TPD and "The Invisible People"

Recently, we were sitting around the dinner table with a group of friends and I heard an absolutely amazing story.  Last winter, in the middle of the night, our friends heard loud yelling and screaming coming from their back yard.  When they looked out, they saw a Mexican man, obviously on serious drugs, waist deep in their pool.  The problem was it was the middle of winter and he had fallen through the pool cover. They called 911, and since they live in SOUTH TULSA, they got a fairly quick response.  The man was apparently high on bath salts or one of the other street drugs that increase body heat to the point that the user thinks they are on fire and will do just about anything to put it out. 

The next day, they noticed a car load of Mexicans in a car in front of their house, all pointing at our friends backyard and talking away in Spanish.  The street is a cul de sac and my friends knew all of their neighbors so those folks really had no business there.  They became concerned after a while and called the police.  In the course of reporting their situation, they mentioned the call to their house the night before.  Curiously the desk sergeant on the phone couldn't find any trace of the incident.  It was obvious that the officers responding hadn't bothered to report the incident.

After hearing my friend's story, I was reminded of another conversation that I had a few months back with a former city official.  He told me that Tulsa had become a defacto "sanctuary city" for illegals and that in most cases of minor crime, they were never arrested, simply detained and released.  In cases of impaired driving or driving without insurance, the car was simply parked near the scene and the keys taken.  Never mind the fact the owner could be back in a few minutes with spare keys and drive away as soon as the police did.  He also told me that huge numbers of men, probably illegals, would gather in some city parks and drink, cook and party to the wee hours without TPD enforcing noise, public drunkeness or other misdemeanor charges.

On the one hand, I can see TPD's point.  Arresting an illegal on minor charges is an exercise in futility.  With no ID at all or a fake ID, as soon as Juan Gonzales friends make his bail he will be gone to another city, or if the charges are serious enough, back to Mexico, where he will just melt into the crowd.  Further, serious attempts at doing something about the situation would prove politically embarrassing and might even bring the Justice Department down on TPD's head.  The lesson of the now infamous feud between Eric Holder and Sheriff Joe Arpaio has not been lost on Police Chiefs around the nation.  If you try to deal with the illegal alien problem in your city, the Feds will punish you.  And, if you just honestly report the crime that is occurring, you risk the Feds suing your city for arresting too many minorities and not enough "majorities" regardless of the fact of who is actually committing the crimes.

So, the net effect is that we have a growing population in Tulsa who are virtually invisible to the city government and the police.  They are not required to get food handling licenses, etc. for their pushcarts and food wagons.  They are not required to have insurance for their vehicles.  And, when the police do respond to anything less than a major felony regarding them, nothing much will probably happen.  Other minority groups have noticed this and are now complaining that too many of THEIR people are being arrested and not enough people with lighter skin.  They apparently want to be "invisible" too when they break the law.  If the trend continues, we may soon see only "majority"  (who are now becoming minorities in whole parts of the city and country) offenses prosecuted.  So much for equal justice before the law.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Report No Evil - And Improve Your Peformance Rating

Nearly three years ago now, my wife and I were nearly killed by a hit and run driver on Admiral Boulevard.  I evaded the head on collision, did a 180 turn across Admiral, chased the highly impaired driver down and pulled my car in front of his pickup truck so he could not simply drive away.  We then called 911 and waited over an hour for a police officer to respond.  At one point, we watched as a TPD unit pulled in to a nearby restaurant for lunch in clear sight of what was going on.  The officer said that he could not respond  since he was "off duty" but driving his cruiser in uniform.  This week, my dear friend had his work van full of inventory stolen. We also waited over an hour and no TPD unit responded.  We watched TPD and Tulsa County Sheriff's units drive past as we waited.  We wondered where they were going and what could have been so important that they could not respond to a grand theft auto report.

Last night, it occurred to me that it is not in the police department's best interests to respond to crime if they don't have to.  They have already devalued the definition of crimes they will respond to to the point that the odds of getting an officer to respond to normal neighborhood crime are almost nil.  And now, it appears that even grand theft auto has been included in this "officer does not respond" list.

So, what is the effect if an officer does not respond?  For the police department it is all good.  Crimes that are not reported do not have to be investigated. And, they do not have to be included in the crime statistics for the city.  So, by simply defining crimes the department will respond to upward, the department has less work to do and looks better on paper.

But there is a downside.  Citizens cannot live in a society without order.  If the police department will not respond, they will respond themselves as my friend did .... by driving around a North Tulsa neighborhood doing the police department's job.  And that is very dangerous, not for the police department or the criminals but for the victim who could become another George Zimmerman for simply trying to make order out the chaos of situations the police department won't respond to.

If You Live In Tulsa Don't Bother Calling 911 - Part Two

My friend who had his business van stolen yesterday got it back today.  You would think that once he got his police report filed
that the tag number and description would have been broadcast, that Tulsa PD and Sheriff's units would have been instructed to look for it, that in their diligent patrols of our streets it would have been spotted and my friend would have received a friendly call from Officer Friendly to come pick up his stolen vehicle.  NOT IN TULSA OKLAHOMA.

