Cleveland PD has been celebrating today at the marvelous return to the living of three young women (and a tiny girl born into captivity) who were snatched a decade ago by three of the ugliest motherfuckers we have ever had the misfortune of eyeballing. But oh dear. It is starting to look as if the po-po are not going to be celebrating for long, as this crazymaking USA Today story lists neighbor after neighbor saying, "Oh, those girls? The ones trapped in that house for a decade? Yeah, we called the cops the first time we saw them being walked naked on a leash. Fuckers never came." (Direct quote, probably.)
Is it possible some of the neighbors felt guilty for not having heroically kicked the door down, like Awesome Dude No. 1 Charles Ramsey, and invented some alibis for themselves? It is possible! Is it possible that all of them did? That is less likely? Here are the calls to the police from just one family on the block -- other neighbors are quoted as well.
Israel Lugo said he, his family and neighbors called police three times between 2011 and 2012 after seeing disturbing things at the home of Ariel Castro. Lugo lives two houses down from Castro and grew suspicious after neighbors reported seeing naked women on leashes crawling on all fours behind Castro's house.
Lugo said about two years ago his sister told him she heard a woman pounding on a window at Castro's home as if she needed help. When his sister looked up, she saw a woman and a baby standing in a window half covered with a wooden plank. His sister told him and Lugo called the police.
Later, Lugo's mother called the police because Ariel Castro would park his school bus in front of their home and bring bags full of McDonald's and drinks into his home. They wondered why he needed so much food. Police again responded but didn't enter the home.
A third call came from neighborhood women who lived in an apartment building. Those women told Lugo they called police because they saw three young girls crawling on all fours naked with dog leashes around their necks. Three men were controlling them in the backyard. The women told Lugo they waited two hours but police never responded to the calls.
So what's the deal, Cleveland? Are you lazy, sorry motherfuckers? Or as Jessica Valenti asked on Twitter, is this indicative of how police treat domestic violence calls in general?
Here, let's judge them by this dispatcher, who basically tells Amanda Berry like 40 times in a row to shut it and she can talk to the cops eventually -- you know like all the other times they got there.
Amanda, Georgina, and Michelle (and Little Girl), please have these kitties. We don't have a joke.
I can has your sammich?
Unfortunately there's a lot of truth to that. I went to school in L.A. many moons ago and the running joke even back then was that LAPD was nothing more than publicly subsidized security for the folks in the gated communities. The job of the police in this country has devolved into keeping the riff raff out of rich people's neighborhoods and keeping the lid on the seething chronic problems in the poor neighborhoods.