Two Terrorists & A Marine

Two radical terrorists boarded a flight out of London. One took a window seat, and the other sat next to him in the middle seat. Just before takeoff, A U.S. Marine sat down in the aisle seat. After takeoff, the Marine kicked his shoes off, wiggled his toes and was settling in when the terrorist in the window seat said, "I need to get up and get a coke." The Marine replied "Don't get up. I'm in the aisle seat, I'll get it for you."

As soon as he left, one of the terrorists picked up the Marine's shoe and spat in it. When the Marine returned with the coke, the other terrorist said, "That looks good, I'd really like one too." Again, the Marine obligingly went to fetch it. While he was gone, the other terrorist picked up the Marine's other shoe and spat in it. When the Marine returned, they all sat back and enjoyed the flight.

As the plane was landing, the Marine slipped his feet into his shoes and knew immediately what had happened. He leaned over and asked his Neighbors, "Why does it have to be this way? How long must this go on? This fighting between us? This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in shoes and pissing in cokes?"

Analysis Of Neighborhood Police Activity

The first chart below shows the total number of police calls in my neighborhood as well as the total number of police calls throughout the entire city for each month beginning in June of 2007. Because my neighborhood comprises 0.07% of the geographic area of Fort Wayne, I multiplied the total city calls by 0.0007 to arrive at the number of calls experienced by an average Fort Wayne neighborhood of my size. By taking the first column and dividing by the third column, I then arrived at the ratio of what my neighborhood experienced compared to what the average neighborhood experienced for that month.

Per this chart, you can see that during the past two and a half years, even during the calmest of times, my neighborhood still experienced four times as much police activity as the average neighborhood did. The chaos peaked in May of 2008 when there were 114 calls in my neighborhood. This was nearly eleven times as much police activity as was experienced by other Fort Wayne neighborhoods that month. It should be noted here that I feel there is a very strong positive correlation between the amount of police activity and the amount of criminal activity in an area.

Now, even though these numbers were taken directly from the Fort Wayne Police Department’s on-line activity log, I have been accused in the past of manipulating the information to suit my own purposes. Therefore, I have broken down the callls into categories of activity so one may better understand what is going on here. I have only done this for my neighborhood, not for the entire city.

WEAPONS
Includes Shootings, Shots fired, Party armed, and Cutting/Stabbing. These are the types of activities which would normally cause a person to call 911 and perhaps to fear for their own personal safety. I can assure you that what is reported in this category is far less than what this neighborhood actually experiences.

VIOLENCE
Includes Vandalism, Man down and Fights. I separated these out because the absence of a known deadly weapon usually makes them far less problematic.

ROBBERY
Includes Burglary, Theft, Armed robbery, Strong arm, and Stolen Vehicles. (*)
* The recover of stolen vehicles is given the same signal code as vehicles being stolen. I did not attempt to factor out the recoveries, so this category is a bit inflated.

NARCOTICS
Pretty self-explanatory. I can assure you that this category is also extremely underreported.

SUSPICIOUS PERSON/ACTIVITY
A lot of police will tell you this is little more than people getting spooked by the wind. Whether that misstatements is out of ignorance, stupidity, or sheer malice depends, I suppose, upon the individual officer making that claim. What I do know is that when I have called the police to report what I was certain was narcotics activity, it usually shows up as a suspicious person call rather than a narcotics investigation. I know this to be true from many of my neighbors as well.

TRAFFIC STOP
It’s hard to generalize about this category without having detailed information about the individual cases. One could make an argument that increased traffic violations is an indicator of greater general criminal activity in the area. But since this is the only category (I believe) which is instigated almost entirely from officers rather than from public calls to the department, it could also be argued that this category is an indicator of police vigilance in the area. It should also be noted that many of the traffic stops I have witnessed are obviously narcotics investigations, but do not appear as such on the activity log.

911 HANG-UP
I actually had one officer tell me this was “Probably just kids messing around.” This officer gave the same reason when a drug dealer once threw a rock through my living room window. I suppose that’s probably the way they classified my house being fire-bombed as well. Needless to say, I find this explanation highly dubious. While many of the persons making noise in this neighborhood are actually very young, these “kids” shoot and kill people, and I don’t consider that “just messing around.”

