I returned from my trip earlier in the week to find this little love note up the street from my house. I drove by it and it didn’t really register until I pulled in to my driveway.
“Wait a minute, ” I thought. I backed of of the driveway to take a second look. This was right across the street from my neighbor’s driveway. I asked her when this happened and she replied on Monday.
The city came out the next day to cover it up. They must have used the wrong kind of paint because it washed away in the rains and the picture shows the result. She reported this to the police, but, no one came out to talk to her. Just a report over the phone.
This is a fairly small bedroom community in the metro Atlanta area, so access to city officials is easy. I called the city manager yesterday and told him what had happened. He replied that my call was the first time he had heard about this. I was assured that he would have a crew out as soon as possible.
A phone call to the City Police was not very informative. I asked several questions if this was isolated, when it was reported and so on. There had been two reports made. “Have this been looked into further?” I asked. “I don’t think so, no indication,” I was told. “Probably just some kids vandalizing.”
I called the local paper and talked to the crime reporter if he knew of any other incidences. “I didn’t even know about this one!” he said. The reporter came out to our street and we had a conversation.
“I hate to say this, but, if this had happened in the more tony part of town, it would have been taken more seriously. There would have been police out here and the city manager would have been made aware of it,” he told me.
I know. It is a distressed neighborhood. Quite a few abandoned and foreclosed homes are on the street.
A few folks have said to me it was probably kids. Very high possibility, as the street is a good place to skateboard. (Skateboarding is not a crime.) Even if it was some kids, that doesn’t change the severity or seriousness of this. Some experts say that this can be a precursor to violence in the future.
Living in the metro Atlanta area, I have seen graffiti of all sorts through the years. Skin Heads scrawl all kinds of hateful messages and I just cringe.
But, if it was kids or not, I was just bothered by the cavalier attitude by the City Police.
Yeah well, the parents of those “just kids” may need to check out their kiddies before they get into “Zimmerman-type” trouble down the road; the mindset that spurs that graffitti is troubling, to say the least.
The cops are jaded. Paint on the street doesn’t register with them as much as a dead body in the street. Consider it fortunate that it wasn’t gang grafitti. That would be a problem. Do many people know your political affiliation? You are in the South. Attend the next City Council meeting and bring your photos. That will draw some attention to a possible future problem. But don’t piss off the cops. They are the people in blue carrying guns.
In Dekalb County I learned that police don’t report or address crimes against property. That way the realtors can tell people that no crime has been reported. Makes it easier to sell houses for five times their actual value.
If all they did was ignore you, consider yourself lucky. One of them backed into my car with a squad car and then wrote me a ticket for it.
Don’t call the police. Work with your neighbors to protect each other.
The police may have ignored me, but, they didn’t ignore the City Manager (whose has a direct phone line that he picks up) and the Councilman from my Ward.
I don’t hide my political affiliation. It’s plastered on my car. People just think I am a quaint old hippie lady around here. The neighborhood is pretty diverse. There are many “crunchy” conservatives that look like hippies around here, too.