Hi All, thought it would be fun to come back and give some updates. So here is one.
In September I had to move to a new apartment complex because of an emergency. And voluntary simplicity really played a beneficial role.
Here is the story:
Once COVID hit, the small college town I live in emptied out. Students moved out of their apartments and went home. No one knew if school would resume in person in the autumn or not. As a result, the ghetto which was only a block away started to expand into the student housing apartments that I lived in.
A bad family moved in right across the hall from my apartmentment. From day one it was non-stop loud rap music, non-stop skunk weed getting smoked, nightly domestic dispiutes. The bad family was a mom, 2 or 3 kids, and a baby-daddy.
8 days after this bad family moved in they decide to have a huge party. Thugs and gangsters show up with various street drugs. They were going in and out of that apartment acting a fool.
They were yelling, screaming, calling each other the N-word in anger. About 8 pm I had to take my dog out. And when I did I could smell some horrible smoke pouring out of their apartment (not weed, something BAD). And I heard them screaming and yelling. I looked up and their glass double door on the balcony was open. There was a brutal fight going on in their living room. I mean brutal! Someone was visciously bitten three times on the back.
So I hauled butt back into my apartment. I got my phone out to record. I watched through the peephole as the brutal fight spilled out into the hallway -- grown men and women brutally beating each other.
Then as I watch, one guy pulls a chrome 45 from his waistband and starts shooting.
I grab my phone and my dog and run to my back bedroom and call the heat.
I tell the heat shots were fired and describe the suspects and give them the location of the thugs' apartment.
The cops then tell me they will send an officer to my apartment. I tell them not to do this because I don't want the thugs knowing I called the 5.0.
Lo and behold, 10 minutes later there is loud hammering at my door.
By now the gunman had fled and the thugs had all left the scene.
So why are the cops hammering on my door?
I go to the door and they shout: "Police! Let us in."
I say: "What do you want?"
They say: "We have reports shots were fired in your apartment. Open up now!"
I say: "I don't know nothing about that."
I say it loud enough the gangster family across the hall can hear me.
The cops insist: "Open up now!!!"
I realize they will kick the door down, so I say: "Okay, I am opening up slow and my hands are up. My hands are up!!!"
I open the door and there are about 15 cops in the hallways in full gear with guns drawn.
I figured they were going to tell me and all my neighbors to shelter in place.
My neighbors, yes. Me? No.
They sweep me out of my apartment. I did not have time to grab a mask. Luckily I had put Harlan in his crate.
Maybe three cops are wearing masks.
They crowd up on me, frisk me, pat me down, take my pocket knife, and then while this is going on -- right outside the thug's door, a cop says at high volume:
"Wait, are you the guy from apartment 8? The one who called us? You called the police, right? Apartment 8?"
I look him right in the face and say: "Are you trying to get me killed? Now the gangbangers know I called the heat. They are going to come after me."
It was a reall good job, Gomer type moment.
They then sweep me out into the parking lot, where all the thugs had quietly went to their cars to watch with the lights off.
After the cops swept the place, interviewed some folks, and tried multiple times to talk to me they finally figured out the thugs sitting in their cars were the perps. So they start interviewing them.
The thug who lived in the apartment across the hall, who started this whole mess with his party, walked up and acted like he just got there: "Whats going on? My girlfriend lives there."
Another cop walked up to him and said, "Sorry Ricky, your girlfriend -- LaKreesha -- she already squawked. We know you were here the whole time. We know you are involved."
They interviewed Ricky for a long time and he told multiple lies I heard.
Finally when I was allowed to go back into my apartment I had to walk past Ricky. He came right up behind me and mumbled something menacing. So he seemed to know already I cooperated with the cops.
I went into my apartment and then got a call from the police station. They wanted me to come down and give a witness statement. They told me they would guard the premises when I left and when I returned.
I gave the cops my statement and the footage I recorded on my phone. The cop said: "You need to get out of that apartment. You don't know what these guys are capable of."
Ricky was on parole.
But in this whole fiasco I was likely exposed to COVID. So no friends or family would take me in -- and it would involve driving 1-7 hours in the middle of the night anyway.
So I stayed in my apartment with my my friends Smith and Wesson at my bedside for a couple days.
Then another neighbor, one I am friends with saw me outside at lunch time. He said: "I gotta talk to you."
He told me that Ricky was asking around about me. Apparently Ricky said: "I know it was that white guy with the white dog who called the cops. In my old neighborhood, up by Chicago, no one would have called the cops."
When my neighbor told me that, I knew the cop was right. I should have gotten out of there.
A friend an hour away closed off two small rooms and a bathroom in her house. She let me stay there while I quarantined. So for a couple weeks Harlan and I lived there. I got a COVID test during that time. Came back neg.
Then I managed to find another apartment in town that allowed dogs -- much nicer area, quiet, calm.
My moves to both the friends' place and the new apartment required two Nissan Versa hatchback loads of stuff.
If I had owned a ton of stuff, these emergency moves would have really sucked!
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Originally Posted by Tradd
