another 911 call

I don’t call 911 a lot – and certainly not for complaints that a drive-thru got my order wrong or to ask that a cute cop I met come over – real items from the news. 911 is for emergencies.

I have called them several times though, and not, I think, for bullshit reasons. I mentioned a few times in the last post and told about last night’s call, which did seem like something that needed to be done. The homeless man I called for may have been delusional or he might have really been having problems, but it wasn’t up to me to make that call, whether or not his fears were real; there are resources to deal with that.

Portland police have gained national attention by shooting and killing homeless and or delusional people – James Chaffee comes to mind, and you may have heard of him, a man brutally beaten and hurt by the police officers who accosted him for peeing "in public" and neglected by the jailers downtown who did not get him medical attention until he died of his police-imposed injuries.

This was and has been very embarrassing to the city and to the police in general, who are not, for the most part, brutal sadists.  New training programs have been enacted for police to learn how to cope with the mentally unsettled in the wake of the failures of our mental health system here in Portland and in the US in general. Our prisons have become the homes of many mentally ill people- there is no other place for them now, without insurance (whose help is very limited anyway) because mental health practises are VERY expensive.

The 911 operator asked me how that man seemed to me, was he drunk or high or acting strangely? I said he possibly was drunk – I did smell alcohol on his breath, but that I didn’t know one way or the other and that he was very afraid. Two police cars showed up within ten minutes, and both officers acted calmly and politely towards me and the man I called for. I walked on to the store and bought my cigarettes and walked back the same way and saw both officers standing more or less in the same place, and the man I called for nowhere to be seen – it was dark out and I assumed he was in one of the cars, "safe" from his fears of people chasing him and wanting to gravely injure him. He didn’t seem to be very disoriented or drunk or incoherent, but was very afraid. I hope that the police were able to help him, or get him to a place where he felt safer, and I think that they did; Portland has learned some lessons (very expensive lessons; James Chaffee’s family won a million dollar lawsuit against the city because of how their son was treated).

***

I started this with another 911 call I made in mind.

I live on the top floor of my apartment building and the balcony looks southwards,towards a bar across the street. Now that all bars in Oregon have gone no-smoking, people gather outside the bar to smoke and it’s a little noisier than it used to be.

One night I was standing out on my balcony and a boy – a young boy – came to the bar’s front door on a skateboard and paused before he went in. Minors are not permitted in bars, and I wondered what was happening. A man and the boy came out, the man yelling at the boy, who was saying "mom wants you to come home now". The man yelled some abusive words at the boy, about the "bitch" who wanted to control him, and "fuck this and fuck you" and pushed the boy away.

The boy restated that "mom wants you to come home!" and the man, who was about to walk back into the bar and dismiss the boy, erupted at him, reached down, and grabbed the skateboard and began hitting the boy with it.  No one else did anything.

Definite 911 emergency! I ran back inside and grabbed my cell phone and called 911 and told them what I saw, and, since the man was so loud, even across the street and 8 stories up, I thought maybe the operator could hear things too.

The police were there in less time than it takes to write about it – very very fast, with lights and sirens. The boy at that time was lying on the sidewalk, the man yelling more abuse at him, and the police did not hesitate, they took him down and cuffed him right away, and not very gently at all stuffed him into the police car. The boy refused medical attention and said he just wanted to go home, and rode off on his skateboard. The police debated whether or not to follow him and "get him" but decided that taking care of the man was the important thing, and drove off, with the man yelling in the back of the car

I MOST definitely felt like I did "the right thing", calling 911. A grown man beating up a child on the streets at night – or at any time – is an emergency. I am no hero, but know wrong when I see it.

***

One time, I guess I was, or tried to be, a hero.

I was in the Navy, stationed in Philadelphia, and one night a friend of mine, another sailor,  and I drove into New Jersey, to Atlantic City. I lived near Las Vegas for a few years, and AC was like a back street of Vegas – this was in 1982. Driving through Atlantic City and stopping at a traffic light, we saw a man beating – really beating – a woman outside a bar. My friend was driving and we stopped immediately and got out of the car, yelling "Stop!" at the man.

Incredibly, both the man and the woman began yelling back at us, to mind out own business, that THEY didn’t have any problems, what was ours.

They did stop hitting each other and advanced on us, and we looked at each other and shrugged – what could we do? and got back in the car and drove back to the base. We had been, we thought, heroes, but the other two people didn’t and wanted to show us just what they thought of our intervention.

Sigh. You take matters into your own hands and get involved with something, and sometimes there’s no telling how it will work out, but that experience has not stopped me from getting involved to the point of calling the police, at least. I try to do what I think is "the right thing".

*****