A Day In The Life Of

It was hot Sunday afternoon as my three year old grandson and I sat in the relative coolness of my living room watching "Finding Nemo" for the hundredth time. Although he knew better, my darling boy seemed genuinely disturbed that the " ugwi shock" was going to eat Dori and the clown fish. Just as I reached to pull him closer, a noisy car barreled past my apartment.

Hitting the street's speed bumps doing at least sixty, the car recklessly bottomed out. With tires screeching the driver lost control and slammed into a parked car. The loud crash brought out concerned neighbors only to glimpse the battered red sedan madly fleeing the scene.

Living in San Pablo I've grown accustomed to the high percentage of reckless drivers on the roads. At least once a month someone hits a parked car on my block. I'm only grateful that there were no children playing nearby this time. Only two years ago a beautiful little girl was killed by a hit and run driver while playing on the very same sidewalk.

As mentioned in previous posts, the streets of San Pablo are not safe. There is an alarming number of blatant violations overlooked by San Pablo pd due to the illegal status of much of the towns population. It's all politics I'm told, as if that's any consolation.

After being distracted, we lost interest in the movie and decided to cool off in the back yard instead. Laying listlessly on the itchy grass I watched as my Boy watered both the flowers and himself equally. The unconditional love I felt for the small person playing next to me, brought me an inner peace seldom felt. But this too would be short lived.

Hearing numerous shouts, I jumped to my feet. Running to the front yard, I was horrified to see a dozen cops pointing their guns at a suspect, as they charged after him. Not wanting to be one of those innocent victims who's caught by a stray bullet, I ran madly out of harms way.

It seems the hit and run driver foolishly drove back to the scene to view his handiwork. This time before he drove away, someone got his license number and called the police.

The cars other passenger surrendered willingly and was quietly taken away. But the driver tried to run, then struggled violently as he was forced into the squad car.

When the police found crack coc aine and a concealed weapon inside the suspects car, He made one last attempt to escape. Using his head, he broke the cars back window.

Some of the spectators lining the street, were obviously amused by the suspects obvious desperation. I was only saddened. I had just witnessed the ruin of a man's life.

Even now as I'm compelled to write about it, I'm not sure why.

[edit on 7/25/2005 by dollmonster]

All I can ask is, what do you think the solution could be? I live in an area with a high population of illegals, too, but so far as I know it has never impeded the cops from doing their jobs. The drug trade is a little more high end, usually involving heroin or coc aine, and usually for sale unless one of the high school kids gets picked up. Yet, from what I've noticed, illegal status of some individuals involved in these crimes has never stopped the heat from doing something about it.

The bottom line is it was a traumatic experience, for you, and for everyone involved.

Once, when I worked in Phoenix (in sales), I was off for the evening, sitting at a Circle K in Tempe. I heard gunshots. There were two vehicles in traffic ( in front of me) and they were shooting at each other. It blew my mind.. and that was after I had been in the war. This was a good part of town! All of a sudden a guy in a bronco whipped into the parking lot. He jumped out, yelling at the top of his lungs, baby in his arm gun in his hand... That other car, that other guy out in that traffic shot into this guy's vehicle and shot the baby through the arm.

The cops finally came up and carefully disarmed the distraught man - and got his baby girl some help.

They never caught those rat bastards who shot her. Thank God it was a clean wound through her fleshy little arm. It wasn't fatal.

I went straight to the neighborhood bar and drank tequila for the rest of the night.