The Ugly

As much as people who are wanting to buy parks might think owning and operating one is exciting, life on a regular basis gets to be hum-drum. Although there are occasional things that happen that are out of the ordinary, once you initially get it under control it is no different than living in any neighborhood.

Last night was our exception.

Other than the fact that our mover brought a home in about 6:30 pm unannounced, it should have been a regular quiet night at home. The pounding on our door at about 9:15 by one of our tenants started our integration into the craziness, stupidity or insanity, whichever your prefer.

Our tenant, a relatively new one, told me to call the police - his brother had gone wild and had been breaking his house, was running on top of cars, and hitting other people. We immediately called 911 and had the unpleasurable experience of having to deal with a dispatcher. Since we knew very little at that point, other than the fact that we did indeed need police assistance, it was relatively impossible to answer her questions. These questions consisted of: what was he wearing, what was his name, how tall was he, was he small or big, and where exactly he was located. Since I had yet to see him, I could answer none of these questions. (I could answer the race question, however.)

In the meantime, our newly-appointed Assistant Manager had also called 911 because someone also came to her door telling her that his wife had been hit by this man. She lives in a completely different area of the park, so you can see that this was not isolated to one spot.

The police arrived, and by the time it was over there were four police cars, five policemen, an ambulance and an ambulance crew. The brother had managed to get him into a car, where he was sitting when we got to the center of the problem. There were more tenants in the streets of the park than we have ever seen outside at any one time! The brother was telling him "don't run, don't run" and the police surrounded the side of the car where he was sitting. After talking with him for a short time they told him he could get out of the car.

He immediately took off running again, with the policemen in hot pursuit. That was when he knocked over the older woman who was standing with the rest of the people trying to find out what was going on. Other tenants ran from his immediate vicinity, obviously afraid.

It did not take a huge amount of time for the policemen to get him under control. Although he had been saying "what's going on" while in the car, he knew to hit the ground when the red dot from the taser gun was on him. He knew he did not want to be tasered.

At the point he was placed in handcuffs, yet was still asking what was going on. His brother told me had not taken his medication, and when he does not take medication he has seizures. In my opinion, this was not a seizure, but possibly a manic episode. He asked to be taken to the hospital, and they put him on the stretcher still in handcuffs because the paramedic had no wish to get hit. The police followed him to the hospital and when released from there he was taken immediately to jail, where he still resides at this point.

We found out as we did our own investigation that he had indeed been running on top of a car, had grabbed one woman as she came home and got out of her car, and hit another woman in the back of the head as she got her mail. The last woman opted to press charges, which we encouraged, but the other women chose not to.

It was brought to our attention by park residents that a young woman who had also been in the park had been smoking marijuana with him. This apparently was part of the cause of the episode.

We have lodged a "no trespass" order with the police department so he is no longer allowed to visit his family here. We have also turned over to the police the name of the female who apparently has been attempting to sell drugs here.

Apparently this has occured before. The brother who is a resident told us he had never seen him so bad. The family was afraid we were going to evict them from the park, but we have assured them that is not the case as long as they do not allow him to return to their home.

When the police left the community, we were busy talking with residents. We found several of the original residents now more open to sharing names of problem visitors to us. They saw that we had no intention of putting up with nonsense such as this.

When we went inside and went to bed, both of us had a very difficult time winding down and going to sleep. The results of this is a very unproductive day today.

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