Monday evening was the end of a very warm Labor Day here in Los Angeles. I was inside with my family, watching TV with the windows open to let in a meager late summer breeze, when I heard shouting outside. A deep gravelly voice that carried a long way, even on a busy night with the competition of traffic and all the other urban noise that is the hallmark of dense inner cities. If you’ve ever heard LSU Coach Ed Orgeron trying to fire up his team, that’s what this voice sounded like.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, there’s something about that kind of shouting that just lets you know deep in your bones that something dangerous is about to happen. I got up and went outside. At the end of our block was a very large man, tall and muscular not fat, in the middle of some kind of drug-fueled manic episode. He was screaming, stomping back and forth across a busy city street, throwing his belongings (including a entire shopping cart, which eventually broke into pieces… how do you break a freaking shopping cart!?) here and there.
I observed him for a few minutes before finally deciding that it was time to call 911, which I have only done twice in 18 years… the last time was for a knife fight that was happening right outside my house in broad daylight. For context, we just had a homeless person beat a woman to death with a metal baseball bat on our block last week, and this looked like another incident that could turn violent at any moment. I would later learn that I wasn’t the only person to call 911, several of my neighbors did as well. But in our neighborhood, one 911 call rarely does the trick. You have to make them in bulk to actually get anyone to show up.
While I waited for the police to arrive, I stood on the corner and tried to redirect foot traffic, there’s a lot of it in downtown LA on an everage night, letting people know they should cross the street and try to stay away from this guy. At some point this crazy person decided to try and drag his stuff down onto our block. It was still a busy Labor Day on our block, families… women and children… on every stoop enjoying the last couple hours of the holiday. Another male neighbor of mine was standing with me and we decided to confront this crazy man, in hopes of getting him to move on in another direction.
Did I mention this guy was huge? It felt a little like trying to keep Bane off our street. We stood firm and tried to sound authoritative, but if this guy had decided to try and push past us, I’m not sure there would have been much we could do. Luckily for us, he complied with our orders and moved off down the street where he eventually collapsed in a heap and appeared to pass out. I stayed out on the street for a while longer and continued to try and redirect foot traffic around him. He looked unconscious, but there was really no way to know what he might do next.
It was about an hour later when the police finally responded. I flagged them down and told them what had happened and where he was. I watched as they drove over to where he was passed out, determined that the threat was over, and then drove away.
I did not write this down to take a shot at the LAPD… the rank-and-file officers do the best they can under trying circumstances. Their bosses, specifically the Mayor, have reduced their budgets (thanks BLM!) and restricted their rules of engagement so drastically that it’s not surprising that they are slow to show up and reluctant to engage when they do. I get that.
But here’s what the leaders of this city, and many other Blue Cities, need to know. We are not going to hide in our homes and allow the crazies control our streets. That’s not how free men and women in a free society behave. If the police won’t engage, then we will. I’m no tough guy, I basically got lucky when this huge crazy dude decided to do what I told him to do. But there are a lot of very serious customers in downtown LA… if the Police are determined to leave us to deal with this kind of trouble on our own, then some of us are going to do exactly that. And the more often this happens, the more people are going to decide that those in charge have given up and left us to defend ourselves, and the more likely it is that someone is going to lose their temper.
Whatever happens next will be blamed on vigilante violence by those who run the city, but we’ll all know the truth, that the fault lies with those who have abandonded us to the crazies. Los Angeles is quickly becoming a failed city. If those who run it won’t do their jobs, we’ll have to do it for them, And no one is going to like what happens after that.