Boundaries

Sigh. Well, looks like the North End is to blame again, even when it isn't. By now you've all heard about the story about the puppy found in a dumpster, but what I bet you didn't know is that Jefferson Ave. is in the North End. That's because it isn't. Although according to the Free Press story it is.

A little Rayne never hurt anyone, so why would someone toss the cute little puppy into a city Dumpster?
That's what staff at Winnipeg's Animal Services Agency -- and a whole bunch of Free Press online commenters -- are asking after the eight-week-old shepherd-collie mix was found wet and cold in a North End Dumpster last week.

...

Rayne was given medical care and vitamins, and "(has) been eating a lot while she's been here," said Gordon, noting the puppy has gained a pound in the few days since she was found in a dumpster on Jefferson Avenue.

Now, admittedly, I'm more sensitive to these sorts of things and although it would be hypocritical of me not to complain if this was a positive news story that was being pegged as the North End if it happened on Jefferson, I don't think that kind of mix-up generally happens the other way around. I don't know where exactly on Jefferson Rayne was found, but it was likely somewhere in West Kildonan or The Maples, NOT the North End.

However, I do have a North End quick story for ya. So last night, after finally falling asleep (I've somehow injured my rotator cuff I think, and boy, does it make everything uncomfortable, especially sleeping!) I was jolted back to life by a hard and fast pounding on the front door. My roommate was first to answer it, but it appears the police had been led to believe that someone at my residence was being stabbed. No idea where they got this thought, but they seemed content with my roommate's simple, "um, no" and went on their way, waking neighbours up across the street, trying to find a stabbing in progress. 5 police cars later, they all left, not having been able to figure out who was being stabbed. My roommate wondered as to where our "regular" cops were - the ones who have come to take statements on more than one occasion.  Must've been their night off.

Yawwwwwn. Is it summer?

So the other night I was awoken by the sounds of shouting and cursing. I tried to roll over and go back to sleep but the shouting continued - now shouting in the middle of the night isn't exactly uncommon - but it's more of a summer thing as a general rule. So eventually it reached the point where I determined that it didn't seem to be happy shouting so I thought that it was probably best to at least take a peek.


So out of my warm and comfy bed I got. The shouters had moved on down the road to one of the trouble houses and promptly engaged in what seemed like a fistfight. I figured that was as good a time as any to call the boys in blue. As I watched and waited for their arrival, the shouters decided to liberate two of my neighbours of their side mirrors. Thankfully they were only about half a block away when the police showed up, and combined with their footprints in the freshly fallen snow they will be get to visit the revolving door of our justice system. I however simply received a visit from the dark circle, puffy eye fairy.

All things considered, what with kids running around with guns and such these days, I suppose that was a pretty good outcome. Of course colour me devastated that it wasn't actually summer outside; I mean, they were playing football today, that should indicate as well that it's summer (Congratulations Bombers! My fingers are crossed for the fairytale ending next weekend).

This just (not) in...

Well, Picnic in the Park seems to have been very well attended, I didn't hear visitor counts but the line for the free food (samosas, pork on a bun, sauerkraut perishke, apples and bannock) was as long indicating a good turn out. Locals were in luck because there was also an event just up the road at Mountain and McGregor hosted by the Manitoba Metis Federation (or so I believe) so they had their choice of family events.

Two events stand out from the time I spent at Picnic, neither of which made the news. The first, which actually happened later, is the type of even less likely to make the news, but was indicative of the aftermath of what was a very active "cheque day" here in the North End (I also wonder if cheque day played a role in the incident on Garfield). For those of you scratching your heads as to what cheque could possibly cause an entire neighbourhood to change dynamic, it's the same one you quite possibly got, the Child Tax Benefit (I think that's it's real name - I always think of it by its colloquial name, Baby Bonus Cheque). Unfortunately, when this cheque comes out in the North End, in particular in summer, the place actually resembles the place that suburbanites think exists all the time. Cheques that are intended to cover the extra costs associated with raising children all too frequently end up being spent on alcohol and other intoxicants. This is certainly not to say that this is the case with all North End families, however, like any stereotype, the roots stem from actual events, and a few bad apples definitely spoil the bunch.

Since this cheque day fell on a Friday, in summer, it was was bound to be more terrifying exciting eventful than some of the others. A friend who has been enumerating here in the neighbourhood stopped earlier in the day than usual because things were getting rowdy earlier than usual, the sirens more prolific throughout the night than usual, and the North End seems to have had more than its fair share of stories in the crime section. As a side note to that - this summer has been the most calm in years, or so it seems - even a glance at the headlines throughout this summer has had most of the crime happening in other places, refreshing for a change!