I believe that most of the 911 hang-ups are desperate pleas for help. They come from people who either don’t know how to properly explain the situation, fear retaliation for their call, or simply realize that the most efficient way to tell a department as dysfunctional as FWPD that they need an immediate police presence in the area is to simply call and hang up. If they talk to the operator, they will likely be belittled and ignored. I believe that the police are required by law to dispatch an officer to the location of a 911 hang-up call.

So, whether you look at the broad overview, or examine the details, one thing is clear. When I started this blog in February of 2008, my neighborhood had already been overwhelmed by criminal activity for quite a long time. And shortly after I started blogging here, things completely exploded. My original plan was to just retell the stories from the past ten years in a calm, orderly and rational manner. But the chaos of this neighborhood is infectious.

For those who saw my comments slowly change from the non-belligerent “And there will also be what I feel is the occasional improper response to this problem by the FWPD” on my original post to eventually accusing Chief York and most of his Command Staff of being lying and cowardly fools, you must have thought you were witnessing a man losing his sanity. That very well may have been the case, and if you look at the numbers from the summer of 2008 you can see why.

But things have calmed down now. Judging by the activity log as well as my own personal experience, things are far quieter in my neighborhood than at any time in the past fourteen years. I’m not quite ready to stand down completely yet. But I’m slowly coming to my senses and trying to recalibrate my mind to deal with a situation which does not require me to look out my window 24/7 or to write down the name of every person standing on the corner or the name and number of every officer who passes by my house.

FWPD Activity Report for October 2009 (My Neighborhood)

FWPD Activity Report for September 2009 (My Neighborhood)

FWPD Activity Report for August 2009 (My Neighborhood)

FWPD Activity Report for July 2009 (My Neighborhood)

FWPD Activity Report for June 2009 (My Neighborhood)

Local History Quiz: Guess The Year

Mayor's Annual Report on the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana - 1900

Mayor's Annual Report on the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana - 1903


I recently came across an old report from the Fort Wayne Police Department. Below is some of the information contained in it. Any guesses what year this report was from?

TOTAL NUMBER OF MEN IN POLICE DEPARTMENT: 42
From Indiana …… 25
Illinois …… 1
Michigan …… 1
France …… 1
Ireland …… 2
Germany …… 4
Ohio …… 5
Massachusetts …… 0
Wisconsin …… 1
Maryland …… 1
Scotland …… 1

SALARIES OF OFFICERS PER ANNUM
Superintendent …… $1,320.00
Captain …… 1,200.00
Lieutenant …… 1,020.00
Sergeants …… 860.00
Detectives …… 900.00
Patrolman …… 780.00
Station Master …… 780.00
Patrol drivers …… 720.00
Station Clerks …… 600.00
* Humane Officer ……480.00
** Electrician …… 480.00
* Balance of salary paid by Humane Society.
** Balance of salary paid by Fire Force.

STOLEN PROPERTY
Total amount of lost or stolen goods reported …… $6,953.00
Amount recovered …… 4,823.00
Deficiency …… 2,130.00

TRAMPS LODGED IN STATION DURING YEAR
January …… 122
February …… 128
March …… 85
April …… 75
May …… 15
June …… 10
July …… 7
August …… 34
September …… 25
October …… 97
November …… 103
December …… 157
Total …… 858

LOST CHILDREN FOUND AND RETURNED TO PARENTS BY OFFICERS
January …… 1
February …… 0
March …… 6
April …… 9
May …… 9
June …… 14
July …… 3
August …… 5
September …… 9
October …… 7
November …… 7
December …… 3
Total …… 73

RECORD OF PATROL WAGON SERVICE
Number of miles traveled by patrol wagon …… 1965
Number of wagon runs made …… 1208
Number of prisoners brought to station …… 930
Number of prisoners taken to jail …… 590
Number of telephone calls for wagon …… 523
Number of box calls for wagon …… 277
Number of sick and injured taken home or to hospital …… 198
Number of wagon runs made to fire …… 56

RECORD OF POLICE CALL
Total number of box calls answered by clerks ............... 67,460
Total number of telephone calls answered by clerks ...... 34,216
Grand total calls answered by clerks ..................... 101,676

CRIMINALS ARRESTED & DISPOSITION OF CASES.
Convictions …… 71
Acquittals …… 5
On-suspended sentence …… 8
Dismissed …… 9
Reform school …… 2
To Juvenile Court …… 16
Insane Asylum …… 1
Case pending …… 2
Total …… 114

