Category → crime
To Hell in a Hand Basket
Those are the thoughts that come to mind after the events of last week. This post is a week behind but since my wife seems to think that phrase is so funny, I thought I would go ahead and post. Last Friday my wife and son were going down the street when they ran across this man chasing this girl swinging a board at her. My son got out of the car, the mail man tried to stop him and my wife called the police. The very next day my wife and I were looking at some new homes in South Oklahoma City/Moore. We missed our turn so we had to pull into a residential area so we could turn around. As we were waiting for traffic to clear, there was a Ford F-150 pickup that stopped to pull into the street that we were on. When an opening finally appeared, the two teenage boys wearing hoods over their heads driving the F-150 took off onto the street we were trying to pull out from. They crashed right into the brick wall that was in the divided road identifying the the residential neighborhood. At that time, both occupants jumped out the passenger door and ran around the corner. My wife and I called the police and identified them when they were captured. The police told us the truck had been reported stolen about an hour earlier and then hit another car before crashing into the wall. One of the witnesses to their earlier car accident was following them all the way up to the crash.
My wife was commenting about how she had to call 911 two days in a row. I told her that I should blog about this and she told me that I need to title it “To Hell in a Hand Basket”. So in honor of my wonderful wife, I did. For some reason she always laughs when someone says that phrase. I don’t understand but I think it is cute. Anyway, I thought I would share the events of the past week.
Gangland in Oklahoma City
Gangland: Crazy Killers (Latino Gang In Oklahoma City, OK) [44 Minutes]
You may remember a post back in January when I took many gang graffiti pictures around South Oklahoma City. This post had become a hostile place for rivals to post their hatred toward one another. It got so bad that I had to disable the post. At that time, I never realized that we had much of a problem other than the graffiti. This week, the History Channel’s Gangland profiled a local gang, the South Side Locos and their hatred for another gang, Grande Barrio Centrals (GBC). The above video is that program that was on television. I know that many times the media tends to exaggerate things and that may be the case here as well. I do however remember a couple of the events in this video happening. We often hear about a shooting on the South side on the news but when it is reported on TV we never hear what it was about. Most people ignore it because there are always going to be shootings on the news.
I was surprised to see this video on a national network. For one thing, I never thought it was that bad around here. Another thing is that I am not sure how wise it is to give them coverage on a national stage. It is hard to imagine what positive things could come from this type of exposure. In my opinion, this exposure can do nothing more than inflame the situation. In the entire story, they consistently put down this GBC gang. Although I am not really familiar with either of them, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that the GBC’s are likely going to be offended by this program resulting in even more violence. On another front, I am not too sure that any city chamber of commerce wants this kind of publicity. When you have your city profiled on a national network for gang activity, it turns potential new residences away. I mean, people that just want to live in peace are not likely to want to move to a place that is on national TV for gang violence.
Although I do think this program does exaggerate the situation to some degree, there is no denying their is a gang issue on the South side. If you drive anywhere from I-35 West to May Avenue, and between 15th down to 59th, the graffiti is very prominent. I have seen entire buildings that are painted over from the ground to the roof as displayed in the photo below.
In the picture above you can see on the bottom right where someone has posted LK for Loco Killer. Someone quickly changed the L to a C for Central Killer. These two gangs are talked about in the video above. These two gangs are not the only ones in the area but they are the ones that are profiled in this program. The photo above is just one small example of the tagging that has taken over the South side. It is sad to see the constant vandalism that has taken over this area. I have always seen small areas of graffiti around but it was quickly covered up. It is so bad lately that it would take thousands of dollars just to cover up what is already there. I have always been proud of my home town but this is the sort of thing that no one wants for their town.
One of the sad things about all this is that I have actually heard people defend the vandalism by calling it art. It is not art when they are destroying other people’s property. If they want to paint up their own house then so be it but leave other people’s property alone. I first read about this story on the OKCTalk web site. They were posting about the show being on at the moment but I missed it. I found it on the Internet and thought I would post it here.
