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Crack House Diaries - 911 Is a Joke in Yo Town, part II
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4519 Reads
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This is not my Glock |
In which I talk a lot about GUNS.
I guess I feel I need to preface this post with some explanation. I grew up in Montana, where the gun culture is very different than here in South Centralâ I have my riflery merit badge, a distinction few of my neighborhood marksmen share . I had grown up with guns and rifles in my home, and I had participated in shooting sports my entire life. My mother had started me off with a BB gun at age nine, and graduated me to a .22 rimfire when I turned eleven. A couple of years later she would take me into the hills to target practice with her .38 special. Though I was aware of the potential to use a gun for self defense, the emphasis was always on sport, which made a lot of sense in a town where most people never locked their doors.
I tend to be quite liberal in my politics, and I support sensible gun control. Nevertheless, I own a Glock 9mm, a gun whose ghetto cachet I was almost entirely unaware of when I bought it in Helena, Montana, over six years ago. I had no idea that five years later I would be living in a Crack House in South Central L.A..
End of preface.
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Our first three weeks in South Central were unusual. We made three 911 calls, each between dusk and dawn at the end of a weekend.
When we moved, we decided to dump the land telephone line altogether and go straight up mobile. We bought a pair of camera phones and signed up for a lot of minutes. Susan called it a âmatter of security.â The cellular service in South Central, like so much else, is sketchy as hell, and our home had a voracious appetite for the signal. In time I learned that if I stood by the bedroom window, looking out to the street, I could usually finish a call without breaking up. That is where I was when I was having a conversation with Fish, a high school friend from Montana.
Fish is white, he has a good job with Intel, he lives in a quiet suburb in Oregon, and he packs heat. Fish is a real person, but in the conversation that follows, he is a composite of the real Fish and West, a college buddy of mine from Texas. In my first days in the Crack House, I had spoken with both Fish and West about guns. They both like guns, and a lot of our conversations, whether I wanted them to or not, would veer to that issue. For any of my readers that know a âgun nut,â you will forgive my conflating the dialogue of these two friends... it all tends to run together, if you know what I mean, but is true to the spirit of our conversations. While the details of our words are sometimes a blur, the specifics of the event that broke up our conversation are as clear to me as, well, the crack of a gun. Fish had recently finished his concealed carry certification, which is what we were talking about on the phone:
Fish: Are you jealous that I can pack heat and you can't?
Rogan: The only reason I would want to pack heat is to always know where my gun is. I worry that someone is going to break into our house some day and steal it. The last thing this neighborhood needs is another gun on the street.
F: Hell, you canât even carry your piece legally, with the laws in California. You have to be a cop, a lawyer or a celebrity.
R: That and I would be afraid I might be in a situation where I could legally use it. In my neighborhood that is a distinct possibility. What happens if I see someone threatening another person? If I don't pull the gun, and some kid gets shot by a thug, I would have to live with my cowardice. If I did pull the gun, and I shot someone, I would have to live with that. Neither outcome works for me, never mind the possibility that I might get shot myself.
F: Yup, yup, yup. The burden of concealed carry isnât for everyone.
R: Well I am pretty damn sure it isnât for me⌠I just hope the gun never gets stolen. I guess we could always put the gun in storage for a while, but I have to admit that I sleep a little better knowing it is there. If someone tried to break in while I was at home, I could probably scare them off by popping a round into the dirt⌠Hey, there are a couple of suspicious looking guys walking down the street.
F: Let me guess, they arenât white.
R: Black.
F: Then you canât say that. You canât say that âthere are a couple of suspicious looking black guys.â Youâre a racist.
R: I am sure I am a racist for a lot of other reasons, and as I figure them out I will try to do better, but this isnât one of those times⌠they are sort of zigzagging across the street as they walk up the block. They are stopping behind cars, ducking down and looking up the street.
F: Are they looking inside the cars?
R: No, they are looking at something up the street. I canât see what it isâŚ
One of the guys was wearing a black T-shirt and the other was wearing a white sports jersey. They both looked to be in their teens. The boy in the jersey crossed over the street directly in front my house, stopping beneath some low hanging branches from the tree in my yard. He walked with his body at an angle, keeping his back pointed away from the direction he was intently watching. This squared him perfectly with the window where I was standing. Once he was under my tree I could see that he had his right hand behind his back. Against the whiteness of his jersey I could perfectly see a gun in his hand.
