PUBLIC COLLECTORS POLICE SCANNER. Day 75. Content warning for a little of everything. Today was the

PUBLIC COLLECTORS POLICE SCANNER. Day 75. Content warning for a little of everything. Today was the final day for this daily project. If you’ve been following my Tumblr page, there are 74 other posts that precede this one. I decided last week that 75 days of continuous listening would be a good time to stop. It has just been a very dark time to be doing this project and as it wore on, I increasingly felt like I was writing down the same awful things every day and the only thing that was improving was my ability to organize my notes in a spontaneous—but hopefully still readable—way. I don’t usually fill up the page in any particular order, but it seemed fitting that the first thing I heard was a call for a Walgreens. There is always something happening inside a Walgreens. As usual there were domestic batteries. There are almost always domestic batteries. I haven’t tallied up my pages of notes, but I’m sure at least 75% of them include a call about a domestic battery. If it’s not that, it’s a call about a mental disturbance. Remember when Rahm Emanuel shut down 50% of the city’s mental health clinics? I sure do after listening to the police scanner for the last 75 days. Despite everything I have heard, I still believe that a world without police is possible. There is so much that needs to change. A lot of that starts with us. There are so many things calling the police will never fix. Everyone will have something happen to them in their lives that could legally justify calling the police. We have to ask ourselves what we think that will accomplish. Even while I was working on this project something like that happened to me. A person rammed their car into our garage door, effectively destroying it. Do you think they left a note accepting responsibility? Of course they did not leave a note accepting responsibility.After noticing the garage door was destroyed, our next door neighbor came over in a huff to alert us. I told him, ‘I know, I know. Thank you so much.“ He assumed it was surely the people across the alley. He asked if I was going to file a police report. I said no. What would happen if I did? The police might come to their house and get curious about the number of people living there. Maybe they would wonder about that, and I suspect that not all of my neighbors are documented. What would the police do—inspect their cars for garage door paint, even though none of the paint chipped off our door from being bashed in? Look for a damaged bumper? Call in Forensics? It seemed absurd. There was nothing good that could come of it. We did not install security cameras to protect our garage door or the uninteresting things inside our garage. It was probably our neighbors across the alley, but when I asked a couple of them if they saw anything or heard anything, they said no. I am not sure they are being honest. I am sure that they probably could not easily afford to replace our garage door. I chose to accept this. We have a history with these neighbors that is fraught and complicated. We weren’t always on good terms with these neighbors, but we are now. I give them vegetables from our garden. They offer my wife and I food when they are cooking in their garage and having people over. I still say hi to them even after our garage door was destroyed. Maybe it wasn’t them. We’ll never know. Holding a grudge against a house of probably 20 people feels pointless. Even if someone living there was responsible, 20 people were not responsible. The garage door cost $900.00 to replace. It was not worth claiming on our insurance. Our deductible is higher than the cost of the door. I truly wish we did not have to spend $900.00 on a garage door. I wish the person that damaged the door left a note and offered to help. They did not. Even though we could have become one of those people calling 911 because of "Criminal damage to property” we chose not to. Why should we have? The truth is that we actually needed a new garage door. It’s probably at least 16 years old. It had already been serviced once in the last year and within a year, it likely would have needed to be serviced again—probably at the most inconvenient possible time with our cars trapped inside of it. So we bought a new garage door about a year early. I love our dependable new garage door. The old garage door was a dull darker color. The new garage door is white and has a brighter surface. Hopefully it is easier to see in a dark alley when you are possibly driving while intoxicated. Anyway, I’m finished listening to 911 dispatchers and the police every day. All of my pages of notes will be printed as a book early next year. Somehow, I will write about all of this and I’ll reprint my 75 pages, spelling mistakes and all. I’ll keep you posted. -- source link

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