So back to my original story - there was an incident at Picnic involving a knife and a fight of some sort, which is a shame because it's a family event. I wasn't witness to the fight but I would be surprised if the participants didn't still have some of the effects from some imbibing from Friday night.  The other story, which I'm extremely surprised doesn't seem to have hit the news at all, was a dramatic river rescue. Okay, I've never seen another river rescue so I don't know if it was any more or less dramatic than usual but it seems that it should get the dramatic adjective.

Just around 830 Saturday morning, while we were setting things up for the Picnic, there was shouting coming from the direction of the Redwood Bridge. As we all know, shouting in these parts is fairly par for the course, so we didn't think too much of it. A few minutes later, sirens could be heard, ending at the bridge. Thinking that perhaps there was a fight or maybe someone threatening to jump, we continued about our business.  Next thing we knew, a guy came running down the river path with the police in hot pursuit. Then they passed him.  Confused as to what the situation was, we headed down to the river bank.  That's when we could see the head and waving arms and the guy we thought was being chased shouting to the river victim that help was on the way, to just hang on.

The police were nothing short of spectacular in their efforts to rescue the man, I was particularly impressed by the way they didn't hesitate to commandeer the rowboat attached to the docked MS River Rouge (man do my posts tie together nicely!) and attempt to row to save the man. As a spoiler (but a happy one), the man was rescued, so I can then comment on some of the amusing scenes that unfolded with the boys in blue. The officers that jumped in the rowboat looked nothing short of comical in their attempt to coordinate how exactly to row a boat and two of the officers who scrambled along the riverbank lost (and found) items off their belts and I couldn't help but think of those pesky taser cartridges. Another onlooker said that an officer fell in the water trying to get in the rowboat but I must've missed that.

So as the officers tried to row out to the man, who I was told by another man on scene who had run down the river path as well (and I believe was the person to call 911) that he had been in the water from at least Burrows, so didn't end up in the drink by the Redwood bridge after all. It was absolutely incredible how quickly the current moved and how far the man drifted in such a short amount of time.  Ultimately he was rescued (or at least certainly seemed to be - it was too far out at that point to see exactly what was going on) by a what looked like a police motorboat.

It strikes me as so odd that this didn't hit the news, not even as a blip; so here on my humble little blog I will give the shout out to the police officers involved for a job very well done, and despite my amusement at their attempt to row a boat (I'm thinking that the motorboat would have eventually had to "rescue" them as well, that's one heck of a strong current) they were nothing short of heroic in their attempts to save the life of a man who ended up in the river. I suppose we will all just have to guess at the rest of the details, like how and where he ended up in there in the first place.

Where Big Brother ISN'T watching you...

Contrary to what the fearmongers might try to make us think, Big Brother isn't watching us all the time, and sometimes that isn't a good thing. Personally I don't really have a problem with video surveillance, I figure that save but inside my house anyone could be watching me at any time, and if they are watching me, they could be taping me, not much I can do about it, so no sense worrying about my theoretic loss of privacy.

The Forks, Big Brother was a no show

 What worries me I think, is the places that people aren't watching me. A few weeks ago I was at The Forks (not the day I came up with my quasi-brilliant idea on how to increase transit usage), to have dinner with a friend and managed to grab the last parking spot in the little "close" lot. It was weird, because I generally have the gift of finding rock-star parking and this spot was less than stellar - the cars on either side of the spot were partially infringing on it and it was waaaaaay back by Sugar Mountain.  But I thought, hey, I have a small car, I'll fit. And I did. Fully between the lines. And this is what I came back to, and a door ding.

Now, hoping the karma really would be a bitch, I went straight to the security office at The Forks (actually, first I went to Sugar Mountain because I thought they would have the best footage if they had a camera) to get the license plate number of Ms. Silver Jeep  (if this was written by a man I am even further disturbed) from their video surveillance so that I could head to Autopac and report the hit and run.

*Now, before I go on, let me re-iterate, I was between the freaking lines! Yes, I did indeed pull into a spot that it was going to make it difficult for the driver/passengers of the vehicles on either side to get back in, but I was fully and completely between the lines, which in the world of parking lot etiquitte, is how it works. They paint lines on the ground and you park between them. I didn't invent the system, that's just how it is. No one forced them to park like idiots. If she hadn't left the note I might not have even noticed it, in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't have been a door ding worth reporting otherwise*

So, it turns out, I wasn't going to get to explain karma to Ms. Silver Jeep (and seriously, how could she not realize that my car is a girl car, I mean, honestly, I have a "Little Miss Sunshine" air freshener!) because, believe it or not, The Forks does not have video surveillance, or at least none covering the parking lots (although I was led to believe there was none at all).  Now, you are sitting there thinking, that can't possibly be true!?! I mean, the place that we are all directed to go to, by the tens of thousands, surely must have some sort of way of archiving things should anything go wrong. I mean, when the Jets make it to the Stanley Cup this year (I'm an optimist) and tens of thousands of Winnipeggers gather at The Forks and the handful of fans from the opposing, losing, team try to start up some sort of brouhaha, are we going to have to rely on the video captured solely on the phones of those in attendance?

