In the beginning, it was funny to me. Here I was, located in a slum of an apartment building, and everything was so goddamn stereotypical. Mothers on welfare, children running around without shoes, thugs playing craps on the cement walk-way outside my apartment. Conversely, my Pier 1/Ikea interior reminded those who saw it that we were foreigners to this environment. This made us a target.
The first time we got robbed, it was amazing to me. For you to completely understand, let me paint a picture of my surroundings. As mentioned previously, my apartment faces an alley. The parking lot is between my apartment and the alley. There is one space per unit, and one visitor spot. There are 12 units total in three separate buildings. Each building is exactly the same, with 4 apartments – one on top facing east (alley) one on bottom facing east, one on top facing west (busy street), one on bottom facing east. I am located in the middle building on the bottom facing the alley. My porch consists of a slab of concrete that extends out just past the staircase of my upstairs neighbour, maybe five feet total. This concrete runs under the staircase and connects to a sidewalk between the buildings. About two feet past the concrete, there is a wooden terrace of sorts between the two sets of stairs that lead from the parking lot to the sidewalks. Total amount of space between my front door and my parking spot: About 10 feet.
Upon moving in, I decided I was going to embrace my surroundings. I was NOT going to give up my BBQ no matter how much drug traffic was outside. I never stopped entertaining, either. I placed my Weber in the dirt between the concrete walkway and the terrace. When friends would come over, we would all perch ourselves in various spots along this terrace around the BBQ. Good times. This particular summer evening, my boyfriend and I were barbequing. We were in and out every couple of minutes, grabbing items from inside and coming out to check on the meat. We would even leave our door open from time to time.
Once we were done cooking, I went out to my car to get something, only to notice that my stereo had been stolen. Understand, drug addicts have balls like none other. They are driven like vampires by an unquenchable thirst, and this causes them to take risks a reasonable human being would not. It was apparent that the thief had broken into my car during a two or three minute window when we were inside. Slapped by the shock of being robbed and floored by the skill and audacity of the thief, I could only shake my head and smile.
When I was done smiling (didn't take long), I marched upstairs to let My and his gang know to look out for my stereo. I knew one of their customers had yanked it, so it would likely turn back up there. They immediately offered me a replacement stereo. Nice and all, but that wasn't the point. I wanted the fucker who took my shit to give it back. I managed to rile My and Peter up about it, suggesting that whoever did this to me obviously had no respect for them, because the thief had to know that the situation would put me at odds with My and Peter, and frankly, we were the only thing keeping that entire family out of jail. My assured me that something would be done about the situation. I left less than satisfied, but better off that I was initially.
The next day, we ran onto a guy named Jay. He was a favourite of mine when it came to the customers. He was of Arab descent, tall, good-looking, well-mannered, well dressed, and very friendly with a wonderful sense of humour. He approaches me with an unusually serious look on his face. He proceeds to tell me that he saw someone in my car last night. Knowing that we entertain often and noticing that the window wasn't broken or anything, he didn't think anything of it at the time. Apparently, Peter mentioned to him what happened, and he thought he'd drop by and let me know.
Long story short, My paid me back for the theft in full, including the cost of replacing the stereo by a professional. He said he'd recoup the cost from the kid that took it, but I don't know that it ever happened. The kid's accomplice (the snitch we got info from) became a regular sight around the complex. His name was Derrick, but we called him "Slack-jaw". Over the course of the next few months, he and I got into more than a couple confrontations. He just couldn't seem to understand that yes, I would indeed hold the theft of my stereo against him, even though he didn't physically remove it himself. It's called guilt by association. Because he stood there and did nothing while his friend stole, he will endure the brunt of my anger, and he will fucking deal with it.
This episode was nothing, however. The mild frustration that accompanies a minor car burglary does not compare to the rage and insecurity that you experience after coming home to your house being ransacked. Yes, the second time we got robbed, people actually entered our house. Lucky for them, we were not home at the time. Lucky for us, they were witnessed.
You see, because my unit is on ground level, the apartment gets ridiculously hot during the summer time. Certainly, we knew better than to leave our windows open in a hood like this. However, if we had to rush out the door, it was not always feasible to do a complete check of the windows. If it looked shut, we would sometimes assume that it was shut. However, this was not always the case.
On this particular afternoon, Mike and I had just arrived home after running some errands to find my sister in complete astonishment. We asked what was wrong, and she simply pointed to our room. She attempted to get some words out, but they weren't coherent. Mike and I walked over to our room wondering what she could possibly be on about. The second we opened the door to our bedroom, our wonder was no more.
