7/6/97  Found a R-P 38 SPL shell case by the alley storm drain grate next to my garage.  Had heard a loud shot the previous evening but no 'report' associated with a hit.

7/7/97  Found the bent, hollow point slug that fit inside the shell casing just inside my rear alley gate.  Apparently, the 38 special pistol was fired straight up in the air by the person ?testing it before buying it?  or trying, once again, to ?scare me?  [ Discovered subsequent to his death, Buster had been sighted carrying a handgun by a couple neighbors.  Maybe, this was his attempt to let me know he had some 'power' to offset mine. ]

7/25/97 4:15pm Friday  The garage across the alley diagonal from mine, which was in the process of being rehabilitated from previous recycling cart arson damage, is now   by a nascent teen never seen around here before.  Eventually, Buster and the out-of-control nephew of the disciplining father mentioned above come out of the garage, too.
    [2001 update:  The garage was completely destroyed on 12/12/01.

VANDALISM:  The stranger was using the metal axel from a green garbage cart to strike at the loose, burned material on the overhead garage door and poke holes in the previously undamaged plywood underlayment.  The two inside were striking the overhead door from the inside with a small metal shopping cart and larger and shorter metal axel from a blue recycling cart.  A picture was taken of all three once the two inside the garage came out and were identified.  The shopping cart was also pushed up against the previously undamaged vinyl siding below that which was removed above it due to the recent arson fire damage.  That action wasn't witnessed.

7/25/97:  A police officer, who established instant, effective communication with the various children coming by, responded to my call.  I was called by an operator while inside the house and notified she was in the alley.  All three of the youths involved in the vandalism eventually came by while she was there - EVIDENCE THAT THESE KIDS KNOW THERE WILL BE NO CONSEQUENCES, BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT AFRAID OF BEING CAUGHT BY THE POLICE, BECAUSE THEY KNOW FROM PAST EXPERIENCE THAT THE POLICE WILL DO NOTHING!

After hearing her tell the south side youth that he should be 'doing this' in his own neighborhood, not this one, I began losing confidence in her.  Closer scrutiny of her behavior indicated that this was going to be another 'no response/no action' call.

So, after she drove off stating she'd at least visit the home of Buster, 140 feet away, to talk to his folks, and not seeing her squad car parked there when I went around to check the front, I called the police and asked to speak to the Duty Lieutenant.  The Duty Sergeant, came on, instead.  During a 30 minute plus or minus conversation, he assured me that action was going to be taken.  He'd look into it and get back to me.  HE NEVER DID!

My major frustration during this conversation was that the law according to the police indicates that unless the owner of the vandalized property complains, they can do nothing about it.  In other words, my livlihood can be destroyed by uncaring landlords who either don't care or can't be found to stop ongoing destruction of 'their' property - thereby making my rental units attractive only to tenants who don't mind living amongst rapidly deteriorating conditions with garbage in the yards, streets and alleys - usually drug dealers or users!  I, as a property owner adjacent to the property being destroyed will get no help from the law or the police regarding vandalism I can take pictures of or witness almost constantly.  It has to be MY PROPERTY being destroyed!  It's no wonder slumlords are the only ones thriving under these conditions!

6:50 ~ 8:25pm  The policewoman was back at the vandalized property with two of the three primary officers of the non-profit corporation having just rehabilitated the house and garage.  The Executive Director, indicated she wanted to press charges - a welcome and scarce attitude.  My hopes skyrocketed that finally someone was going to be able to get police to do something in this neighborhood.

7/26/97 11:00 pm Saturday  The van parked inside the fenced yard of the disciplining father was vandalized.  The owner indicates that he obtained witness testimony to the fact that his nephew living in his upper flat and Buster, both nascent teenagers, were the perpetrators.
VANDALISM:  At about this time, during one of my frequent daily trips to the alley, this time just before retiring for the night, I witnessed the three individuals in the unfenced rear yard next to the disciplining dad.  It looked to me as though they were trying to hide from view from whoever was in the yard next door where the Van was vandalized.  Seeing only the hide & seek activity and hearing no noise, I took no action.

