S.W.A.T. team assist

So a weird follow up to my post yesterday...

I have to say that there is nothing quite like working from home and being on a call with your team and interrupting with...

Me: "I'm sorry, I have to leave the call..."
Team: "Whats going on? Are you okay?"
Me: "Yes but I am worried about the fact that there is a police sniper in my backyard..."

Turning back time by about an hour, I had to leave my desk to a very loud knock at my door. I opened it to a man at my front door. I recognized him as my neighbor to the south, but as we have never officially met, other than me taking his puppy back to his front door four times a day because his fence is in shambles, I figured it was nothing. I answered and he asked me to call the police, as he didn't have his phone, for some domestic problem.

I did call dispatch and told them I could not provide much as of a reason other than what he told me. I hung up the phone and went back to work. Where I live is fine, but this one house to the south, no matter the tenant, always has these kinds of problems. Embarrassingly enough, this is standard. It's not ever violent, it's always noisy, and over the 9+ years I have been here I have tuned it out. But today...

Today it was violent or could have been. I realized the weight of the situation when I saw the sniper. I looked out my window at him and he raised his hand to tell me that he was no threat to me, and as I opened the door he let me know he was here because of the neighbor and I should remain in the house.

Hearing this, I immediately went into the house and woke up my girlfriend. "Thank goodness J is with her mom and at school right now," I thought. My girlfriend and I sat in the kitchen at the opposite end of the house from where whatever was happening happened. We were greeted by two S.W.A.T. team members at our door informing us to stay put. Police car after police car showed up and more and more members of the force surrounded our house in full gear with shields. What started as nothing had, in fact, become something. After an hour, two members of the force knocked on the back door and told us they needed to escort us from the property.

As we learned later, the male neighbor I had spoken to earlier had barricaded himself in the house with his 5 kids and had a gun. I had come face to face with this man not 45 minutes before all this had happened. We were escorted to a supermarket down the street by the sheriff's department due to the fact that I really only know 2 people close to my house that are not in the immediate area and they were both not at home. The workers recognized me and welcomed us in to stay until we could have someone come get us; wonderful people.

After all, was said and done, the police saved the kids, which were unharmed thank goodness, and took the man into custody. Five hours later I am back at my house and mystified at how quickly everything is back to normal. The community of people around me is pretty close-knit. We have been talking about how we can help this family in their situation.

I keep going back and forth about what I am going to do if this man gets released and returns to the house that is right next to mine. One would think that this woman would never take him back but, we can all agree, stranger things have happened. The reports say he was not in his right mind but drugs or not, this is a huge deal. I am raising a teenager here and I feel as though this man should not be allowed to ever return to society. But we all know he will, just hopefully not on my block.

This house next door has been a catastrophe since 1 year after my family moved in. When we did it was vacant and the woman who bought it moved her son in to start renovating. Little did we know that this would be the one problem in our society for years to come.

For years, up until about a year and a half ago, her son was a menace. Not to the point that the law could do anything, but for us it was a nightmare. He was mentally unstable, which is fine, but when you add a mean drug habit on top of that, it was something I had never seen. The yelling, the music blaring at 4 am, playing ping pong with my windows, the screaming with his girlfriend... It was hard to bear. I would call police dispatch 2-3 times a week just to get the sound level down so we could sleep. The law could do nothing about it or didn't want to. I called so much that when the man came over today, I literally had the police department on speed dial.

A year ago our spirits were lifted when my constant pleas to the homeowner were answered and she made her son move out. She had been trying to hide her "embarrassment" in that house so she didn't have to deal with him, but I did, and I made her know about everything he did. I'm sure she was sorry she gave me her number. She moved in a couple, one of which I believe she was related to, who were supposed to be making renovations on a house that was in shambles. Holes in walls, spray paint everywhere, cabinet doors missing, holes in floors, it was the epitome of a crack house, or what I imagine one to be in my head.

The rest of the story is her words. She kicked the couple out due to doing unsatisfactory work, but before they left they moved this family in. Keep in mind where I live it only takes 2 weeks to establish residency, that part is true, so when she came to the house, she says they were already there and had already claimed residency and her eviction proceedings on a family that wasn't paying rent began. I do not claim that this story is true, nor do I care. All I know is that they have been much quieter than anyone there, music is bearable and we live close so I can't complain. They did get a puppy which we pay more attention to then they. Even still, compared to what came before, no big deal. All seemed fairly well until today.

Today put a lot of things in perspective, I am attached to this house due to the fact that I am not wealthy enough to move at this point. I'm on a two-year plan to get out of all my debt and my plan was to stay here until my kid goes to college in four years. This house, good and bad, as for now, is the most stable place my child has. She has grown up here since she was three years old and after the divorce and her and her mother moving three times in two years, I feel that it is her comfort zone. Thinking about the future, I am fixing issues with the house, and doing things that need to be done to sell it. But now I am at an impasse. Do I find a way to move sooner than later or is it just this one house that is the problem? Either way, I am trying to rally the community around us for change. I am not the only one affected by this and everyone around seems to agree that something has to be done.

Through it all, whatever the outcome, these innocent children are safe and that's really all that matters. I hope that they can get through this trauma and lead normal lives.

In the link below, that's my house on the right, just beyond the fixed view in the middle at the beginning... Awesome :(

http://www.kctv5.com/clip/14087754/police-arrest-man-rescue-children-after-standoff-in-kck