This morning, my friend and his grandson got in their beat up old car and started searching the streets near where the theft occurred.  (Wouldn't you think that is something our highly paid police officers would have been assigned to cover?)  At any rate, within an hour or so they found the stolen van parked in plain sight in the parking lot of just about the only grocery store on the north side.  The keys were in it, his fruit, tools and personal possessions were still there.  Only some minor electronics had been stolen.  So, in a way, my friend was lucky.  He got his beat up old van and load of fruit back.  But, was he really lucky.  I think not.

I think that when a grand theft auto is reported that any citizen has the right to speak to a police officer within a few minutes of making the 911 call.  That did not happen.  I think that when an auto theft occurs, a citizen should not be required to get himself to a police station somehow and then beg police officers in the parking lot to take a report.  I think that when an auto theft report is taken that the citizen has the right to expect the police to make at least a cursory search for the vehicle.  And, I think that if a stolen vehicle is parked overnight in a public parking lot in full view of dozens if not a hundred passing TPD and Sheriff's units, at least one could have had the common decency to investigate.  That's what I think.

And, I think that my friend is awfully lucky that the vehicle was abandoned.  What if he had drove up on it and the thieves had been in it or nearby?  Would my friend have become the next George Zimmerman for doing the police department's job? 

It seems to me that Tulsa's city government, especially the police department, has abdicated its duty.  I no longer bother to tell clients to call the police when they are the victims of theft, embezzlement or even blackmail.  And, I tell them not to bother with the DA's office either.  All of those people that we pay to protect us are too busy for the day to day crime that costs us a fortune in the aggregate and even makes our lives a living hell at times. This situation has to change because anarchy is already taking hold.

If You Live In Tulsa Don't Bother Calling 911 - The Police Aren't Coming

Increasingly, the actual probability of a TPD officer responding to your crime report is getting miniscule.  Common theft reports are now apparently not responded to at all and the victims are advised to either file a report online or go to the nearest police station.  In either case, in a few weeks you will get a letter from TPD telling you that the investigation is closed and you should simply suck it up.  That's the cost of living in Tulsa.

But, today's experience was new low for me.  Around 4:00 PM, I got a call from an old friend and occasional client.  He is not a wealthy man.  He makes his living selling fruit both wholesale and retail. At any given time, his whole business is contained in the big van that he works out of.  Nearly in tears, my friend told me that his van had been stolen while he stepped inside a business to try to sell some fruit.  I asked him where he was and he said Pine and Utica.  I told him to call 911, sit tight and I would be there in ten minutes.

I got there in about ten minutes.  My friend had called TPD several minutes before he called me.  We sat in my car and waited.  My friend told me that several police cars had already passed and that he had waved at them but they didn't stop.  We continued sitting in my car and waiting.  It was not a comfortable wait.  My car looked really out of place in that part of the 'hood and we were attracting attention that made both of us  uncomfortable despite the deeply tinted windows.  A couple of hookers and local "street businessmen" passed close by to get a better look inside even though we were parked in the middle of a gravel parking lot.  But, we continued to wait.

After about half an hour, I called TPD and asked when we could expect an officer.  The dispatcher said that he could not tell us when TPD would get around to honoring us with their presence.  I told the dispatcher something to the effect that we weren't sitting in the safest place in the world.  He said that he just couldn't help.  Several TPD cars and a Sheriff's unit passed by but didn't stop.  After we had waited over an hour, my friend just gave in and said "take me home Bill.  This is enough."

I can't describe to you the look on my friends face.  Every nickle he had was tied up in that van, the load of fruit in it and the expensive tank of gas he had just bought.  He was also headed out for the week and had personal possessions in the van.  He even lost his new glasses.  My friend had just lost just about everything he had and the Tulsa Police Department couldn't even be bothered to respond, take a report and put the description of the stolen vehicle on the air so that the law enforcement community could be looking for it.

A couple of hours later, I got a call from my friend.  He had driven from his home to the nearest police station only to find that they had already closed for the day.  He flagged an officer down in the parking lot who could not take his report.  But at least that officer did contact someone who could and over two hours after the theft and my friend's DRIVING TO THE POLICE STATION AND BEGGING AN OFFICER IN THE PARKING LOT TO TAKE HIS CRIME REPORT, it was finally filed.

TPD's response to minor crime started lapsing years ago.  When it did, we began losing neighborhoods to  hoodlums who had a more or less free hand there.  As the years passed, the severity of the crime TPD no longer bothered with increased.  Now, apparently TPD is too busy to respond to major crimes like grand theft auto.  It is past time for TPD 's leadership to change and along with it the department's whole attitude toward the city they serve.  And, in case you think this is an isolated incident, read this blog entry from 2010 about TPD taking over an hour to respond to a hit and run accident my wife and I were involved in where I chased the perp down and pulled my car in front of his vehicle to keep him from driving away.

Confidence in a police department is built a call at a time.  At this moment, I have no confidence that TPD would respond to my 911 call if my home was being broken into.  They have a long way to go to earn back my trust and for that matter the trust of good people of North Tulsa.  The bad people of North Tulsa already trust them .... NOT TO SHOW UP.