7/26/97 11:59pm+- Saturday/Sunday  My upper flat tenants across the street were burglarized.  The tenant indicated that she thinks the children from the lower flat next door did it.  They took children videos and other 'child' things and had been in the house, apparently stealing what they could as they could previously, because of the her good natured naivete.  She now knows to be suspicious of new residents in our neighborhood, especially those moving in and out of the several problem houses on an almost quarterly basis.  The children were twice the age of hers and gave an outward appearance of decency and self-discipline but did walk in and out of her flat as if they owned it.  I witnessed it while rebuilding the kitchen sink unit in the flat last Wednesday and Thursday and thought one was an older cousin of her 7 year old step-son.
The burglars moved a garbage cart from near the alley gate to just under the upper rear porch to use as a platform from which to climb up thereto.  They first attempted to gain access through the double cat door in the kitchen door but couldn't reach the deadbolt to turn it.  Instead, they cut a square hole in the aluminum screen of the bedroom and crawled through the open window.  The tenant wasn't using the window pins installed to discourage exactly this type of burglary through that upper flat window but will, now.

I've seen the car borrower from the next block over sitting on the front porch next door talking with the children there as though they were cousins.  The stolen tapes from this burglary may be in his attic, having been obtained by or for him in conjunction with these burglarizing youth.  And, since the police who came to his house on Sunday never bothered to search for the pellet gun, they couldn't have found the stolen goods.  In fact, since one squad seems not to know what another is doing, they wouldn't even have known that there were stolen goods for which to look.  And, since juvenile records are sealed, even I don't know if he has ever been convicted of anything - let alone burlary or car theft - the two things I'm sure he's been involved in.  And, of course, police never talk with Block Captains to see if they could help during an ongoing situation, so Block Captains don't bother to keep track of same.  Hey, it's just a job!  It's not as though this were a neighborhood in which officers would actually want to live or care about.
7/26/97  Called the local police sub-station 'personal' number provided by the officer repsonding to the garage vandalism to fill her in on the trememdous amount of new information obtained so far.  Got an answering machine.  Left message.  NEITHER SHE NOR ANYONE ELSE EVER CALLED BACK!

7/27/97 2:30 pm Sunday  The Director of the non-profit group owning the vandalized garage was shot in the stomach with a high powered pellet rifle fired by one of the two teens involved also in the van vandalism the previous night.  The shot was fired from the attic of the car borrower.

EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE SHOOTING:  The Director had been informed by his Executive Director and Assistant that the administrative assistant to our Alderman was going to be in the neighborhood to speak with parents of the youth involved in the vandalism on Friday.  He had told me that, and I passed it on to them on Friday evening when they visited the property in response to a call from the police sub-station officer.  The Director was informed by them that I witnessed the youth vandalizing his garage, so he came by my house sometime after 12:30 pm to get what information I had before going to the local police station to make sure they were going to take action on the vandalism.

By the time I got done filling the Director in on this and the other, related incidents regarding his and other property in the neighborhood AND THE FACT THAT EVEN THOUGH THE PERPETRATORS WERE KNOWN, NOBODY, especially not the police, could seem to do anything about it, it was 2:00 pm.  So he drove his car around to his property on the next block, while I shut-down my computer (1:51 pm), secured my house and walked through the alley to meet him there.  His property is immediately north of the absentee owned rental 'nuisance' duplex directly across the alley from me.

Well, by 2:20, when the Alderman's assistant had not shown, we decided to walk back to my block see if he was already visiting Buster's mother, first.  While talking on the sidewalk in front of my house, Buster, aged 13, and the little out-of-control first grader came by.  After identifying Buster to the Director as one of the youths involved in the vandalism of his garage, I asked Buster to stop and informed him that the man standing there was the owner of the garage he had vandalized.  During the ensuing conversation, the Director informed Buster that someone else had told him Buster was the one who had set the recycling cart fire, too.  Both Buster and the out-of-control first grader then told us that the car borrower was 'pelleting' my garage.  (One pellet one found on the 31st.) [ Buster also said that the car borrower was the one setting the fires - indicating that both the car borrower and Buster, and probably even the little out-of-control first grader, were involved in the three dozen garbage cart fires over the past three years. ]

Hearing this, both the Director and I proceeded through my side yard and immediately noticed that the previously undamaged attic window vent (required when attics are insulated) had a large square opening in it.  Knowing that the car borrower and his older brother were either living in or using the attic as a clubhouse (just as my brother and I did back in the late 1950's in ours), I surmised that that's where the 'pelleting' was originating.

