The Beginnings of a Breakdown
I finally upgraded my phone this week! Not because I “wanted” to, but because I HAD to. Everybody's dropped a phone. I've dropped mine a gazillion times, but that's what they make those case things for, and they work amazingly well. There have been times I whoopsied in some truly awful places, including the toilet. Never a crack, nary a shatter, until THIS phone.
But I didn't just drop this phone…
The neighbors across the street and down two houses have been an issue for years. It started when they kept letting anywhere between 7 and 13 dogs run loose every goddamn day. That's when I figured out 98% of the people coming in and out of that house didn't actually live there; of the two women who do live there, neither own a dog. They don't own the house either, they're renting, and everyone else is “just visiting.” So the problematic people are less “neighbors” and would be more accurately coined “squatters.” Squatters who picked a yard to live in with no fence, and the concept of a leash isn't so much a matter of safety, as it is clearly an imposition of their freedumb.
I lost count years ago of how many dogs I've carried back to that house. Several times, their side door was just wide-the-fuck-open, and I'd put the dogs inside the house and shut the damn door *for* them. Not only did I never get a singular “Thanks”, they seemed rather annoyed by my presence in general. I was polite the first few times; I still have that “customer service” voice I can combine with the patience of my “teacher” one, and it's usually quite effective at communicating, even with children. I told the man who seemed to be the most responsible for the gray and white pit bull I was carrying back to him for the 6th time, “She's yours, right? I can tell she's a sweet dog, it's just that mine is super territorial when it comes to our yard and he's a good 100 pounds of muscle; it's a sitch every time she makes it to my yard and I just don't want anybody to get hurt.” No response. He just grabbed the dog, put her in the house and shut the door. Hmkay, that's fine; good chat. That'll be the last time I do that. And it was.
My voice has always carried fairly well, whether I intend for it to or not. Now that I'm living with my mother who's half deaf on a good day, I kinda stay in “outside voice” mode; I usually have to roll it back a good decibel when I run into people who still have functioning ear canals. If I WANT to be heard across the street and down 2 houses, they're gonna. No more need to walk down there; I can make my point from HERE, and have taken the opportunity to do so on more than one occasion. Most often, it was about them getting their dogs out of my yard, so I wouldn’t be responsible for cleaning up another crime scene.
Without getting into ALL the details of what's gone on between here and there - including the fact I’m down to one dog out of the three I moved here with - we'll just say shit escalated.
During the first week of July (2023), I had fallen asleep on the couch and mom came to wake me up. It was 2:12 in the morning, and I could tell she was panicked: “Something's going on outside, you might want to come check it out.” Oh, shit! If it's loud enough out there to wake Dixie up, we might actually be about to die. I ran to the front door.
There were more cops outside than I'd ever seen down here, and there were a LOT of them that one day I made a mistake all the way out loud at a wall of them a few months earlier. That incident was about the mountains of trash in their yard, and a fucking CRANE the city regularly has to use to haul it all off. There's not supposed to be this much action at the ass-end of a dead-end street, but here we are again. What. The Actual. Fuck.
I took a seat on the porch to quietly observe. “We got front row seats for the show tonight, y'all!” There were 3 cop cars slightly to the left of me, and probably 4 more up the rest of the block in the other direction. Mom wandered out to join me with Cheeto on his leash and sat down like we were at the goddamn movies, just missing her bucket of popcorn. Problem is, I haven't been able to watch a movie with her since the 80’s without her talking over it, and we don't have a pause button for this shit, mom - it's LIVE.
Soon, I could hear the muffled barks of a Belgian Malinois getting closer; he was in the back of a white, unmarked Suburban and they were pulling up across from us. “Mom, take Cheeto and get back in the house… they're about to bring that dog out and the last thing we need right now is my fuzzy little Princess going ape-shit thinking he's a tough guy.” It was easier to blame the dog than it would have been to keep her from talking over the movie while I was in investigative mode. She saluted me, tossed in an “Aye, aye, Captain!” and off she went.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm near the end of a dead-end street. I used to call it a cul-de-sac, because we're right at the edge of the turn-around part, until one day I realized cul-de-sacs exist in neighborhoods that you don’t have to drive past two junk yards and a meth lab to get to. They have landscaping and shit, and none of their cars are up on blocks or have duct tape on the windows. I was ashamed of that for a little while, then guessed there's gotta be more people than I’d previously calculated who live in Little Rock and have to drive past two junk yards and a meth lab to get a LOT of places here, whether they're in our tax bracket or not. It’s a thing, y'all. Anyway, the only house dead-end-er-er than ours is Smitty's place; he's at the END end. And there he was, in his driveway, shirtless and squinting with multiple flashlights in his face, dealing with somewhere between 8-10 cops. Most of them were just wandering around with their dicks in their hands, looking at the dirt. Some of them might have been checking Facebook. I listened for a minute, then turned the other direction, up the block; more cars were pulling up.
Those guys are in different hats. They stepped out of different looking cars. Those are State Troopers. This is seriouser shit than normal. And now there's a helicopter with a spotlight. I'm so glad I'm awake for this! Pan back to the dog.
