To Robert Roenker
You should be in jail, motherfucker.
Living in The Bottoms, I have seen some shit. And I pride myself on not calling the cops over any of it, whether it be Johnny Suburbs dropping off a sex worker in the alley behind my house at 8 a.m. or even that gang of ruffians that tried to jump me and a former co-worker when we closed the neighborhood bar a couple months ago.
When you call the local armed gang that has a monopoly on violence, odds are you are changing somebody’s life forever — and usually for the worst.
Robert Roenker, a 72-year-old Republican who lives at 1054 Oberlin Drive, didn’t feel that way. He saw somebody starting their car multiple times outside his house and decided this was a job for the police.
The call is one of the most psychotic things I have ever heard in my life. You can tell this isn’t Roenker’s first 9-11 call because he immediately lists his name and address, which was edited out of the above video but I have reprinted in full.
He doesn’t report any criminal activity. He reports somebody repeatedly starting their car before filling the silence by joking that he doesn’t want to “get in trouble” by investigating further because he “doesn’t have a gun.” He also mentions that his wife is extremely worried about somebody who most likely needed a mechanic.
I don’t understand why the dispatcher thought this warranted a police response. Roenker did not report a crime in progress. There was no medical emergency. Roenker didn’t think company of his neighbor would be starting a car repeatedly, as if criminals love hanging out at the crime scene and engaging in noise-producing behaviors that would attract the attention of nosy neighbors.
The dispatcher should have asked why Roenker felt he needed a gun or why his wife felt nervous over somebody starting and idling a car in a public space. Roenker would have no other answer other than “Black people scare me,” at which point the dispatcher should have told him to fuck off.
This is no difference than SWATing, which is when people call in a fake violent crime-in-progress hoping that SWAT thinks the victim is actually the criminal.
Roenker got exactly what he wanted. If Andre’ Hill were white, Roenker wouldn’t have called the police. If he lived in a less affluent neighborhood, the cops probably would have laughed at responding to the call about somebody repeatedly starting their car.
Instead, a guy wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirt got executed by a jittery cop who was officially fired yesterday (but could still be re-instated later by the Fraternal Order of Police).
Perhaps Roenker didn’t want to see Hill shot to death. But he definitely wanted to bring the full weight of local government down upon a stranger, which is why he treated 9-11 like a Customer Service line.
I hold Roenker and the dispatcher just as liable as Officer Adam Coy in the murder of Andre’ Hill. They may not have pulled the trigger, but they put the bullets in the gun that took his life. Any justice for Hill must account for their criminal negligence as well.
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