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The case of the crack baking laser shooting neighbors.
I went to a call the other night at around 2AM.
The call was dispatched as a Battery by the next door neighbor on the complainant.
My partner and I arrived at the call, which was at a 10 story building and also part of a series of project housings. This building was run down and looked like it should be condemned. The security guard on post looked a little out of it and wore his uniform in such disarray that it was apparently not a requirement to have maintained. One of his eyes was lazy and it was pointing directly at me but he didn’t turn towards us or even say “Hello”..
The address was on the 9th floor so my partner and I hopped into the smelly cramped elevator and started our accent to the 9th floor.
As soon as the elevator door opened we saw several apartment doors in a very narrow hallway with old worn laminated flooring in that checkered pattern you see in bathrooms, roaches crawling on the walls and dim yellow lights attempting to give off some form of radiant glow.
One of the apartment doors was open and had an older heavy set woman sitting in a chair that looked as though if it could speak would be screaming for crucification instead of having to carry her weight.
She was holding a cane in her right hand and had the appearance of insanity about her.
Batman turned to me and said with a sly smile, “Dash this ones all you. I’m gonna stand right here and I got your back”.
I walked up to the woman and asked the proverbial question, “Mam, what happened?”.
She suddenly came to life and in a very slurred tone told me a story :
“I keep calling the police but every time they never do anything about my problem. You see, the people that live right above me are drug dealers. They have a cocaine lab and make crack every night. Sometimes I go up there and tell them to stop but lately they’ve started shooting lasers at me”.
I looked at her for a second, “Mam, lasers?”
She replied, “Yes, oh heaven Lasers, right here at the back of my head. They aim them at me through the ceiling and somehow the lasers go through the wall.”
Now, I’ve seen a lot and I can usually hold back my emotions, but LASERS? I let a smirk escape my face.
Looking back at my partner, he had turned his back to us and was in what I’d like to call the laughing huddle as he bent into the open elevator door in silent laughter.
I turned back to the woman, “So, what do you want us to do about your laser shooting neighbor? I can go up there and ask him to stop it but shooting lasers isn’t exactly illegal in our state so I can’t arrest him.”
Now she had a concerned look on her face. She pointed to the back of her head and said to me in a dead serious tone, “Officer, you’ve got to do something for me. It hurts so bad when they hit the back of my head. The lasers burn into my skull…”
Now, I was almost to the point of peeing myself with internal laughter but I maintained the professional amount of composure that one must keep in situations like this.
I asked her, “Mam, I see you have a kitchen right over there? Do you have any Tin foil? You know that Tin Foil reflects light and that might be a solution until my partner and I can get upstairs to stop him from shooting the lasers at you.”
She said to me, “You mean, like rap myself in Tin Foil? Thats insane!”.
My partner couldn’t take it any more.
He came from around the corner, “Hey Lady, what medication are you on? Lasers don’t go through walls. Stop calling us!”
With that, he stormed off into the elevator and I gave her a look of empathy and said, “We’ll go upstairs and take care of your neighbor right now.”
During the elevator ride back down I told my partner that had I gotten her to wear a tin foil hat, he’d have to buy my dinner the next day. He told me he knew how it worked and that’s why he jumped in to interrupt, because I was one sentence away from a free dinner…
You can’t help everyone and you can’t make crazy people uncrazy, but you can offer them alternatives to living with the fear of Lasers whether those Lasers are set to Stun, or Kill.
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