It looked just like it might in a movie. Our mattress was askew, drawers were pulled out, some over turned on the floor. Clothes were strewn everywhere. To our amazement, our room had been tossed. The strange thing was that it didn't look like anyone had taken anything. I had antique jewelry that had not been touched. I had an expensive CD player and CDs that remained. What could they have been looking for? Well, as we began to put our bedroom back together and examine the rest of the house, it became apparent.
As we surveyed out room, we realized that there were four shot bottles of various liquor gone, a half ounce of pot as well as a change jar and a bong. Those sons of bitches stole my beautiful bong. That right there was an unforgivable offense. Upon returning to the living room, we discovered that our PS2 was gone. There were 10 brand new, top of the line games sitting right there, none of which were gone. Shit…they were worth more than the damn PS2. It was then that we realized that we were dealing with kids. They weren't looking to rob us blind or get a big return from the pawn shop – they were just looking for fun. My sister had the thought to look in the fridge. Nothing gone from the fridge, but the freezer was missing a bottle of pineapple flavoured Malibu rum (they didn't bother with the unopened fifth of Skyy Vodka), a box of taquitos and a package of hot dogs. Those fuckers had the audacity to steal our taquitos?!? Some gotdamn taquitos. Were they serious?
This changed my whole outlook on the situation. After a good, hearty laugh about the missing taquitos, I didn't know whether or not to be angry with them or pity them. I mean, if they had to steal food from our freezer, they were probably in pretty bad shape. Should I really be so angry at people who are this bad off? After all, they could have pocketed all that expensive jewelry and they chose not to.
Well, standard procedure in this situation is to inquire upstairs. Find out if anyone heard anything or seen anything. We walked out the door only to find Dylan sitting on the terrace outside. We told him what happened. Before we could finish, he told us that he knew. He had seen the whole thing. He was sitting in the back of the broken down Cadillac sitting next to my car in the parking lot smoking a bowl. After it had happened, he ran upstairs. My told him not to call the cops. Since he didn't have a phone of his own, that was that.
Apparently, there were three of them, one male and two females. The male got through our bedroom window, came around front and let the girls in. They were only in there for a couple of minutes. They had locked the door behind them and exited out a window. As the girls were standing out front, one said to the other, "Don't worry, we've been in here before." Had they? There was never any evidence. Perhaps she had said it to calm the nerves of her friend. Maybe they really had been in there before. I mean, if we can get robbed in broad daylight with people watching, anything was possible, right?
We asked if he recognized them. Indeed, he did. They were the hood rats from behind us. The gal that lived behind us was a young, single, black mother. I'd had several run ins with her in the past. She was as ghetto and ignorant as an individual can get. She let several young ghetto children stay with her – kids from 15 to 25 – none of which seemed to have anyone to care about them. Not that Tenicia did much better.
We then asked if he would be willing to talk to the cops for us. No suck luck. In the ghetto, even the good guys have warrants. We were still going to call the cops, though. Maybe they were lazy enough to leave fingerprints. Either way, the event would be recorded, and although our testimony would be no good, the cops would still make a record of who we thought did it.
The cops showed up fairly quickly. The one good thing about my neighbourhood is the location of the nearest police station, about three blocks down the street. Two young officers knocked on our door. We let them in, and one of them said the funniest thing: "Huh. We didn't know that decent people lived here. You've got a lovely apartment." It stuck me as humourous, anyway. He proceeded to tell us that this complex was notorious with the SPD. He said that my complex, along with one next door and one across the street, is about as rough as it gets in Seattle. As if we hadn't figured that out already.
I remained in the living room with the other officer while he and Mike went into the bedroom to look for prints. I told the officer all that I knew, that there had been witnesses, but they couldn't talk to the police. The officer informed me that we could make them talk to the police, but I wasn't interested. I knew who did it, and that was really all that mattered.
Unfortunately, they found no physical evidence. Oh well, after they day we had, we hardly expected to get lucky in that respect. The officers left, and we settled in for the evening.
Over the next few days, we dealt with myriad emotions. I wasn't sure how to take it. To be robbed is one thing. To be robbed by the people who's bedroom wall is your bedroom wall is entirely another. These people were neighbours, and because of that, we had no real recourse. Well, that and the fact that the gal who lived there had a young child. The neighbourhood had turned me, but not that far.
We did learn our lesson, though. Several, really. Don't feel safe in broad daylight. Don't feel safe in a populated area. Don't trust your neighbours. Just because people witness a crime does not mean anyone will pay. Oh, and most importantly, shake it off. The ability to hold fast and true to your morals will give you far greater piece of mind than the satisfaction of self-administered justice. The universe does indeed tend to unfold as it should. Just months later, Tenisha got evicted, got her kid taken away, and got beat by some guy (not that I condone such behaviour) for acting up. Good times.
While the robberies did provide some much needed hardening, they could not even begin to prepare us for the shootings that would take place over the months to come...