Calling to report burglary may not ease anger
It will happen something like this: You will arise one morning to a day rampant with promise. The air will be filled with birdsong and soft warm sunlight. It will be a perfect day to trim the dead branches from that old bristlecone pine. But first: the chain saw!
What’s this? Someone has left the garage door ajar. Oh well, where’s that chain saw?
Hmm; it’s not in the chain saw place nor on the oaken bucket, nor the … Hey, where is that bucket? And where’s Grandfather’s shillelagh? HOLY MACKREL, YOU’VE BEEN ROBBED!!!
Now is not the time to panic, you must step back from the abyss. Ignore the ironized blood coursing through your cerebellum and quell the urge to murder.
Time is of the essence; go immediately into the house and call your mother.
True, Mom won’t put out an APB for the perps, but don’t worry, neither will the police.
Mom won’t dust the crime scene for fingerprints nor take forensic evidence, but neither will the police.
Despite your fervent wishes, Mom won’t round up the usual suspects and work them over with a rubber hose beneath hot lights, but neither will the police. In fact, the police will never even show up at the crime scene. I know this from experience.
After a week or two of installing locks on your locks and promising your sleepless family that the boogeyman never strikes twice, you may contact a sheriff’s sergeant in the Property Crimes Unit for a progress report.
The sergeant will tell you that it’s your fault no one has been assigned to investigate your burglary because you were unable to supply serial numbers on the stolen items. If you had, the cops could access a database maintained by pawnbrokers listing their purchases.
The responsibility for investigating Spokane County burglaries is now in the hands of pawnbrokers? The sergeant will deny this on the grounds that thieves don’t sell their swag to just pawnbrokers.
If you ask why no officer ever was dispatched to investigate the crime scene to gather evidence (fingerprints, tire tracks, autographed self-portraits, etc.), the sergeant will inform you that stuff just isn’t done; not standard procedure.
This willful display of official indifference may provoke you to ask the sergeant if the Sheriff’s Department has a motto?
The ensuing confusion may cause you to offer a hint. Could it be “To Protect and Serve?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” replies Sarge.
Aha, now we’re getting somewhere. You may choose to use this moment of clarity to ask the sergeant how many of the thousands of burglaries occurring in the county each year are actually solved. Don’t go there. The hyperbole encountered may well leave you doubting your sanity.
When finally you hang up the phone you will experience a slight shift in the cosmic equilibrium, as if emerging from a black hole of subterfuge into the world of light and air.
On your journey you will have learned the police are impotent in the face of this growing epidemic and the crooks know it. You will learn to bid adieu to your prized possessions with a casual wave of the hand, knowing that in the arms of the Sheriff’s Department your remaining goods are as safe as an abused wife with a restraining order.
We all agree that investigating burglaries and tracking down the perpetrators is a difficult task, but it is only difficult if someone is actually doing it. How dangerous is it? The State Department of Labor and Industries charges an hourly contribution from employers and employees of every profession it insures according to the dangers involved. Roofers pay $5.47 per hour; interior house painters pay $1.06; the tab for a city of Spokane Valley policeman: .75 cents per hour.
We will soon be asked to elect a new sheriff. With all the above in mind it might be time to ask the candidates what they plan to do about this epidemic of indolence. If they lack a satisfactory plan it may be time to consider Mom as a write-in candidate. She could run this show from her parlor with phone and a Ouija board.