Now, Winnipeg most certainly does have some video surveillance, I mean, who hasn't seen the infamous "Guy pooping in the flower pot at Portage and Main" video? Now, of course, that is not at all the point of video surveillance; the putting of it on the internet I mean - obviously the point is to be able to see who the culprit of things like that is. We also have some CCTV cameras, I wasn't able to get a clear understanding if they are monitored in real-time or not, I don't think someone watching live video is the way to go personally, but being able to have that footage stored digitally seems like an invaluable resource.

So, I ask this, in today's day and age, why aren't there cameras at The Forks?

"Critics who say surveillance cameras are an unwarranted invasion of privacy should have a look around. Cameras have become an ubiquitous aspect of daily life in big cities around the world and it is virtually impossible to travel very far without coming under the watchful eye of a security camera." (from the Free Press article linked above)

I think this is an important issue and one that other people besides me need to bring this up. Take the time, send an email to the Mayor,  The Forks, and what the heck, why not tell the Police that you don't feel protected while you're at Winnipeg's most popular public place.

Oh, and maybe they could put a camera up at my corner too - "The Wolseley Project" got a little trampled the other day and I'd like to confirm my suspicions about the culprit and getting the plate numbers of guys trawling for h00kers wouldn't be so bad either.

When gunshots don't sound like gunshots

First some random housekeeping...

For the person who googled Root Beer Slurpee (a close second to Dr. Pepper) - if you're still looking, try the Sev in EK by Rona, just off Panet. They had them a week or two ago.

For the person looking for VW hubcaps - send me a message, I might have what you need if you didn't already find it. I, and most of my friends seem to hoard VW's.

For all of you that are looking for some variation of Winnipeg and h00kers (streets for h00kers in Winnipeg, Winnipeg h00kers, where to find Winnipeg h00kers and so on), please consider not looking in my residential part of the North End. I'm genuinely a little disturbed as to how many hits my blog gotten based on people who seem to be googling for h00kers.

To expand on a rant from way back when, Geography, where I expressed anger at negative news being attributed to the North End when it didn't belong there. At the time I didn't really have evidence that I could link to (as my own memory doesn't record details like dates and times that I get angry. Ok, well, now it does a bit more that I have a blog, but I digress...) so every time I come across something now, I try to add it to the list. So, Mike McIntyre, this one is for you. The intersection of Ross and Isabel is NOT in the North End. Thanks. While I'm thanking people, thanks to Winnipeg Cat for a daily chuckle and the link that led me to the story.


Oh, and the Wolseley project? Well, we're two weeks in and going strong. Only a little disturbance to the flowers and one lost due to natural causes.

Now on to my attention grabbing post headline...
Picture it, Saturday night in the North End. It was a nice enough night out, which generally means it's a little bit loud, but this past Saturday night was actually pretty quiet.  At one point, we'll say, maybe around 1130, I hear a series of noises that "sounded like gunshots". Or at least slightly less identifiable than most of the other noises that people claim sound like gunshots. For the record, most of the noises that are "gunshots all of the time" (see almost every story involving a shooting in the core area for this quote) are fireworks, backfiring cars, cars driving over glass bottles, cars driving over juice boxes, or pretty much any other noise besides gunshots. Of course, sometimes they are gunshots.

So Saturday night I hear a series of noises that didn't quite sound like the usual fireworks, but I wasn't really sure what they were either. Since there were no sirens immediately after I didn't really think about it too much. About half an hour or so after that, there was a loud BANG! sort of noise, but more like the sound two train cars make when they're joining up. I thought it sounded like it came from the government housing units across the street so I looked out the window, saw nothing of note, listened for a minute or so and went back to watching tv. Another minute or two later I heard the same sort of noise again so rushed to the window to try and figure out what the heck was going on. Was someone tipping over autobins again? There was not a soul in sight and no other noises to be heard. Back to my PVR I went.

About ten minutes later a vehicle tore down my street, like it was in a NASCAR race - it went by so fast that by the time I jumped up to see what kind of vehicle it was, it had already passed. I returned to the TV only to jump up like a jack in the box like 20 minutes later to the sound of a bunch of voices outside my window. This time I meandered outside to see what was going on. There were numerous cop cars milling about and the neighbours said there had been gunshots. Wait, you mean the banging noises half an hour ago?