Not finding any obvious damage, I was in the process of egressing the alley gate to look at my garage surface when I heard a 'puff'.  Upon looking up I saw two dark shirted bellies and the long, presumed barrel of the pellet rifle moving away from the square opening.  Then, I heard The Director say he'd been shot.  Fortunately, it hit his outer clothing and a soft, absorbant part of his body, his stomach, and didn't penetrate.  (I subsequently found two pellet holes in my garage and one in the aluminum siding at the rear of my house.  This was my first experience with tiny, BB sized holes in material as hard as wood made from rifles that weren't this powerful at 100 feet when I was a kid.  There's another hole in a window of my screened-in front porch, discovered this past Spring, that may have been made from the same weapon.  The rifle belonged to the out-of-control nephew, who had been living wherever he could since getting kicked out of his house by his mother.  A 1988 home purchasing neighbor told me he'd seen him carrying the rifle around one day and thought it was a more powerful weapon.)

We immediately proceeded through the unfenced side yard across the alley and informed the car borrower's grandmother that he had just shot the Director with a pellet gun.  The usual denials, shouting, yelling and excuses ensued, with both the car borrower and the out-of-control nephew coming out of the house in the process.  After realizing the police were on their way, the car borrower and out-of-control nephew walked away toward the local commercial strip a block away with their older brothers.  They were obviously used to avoiding arrest by the police merely by leaving the scene.  [ Calling our local commercial strip a "commercial strip" is a joke.  Almost 90% of the store fronts are boarded-up and empty.  It seems that no one in local government thinks it's their responsibility to encourage commerical support for residents of each neighborhood in the city - especially those in the expanding Inner City where neighborhoods are resegregating from White to Black.  In other words, there isn't even the slighest attempt to promote or support integration, so re-segregation is the only recourse. ] 7/27/97  A couple hours after the shooting incident, the grandmother confronts me at the alley fence.  During our conversation regarding the shooting, attempting to intimidate me from cooperating with the police regarding her car borrowing, almost 14 year old grandson, she says that she'll tell everyone, I "(iF yoU see Kay) cats in the ass".  She's 59 - five years older than me!  That's the first time anything so outrageous was said to me by a supposedly friendly neighborhood adult.  The car borrower came out, too, and unintentionally confirmed that he was involved in the shooting.  (Getting information from these kids about everything happening in the neighborhood isn't rocket science!  Oftentimes in the past, while the police were here questioning adults, who hardly ever venture outside their homes, about some incident and getting nowhere, the kids were filling me in on all the details.  I usually passed along relevant information, so the officers could handle the situation before leaving the scene.)

Hers are the 4 grandchildren who adopted me ten years previously.  They're the ones who I've attempted to positively influence with as much positive attention as time allowed.  They're the ones who, to this day, were still lying to me or trying to hustle me whenever they thought they could get away with it.  This incident was the final realization that I didn't have enough time to counteract the constantly negative influence received within their own family.  (When I was a kid, there were dozens of opportunities every day to meet people like me who cared about children and felt it their responsibility to go out of their way to impact them positively.  Nowadays, kids are lucky to meet one such person a week.  It's little wonder our children, throughout the country, are evidencing the 'anti-social' behavior resulting from an absence of such positive daily attention throughout their childhoods.  Segregating children in their own transportation system apart from that which already existed was one of the greatest lost opportunities for such positive adult to child interaction we could have had.  The absence of local grocery stores, almost on every block, with caring owners selling candy to neighborhood kids is another.  Nowadays, the kids go to stores to get cigarettes for their parents.  Aside from selling cigarettes to pre-teens, many of these stores are also involved in illegal liquor and other sales - all witnessed by these children on a daily basis as they grow up.)

I told her that repeating an idiotic statement like that, usually reserved to children, just made her look like a child, too.  When I was a kid, "grease up the cat's a$$, here comes another two bit customer", was the often used phrase to insult another child or an adult safely out of earshot.  We would never have repeated anything like that to anyone older than us.  While children still may not say such things about an adult when that adult's within earshot, they apparently have no compunctions repeating it amongst adults within their 'dysfunctional' peer group.  That those adults not only don't discourage it but pass it along is one of the primary reasons why what little external positive influence these kids get isn't enough to offset the much more constantly negative influence received within their own and peer group families.  It's pretty obvious that peer group pressure amongst poverty stricken, criminally inclined families oftentimes involves a lot of misinformation, slander mongering and disrespect for everything outside their peer milieu.

7/28/97  Left messages at Aldermanic and SPCA offices to get the name of new owner of the car borrower's house to inform them of the vandalism occurring to their new property; ie., the new large hole in the attic insulation vent window.  They should also be aware that their tenants are firing at people and property with a high powered BB gun.  The police sub-station said the address wasn't in their area.  Got the names and telephone number of the prior owners from the computer search done by the Neighbors Watch office supervisor while my partner and I were out on patrol the following night.  The next day, they called with the new owners name and address but, his registration with Building Inspection, required upon purchase, DIDN'T LIST A TELEPHONE NUMBER!

