Somewhere to go

So we're not supposed to know anything about juveniles in the justice system: their cases are off-limits to info requests, you don't see their names in criminal complaints, and nobody is authorized to say squat about them.

But occasionally you hear things. Because they seem to be the cases that affect cops the most. 

Take tonight for example: an 11-year-old kid who broke a window and pulled a knife in a foster home, and the others won't take him because he's already been through all of them. He's yelling, "I just wanta go somewhere where they love me!" Yeah, those things get to people.

He's probably going to stay in juvie tonight. Even with all the new rules emptying out the juvenile detention centers, even if he tests out on the intake -- which he normally would -- they're probably going to have to take him anyway. No place to put him. Amazingly enough, a cop or two actually wants to take him home too.

Thanks where it's due

I remember growing up, at the end of the night when there wasn't anything better to do, we’d ask each other who our heroes were. Eddie Vedder, Gandhi, heck I was an 80’s child. But a year ago I met a new one.

I read about Amanda Hocking on a website somewhere, but no large American newspaper had done a story on her. It was like she didn’t exist, as far as the U.S. media was concerned. Papers in Germany and the U.K. were writing all sorts of things about her, but as for us… barely a peep. Despite the fact that she’d made over a million, at the age of 26, all on her own, publishing books online. Kinda sounded like a story.

I was warned to be skeptical: our book reviewer, who’d been in the industry for decades, had told her editors -- who then told me -- to be wary of the numbers. She’d heard all kinds of claims from self-published authors, and she was pretty much jaded for life. I didn’t blame her, in a way.

Anyway, I asked the editor of my paper if I could drive down to Austin to do a story on this girl. And she was a girl, to me. She was young – 26. Living in a house her parents owned, half-finished, with bare wood and holes in the staircase so you could see the ground. You could see the struggles, just looking around.

She was open, honest, and talking to her, a strange thing happened: I didn’t get jealous. She so deserved it. Our competing paper, also a large metropolitan daily, hadn't treated her so well. Which didn’t surprise me. But she didn’t seem bitter.

She became a hero to me. If this girl, working as an assistant to the disabled making $15,000 a year while every friend of hers was getting married and moving on to real jobs and real careers, could push out five books a year on faith and Red Bull and Spaghettios, what the hell was I doing?

I never did read any of her books, but she’ll probably remain a hero of mine forever.

Anyway, here's the first big story published about Amanda Hocking in an American paper.

A little reading to take the edge off

So after burning gallons of midnight oil, I went ahead and pushed out a novel that has absolutely no relation to my day-to-day reality. One, I live in the frigid Midwest, and it's set in the Arizona desert. Plus there's a space station that reaches from the earth to the heavens, so there's that.

But there is a little homicide and fugitive manhunts and ... well anyway, I'm happy with it, and I hope other folks will be too. You can find it on Amazon here.

Silent Nights

Contrary to conventional wisdom, after six years as a night reporter covering a lot of crime, I can safely say that people don’t stab or shoot or strangle each other with any higher frequency during the holidays. It’s long been the belief among jaded reporters such as myself that if you pack a bunch of relatives in a house, add a rack of sharp knives, some cabin fever and a dash of financial stress, it’s a quick and easy recipe for domestic assault.

But after six years, I have to say that hasn’t been the case. If anything, it’s been quieter than usual around the holidays. I asked a few cops, long-time vets, and they said the same thing. Sucks that they have to work, but usually a dull night.

Which makes me wonder where that rumor came from. The fevered imaginations of night reporters perhaps?

Conflicting Stereotypes

So a unique conundrum at the jail. Apparently, prisoners that are brought in who want to go to the bathroom need to be watched. Legally, by a same-sex cop.

We’re talking temporary holding, not real jail.

In walks a person named Kai.

“I usually can tell the trannies,” says the female officer that has to watch. "I honestly can't tell if she's... he's a boy or a girl."

They still don’t know.

Kai: No help. Shaved head with earrings, no makeup, no bra, and none apparently needed. Still no help. Wore boxer shorts … and bikini underwear.

So finally, they think Kai’s a she (Kai’s license says so), and the female officer has to watch the person take a piss. But they stand with their back to the officer, and go standing up.

“She peed like a boy,” the officer says. "I'm dying to know." Still no confirmation, and she’s worried about being sued.

Crime and Politics

You kinda have to cover both at night, but given a choice, I’ll take crime every time. Honestly, I’d much rather cover the aftermath of a bloody shooting than listen to some blowhard city council members take rhetorical swings. You see the pure consequences of bad actions when you go to a crime scene. With politics, on the other hand…

So I went to a suburban meeting recently where they seem to love screaming at each other. This city has been qualified by a local weekly as the most dysfunctional suburb in the metro area. The mayor had to get up and close the doors, and looked like he almost came to blows with a couple people standing there. Everybody was denying the other sides’ facts (we’d already stated our analysis for the record; nothing seemed to matter to anyone).  People were calling each other communists or idiots. The topic: garbage hauling.

O.K. maybe it’s been worse lately, political climate and all, but I’ll say again: give me a shooting any day.

Immersion Reporting

So to get closer to my work, I decided to have somebody break into my house last week. Well, it wasn’t really my decision, but subconsciously I might've brought it on. It’ll definitely help out with interviews: "Oh, I know man, I just got broken into last night... So how did it feel when you got beaten up/stabbed/shot/robbed/stalked/spat upon?"

You know how people always tell you that it feels like your home isn’t your home anymore after it gets “violated?” Didn't happen. Maybe I have a high violation threshold. I’ll ask my wife about that. Could be all those times my car kept getting broken into/stolen in Chicago; this time felt kinda meh.

Actually, the second time my car got stolen in Chicago, somebody left something in it. I’ll say no more, but technically it was a net gain.

All they got was a HP Mini: in, opened a few drawers, took what was in plain sight, and then ran back out the busted up door.