Apparently. I wandered up to the next block where the most police activity was and asked one of the few officers who was not looking all over the ground with a flashlight, what was going on. I was asked if I heard anything, I repeated the above story and was very amusingly given a "ma'am, I can tell you that there has been a gun fired, perhaps it's best you return home". Eventually the intersection was closed off with police tape. Now, I can see most of that intersection from the window I was looking out, it can't be more than 50m from my house, and there were no people milling about after I heard the sound that didn't sound anything like what TV, Movies and my own one confirmed account of gunshots have told me that gunshots sound like.

Interestingly, right around the time they were closing off the street with police tape, about 25m to the other side of my house there was a number of cop cars all of a sudden and they had stopped a car and had 4 people down on the ground. I was led to believe (can't know for sure of course as the police tend to be tight-lipped on these sorts of things) that the two things were connected however the time delays between all of the events confuses me.

Oh, and Choppy (forgive me, I don't remember which blogger called the Police helicopter that, but it amuses me so I'm going to use it too) was there circling around for quite a while. Well surely an event of this magnitude made the papers and you're just desperately searching for where I've hidden the link to the article... nope. Nothing. Nada. No hint of a story.

I don't write this post to highlight yet another negative thing that has happened in the North End, I mean, I don't want to hide the negative either, but more to point out two things. One, we need more information from the Police. When something of this magnitude happens there should be a website that explains at least the basics so we can arm ourselves with the most powerful weapon out there - information. Perhaps a rule such as if more than XX cars are dispatched (I would say 4 is a good number) to a call, a brief summary should be made available to the public. Two, sometimes gunshots don't sound like gunshots.

Oh, so that's what happened.

Many a time we see the police going about their business, never entirely sure what they're up to. In my last post I mentioned an incident up to block. Well, I actually found out what happened this time.

WEAPONS ARREST

On January 8, 2011 at approximately 1:00 a.m., members of the District 3 Crime Unit with the assistance of the Tactical Support Team, Street Crimes Unit, Canine Unit and Uniform members, executed a search warrant for firearms at a residence.

It was at this time officers observed a male suspect fleeing the residence while in possession of a duffle bag. The suspect was arrested and taken into custody without incident. The duffle bag containing the following items was seized by officers:

· Loaded semi-automatic machine gun

· 9 mm handgun

· 22 calibre semi-automatic rifle

· Various rounds of ammunition.

A 17 year old male has been charged with the following offences: Possession of Weapon for Dangerous Purpose x 3, Breach of Firearms Regulation (Unsafe storage) x 3, Unauthorized Possession of Firearm x 6, Unauthorized Possession of Weapon x 3.

He has been detained at the Manitoba Youth Centre.

Good to know that they got those guns out of the neighbourhood, even if it's just for a little while. Even knowing what it was that happened, I still get a laugh out of the "go inside and turn off the lights" idea.

Might as well get it out there...

I live in the North End.

There, I said it. Now, you might think my hesitation is because I'm ashamed. Quite the opposite actually. I am like a fiercely proud mother and my neighbourhood is my special child and having to defend it on a regular basis gets a bit tiring.

I haven't always lived here, in fact I grew up in one of the more desirable post codes that the city has to offer. I found my house on a fluke and have often considered it to be the best thing that has happened to me.

Now, the 5 years that I have lived here have not gone by without incident - in fact that's what prompts this entry. I looked out my window to see the boys in blue (including SWAT counterparts) blocking off streets and surrounding one of the trouble houses on my street.

I was able to get the guys stationed in the car outside my house to tell me that there was weapons concern with the property in question. Amusingly, they suggested I go back in the house and turn the lights off; call me crazy, but I figure with the SWAT team dealing with the house in question and dozens of police around I didn't think I was in any danger. I appreciated the sentiment but obviously if there was any danger to the public then they would have been knocking on my door rather than sitting in the car eating a sandwich while the SWAT guys did their thing.

Part of me debated not to post this - after all, this event isn't going to make the news, heck, if I had been asleep I never would have known it happened either. I usually keep this sort of thing to myself, all of my friends and family already think I'm a bit nutty for living here.

So why do I mention it? So that I get my first of many chances to tell you how many AMAZING neighbours I have. All I ever read in the paper about my neighbourhood are the bad stories and after every shooting they seem to find the same person to interview who "always hears gunshots". For the record, I have heard fireworks, backfiring and any number of other popping and banging noises. I have heard at least one gunshot, it was different and everyone knew it was different - I know this because it brought all of us "good folk" out of our houses and we talked.

As far as I'm concerned the Winnipeg Police do a great job and I tell them that almost whenever I get the opportunity. Incidents like this get the bad people out so that there can be a higher ratio of good to bad and that's a-ok in my books.

Life is a lot of what you choose to make it, and if you want to see nothing but bad things then that's all you'll see. Now, I know sometimes I have a bit of a Pollyanna thing going on but someone has to bring a little hope and happiness to the party.