Hopefully in my idealist world, the people will see this and take a stand to clean up the problems. Unfortunately it will likely result in more hostility between two groups that are being ‘dissed’ on national TV. That is likely going to be the end result of this program’s airing. It will make them even more emboldened where the tax payers are less safe and end up being stuck paying to repair all the damages. I hate to be so cynical but the media coverage paints a rosy picture as though there is nothing wrong. Our local media does not even know their is a South side. One thing that I have noticed about this city is the enormous blinders that are on. Our city has a North side that tends to reap most of the financial benefits that come with having one of the lowest unemployment numbers in the nation. There are lots of great stories about how our economy has faired well in this downturn. I have met people on the North side that have not been to the South side in 20 years. They have lived here their whole lives and do not even know where some of the main streets go through. It is this vacuum of knowledge about what is going on around them that keeps these problems out of the media.
The local media is almost exclusively comprised of North side residence. I work with people that live on the North side that do not even know about the things that go on in the South side. I do hold a little hope that having a national television exposure will wake up those in our local media so that the tax payers will know what is going on. I sometimes think it is sort of like that awkwardness that people experience when they are at a red light and there is a homeless person standing there holding a sign. It is too easy to stare straight ahead and pretend he is not there. It is easy for our locals to pretend our problems are not there and ignore it because they live in their expensive home on the North side. We do not want these types of stories getting national attention because it only exacerbates the problems. I still love my home town and hope to see it retain its family values roots. I do not want to see it become a den of crime to a point that no one wants to live here.
I Am a Bad Person :)
Wow! I just witnessed my beloved neighbors screaming obscenities at each other so loud that I could hear it over my television. I am a bad person because I enjoyed every minute of it. A while back my neighbor and I got into a shouting match over his spilling oil into the street in front of my house. I was blocked into my drive way where if I backed out, I would drive right through it. Then I went out to take some pictures of it and he started shouting obscenities at me for taking pictures.
He eventually got the water hose and sprayed it out of my drive way into the lady next door’s drive way. This guy plays the stereo every night and day where I can hear it inside my own house.
I have never called the police on him but it really gets on my nerves. This oil incident happened over a year ago. We have not spoken since that day until last week. I was taking the basket ball goal out of the yard that had so much concrete on it that my whole family could not move it without breaking it up with a sledge hammer. The same neighbor pulled up and helped me get it into the truck. I am certainly torn because I was very grateful for his helping me yet he continues to blast the stereo very loudly. The funny thing about it is that I can hear praise music so loud inside my house. He also has several Rottweiler’s that use to always get out and terrorize the neighborhood.
As recently as this morning I heard the praise music blasting from his house. About 15 minutes ago I was hearing f*** this and f*** that. This same guy was screaming at his neighbor on the other side of him. The victim this time is the same neighbor that always defends this guy. They have always been close neighbors. The neighbor would always defend him when the other guy’s dog would get out. Now they are screaming at each other because the friend next door pulled his truck between the houses and caused ruts in the guy with the dog’s yard. They were screaming so loud that many other neighbors were peeking outside to see what was going on. For some reason I find pleasure in seeing this happen and I know it is not right. I could barely contain myself from giggling while peeking through the window blinds like a coward. I know that is not a nice thing to do but for some reason I feel vindicated despite his helping me load the pole with concrete in the truck. Maybe I have lived in a neighborhood where criminal activity has become so common place that it does not even phase me anymore.
The sad thing about all this is that not only do I know it is wrong for me to have pleasure in their fight, but this is the neighborhood that I grew up in. It really does bother me that our neighborhood has come to this. You may remember just last week some 17 year old was shot and killed just three streets over from me in this very residential neighborhood. I thought that the cops would show up for sure tonight but they never did. They were shouting so loud that I could understand what they were saying inside my house with the door shut. I hate to see my childhood neighborhood become so bad that people are not even phased by it.
