insomnomaniac

Punks update: Last night's safety meeting

Before I update those of you who care, let me just send a shout out to those of you who lumped me into the same bucket as the liberal socialist "help me I'm a victim" types who make up the majority of the population of the Pay State:

LEARN TO READ MORONS!

Could I have been more clear?

• I'm unemployed, married and pregnant. Hate to get all 1950s on ya, but that means if my husband's job is here, and he likes that job, and it's not one he could get in, oh, I don't know...Texas for example, I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future


• My husband's entire family live here, and members of mine as well, much as we dislike most of the other residents of this hell-hole, we like them and don't have tons of money to spend hopping on planes to visit whenever we feel like it


• Everyplace has its problems. I can romanticize Texas all day long, and twice on Sundays, but in reality, it's fucking HOT there, and then there are those tornados...

In other words, calling me names or telling me that I somehow deserve the treatment I've gotten simply because I happen to live here is not only rude, it shows that you are not much better than the punks who are harrassing me and are not someone I'd want as my neighbor either!

Now, without further ado, onto the details of the public safety meeting...

OK, first of all, here's who showed up:

• 10 people (male and female) who--if we were using the same shallow criteria the punks use (manner of dress and speech pattern)--could be classified as "yuppies."


• 10 women who huddled together like sheep in the rain, virtually shunning the rest of us with every syllable of body language they could manage without appearing to be having seizures (slouching, recoiling, hair tossing, pulling chairs farther away from us, rolling eyes, etc...)


• 1 community rep (civilian) 2 cops, 1 rep from the Mayor's office, and one rep from the Congressman's office (the guy I spoke with)

There was no agenda.
There was no facilitator or leader identified.
People just started talking.
No, I've never been to one of these before, sorry. Color me ignorant, but I expected a little more structure and, being the control freak I am, I worked hard to make structure where none existed (and succeeded, by the way).

After one of the cops told us that crime has gone up in Charlestown by 25% since last year (YIKES), and hearing very little alarm from either him or the huddled sheep in the corner, I raised my hand and asked:

"What happens to perpetrators of crime after they are arrested."

And I was told:

"Well, we have no control over the courts, you'd have to complain to them, if you don't like what happens, it's not our fault (trailing off as I interrupt, politely)..."

Me, interrupting:

"Oh, I'm sure you don't control the courts, but I have no idea if I don't like what THEY do because you haven't told me yet. What typically HAPPENS to these kids after they appear in court? What kinds of punishments do they get if they are juveniles? What if they're adults?"

Cop, looking a little piqued, but probably out of embarrassment:

"Well, there's one judge who hears all of the cases, so he's consistent. Most of the kids get probation, unless they've already been on probation and have violated it, and then they usually get sent downtown or confined for a few weeks, and then they're released on probation. They all get curfews, which we check randomly. They're usually not home when we check, but we can't go looking for all of them."

Then one of the women at our table (one of the "yuppie" types I guess) raised her hand and asked if there was something we could do to be more proactive, like starting a crime watch. The cop said yes, and told us how to do that. Then he said we should also keep calling 9-1-1. He said that the calls are logged, and the only way the Mayor will assign more cops is if he sees a spike in calls. In spite of all the trouble lately, the calls have only gone from 15 calls per night to 17 in the past month. Not a big enough spike, but I can tell you right now that many of those 17 per night were ME on a few nights!

The same woman asked if that was really OK because, she said, she hated to "bother" 9-1-1 if the calls weren't really emergencies...

Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the Ewes started baaahing:

"Those calls ah a nuissance! People call, and then the cops come and throw all the kids out of the pahk, and ou'ah kids ah some a them, and that's not fa'ah!"

So the cop speaks up and says:

"Well ma'am, the other day, a lady called to report that some kids blew up her mailbox with an M80. Her property was destroyed and she was scared out of her mind--she was an older lady. What do I tell her when I show up? 'Sorry, some of the kids in the park across from your house might be good kids, nothing I can do?' If it were your mailbox, you'd want me to do something, wouldn't you?"