The chunkiest cop out of 30 I saw that night was handling the K-9 unit. I watched him waddle from Smitty's driveway, up towards the edge of the woods, then back over towards Mz. Wanda's yard, directly across the street from us. They kept on toodily-boopin past the Pastor's house, then between them to the back of the trap house. The K-9 goes into business mode; two or three cops start yelling, “Get on the ground, NOW!” I probably shouldn't still be outside with this going on, but it sounds like it's about to get to the good part!
I hear a staticky radio squawk for back-up behind #9. I watch a dozen officers continue to bumble in the street, looking around confused as fuck - like they just got the news some shit was going down. Nobody was watching the goddamn dog but ME. Nobody else sees the spotlight from the helicopter? I hear a rookie squeak out, “Where's number 9?” For fuck's sake, you're standing right in front of it. Granted, it's dark and the street numbers don't make sense anywhere in this god-forsaken town, and these boys clearly ain't from ‘round this neck of the woods, so maybe they’d appreciate some help. For the first time that night, I activated my big girl outside voice: “We’re 13, there's 10, that one's 9!” A flashlight appears as an officer confirms the number on the pastor's house; he says, “Thanks!” I bark, “Welcome!” and go back to shutting my big mouth, at least temporarily. Until the pastor came out to thank the po-lice, I'm assuming, for not shooting him or his wife; I went ahead and hollered, “Mornin’, neighbor!” on his way back inside with a wave as casual as any other day because THIS IS JUST HOW WE ALL LIVE NOW. I let go a “Hey, girl!” when I saw Mz. Wanda peekin around her curtains so she'd know I'd been out taking notes and, now that I think about it, I did say “Mornin’” to one more officer as they walked in front of the house because they were cute but aside from that, I was quiet as a church mouse, hand to gawd, y'all.
Soooo, *checks notes* Here's What Ha’ Happened:
The State Troopers got a call somewhere outside the jurisdiction of local police to an abandoned house where the tweaker/squatter/garbage-humans had broken in. A high-speed chase ensued - hilarity did not. Either dude's plan was shit, or he didn't have one at all; I'm leaning towards the latter. He was obviously trying to make it back to “home base” when he drove right the fuck past it. The driveway is so full of trash they can't use it, and there are usually 4 or 5 other non-running vehicles parked blocking the front of the house so he just kept driving until there wasn't road anymore, which wasn't far at all. Dude was so high, he turned into Doc Brown; “Where we're going, we don't need roads!” Well, yeah, but the car you’re driving like you stole sure as shit still does.
Dude was off-roading just past where Smitty's driveway stops. He kept driving towards the trees trying to find an exit route until one of Smitty's trailers got in the way and BLAMMO! There wasn't enough duct tape in the world to keep that car running after that, so he decided to give running a try himself. It was only 3 houses away from where he was try’na get. How the hell did he NOT make it? These people super suck at criming, y’all. He didn't even go inside the house, he was just hanging out in the backyard waiting for the cops to show up. Even then, I don't think they would have thought to look around the corner had it not been for the dog dragging over Officer McDunkin’.
The guy they wound up cuffing and putting into the back of a squad car wasn't a resident of this block, but he was definitely a regular. I see him over there every day, working on cars that will never run. He was out of jail within 3 days and back to his regular bullshit.
I know they put the hoods up on their non-running cars they pretend to work on to signal to people up the street that there's people outside who might be witnesses to their criming. Make no mistake, it in no way STOPS them from criming in broad daylight, but at least they have a solid signal situation. Another one of their methods when they’re waiting for someone to do a pick-up and/or delivery, is to spray a water hose on the driveway until they see someone coming, then they'll turn around and spray it towards the back of the house; super cunning, and in no way suspicious at all. They're always “cleaning” something, but nothing’s ever clean? I've seen them run that hose for 45 minutes, all the way up to, like 5 straight hours. “Who the hell is crazy enough to watch someone water their driveway for 5 hours,” asked nobody. Me, that's who. It was 115 degrees outside that day but I had time on my hands, the will to watch them squirm, and an even deeper desire to watch one of them crack, so I made sure I stayed hydrated and grabbed some sunscreen. After about 3 hours, the girl they had on hose duty just started crying as she screamed at the people behind the house, “She won't leeeeeeave!!!” I laughed so hard, I peed a little bit. It was 100% worth turning my ankles into bacon bits sitting on the porch all afternoon. I won! I still don't know what the prize was, but that's not the point. I set out to achieve a goal, and I got the damn thing done.
If you're thinking to yourself, “She's got a pretty fucked up gratification system,” you are indeed correct. I don't know where the wiring got crossed and I don't know how to fix it. We're obviously not gonna get to the story of how my phone got broken today, but I feel like this is a fairly solid set-up for later. This story is just about the beginning… it's gonna get worse. You might as well grab a helmet and a bag of chips.
This was the night I realized how grossly incompetent the majority of the people in charge around here seem to be, and I lost what little faith I had left in “the system.” We'd ALL been calling the cops on that house, and nothing ever happens. Some of us were hopeful that the Staties being involved would make a difference this time, but it didn’t. They all keep telling us they don't have enough evidence for a warrant, so there's nothing they can do.
But what if I got the evidence FOR them?
Seemed like a good enough idea at the time.
Spoiler alert: It Wasn't.
Because then the motherfuckers hit me with a van.
[To be continued… ]