Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I was crawling into bed (early for me, but I think I might be sleepy enough), when I heard this pounding. Looked out the window and saw a police car. Stuck my head out a 3rd floor window to get a look at what was going on, and they seemed to be looking at the front door of the house next door. Four vehicles, one pointed the wrong direction (I'm on Lombard, a one-way street), and four officers. One of the cops spotted me and asked whether I'd called them.

I went downstairs and opened the front door; they asked me about the folks living next door, and went on pounding on that door. The dispatcher was saying something about a caller on a cell phone. Now I do call from a cell phone when I call the police (the only thing on my landline is the modem), but I hadn't called them tonight. And as for the folks next door, well I hadn't heard a peep out of them all day. (Sometimes they play their stereo too loudly, or I hear them on the stair. Today, nothing.) Finally one of the people next door came down and answered the door. Nobody there had called the police either.

Then came the call over the radio saying something about a suspect moving towards Broadway. Ping! I had the same thought as at least a couple of the cops did: "Hey, that's East Baltimore!" It was kind of interesting noting the simultaneously sheepish and really annoyed looks on their faces as they apologized for having gotten me and my neighbours out of bed because the dispatcher had sent them to West Lombard St. when they should've been going to East Lombard St.

(I can see how it would happen. The 911 and 311 operators have gotten a fair number of calls from me. (People entering the vacant house on the other side of mine, drug dealers in the Spring of 2001, kids playing with fire -- the aerosol can and cigarette lighter trick -- behind another vacant house, etc., etc.) So a cellular caller rings in and says they're in the same-numbered block of Lombard, probably forgets to specify East or West, and the dispatcher figures it's yet another run out to West Lombard. Still, it's simultaneously amusing, annoying, and disconcerting (how long has the person on East Lombard been waiting?).)

Let the record show, by the way, that while there have been a couple of exceptions, the police generally arrive pretty quickly when I do call them. I figure this is an anomaly rather than a sign of Big Problems with the city police dispatcher.

Okay, trying again to go to bed...