I was awakened just now by a very loud, highly amplified announcement:
“[FirstName LastName],
This is the [MyTown] Police Department. We need you to answer the phone, and come to the door with your hands in the air. You are under arrest.”
Sometimes they vary it by adding the street address, and adding “we are not going away.”
This started at some time before 5am, and it’s been going on for at least 10 or 15 minutes.
It repeats and repeats, almost like a recorded announcement, quite calmly.
I got up and looked to make sure that no cop car was actually sitting in front of our house, and the announcement seems to be coming from a block or two to the south of us.
David says if I were a serious newsie/blogger I’d get dressed and grab my camera and go out to investigate. I must be a piker, because I have no intention of doing either. Although, it’s a lovely quiet morning, filled with birdsong (and metronomic, echoing arrest announcements).
There, it seems to have stopped. I guess whoever it is finally either answered the phone and came out with his hands up, or the cops figured ou…
Holy crap, two loud BANGs like big firecrackers just went off, and then the announcement sounded a lot more agitated and cajoling. David was at the window and thinks whoever it was is coming out, and that verbiage had changed. Something about “come out with your hands up and walk backwards.”
UPDATE: The story in the very local press (the minor league versions of the major Chicago dailies for the suburban areas) is that it was a domestic dispute, and that someone had barricaded himself in a nearby house last night after midnight for about 5 hours. The two loud bangs were described as “loud booming devices,” or in other words, “flash-bangs” just like they use on TV cop shows. And also, a news helicopter showed up, and I took pictures, but they’re crap and grainy because I used the long lens but not the tripod. But it was ABC7’s “Chopper 7 HD,” although there probably wasn’t much to see by then. It was long after the flash-bangs went off and the announcements stopped.
Now, my husband David claims that if he’d been awake enough to realize that flash-bangs had been used, he would have gotten dressed and walked over with his camera, after first stopping to print out a PRESS pass. Ho ho, I countered, first we need fedoras to stick our DIY press passes, and then we need spiffy pajamas and big fuzzy animal slippers if we want to be REAL blogger-journalists.
Oy. Coming this fall: a full slate of cop dramas, including “CSI: Burbclavia” and “Suburban Confidential.”
Technorati Tags: Arresting Developments