7/29/97  Follow-up to pelleting.  The Director's workers told him they were pelleted by the kids on the upper front porch at the car borrower's house while rehabbing the property.  And, neighbors in the newer homes a block away apparently have called the police recently about their homes being pelleted from the same location.  (I guess when they escalate to more fire power, then the police might consider that serious enough to take action.  Or, maybe they're waiting for a dead body - apparently the preferred "law enforcement" activity.  Is catching a killer enforcement?  I thought that enforcing the law against murder was when the murder was prevented, not the other way around; but maybe I'm just stupid and don't understand this 'brilliant' strategy of waiting for the actual crime to be committed before taking action.  It'll be ''small'' comfort to me to know that the police were able to find and arrest my killer!)

7/30/97 10:45am  Called the local police station to tell them of all the new information and aprise them of the fact that the stolen goods from the burglary at my tenant's flat may be in the attic of the car borrower.  As soon as I mentioned the desk sergeant's name, the female operator told me he'd get back to me.  NO ONE HAS EVER CALLED BACK!

7/30/97  13 year old Buster, the 6 year old out-of-control first grader and an 8 year old were wrestling while trespassing on my front lawn around 8:00 pm - trampling the nice flowering bushes in the process.  After being told for the umpteenth time to get off my lawn and knowing that Buster had been involved in at least 2 other separate incidents of vandalism of my vegetation over the past few days and hearing him give me lip again, I shoved him off the lawn.

He immediately shouted to other family members (some of whom apparently just come by to transact business with numerous car drivers who come by when they're there), "Hey!  Did you see that?"  Then, he went back to the front of his house and started throwing rocks at me and my duplex - the front of his house always had numerous rocks laying about, apparently just for that purpose.  The key point to note is that Buster didn't respond immediately to me but to the half dozen young adults on his front porch - indicating that the whole purpose is to provoke me into an action which will then be the excuse for them to react with violence or, more likely, other cowardly, dark of the night arson or other 'payback' (vandalism) to my property.

Although one of these adults is known to have been involved in armed confrontations with other youth along a local commercial strip and another adult raped a 12 year old on the block, I've determined that this is not an openly violent, confrontational family.  They prefer to incite others to violence or perpetrate their acts of cowerdly vandalism in the dark when unseen.  I witnessed Buster's mother walk across my tenant's front lawn instead of using the sidewalk to get from her house to the former residents two houses south when she thought I wasn't around.  When I was outside, she used the sidewalk.

When Buster again started trespassing it to get from his side yard sidewalk to the public sidewalk, I installed some recycled, barrier fencing.  I can't afford a new fence.  Having just become aware of ordinance 79-5.5 regarding Unauthorized Removal of Contents of Waste Containers, it looks like I'm going to be out of the rehabilitation business, anyway, so I may as well sell my properties and get out of this neighborhood.  I can either fix my buildings or make trips back and forth to the various distant hardware and other supply stores NOT LOCATED IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD, but I can't do both.

I've long called the large green or yellow dumpsters placed around the various neighborhoods 'Treasure Boxes' for all the valuable NEW construction material, old tools and very old but sturdy material thrown away by people not realizing its value.  Having a constant supply of bits and pieces on hand make any fix-up job a lot easier and longer lasting for the higher quality of material used.  I'd suggest the ordinance be revised to allow 'registered' owner occupants or other recyclers access to those dumpsters.  After all, isn't recycling what were supposed to be doing, anyway?

