Here’s the second part of my Raleigh 911! post. When we left our intrepid hero, he was on the way to bust a murder suspect.
We approached the area and the two officers discussed their capture strategy.
Chris then turns to me. “If I get out to run or have to leave in a hurry, ” he said, “just sit tight in the car with the doors locked. No one will mess with you.”
Gulp. Ok, we’re not playing around anymore. I nodded and felt my pulse double in an instant.
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I was reading this article about other cities’ battles with teens loitering around malls and it got me thinking: do we want to discourage teens from going to malls – a place where they can be better supervised? Do we really want to disperse them elsewhere? That sounds like a bad idea.
I mean, while the mall melee was scary, no one was seriously hurt (a credit to our police agencies). And as far as I know, before the fight broke out these kids weren’t committing any serious crimes. Perhaps an occasional shoplifting, but not drug-dealing or shootings.
At the mall, the ways kids can get into trouble are limited. Perhaps the answer is simply to beef up mall security.
A friend suggests the easiest way to keep teens from loitering in mall food courts is to eliminate the food court’s free drink refills. While it wouldn’t be the only solution I think it would be a step in the right direction.
There’s also the “mosquito” method as well. It would need to be used where teens are and not kids, however, so that rules out a food court. Might be good for the open-air drug markets around town, though.
Remember the North Carolina Museum of Transportation excursion train I was psyched to ride from Spencer to Charlottesville? I happened upon the museum’s webpage last night to discover that tickets were already being sold. Though I had “sent an email for more information” way back, the museum left me in the lurch. It would seem important to know when one could actually purchase tickets, so I’m not sure why I wasn’t told about this.
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Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel
If I ever won the lottery I’d buy it and reopen it as one of downtown Raleigh’s most elegant hotels.
I don’t care what you may think you know about your neighborhood, you don’t know it as well as your local beat cop does. Period. The best way to learn about your neighborhood, then, is to have a cop be you tour guide. This is what I did Friday night when I rode along with my local police officer. As you’ll read below, the night didn’t disappoint.
I showed up at the district substation at 7:30 PM, called the cellphone of the sargent on duty, and was invited inside to wait while an officer came to pick me up. After handing in my waiver, I accompanied Chris, my officer, to our first call: a domestic disturbance.
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We just got our phone bill today – and boy, was it outrageous. It isn’t outrageously expensive, though: its outrageously cheap!
We’ve been charged $20 for our phone service. That’s right: twenty bucks … since May 15th! That’s $20 for ten weeks of service! And its all because we switched our phone service from AT&T to the Voice over IP (VoIP) provider Vitelity. We get two phone numbers, CallerID, and the ability for more than one simultaneous call.
Our base Bellsouth/AT&T bill used to be around $47.00/month. Long distance calling would tack on an extra $20 to that. Thus, our phone bill was often above $60/month.
Put another way, what we used to pay $60 per month for we now get for a jaw-dropping $8 per month! And through the magic that VoIP brings, we’re getting more features now for far, far less!
Voice over IP phone service isn’t rock solid, and it doesn’t always have the highest call quality. To save an extra 52 bucks each month, though, we can live with it!
So, uh, North Raleigh needs to deal with its gang problem. Three hundred gang members fighting at the normally-quiet (and sometimes dull) Triangle Town Center mall? Whodathunkit?
On the way back from our balloon adventure we passed two police cars screaming north up Capital Boulevard. The fact that multiple agencies were responding made me guess the call was a big one. Still, I never would’ve guessed it was a gang fight at that mall.
I think this incident might open people’s eyes to the fact that no one is immune to the problem of gangs.
We got back from the balloon launches a little after 8 PM. The kids had a great time seeing the launch process. I wish we could’ve stayed for the recovery but bedtimes beckoned.
And mine is beckoning, too. I think I’ll be spending some time tomorrow night writing up these two wonderful events. And there’s yet another weekend day left.
I just got back from my ridealong. Boy, was it exciting! I actually got to witness some Cops-level stuff, not just your routine expired-tags traffic stop. I definitely want to do it again sometime!
More details tomorrow. For now, a snack and bed. Got a balloon to help launch tomorrow, y’know.