And the stupid bitch says:

"Well, it wasn't my mailbox, but it was my kid gettin' kicked out! And then my kid has to go down the Sto'ah 24 and hang out, and when I send him to the pahk, I want him to stay the'ah, I don't want him down Main Street at the Sto'ah 24!"

OK, two questions come to mind:
1. Since when is the park her personal playpen for her kids?
2. Why is it the responsibility of the police to ensure that it's not her kid who's getting into trouble?

Just wondering. But I digress...

So this "mother" goes on to say that there just needs to be more police presence--they need to be there all the time, watching over her kids and everyone else's kids, and they need to know their names, faces, etc...so they can be sure to discriminate between "good" kids and "bad" kids.

Yeah, we the taxpayers and neighbors who live ON the park (as opposed to she who lives almost 1/2 mile away apparently) should pay for babysitting services for her? I think not.

Never mind the fact that the cop had just finished explaining how the system works--that it's the calls to 9-1-1 that impact the police presence, and NOTHING ELSE! Of course, he repeated himself so she'd hear it this time, but she still kept muttering (and was echoed in her muttering by the other mother sheep sitting around her--one of whom was the big fat load who almost attacked me a week or so ago):

"Still, the goverment needs to do more! The government needs to get more involved..."

And here's the kicker...Get ready for the red-hot irony, you might miss it if you're not paying attention:

"...These kids ah just sick a the liberal yuppies comin' in here and callin' the cops on them and it's makin' them bittah and even more likely to go bad."

Me? A liberal? Yuppie I'll cop to, maybe but liberal? I'd have to buy into HER nonsense about contributing to the delinquency of her child by calling the cops about him if I were!

Well, you'd be proud of little Deb...I said--in no wilting violet voice either:

"Listen! You can call me a lot of things and get away with it, but I'm no liberal!"

Which my husband quickly seconded, chuckling as he did.

Interestingly, I was not booed out of the room! In fact, my fellow "yuppies" in arms laughed and gave me the "you GO GIRL" look. It was a moment of triumph, I must say...

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. Ms. "Mwaaaaaaah! Why isn't the government doing more for me with other people's money? Mwaaaaaah?!"

Well I was so fired up by my recent triumph that I looked right at her and said:

"OK, you say that your kids aren't doing anything wrong, fine. Officer Mike over here says we need to call to get more police presence. So, what if we organize something where you bring your kids to the park to meet the neighbors who live around it, face to face, so next time we call, we can step outside and look around and say 'Oh, officer Mike, it wasn't little Tommy blowing up the mailbox, it was that other guy whose name I don't know because his mom didn't introduce him to me at the 'Meet and greet.' How would that be? We'll take the time if you will!"

Hehehe...Well, that shut her up right quick! In fact, she kind of raised her eyebrows in what I think was shame (not that I can recognize it anymore, I see it so rarely) and said:

"Uh, yeah, that might be a good idea..."

Of course, the table of yuppies thought it was an awesome idea and we exchanged numbers and e-mail addresses and offered to do the same with the sheep, but they ran off when the meeting ended so fast, they clearly didn't want any part of our "good idea" and expected us to do it ourselves.

No matter. We're going to do it. We're going to print flyers, put them in mailboxes, and at the first summer party in the park (they have several throughout the summer, sponsored by "The Mayor" (translation, paid for by taxpayers like my husband and me), we're going to set up a booth with ice cream we're having donated by our local Baskin Robbins (when it runs out, oh well, if you missed it, try next time) and we're going to get names, faces, etc...of kids AND parents who show up. Those kids will be protected by us if they are innocent, all the other kids are fair game for our calls and our Crime Watch, which we are also setting up. Part of that plan will be to have a call list for the people right around the perimeter of the park, and when something happens, we'll call people on the list and as many of us are home will step out, preferably with baseball bats, and will make up a physical adult presence. The goal isn't to confront the kids, just to show our faces, and to SEE faces (more importantly). We'll have a video camera too, and we will ALL call 9-1-1 together and log the calls on a pad next to our phones so we can keep count along with the Mayor (cuz we trust him so much....NOT).