OPEN DOORS: Doors of stores and other business places found open and unsecured after business hours and secured by Officers on District.
January …… 14
February …… 8
March …… 9
April …… 16
May …… 10
June …… 12
July …… 3
August …… 6
September …… 4
October …… 15
November …… 11
December …… 17
Total …… 125

RECORD OF ABANDONED BICYCLES BROUGHT TO STATION BY OFFICERS AND LATER RETURNED TO THE OWNER
January ...... 0
February ...... 2
March ...... 1
April ...... 9
May ...... 11
June ...... 7
July ...... 5
August ...... 4
September ...... 5
October ...... 4
November ...... 6
December ...... 0
Total ...... 54

I Love The Internet!

The Internet - Just like going to the library, only cheaper!

For the past few months, I’ve been doing some internet research on the Fort Wayne Police Department. Basically, I began by searching the names of officers I know, or know of. As I check each name individually, whatever stories I find usually lead me to many other officers. I believe I now have the names of just about every current officer, as well as many former ones. Not being from Fort Wayne, I suppose that it should come as no surprise to find that I am discovering a lot of information that is new to me. I suppose some of this is old news to Fort Wayne/Allen County natives though.

For example, I did not know that the 911 consolidation idea has been going on for so long. In 1986, Fort Wayne Police Chief David Rieman proposed merging the city and county call centers. And earlier that same year, Allen County Sheriff Dan Figel actually called for a commission to study merging the city and county police departments entirely. Well, I guess these things take time, so it will probably be another twenty years or so before we get this accomplished.

I also found another interesting story that made me think back to when my home was fire-bombed by drug dealers in 2006. After FWPD Deputy Chief Nancy (Becher) Chamberlin laughed at me about this, refusing to allow me to deliver information about the attack to her department, and telling me I should quit causing trouble, I felt that my home and my property were in imminent danger. My situation became even more desperate after the Allen County Sheriff’s Department made it clear to me that they preferred to respect the jurisdictional boundaries of FWPD, which meant they did not intend to enforce the law in this part of their county.

After my complaint against her was summarily dismissed by the department’s office of non-professional standards (Internal Affairs,) I really felt my back was against the wall. So, in addition to sending my appeal of the dismissal to the Board of Public Safety, I also sent it to several other agencies as well. One of these was the Indiana State Police. I still have the letter that was sent as a reply. The person writing the letter complimented me for doing “all the right things” a person should do in my circumstances. He then went on to say that he knows Chief York and that he has confidence that FWPD can and will properly address the problems I was facing.

That letter was written by Paul Whitesell, superintendent of the Indiana State Police. I had always assumed that his knowledge of Chief York was only scant. It seems logical that the head of the state police would at least have some familiarity with the heads of the largest city police departments within his state. But after reading the article, it appears that there may be a much closer connection than I had assumed. Although the article does not say exactly what years Mr. Whitesell worked for FWPD, or in what capacity, a casual examination of both his and Chief York’s dossiers leads me to conclude that they probably did actually know each other pretty well.

So now I’m laughing, imaging what Mr. Whitesell was thinking when he read my letter. There’s a possibility that he knew exactly where my corner was, and that he knew I was not exaggerating about the problems here. He probably called Rusty up and shared a few laughs with him over the whole incident. Oh well, although the substance of his response was really not that much different than the others, at least he had the decency to write me a formal letter and to not laugh in my face about it.

And finally, the third article really amused me. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t picture Officer Russell York, out of uniform, and buying drugs on the streets. I always gave him just a small amount of consideration based upon the fact that someone as high up as him, and in an organization as complex as FWPD, probably can’t really know what is going on down on the ground. But the fact that he used to be an undercover narcotics officer changes all that. I’m sure things have changed a bit in the past couple of decades, but he probably knows enough from his past experiences to understand what I was dealing with here. And the lousy shit didn’t even have the decency to return my phone call or reply to my letter? - What a lousy bastard!

Well, that’s all for today. I’ll share more FWPD stories with you some other day, but for now, I have a lot of searching left to do.

Thank You Chief York!

Several days ago, a neighbor of mine told me her car had been stolen. She stated that she had filed a police report and was hoping they would not find the car so her insurance would pay her out. In the last two days, I have seen her drive past my house three times in her “stolen” car.

