The black helicopters finally came...
...and hovered over my house the other morning. It was further complicated by the strong presence of men wearing fatigues and carrying very long guns (automatic? simple shotguns? too quick to tell) speeding through the neighborhood, hanging off the sides of SUVs, and being notified that we were under lockdown. Oh, what a morning!
I should start at the beginning.
I was in bed, and the persistent sound of helicopters buzzing around overhead woke me up. This being rather strange behavior for this neighborhood, I hopped up and looked out the back sliding glass doors, only to see a huge black and white chopper over the house, simply hovering there. He was so close I could read "POLICE" along the top.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?
It buzzed off a block or so away, and then came back to hover. By this time the kids were up, too. We had plans to meet with some friends to go to the kid's museum at 10 a.m., but this was an interesting little wrinkle. Were they going to try to bust me for drugs or something? (Yeah, good luck. If there were ever two people less likely to yield anything in a drug bust, it's us!) I made sure all the doors were locked, pointed the 'copter out to the kids (kinda hard to miss, you know?) and told them it was a police helicopter.
"Why is it over our house?" asks the astute seven year-old.
"I have no idea. Kinda wondering that myself. Just stay inside," I said, and went back to the bedroom to let Doug know what was happening and to get dressed. He looked at me kind of blearily and said, "Sweet," and collapsed back onto the pillows. I told him if I was going to get arrested, I had probably better get dressed. He mumbled something into the covers about Gitmo.
I came back out and still, there's the chopper. "Nobody will believe this," I thought, and I grabbed my iPhone, went out on the deck and started taking photos of this thing. I went back in and turned on the radio. Nothing unusual being broadcast. I turned it back off. Police scanner? Don't have one. Surely that's on the net by now? I flipped open the laptop and had just found a page claiming to stream the local scanner frequencies when suddenly there was a pounding on my front door.
I have never wished so fervently that my door had a peephole before now. The kids look at me with large eyes.
I set the laptop aside and headed for the door.
"Kelly, open up, it's me!" Ah, my neighbor! Good!
I swung open the door, and there she stood, in a far greater state of panic than I. "Can I come in, I just don't want to be by myself at home right now! There are cops running down the street with guns drawn...they went that way...did you see it? These are huge, they look like machine guns! There were cop cars going that way, and FOX 2 News was following them!"
This had the absolute opposite effect on me than it had on her. My blood pressure went down about 20 points, and I thought:
(A) Oh, good, they don't want ME if they're busy passing up my house with drawn guns.
(B) Lots of cop cars, lots of guns, and some helicopters. Man, somebody fucked up. I'm putting my money on a hostage situation, probably some guy holed up in his house with an ex-girlfriend/wife/whatever.
(C) Well, son of a....let's turn on Fox 2 News!
Turns out they were looking for some guy who had apparently shot a 12 year-old little boy the night before closer to the East St Louis area. I guess he was angry about a domestic situation, so he drove over to his girlfriend's house and sprayed the place with bullets, hoping to hit the boyfriend inside. Instead, he struck the girlfriend's 12 year-old son who was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework.
So that's not good enough, and we have to to bring in the commandos hanging off SUVs like it's some kind of militia-run African nation-state:
We put the subdivision on lockdown and post checkpoints throughout the area...traffic is hideously snarled...
...while police rifle through everyone's car, truck or SUV.
In the meantime we have lots of calls from neighbors coming in on cell phones; people who won't come home because they're scared of this guy, neighbors who have fled with half-naked children because this fugitive might be in the area. In the meantime, we have the running commentary on TV and the live helicopter shots. The kids were sitting there watching this on TV and listening to the helicopters outside the doors. (Ever driven into our complex? You go between two retention ponds with fountains...you can see them on this video.)
The neighbor at the end of the block calls and says the cops are using their poolhouse as a hideout to look for this guy as he might be coming down the greenbelt.
Finally they catch up with him...about a mile away in a shed or in someone's backyard...I'm amazed by how many officers they put on this case.
I should start at the beginning.
I was in bed, and the persistent sound of helicopters buzzing around overhead woke me up. This being rather strange behavior for this neighborhood, I hopped up and looked out the back sliding glass doors, only to see a huge black and white chopper over the house, simply hovering there. He was so close I could read "POLICE" along the top.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?
It buzzed off a block or so away, and then came back to hover. By this time the kids were up, too. We had plans to meet with some friends to go to the kid's museum at 10 a.m., but this was an interesting little wrinkle. Were they going to try to bust me for drugs or something? (Yeah, good luck. If there were ever two people less likely to yield anything in a drug bust, it's us!) I made sure all the doors were locked, pointed the 'copter out to the kids (kinda hard to miss, you know?) and told them it was a police helicopter.
