Just Another Night in DC
I stopped paying attention and that's when somebody got killed, out in the street under my window. A nice girl from the suburbs, and here was a homicide right under my nose. I used to call the police every time there was a fight, but the city dispatchers quickly disabused me of the notion that the police had any interest in breaking up street fights. Or maybe they were just tired. "How do you know anyone is actually being threatened?" a disengaged voice asked when I called one night. Ten guys are pounding on each other, I replied. "Well, but is anyone hurt?" the voice ventured, searching for reasons not to send anyone. "Not yet; that's why I'm calling," I answered. Apparently the concept of prevention had not yet caught on. Post-homicide report-taking seemed to be the main activity, and if there was no dead body to report about, they weren't interested, seemed almost disappointed. The interest drained right out of their voices like the air being let out of a tire. After all, there were so many other dead bodies lying around the city right this minute, evidence of important crimes waiting to be catalogued and collected and carted away, that they didn't have time for any actual live people and their silly little problems, like knives that hadn't yet stabbed anyone or guns that hadn't yet been fired. People screaming and hitting each other, people that might go berserk at any moment but hadn't yet. Silly fool for even calling and wasting our time, the dispatcher's tone seemed to suggest. No, breaking up an actual live fight might be too dangerous. No, we don't care about your quality of life. If nobody's dead and you don't want to press any charges then there's nothing we can do.
I watched from my ninth-floor balcony and held my breath. The posse of punks continued to beat each other up while they rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight. A patrol car rolled by at a leisurely pace about a half-hour later and, finding everything nice and quiet by that point, stopped by the drive-thru across the street. My tax dollars at work.
So the next time when the fight started down in the street, I didn't call. I hoped it would be the usual fight - same script, different characters - hoped it would run its usual course and be over soon but it just kept getting louder and louder. It was late and I wanted to get some sleep, and I figured the police wouldn't come for a while anyway, so what was the use? I figured they had me on their "ignore" list anyway because I called them one too many times. They would read off my phone number to me, and my address, and there would be heavy sighing, so I didn't bother this time. The shouts in Spanish, peppered with Anglo-Saxon obscenities, echoed from the concrete and I just lay there with my eyes closed, listening to the staccato of hostility rising with the steam from the city grates. Bits of light from the street that had managed to sneak like roaches through a curtain blackened with soot fell on my blanket and my face.
When I finally decided to pay attention, he lay crumpled on the sidewalk. The police came to take a report, and then the city coroner’s white truck showed up and collected evidence, and an ambulance came and took his body away, and a clean-up crew followed, hosing the blood off the sidewalk, where it ran down the gutters and into the drain.
Nobody could manage to prevent this guy from dying, but once he did, everything was very efficient and orchestrated, an impressive show, a well-rehearsed and practiced scene that played itself out all over town, night after relentless night. Another dead body for the bank. Another ID to be made at the morgue. Another statistic for people to tsk-tsk about. Another proud but worried Central American mother to receive the worst long-distance phone call of her life.
I wished I had called. Even if they had not come in time, I still wished I had called. I owed him that at least, one small feeble attempt to stop the fight and save his life before it was too late. Just one more lost young man from Central America, gone from this life forever, to join those already slain by the knife or the gun or the bottle, or waiting in line for their turn. I knew guys like him, sat and talked with them, heard their stories, danced with them, guys from Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador who lived in my building and on my street, who came to America for a chance to save themselves from war or hurricanes or earthquakes, to make lots of money building our buildings or washing our dishes so their families back home would have clothes on their backs and food to eat. Forgettable fellows to too many of us, generic interchangeable busboys and construction workers, but somebody's sons, somebody's brothers, lost people with displaced lives and unfinished struggles. Guys with something to prove who sent hundreds of dollars from their paychecks home every month and spent the rest drinking themselves into a stupor to forget. Guys like him, who never suspected that this night would be his very last.
After everyone was gone, I just stood leaning over my balcony railing for a while, staring down at the last trickle of blood and thinking about the far-away mother who did not yet know the horrible truth that I knew. A few tears fell nine floors down in slow motion onto the sidewalk. The sky was clear and a soft midsummer breeze blew. Peace descended on the street and I went back to bed.
This incident happened several years ago and I live somewhere else now, but I still remember the guys with their stories to tell, their families to support, their angels and demons, their joy and pain, their blood, sweat and tears running down the drain.
Tags: DC, crime, Washington
I watched from my ninth-floor balcony and held my breath. The posse of punks continued to beat each other up while they rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight. A patrol car rolled by at a leisurely pace about a half-hour later and, finding everything nice and quiet by that point, stopped by the drive-thru across the street. My tax dollars at work.
So the next time when the fight started down in the street, I didn't call. I hoped it would be the usual fight - same script, different characters - hoped it would run its usual course and be over soon but it just kept getting louder and louder. It was late and I wanted to get some sleep, and I figured the police wouldn't come for a while anyway, so what was the use? I figured they had me on their "ignore" list anyway because I called them one too many times. They would read off my phone number to me, and my address, and there would be heavy sighing, so I didn't bother this time. The shouts in Spanish, peppered with Anglo-Saxon obscenities, echoed from the concrete and I just lay there with my eyes closed, listening to the staccato of hostility rising with the steam from the city grates. Bits of light from the street that had managed to sneak like roaches through a curtain blackened with soot fell on my blanket and my face.
When I finally decided to pay attention, he lay crumpled on the sidewalk. The police came to take a report, and then the city coroner’s white truck showed up and collected evidence, and an ambulance came and took his body away, and a clean-up crew followed, hosing the blood off the sidewalk, where it ran down the gutters and into the drain.
Nobody could manage to prevent this guy from dying, but once he did, everything was very efficient and orchestrated, an impressive show, a well-rehearsed and practiced scene that played itself out all over town, night after relentless night. Another dead body for the bank. Another ID to be made at the morgue. Another statistic for people to tsk-tsk about. Another proud but worried Central American mother to receive the worst long-distance phone call of her life.
I wished I had called. Even if they had not come in time, I still wished I had called. I owed him that at least, one small feeble attempt to stop the fight and save his life before it was too late. Just one more lost young man from Central America, gone from this life forever, to join those already slain by the knife or the gun or the bottle, or waiting in line for their turn. I knew guys like him, sat and talked with them, heard their stories, danced with them, guys from Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador who lived in my building and on my street, who came to America for a chance to save themselves from war or hurricanes or earthquakes, to make lots of money building our buildings or washing our dishes so their families back home would have clothes on their backs and food to eat. Forgettable fellows to too many of us, generic interchangeable busboys and construction workers, but somebody's sons, somebody's brothers, lost people with displaced lives and unfinished struggles. Guys with something to prove who sent hundreds of dollars from their paychecks home every month and spent the rest drinking themselves into a stupor to forget. Guys like him, who never suspected that this night would be his very last.
After everyone was gone, I just stood leaning over my balcony railing for a while, staring down at the last trickle of blood and thinking about the far-away mother who did not yet know the horrible truth that I knew. A few tears fell nine floors down in slow motion onto the sidewalk. The sky was clear and a soft midsummer breeze blew. Peace descended on the street and I went back to bed.
This incident happened several years ago and I live somewhere else now, but I still remember the guys with their stories to tell, their families to support, their angels and demons, their joy and pain, their blood, sweat and tears running down the drain.
Tags: DC, crime, Washington
posted by Christine M. Hanson | 3:44 PM
|
1 comments
