Oct 2023. Blues Vol 39 No. 10

WORDS BY LT. DAVID

WORDS BY LT. DAVID WILLIAMS First 12 hours of ‘defunded’ police. On September 4, 2020, our city council voted to defund the police department I just retired from. Effective October 1, 2020, the start of the city’s fiscal year, the police department and its officers was replaced by what the city called ‘a non-violent social alternative to law enforcement.’ What you’re about to read is what happened in just ONE PA- TROL DISTRICT in the first 12 hours without a police force. October 1, 2020 00:01 am – Just after midnight, I stepped outside to see if anything was happening and it seemed like a quite night. I expected the worse but didn’t hear any sirens. No screams for help. So I walked back inside and went to sleep. All was well. 02:20 am – I woke up to the sound of my neighbor’s car alarm going off next to our bedroom window. I looked outside and saw several people standing by his new black BMW. I grabbed my new conceal-carry Glock and ran outside and started yelling at the men to get out of the car. My 156 The BLUES 156 The BLUES neighbor was already on the front lawn with a golf club (he despises guns and says he is a non-violent person) and he too was yelling at the men to get out of his car. One of the men, teenagers actually, pointed a gun out of the driver’s side and fired a shot at my neighbor. Luckily he missed, but my neighbor ran inside to get his phone. The three boys smoked the tires and left the cul-de-sac in a cloud of smoke. By this time my wife was outside with me. “I called 911” she said. What did they say? We don’t have police, who are they sending? “No one, they advised me to try and reason with the young men.” “Do what? Reason with them?” My neighbor re-emerged from his house screaming into the phone, saying they took his car and tried to kill him. The 911 operator said a Crime Prevention Specialist would come out after 8am to speak with him if he liked. He threw the phone across the driveway. I did my best to calm my neighbor down and went back inside and turned on the citywide scanner. For the next 10 hours I was glued to the computer and could not believe what was happening in my city. 02:50 am – Two blocks away, three men in a Black BMW walked into the Corner Convenience store, pointed a gun at the clerk and demanded all the money. On the way out the door with in cash, an armful of beer and cigarettes, they fired two shots at the clerk. One hit him in the upper arm. A customer saw what happened and called 911. 911 dispatched an ambulance but they waited two

locks away for the scene to be cleared by police. But there were no local police, so they had to wait 30 minutes for a State Trooper to arrive. The clerk lost so much blood they didn’t know if he would survive. 03:55am – A major accident on the Interstate with people trapped in a car that was on fire was dispatched on the intercity radio band. That’s what the 911 operators were told to do given the local agency was now defunct. The trooper handling the robbery was the closest unit to the accident, so he left the crime scene and headed to the accident. Since there were no detectives or crime scene units to be called, he turned the scene over to a manager the alarm company had called. 04:11am – The trooper arrived on the scene of the accident and immediately called for backup for traffic control. The dispatcher said all the units were tied up on other city calls. No one was coming. The trooper asked one of the witnesses what happened, and she said the white car that was on fire, was run off the road by a black car that looked like a BMW (wait is that my neighbor’s car?) The white car struck the bridge support and burst into flames, while the black car with 3-males inside took off at a high rate of speed. 04:20am – Two more cars slammed into the burning vehicle on the Freeway. The trooper was lucky to be alive. He jumped over the guardrail just before the first car slammed into the burning hulk of a car. When the accident was all said and done, one person was dead, and three more went to the hospital. 05:01am- According to 911 call records, sixty-five calls for police service were now holding. Twenty-five were in progress calls. 05:16am – A citizen called 911 to say that he saw a wrecker driving at a high rate of speed down Main Street. And was dragging what appeared to be an ATM machine with sparks flying everywhere. Make that 26 in-progress calls. 05:25am – A report of a minor accident, Main and 33rd Avenue. A UPS truck reports his van was struck by an object being towed behind a wrecker - an ATM I assume. 05:26am – A man walking his dog in the 2500 block of 33rd, reports a wrecker has struck a fire hydrant and water is flooding the street. While 911 is talking to the gentlemen, the operator The BLUES 157 The BLUES 157