Well, two more new White police officers came who'd never been in this neighborhood before.  Just before they came at dusk, just when it was dark enough to not be seen so easily, Buster and the out-of-control first grader came over and broke the top off the small tree I've been trying to grow next to my side yard gate for the past three years.  It takes a year for it to grow to it's present height of around 5 feet.  They did the same thing last year - in addition to stomping and flattening all the bushes in front of my house.  The wrestling may have been the 'innocent' method used to roll around into the bushes to flatten them.  Regardless of the fact that they're trespassing on my property, that excuse fools the police so that they get away with it their entire childhood.  Of course, with different officers coming into this neighborhood on EVERY SINGLE CALL, sometimes a half dozen in a day, even morons fool the police with ease.
The prior Monday, while going through the two alleys taking pictures of the garages burnt to the ground by Buster and/or the car borrower, the 1988 purchasing home owner told me that he just threatened Buster with physical violence the first time he began harrassing him (after he called the police, probably) and has had no problems with him since.  So, after this latest confrontation with Buster, when his mother Rita confronted me on the sidewalk and asked if I "hit" her son, I told her I "shoved" him off my lawn and, in a loud voice for everyone to hear, said, "and if I catch him on my property again, I'm going to beat the $hit out of him."  After noticing that both the out-of-control first grader's mom and her boyfriend were walking by on their side of the street, and knowing that this jerk had almost every vandalizing, pellet gun shooting and other disrespectful neighborhood kid in his house almost daily, I repeated it loud enough for them to hear.  He gave me lip about it - indicating that he's well aware of and may have a lot to do with the campaign of terror being waged against the decent Black and White residents of this neighborhood.  He knew that the 6 year old out-of-control first grader had been 'banned' from both of my duplexes because of his past disrespectful behavior.  That may be why the out-of-control first grader was used as the one to break-off the top of the tree.  He's only 6 years old and is so cute.  Who'd believe he's a 'bad' kid?!  It's good enough to fool the police every single time!  (Of course, they want to be fooled because, then, they don't have to do anything.)
Two of the comments made by the lead police officer that set me off and enhanced my enraged attitude were:  "He's only 13 years old."  and "Sounds like your pretty tired of this neighborhood."  I didn't give him a chance to provide the PRIME "police" solution to every neighborhood problem, especially those involving participants who're Black and White:  'why don't you move?'  He used "this" instead of "your" neighborhood and chose to focus attention on the victim, the neighborhood, rather those perpetrating the crimes or the inadequate police response.  In other words, he came to the scene with the mindset that this was foreign territory undeserving of law enforcement.

WHAT KIND OF TRAINING IS HAPPENING IN OUR POLICE DEPARTMENT?  Hasn't anyone told the police that laws are being changed all over the United States to recognize the fact that children as young as 11 years old are committing crimes formerly reserved to adults?  Don't the police know that the first thing a gang/group of drug dealers does to establish their control of a neighborhood is to intimidate everyone from calling the police?  Now apparently, some are merely trying to chase the non-drug buying renters away by harrassing their toddlers and other pre-schoolers so that eventually, the new tenants will buy $100, plus, worth of marijuana from them each and every month.  Don't the police care about neighborhood stability?  Don't the police care about preserving order?  Don't the police care about solving problems rather than just moving them around? You know, regardless of what leadership at the top states, this neighborhood has received absolutely NO RESPECT since about 1989.  Maybe there's some secret map down at police headquarters that shows the racial make-up of various neighborhoods and as soon as the mix of Black to White gets to 70% to 30%, law enforcement stops and excuses start.

7/31/97  Found one brass BB laying on the deck of my upper rear porch.  I've been rehabilitating that porch since the beginning of July.  Being the only one with a roof in this neighborhood, it's too expensive a process to hire out and I don't have all the proper equipment.  Next year, at age 55, I'll be eligible to use the woodshop equipment at the nearest Senior Center.  That should make rehabbing a lot easier.  In the meantime, I have to go slower, thinking of creative ways to use the 'recycled' materials and tools on hand.  • 38shellCasingFound  • 38pistolTesting?  • absenteeOwnersCare!  • atticVentDamaged  • barrierInstalled  • BusterShovedOffLawn  • commercialStripNOT!  • competentPolicing  • consequencesNOT!  • garageVandalized  • goodNaturedThiefs  • goodsStashedInAttic?  • he'sOnly13!  • hollowPointSlugFound  • ifYouSeeKay  • incompetentPolicing  • intimidationByGrandma  • kidsVandalizeBushes  • moreUncaringPolicing  • motherTrespassesTOO!  • moveOutWhyDon'tYou  • naiveteDoesn'tPay  • neighborBurglars  • nephewVandalizesVan  • peerGroupPressure
PELLET:  gunShooting  • foundOnPorch
     • holesInGarage  • workerVictims
POLICE:  consistencyNOT!  • don'tCare!  • FooledEasily
    • inaction  • trainingNOT!
 • powerViaPistol?  • rehabbingEasierWhen55  • sexWithCats!  • shootingViaAttic  • slumlordsThrive  • stillNoCallBacks!  • stomachShot  • tattletales  • telephoneNumberNOT!  • tenantsBurglarized  • thiefsOfAfeather  • treasureBoxes
VANDALISM:  ONE  • TWO  • THREE
 • walkAvoidsArrest  • What?MeWorry?!  • windowsPinsNOT!  • workersPelleted • hood

Website link/location/URL: http://www.KidsRiot.com/kids977.htm or http://www.Jamrent.com/ic/kids977.htm