I Don’t Have No Understanding

When you think about violent cities anyone couldn’t imagine being born in. You might think of The Motor City, Detroit, Michigan. The city’s massive unemployment and poverty rates (9% and 37.9%, respectively) amount to a city with the highest violent crime rate in the country.

You might even think about Memphis, Tennessee with a violent crime rate of 1,943 incidents per 100,000 people, Memphis, Tennessee ranks as the most dangerous city in America’s south. One could argue that violence is just as much a part of Memphis’s identity as blues music, barbeque, the statue of Elvis Presley, Beale Street Landing and Graceland. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 and since the Civil Rights Movement, the city has become ground zero for some of the worst firearm violence in the country.

I was unfortunately born in the capital city of Connecticut, Hartford also known as the “Insurance Capital of the World” thanks to the many insurance companies headquartered there. It also holds the distinction of being one of the oldest cities in the United States and a great destination for history buffs. In spite of these distinctions, Hartford is a city currently suffering through a high crime rate and economic woes. Hartford’s violent crime rate of 1,066 incidents per 100,000 people can be at least partly attributed to the city’s high unemployment and poverty. The unemployment rate (7.0%) and poverty rate (30.5%) are both well above the national average of 3.9% and 14.9%, respectively.

I know that Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe are probably doing somersaults in their perspective graves watching the decline of that once little unknown respected city.

I was doing some midnight surveillance on the corner of Albany Avenue across the street from the Desmond Hotel Albany trying to get some evidence for my client who believed her husband was cheating on her. I watched this very attractive blonde white woman get out of her 2019 Audi 500 who stopped at a gas station to use an ATM machine.

She was robbed immediately upon getting money from the AMT machine by a woman who appeared to be a crackhead. In seconds I was able to deduce that’s what the thief was a female person who lives to hit that cocaine rock. She was real thin, dirty and probably smelled like warm trash and/or spoiled milk, fecal matter and a rotting corpses. I watched her frequently bobbing, weaving, twitching and glitching. If you lose property to a crackhead, accept the loss. If you find yourself chasing a crackhead, accept the loss because them crackheads are fast. You aren’t going to catch no crackhead.

I was able to flag down a cop who drove by the gas station mere seconds after the incident occurred, however the officer made no attempt to attend to the woman who was screaming bloody murder that some crook just drove off with her car and purse.  

Instead the driver of the police car asked me: “What was I doing while the woman was being robbed”? He told me to bend over the hood of the police cruiser while his partner in crime checked my pockets. When he found $800 in cash I had in my suit jacket pocket he magically slipped the folded money into his slight of hands pocket. Then he kicked me in my rear end and told me to get my peeping tom sicko black ass out of his eyesight. 

Right then and there it seemed to me that the Hartford police just seem so world-weary, robberies are nothing to them apparently.

On my way driving from the crime scene I saw this man get jumped on Capital Ave. by two guys in a car. They stole the man’s earrings out of his ears and broke his nose and mouth open. I was able to get the license plates numbers and anonymously fax the info to a former policewoman I once dated.  

Today Hartford is known for many things. Unfortunately, one of these things is Crime. Hartford has been ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in the Country, peaking at #8 in 2019. Most of this violence is contained in the Upper Albany areas.

Those two tragic events that occurred that night never made the TV station Fox 61, 6  o’clock early morning news or The Hartford Courant Newspaper.

About 3 days later all hell broke loose because the woman who got her expensive car stolen along with her Louis Vuitton purse stole was later found dead by the same two police officers who accused me of vagrancy, loitering and as some kind of voyeur, .was the Mayors niece.

The reward of $30 seemed a bit low for my taste and I was quite sure a lot of residence in the Albany area would be more than willing to confess to knowing something they never witnessed. Policed surrounded a crack house on Park Street. All they found was the purse and stolen ATM bank card. The owner of the crack house pleaded no contest as to knowing the goings on at that house. He was fined $500 and was told to demolished the run down condemned shack. The twelve people who were there in the house whether copping or using or selling were all killed. The crackhead who stole the purse wasn’t one of the slain victims. I had taken her picture that night. Had the police greeted me better they would have that information.

The city and crooked Mayor truly believed that the case was solved.

Well maybe not everyone because those two officers knew that they had to clean up one major loose end and that was me. Especially when I sent the photos of the snatched purse thief and the time from the gas station clock to the Hartford Courant editor. I also included in a written message that I seen the murdered woman get into a cop car at the time.

When the pathetic photo of the former crackhead hit the paper the policed received over 1,000 calls. Her name was Desiree Brown a 26 year old former prostitute, grand theft auto thief and clothing booster from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The City of Milwaukee is reportedly more dangerous than it was a year ago. That's according to an annual report by Safewise which compiles FBI crime data. Milwaukee went from the 7th to the 6th most dangerous big city in the nation.

Criminal minded people know exactly where to go to keep their talents alive and flourishing. They found Lady D. her street name dangling from an extension cord on the 1-acre site between Magnolia and Irving streets.

The stolen car was never recovered, but the engine was found in a junkyard with the Vin number torched off.

During the investigation by Internal Affairs the two officers admitted that they seen the Mayor’s niece Ms. Lansbury but she refused to make a statement or press any charges so they just pulled off while she got into a cab. Not even Barney Fife was buying that story.

A few months quickly passed and the case went unsolved. That was until those two cops found me and the Mayor waiting on them to fence the gold watch and expensive necklace to a fence that I arranged.