IT'S ABOUT FREAKIN' TIME

Last January my lovely wife and I were sitting in our living room, one evening, enjoying the warmth and some mindless television when we heard the unmistakable sounds of a gunfight in the immediate vicinity of our home. It was a bit disconcerting. While she killed the lights I grabbed the phone and did the 911 thing. After hanging up the phone I shrugged into my jacket and mosied out to the corner to meet The Heat when they showed up. Thing is, it was some time before I actually spotted a marked cruiser-- maybe 10 minutes or more. But that's not to say the cops took their time about getting to the scene. Having grown up in the city, I learned to be aware of what's happening on the street. And what was happening was there was a sudden rush hour of non-descript vehicles in the neighborhood. Sedans, sportscars, pickup trucks and the like, and they all seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry... and none to the same place. If I had to posit an educated guess, I'd say they were undercover cops setting up a parameter with my house as ground-zero-- without the noise of lights and sirens.
In the fullness of time, a uniform did show up and took a report. But he told me we weren't the only ones to call in.
In the following days we discovered that someone had sustained a minor gunshot wound when two wannabe gangsters started busting caps over-- you guessed it, dope. Apparently one of the shooters was also a shootee, as it were, and caught a minor case of hight-speed lead poisoning. The other one, who the cops say was a bonehead named Riley Collick. Cops had been looking for him since then. But Collick surrendered to federal marshals in Baltimore today and is being held on federal fugative warrants there. .... Well, that's a load off my mind but it does sort of point up the ineffectiveness of the local cops.... a hometown boy who can hide from the cops for almost a year..... look guys, he's not at the doughnut shop so quit going there to look for him.