Urban Graffiti is a Crime
I have been seeing a troublesome pattern among posters on OKCTalk defending graffiti as being art. Not everyone was defending it but there was certainly more than one. I can see it as an art if done tastefully in a legal way. When I say legal I mean someone gives their permission to paint their property. It is amazing that people would not see the criminal nature of graffiti. No matter how artistic it may appear, it is the destruction of someone else’s property. I am pretty confident these individuals would not see it as art if it were their property that was vandalized. This is clearly a lack of understanding what vandalism is. The American Heritage Dictionary defines vandalism as…
Willful or malicious destruction of public or private property.
There is not a nice way to put this. People work hard for the money they get and then they purchase valuables with that money. When another person comes along and destroys those belongings, it is not likely they are going to view it as art and they should not. If municipalities decide to set aside areas for this purpose, then I have no problem with graffiti but when you go out and destroy someone else’s property, it is wrong. The perpetrator may view it as art and think they have the right to do this but they do not. It is no different than going to someone’s house and kicking a dent in the side of their care and then claiming it is art. The owner did not want that dent there any more than they wanted the graffiti on their property. This topic so outrageous that it surprises me that we are even having this discussion. It is so obvious that it is wrong that it is difficult that anyone could not see it.
I just had to voice my opinion about this because graffiti is becoming a bad problem around here. For those that would say “I’ve been here or there and it was far worse so you do not have a problem” I would say that any crime is too much. I have never understood this relative thinking. Just because something else is worse somewhere else, it does not negate the problem here.
Del City’s Challenges and Opportunities
As a resident of Del City it is easy to become excited and also distraught with some of the changes going on. For those not familiar with Del City, it is a suburb of about 25,000 people completely surrounded by Oklahoma City, Midwest City, and Tinker AFB. This city use to be about 30,000 before an F-5 tornado came through on May 3, 1999 and destroyed nearly a thousand homes on the Southeastern edge. Many of these people never moved back and those that did bought their neighbor’s lots and rebuilt homes that were twice the size of what they had. Although the city has been rebuilt, there are fewer homes around. This city was built in 1948 as a place for the growing Tinker AFB. Back then both Midwest City and Del City was thrown together in a very short time. Many of the homes were very cheap and small. Because Del City is completely surrounded there are very few places to build new homes. Real Estate is hard to come by that is not in a flood plane.
In the above picture we see a very large apartment complex that was built late 1970’s early 1980’s time frame. This apartment complex covers several city blocks as you can see on this map.
There is a creek that runs right behind it and usually does not flood but about five years ago it did. We had so much rain that the whole city was flooded and this creek overflowed its banks right into many of the buildings of this complex. This flood caused many of the buildings to become inhabitable and the city condemned them one at a time as tenants complained. It is not clear why the owners did not repair the damage. Surely they had insurance as I would think it would be mandated by law. This complex has been filled with mold and many local news stories have been published about it.
I have some good memories visiting friends in this apartment complex back in the 1980’s so it is sad to see this happen. I drove through the parts that were not chained off and took a few pictures to see the condition. I found this sign on each of the doors as you would go inside.
The writing has been on the wall for a long time. Each time I would drive by here I would see another building boarded up with chain link fence around it with warning signs. I may be wrong but I think the city had big plans for this property though I am sure they would never admit this. If you have been down Sooner Road in the last five or six years you may have noticed the transformation. When I left Oklahoma in 1989 to join the Air Force Sooner Road was a no mans land as a dividing line between Midwest City, Del City and Tinker AFB. That tornado was the beginning of a rennaissance of this area. Many of the old buildings were destroyed and the vacant lands have been developed. Sooner Road has been growing from N.E. 10th street all the way down to S.E. 104th Street. Since Del City’s side has been limited in development due to being at the end of Tinker’s runway they can use all the land they can get. This apartment complex sits at some of the most valuable real estate in Del City being at S.E. 29th and Sooner Road. This intersection has a lot of traffic and is ripe for development. The Northwest corner is off limits due to the Tinker Runway but the Southwest corner is right where this condemned complex sits.