R: I gotta go. One of the guys has a gun.
*Click*
I dial 911.
I have to admit. I was kind of excited by all of this. It isn't every day you see something that reminds you of how many people there are walking around with guns. From the quiet suburbs of Oregon, to the sun beaten streets of South Central, there are a helluva lot of people packing heat. At what point is this supposed to terrify us? At what point does a person make the connection between guns and the reality of what happens when someone pulls a trigger?
I was watching a guy hiding beneath MY tree, in MY front yard. He held a gun behind his back, and I felt absolutely nothing. The 911 call was my perfunctory duty.
911: You have reached the 911 emergency line. All operators are currently busy. Please remain on the line and your call will be serviced as quickly as possible. Please be ready to report your cellular phone number and the location of the emergency to the operator. Be advised, that freeway accidents cause a large volume of emergency calls from cellular phones. If you are calling about an accident on the freeway, please be prepared to quickly identify the location and description of vehicles involved. This will assist the operator in determining if an emergency response crew has already responded to the accident you are reporting. Thank you for your patience, and please remain on the line. The next available operator will assist youâŚ
This message droned on for TEN MINUTES. In that time I saw the two teens walk up the street, heading east, then back down the street heading west. I made the 911 call at sunset, and during my hold time the sun had gone down.
911: 911, please state your emergency.
R: I just saw a couple of guys walking around on the street. One of them had a gun.
âGunâ is the magic word in a 911 call.
911: Sir, did you SEE the gun.
R: Yes, very clearly. They were walking up the street, and one of them had his hand behind his back and he was carrying a gun.
911: Let me transfer you⌠(I could now here the low âwhuppa, whuppa, whuppaâ sound of the inside of a helicopter). This is 911. The caller saw a suspect walking with a gun in your vicinity.
Note: At this time I hadnât actually reported my location.
Officer: Can you describe the guy with the gun?
R: There were two guys walking together. They looked to be in their teens. The guy with the gun was wearing a white sports jersey. He had something red and black on his head, but I couldnât really tell what it was.
O: Where did you see them last.
R: I was on hold for ten minutes, so they left a while ago, but they were walking west on ____ street toward Figueroa.
O: East or west of the 105?
R: WestâŚ
âŚone, two three. Three seconds from my last words and the helicopter came thundering over my street, cutting through the dark with a brilliant twitchy spotlight that swept spasmodically over houses, pavement and bushes. Neighbors up and down the block stepped out onto their porches to watch the spectacle, which lasted five minutes. Then the helicopter flew off and was replaced by a patrol car with a spotlight. The ground unit officer patrolled the street from his car for twenty minutes, then got out and began to inspect an alley with his flashlight. People went back to their homes, and nothing else happened, as far as I know.
I called back Fish and recounted the events.
F: Your neighborhood sounds worse than I imagined.
R: It is strange, I never felt worried, even when I saw the guy with the gun.
F: That is because you knew that if anything happened you had the means to protect yourself and your family.
R: No, not at all. The guys were obviously preoccupied with something or somebody up the street. I never felt singled out. It was weird. I saw a guy with a gun, and I wasnât afraid. I just matter-of-factly called 911. If I didnât get put on hold for ten minutes they might have actually caught those guys. My only worry from all of this is that it seems that cellular phones get a different priority rating compared to land-lines. That might be a problem. I donât want to wait ten minutes if I have a serious personal emergency.
F: What it shows is that you can not depend on the police to protect you in your neighborhood. They either never come at all, or they come too late. You owe it to yourself and your family to keep that gun. You have to be ready to do the work that the police have proven to you they are incapable of doing.
R: I can't argue with you there. I just hope the gun doesnât get stolen during the day when I am away from the house⌠the thought of that scares the shit out of me.
F: Then you should buy a mean dog.
Previous:
Crack House Diaries - What Are We Doing Here?
Crack-House Diaries - 911 is a joke in yo town, part I
South Central Living: Introduction
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| Posted by: RoganFerguson on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 09:49 AM
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