If the sidewalks could talk

Patty here…

I live in a quiet neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles. My neighbors are TV producers, architects, psychologists, and lawyers and at least one out-of-work construction worker (more on that later). My neighborhood has its own newsletter, annual dinner, block captains, and community council. We stop to talk to each other as we walk our dogs and sometimes we have parties and invite each other. Living in my neighborhood is not unlike living in Small Town Anywhere except it's in the middle of a city of 3,849,378 people.

When you've lived in an area for a while, you learn that the neighborhood closet has skeletons, too. Bad things happen here as they do everywhere. Burglars broke into my neighbor’s house some time back. I didn’t even know until we were out in our front yards chatting recently. An elderly man down the block committed suicide with a handgun several years ago. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a very good shot because it took him several tries before he succeeded, which sent the woman next door diving under her kitchen table, dodging bullets. A teenager who lived three doors down from me attacked her father with a knife. The previous owner of the house in which I live hung himself in the room that is now my closet.

About a week ago, I was driving to Hollywood to attend the screening of The Messenger starring Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson. I had just turned on a side street a block from my house, when I noticed several black-and-white police cars blocking traffic. There was a small white tent on the lawn of a nearby house. I knew immediately that under the canvas was a dead body.

The next morning, I found a small article in the newspaper describing the incident. A construction worker, distraught over his inability to find work, called the police to say he had killed his girlfriend and was about to shoot himself. Officers arrived at the scene and for hours, they tried to talk him down. During that time, he walked in and out of the residence numerous times brandishing the gun and threatening to kill anyone who came near. At some point, he exited his house and pointed the gun at officers. Not a good idea.



As it turned out, he lied. His girlfriend was not dead inside the house. The truthful part of his story was that he wanted to die. He just couldn’t pull the trigger. For that, he needed the police. It’s called police-assisted suicide or suicide by cop and it happens more frequently that we can imagine.


A February 2005 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin reports:

A 1998 report by the American College of Emergency Physicians examined all deputy involved shootings that occurred in the Los Angeles County, California, Sheriff’s Department. The findings revealed that suicide-by-cop incidents accounted for 11 percent of all deputy-involved shootings and 13 percent of all deputy-involved justifiable homicides. The report concluded that suicide by cop constitutes an actual form of suicide and defined it as “an incident where a suicidal individual intentionally engages in life threatening and criminal behavior with a lethal weapon or what appears to be a lethal weapon toward law enforcement officers or civilians specifically to provoke officers to shoot the suicidal individual in self defense or to protect civilians.”

Here's another article about the phenomenon.

I suppose it's too much to ask these people to consider the officers who are forced to shoot back. To kill someone over a lie. To find out that the gun wasn't loaded or that it wasn't even a real gun.



On second thought, maybe my neighborhood has one too many skeletons in its closet. Before I go for any more walks in the ‘hood, I think I’ll go shopping for a new outfit.



What about you? Got any skeletons in your neighborhood closet?

Reflective Monday!