Bradley Farless

My wife and I were watching a movie and we started to hear this banging noise from the hallway. When it went on for more than a few minutes, I stuck my head out the door to see what was going on and I saw this skinny crackhead looking dude in a heavy black coat banging on a door down the hall with some kind of tool.

I looked at him and he looked at me and he didn’t even care. He just kept banging on that door.

While I was looking down the hallway, the super’s wife opened her door across the hall and I waved her back inside and told her someone is breaking into an apartment down the hall. I took one more look at the guy and shut the door and called the police.

I placed that phone call at 5:50 PM.

We listened to the guy hitting the door and using what sounded like a hammer and chisel for about ten minutes. Then we got bored and went back to watching our movie.

Twenty minutes later, we heard an altercation in the hallway so I went and looked again and the building super was running the guy off.

The police never showed up. I called 911 again and asked why the police hadn’t responded to a report of a man hammering his way through the door of an apartment. The operator told me that the “job [was] in the system” and she wasn’t sure why there was a delay in my area.

I could only say, “very reassuring” and ended the call.

The NYPD finally responded an hour after my first call. One hour. The criminal got away because the NYPD failed to respond in a timely fashion, which means the guy will probably be back. What if he had attacked someone in the hallway?

Thankfully, the door held. Even if there was no one home, no one deserves to have all of their property stolen or vandalized, or to possibly have pets injured because the NYPD was too busy eating donuts to respond to a call. We’re supposed to trust them to help us when we need them but how can we?

They don’t show up for 311 calls for noise or huge numbers of double and triple parked cars blocking the road, or parked on the sidewalk. They don’t show up for a crime in progress. Will they really show up and save you?

You can’t rely on the police to save you or even to help you, only to write a report about how you got wasted after the fact. We need more 2A friendly laws in New York City so regular citizens don’t become victims due to lax policing and even laxer sentencing.