You may have noticed that Del City has decided to develop Sooner Road South of I-40 across from the new Wal-Mart store. I say some incredible renderings of new hotels, restaurants and shopping center. This is very close to the forbidden zone of the Tinker runway. With this apartment complex being demolished, this opens up some very valuable land at one of the busiest intersections in the Eastern half of the metro area. Sooner Road has become such a desirable place to build that the Mid-Del school system has announce they are going to close Sooner Rose elementary at S.E. 15th and Sooner behind the Home Depot due to heavy traffic. This will open up another valuable corner for development but Midwest City will reap the benefits of this area since it is on their side of the street. Sooner Road has almost every hole filled from S.E. 29th Street down to 74th. With the addition of the new Mercy Heart Hospital at I-240 and Sooner, this area is getting crowded.
The amazing thing about all this change is that it took an F-5 tornado to get things moving. After the miles of total destruction throughout the metro it would have seemed at the time that no one would have built anything back. On another front, Del City is finally moving thier City Hall out of their old 60+ year old building located here at 4517 S.E. 29th Street.
They are taking over the old Exchange National bank building on S.E. 15th Street.
This building was built in the 1980’s as the Exchange National Bank Del City branch and then changed to the Fraternal Order of Police building. Recently we have seen signs up saying this is going to be the new City Hall building. The old Del City Police department located on Epperly Drive is going to move to the old City Hall location after they tear it down. Here is a picture of the old (current) Del City Police department.
This old facility I am told will eventually become a Senior center. I am not sure about the accuracy of this as I heard about it on the OKCTalk web site. You can read about this here. I grew up in Del City and have been sad to see it become a place of rent houses and people that do not care about their homes. It is nice to see the city trying to improve on this and I think the current mayor Brian Linley is owed a lot of credit for much of the improvement. I still live in Del City and plan to stay unless something major happens. Getting rid of apartment complexes, especially ones that have a lot of crime in them is a good first start. If you were to look at a map of the Oklahoma City metro area you would be surprised to see how the small town of Del City is somehow embedded deep into the center of the city. It gives the impression that Del City is more of the stereotypical inner city environment you see on television. Unfortunately this stereotype is becoming more and more true as time passes. I have heard gun shots at my house more than once. I often jokingly refer to my neighborhood as “The Hood” to my wife’s irritation but there are times I feel this way. It gets so old sitting in my own home with people driving up and down my street playing those loud stereos where the booming shakes the dishes in my own home. Sometimes they will park in their driveway and let it play for an hour. There is a man across the street that plays his home stereo so loud that I can hear it in the back of my house at 1:00 AM. Let’s hope this leadership team is able to turn things around. Getting some commercial development will mean more tax dollars and a greater ability to combat some of these things.
Del City Shooting
My wife and I went to run some errands this afternoon and enjoy the wonderful rains of hurricane Ike when we stopped at a 7-11 store. We saw many cars lined up on both sides of the road that to me indicated a funeral. When we went into the store, there was a Del City police officer in there and the store clerk told us that a woman had been shot across the street. I really hate to hear sad news like this particularly when it is walking distance from my house. I grew up in this neighborhood, then left for the Air Force, just to return again. This neighborhood may have its share of crime but so do many other parts of town. We need to keep this family in our prayers and hope the victim survived and doing well. In the image above you can see the yellow police tape, a police car, and the remote broadcast van for KWTV, channel 9 in Oklahoma City. For those not familiar with Del City, it is a small community of about 25,000 totally surrounded by Oklahoma City, Midwest City, and Tinker AFB. Del City is a town that was founded in the 1940’s as a result of Tinker AFB being established. If you would like to see the rest of the photos that I took of this event, just click on the photo and it will take you to Flickr, where this set is hosted.
UPDATE
I was mis-informed on this story. According to KFOR this morning, the mother has not been seen since Friday and the Ex-husband was arrested on Saturday in the victim’s car with her kids. They were searching an empty field near their home near SE 15th Street and Bryant Avenue.