and housing aside… in a city where the risk of personal and property crime is more than 2 times the national average (Money Magazine) they certainly need a larger police force out and available on a Friday night if they want ANY kind of change in this city. My husband called just after the incident and we foolishly expected someone in uniform with a weapon at our home in a matter of minutes. While nervously waiting I did everything I could do to not vomit because I was so upset. After 15 minutes I decided that amount of time was unacceptable and called again asking how much longer it would be. I got a somewhat rude answer of, “We’ll send a car when there is one available!”. EXCUSE ME FOR ASKING! SO more than an hour and a half later a cop finally showed up nonchalantly without so much as even turning on his lights. By that time a neighbor had come over to help us board up the windows and clean up. We filled out a report and that was it. He left. This in a neighborhood that had 3 break-ins in the past week. REALLY helpful. At the very LEAST couldn’t he have offered to keep an eye on the ‘hood this week or something?

We are not the only ones to have had such disappointing encounters with the City Police. Friends of ours used to live in a rough neighborhood (MUCH more rough than ours) closer to downtown. They chose to move there as a sort of Christian mission to the city. To get to know people, build relationships, build trust, and change lives and therefore our city. I greatly admired them for it. These were not people who would abuse the 911 system and call needlessly. They called when there were shootings. They called when their home was broken in to. They called when there were prostitutes soliciting on their street. They called in an EFFORT to HELP the police clean up that area of town. And what did they get in return? Attitude, slow response times, and lack of professionalism. THEY were treated as the enemy! Since that time we have even gotten a new mayor who sure did make a lot of empty promises as it seems nothing has changed. I have every intention of letting him and the police force know of my feelings about this and many other situations but am choosing to bite my tongue until I am out of this house. Because if there is one thing our city has taught us this past year, it’s that there are police officers who are by no means upstanding citizens (if you’re from around here you will know who I’m talking about- B.C.).

I mean no disrespect to those officers who joined the force for the right reasons and are fighting for change in our city and others. But it just seems that those men and women are currently outnumbered here in our town. Something has got to change.