Do I think it will work? Who knows. I almost don't care. It feels good to step up and not be the victim, and to show up these local tax-sucking pigs whose kids are most asuredly the culprits in some cases.

Two sad stories that came out of this meeting (which I tell you all at the risk of getting more nasty "You're a moron if you don't move" comments) came from the two mothers who could have fit in either group. Both were born and raised "Townies," but seemed to have chosen, somewhere in life, to follow a path that put them more in "yuppie" territory than their wilfully blind, cud-chewing neighbors.

The first told us about her son--an 11 year-old who attends private school. She and her husband work their tails off to send him, and he's very athletic, so they're hoping for a scholarship for college someday. One day, her husband arrived home to find his son in the middle of being attacked by a 16 year-old with a MACHETE. He jumped the kid, tackled him to the ground, and almost got the machete in the temple. It took all his strength to hold the kid's arm away from his head, and he held him until the cops his son was able to then call showed up. The monster kid was arrested and brought before the judge who asked him why he'd done it. His response?

"I've always hated that kid! I've hated him since he was 3!"

The judge's response? Probation, which the kid violates daily.

Now this mother sits on her front steps every day when her son goes out to play roller hockey with his pals in the park. She watches with the phone in her hand and a lump in her throat because she knows that this kid has it in for her son and no one seems to care.

We care, and she's going to point out this bastard to us, and every time we see him anywhere, 9-1-1 is going to hear about it. There's a restraining order against him, but it will help if she has multiple witnesses who see him violate it.

The second story came from a woman who lives near the middle school (1 block off the park). Of the over 500 kids who go there, only 100 are local. The rest are minority kids who are bussed in from Southie, Dorchester, Roxbury and other areas.

This woman walks her two small children home from their school right past the Middle School as it lets out. She grew up in this town, but she said she never saw or heard behavior as horrific as she's seen in the last year. Apparently, the LOCAL (read: white) GIRLS enjoy going door-to-door, breaking people's planters and pulling plants out of window boxes and grabbing mail out of mailboxes and tossing it in the street (a federal offense, not that they care).

I only mention their race and the make-up of the school to highlight that we're talking about a small subset of the population under the school's care. If there are 100 white kids, and roughly half are female, we're talking about only 50 possibilities of who these girls could be! You'd think the school would be able to figure out who these girls are and contact their parents IMMEDIATELY since they are local, but nooooooo. Once those kids leave the building, they are in the streets and our problem.

As bad as bussing has been, it has not been the cause of this problem. Well, at least not in MY view. I'm sure if you ask the woman who wants the government to babysit her kids all afternoon, she'd tell you that the bussing is the root of all evil. That's the weird double-standard here. Those of us who oppose bussing because it's a flawed solution to a very real problem, not on racial grounds are "liberals," whereas those who oppose it because they hate blacks and other non-whites, but at the same time want the government to remedy all of their problems aren't. Uh-huh...Riiiiiiiight!

Guess this proves that terms like "liberal" and "conservative" are even more absurd than I previously thought.

Anyway, back to the nasty girls...Apparently, they delight in ringing doorbells and knocking on doors, and whenever someone answers, they all scream at the person "Get the fuck back in your house you fucking c--nt (if a woman) bastid (if a man)."

This woman had to explain to her kids what was happening, and she was almost at a loss for words. How do you explain to a seven year-old that a thirteen year-old thinks it's fun to terrorize adults? How do you have that conversation? All she could do was say that these kids are doing things they (her kids) should NEVER EVER do because they are WRONG and MEAN and ILLEGAL.

She'd like to move too, but can't afford to and now fears that her house is worth diddly squat because of the hoodlums who terrorize her street. She's probably right.

So, that's the update. Tragi-comic, but what did you expect?

Posted by insomnomaniac at May 22, 2003 1:59 AM | TrackBack