Now, there are several reasons why I find it to be likely that she lied to me about the car being stolen and about filing a report on it. On the other hand, there are several things that make me wonder if she actually did report it stolen. I think it is highly improbable that the car was stolen and recovered in just a few days, so this would mean that she filed a false report with the intent of collecting on a fraudulent insurance claim.

If my city had a functional police department, I would call them to report this information. It would only take a few minutes for them to identify her and find out if she had in fact filed a stolen vehicle report. If not, there really would be nothing lost for checking.

But my police department is extremely dysfunctional. If I did call, I would first probably have to endure the “Who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you bothering us?” routine before I actually got a chance to tell them what was on my mind. Then, they would send a uniformed officer to my house to ask me the same questions that the civilian operator had just asked me. I would offer to show this officer my security tapes documenting the dates and times that my neighbor drove past in her stolen car. He would decline this offer, but take my number so he can contact me later. I would tell him that my tapes have a short record-over period, and that I will not save anything unless I am instructed to do so by his department.

About a week later, another officer would call me back to tell me he heard that I wanted to report a stolen car. After explaining that what I was actually trying to report was the possibility that someone else had filed a false report of a stolen car, he would then tell me he will call me back later about this because he needs time to analyze this new information. I would remind him that my tapes of the incidents are very close to being recorded over. He will give no response to this.

Next (about a month later this time) another officer will knock on my door. He will explain that he is here to investigate my stolen car incident. After we straighten this out again, he will then chastise me for giving his department a contact number that is no longer in service (which is his excuse for having taken so long to get a hold of me.) When I ask what number he has, I will realize that somehow the idiots have pulled an old number of mine out of their system, and managed to replace it for the current number which I had recently just given to three different people within their department. He will get very upset at me when I inform him that my video tapes have long since recorded over the incident I reported on.

Finally, about a month later, a detective will call me. He will first ask if my car has been recovered yet. After I explain that my car was never stolen, he will then ask if I have received compensation from my insurance company for the stolen car. After I again explain that my car was never stolen, he will tell me that this type of crime is usually a low priority for the prosecutor’s office, and he really doesn’t want to put forth the effort to investigate something that will not be prosecuted. He will recommend that if I am able to get compensation from my insurance company for the stolen car that it would be best to just let it drop.

At this point, I will fake like I am putting him on hold to take another call. I will then come back and tell him that my insurance company has just called to tell me that they are cutting me a check for my stolen car. I will thank him for his time, apologize for not having saved the video that his department never asked me to save, and apologize for his department having switched my phone numbers (because, for some reason, he is really pissed at me over this) then hang up. I will then wonder why in the hell I even called in the first place.

And the next day I will read in the paper that Chief York is concerned about the increase in vehicle thefts. He will mention one particular case which sounds very similar to my neighbor’s “stolen” car. The Chief will be quoted in this article as saying that the reason his department can’t get this problem under control is because citizens refuse to cooperate with his department. He will then state that some people act this way because they don’t care, while others do so because they are scared. And just after admitting that there are groups of criminals who are strong enough to intimidate people and keep them from talking with the police, he will reiterate that Fort Wayne does not have a gang problem.

But I don’t have to go through this type of ordeal now, because I’ve already been through it several times in the past. I already know that whoever answers the phone will probably not have a clue about much of anything. And I know that either I will be quickly dismissed or several officers will ask me the same questions, yet still manage to lose or confuse the answers I give them. And ultimately, I know that however they may word it, their final message to me will be “Please don’t bother us. We’re cops, which means we really don’t want to hear anything at all from you fucking moron civilians anyway. Please just leave us alone and let us do our job - whatever the hell that might be.”

Anyway, I suppose the basic point of this post is to thank Chief York. After all, being an upstanding citizen who pays attention to his surroundings and reports suspicious behavior to the police takes a bit of time. And in neighborhoods like mine, it can be downright exhausting. But Chief York’s mismanagement of the police department lets me know that any such efforts on my part will probably be wasted. With this department, there really is no compelling reason to try and cooperate.

So thank you, Rusty. Thank you for telling me that it is okay for me to ignore felony crimes taking place around me. Thank you for telling me it is all right to not put forth the effort of being a good citizen. I get a lot more yard work done by not having to waste my time calling your department to report crimes that you really don’t want to investigate. Thank you Rusty!