"Why is it over our house?" asks the astute seven year-old.
"I have no idea. Kinda wondering that myself. Just stay inside," I said, and went back to the bedroom to let Doug know what was happening and to get dressed. He looked at me kind of blearily and said, "Sweet," and collapsed back onto the pillows. I told him if I was going to get arrested, I had probably better get dressed. He mumbled something into the covers about Gitmo.
I came back out and still, there's the chopper. "Nobody will believe this," I thought, and I grabbed my iPhone, went out on the deck and started taking photos of this thing. I went back in and turned on the radio. Nothing unusual being broadcast. I turned it back off. Police scanner? Don't have one. Surely that's on the net by now? I flipped open the laptop and had just found a page claiming to stream the local scanner frequencies when suddenly there was a pounding on my front door.
I have never wished so fervently that my door had a peephole before now. The kids look at me with large eyes.
I set the laptop aside and headed for the door.
"Kelly, open up, it's me!" Ah, my neighbor! Good!
I swung open the door, and there she stood, in a far greater state of panic than I. "Can I come in, I just don't want to be by myself at home right now! There are cops running down the street with guns drawn...they went that way...did you see it? These are huge, they look like machine guns! There were cop cars going that way, and FOX 2 News was following them!"
This had the absolute opposite effect on me than it had on her. My blood pressure went down about 20 points, and I thought:
(A) Oh, good, they don't want ME if they're busy passing up my house with drawn guns.
(B) Lots of cop cars, lots of guns, and some helicopters. Man, somebody fucked up. I'm putting my money on a hostage situation, probably some guy holed up in his house with an ex-girlfriend/wife/whatever.
(C) Well, son of a....let's turn on Fox 2 News!
Turns out they were looking for some guy who had apparently shot a 12 year-old little boy the night before closer to the East St Louis area. I guess he was angry about a domestic situation, so he drove over to his girlfriend's house and sprayed the place with bullets, hoping to hit the boyfriend inside. Instead, he struck the girlfriend's 12 year-old son who was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework.
So the guy drives off and I guess wrecks his car nearby and takes off on foot, and now there's this giant manhunt for him. Schools in the area are under lockdown, police swarm down into our neighborhood, and put US under lockdown, too. To wit:
So that's not good enough, and we have to to bring in the commandos hanging off SUVs like it's some kind of militia-run African nation-state:
We put the subdivision on lockdown and post checkpoints throughout the area...traffic is hideously snarled...
...while police rifle through everyone's car, truck or SUV.
In the meantime we have lots of calls from neighbors coming in on cell phones; people who won't come home because they're scared of this guy, neighbors who have fled with half-naked children because this fugitive might be in the area. In the meantime, we have the running commentary on TV and the live helicopter shots. The kids were sitting there watching this on TV and listening to the helicopters outside the doors. (Ever driven into our complex? You go between two retention ponds with fountains...you can see them on this video.)
The neighbor at the end of the block calls and says the cops are using their poolhouse as a hideout to look for this guy as he might be coming down the greenbelt.
Finally they catch up with him...about a mile away in a shed or in someone's backyard...I'm amazed by how many officers they put on this case.
Once the helicopters moved off a bit, the neighbor felt better and headed home; I told Doug I was leaving, and he opted to work from home in order to keep an eye on the house. So by the time I left, the checkpoints were gone (at least in the direction I went) and life was a bit more normal.
See what you missed?
posted by Kelly at
11:52 PM
3 Comments:
Aha hahahahahaha! I laugh because, yeah. no. We get cop cars- no shock troops, even for a multiple homicide. Although it is fun times seeing your block has been... blocked off. <-that's sarcasm. It's not fun.
Yay for us living in the not-quite-ghetto!
But seriously - glad to hear it went okay and that you are all safe. Hugs!
Interesting that YOU don't hardly get "boo" for multiple killings, yet we're practically under martial law for some moron wrecking his car and running.
Wanna guess the defendant's ethnicity? Do you suppose we'd have had said "shock troops" had he been of a ... um ... different heritage?
Or do you suppose it just gets them bigger grants from the Department of Homeland Stupidity to put quiet neighborhoods into military training exercises?
I blame living in the former "frontier" versus living in the old "Wild West". *snort*
oh. Palin was in town yesterday. Gag. My friend Paul suggested we go and chant "kill"..."moose" at her. In reference to the people who are shouting 'kill Obama' and stuff. He almost had our boss convinced we were leaving early to do this. I told him that if I was in the same room as her, I'd probably claw her eyes out. She's an embarrassment to the idea of a woman in politics. < /rant> :)
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home