Call the Fire Department!...or That Time I Accidentally Became the Neighborhood Narc

  In June of 2007 we had recently moved into our 'hood. Our five year plan for children had recently been changed to a two month plan-and I was already three months pregnant. At this point our neighbors seemed decent, albeit a bit unfriendly with an unusual amount of foot traffic to their apartment. (Hindsight being 20/20, this should have been a sign of things to come, but at the time we were still relatively new transplants to the 'hood and didn't recognize the now familiar warning signs that shit was about to go down.)

We had gone to bed on this night noticing nothing out of the ordinary. It was a school night. (I remember this because I had a field trip the next day that I ended up being exhausted for. Foreshadowing.) At 3am we were woken up by the carbon monoxide detector going off in the apartment above us. We lay in bed for awhile, annoyed that we were up. But as the alarm kept on beeping, we started to get worried. What if the neighbors were dead from carbon monoxide poisoning? (Neighborly-ness isn't dead. Even in the 'hood.) Joe went up to knock on their door and see what was up. Partially because we were concerned about them, but mainly because we wanted that alarm to stop so we could get back to sleep. (I mean, if we're being honest, it WAS 3am on a school night!) There was no answer at their door. That was it! They HAD to be succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning up there. (Also, I have a tendency to jump to the worst case scenario in 2.5 seconds flat.) Time to call the fire department! (aka time for me to become the neighborhood narc)

A few minutes later, the good men and women of the Worcester Fire Department arrived, went up to that apartment, and checked the carbon monoxide levels around the door to the apartment. No reading because the door was too tightly sealed. (A good thing when it comes to heating your apartment efficiently, a bad thing when the fire department is trying to figure out if people are dying from CO poisoning inside said apartment.) We thought that would be the end of things and went back to bed. Because like I said-school night. Five minutes later, just as I was finally drifting off to sleep, I hear a metallic "clink" outside of my bedroom window, so I looked outside and came face to face with a firefighter climbing a ladder to the third floor. Huh. This was followed by the sound of large boots clomping around the apartment upstairs. And a few minutes later? A knock at our door. Time stamp: 4am

I stumbled over to the door in my sleep deprived state and opened it-only to discover several firefighters and police officers standing there. (If answering the door at 4am-pregnant and wearing nothing but a Tshirt and underwear doesn't say, "I belong in this neighborhood" then I don't know what does.) If they noticed my outfit, they didn't mention it. All they said was, "Ma'am? Is the layout of your apartment the same as the one upstairs? And if it is, may we come in?" At this point I sprinted to my bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. Just in time for several emergency response people to stomp into my bedroom and check out my closet. Oh. My. Goodness. Time stamp: 4:30am

A few minutes later all emergency personal leave the bedroom. What follows is a bit more stomping around upstairs, followed by another knock on our door. (Knock, knock! Who's there?! It's the chief of the Worcester Fire Depetment!) Mr. Chief tells us that our upstairs neighbor has "quite an extensive drug operation going on upstairs" and that the reason they needed to see our closet was that his was blocked off by plastic sheeting and vented out the window with a dryer hose. They couldn't go in without a warrant (which they later got) so they needed to see just how big the closet was. Come to find out, our unfriendly neighbor had a little grow operation going on in that closet. 

But wait! There's more! After the warrant was procured, Worcester's finest found 2.5 lbs of weed, 20 tubs of hallucinogenic mushrooms (The police weren't sure of the street value of these because they had never seen so many in one location before. We're #1! Oh wait, that's not a good #1, right??), and a book called "The Cannabis Grow Bible." But that's not the best part. The reason the carbon monoxide detector went off? Our resident genius decided to rig his oven so that it could run in the self-cleaning setting WITH the door OPEN. To dry his weed. I've said it before and I've said it again. You can't fix stupid. 

When I left for work later that morning, there was a full fledged stake out going on because apparently, neighbor dude had returned from the clubs the night before, seen the police action at his crib, and hightailed it out of town. (Leaving his girlfriend to clean up the apartment after the police left. Classy guy.)

Not sure whatever happened to him after he was finally apprehended and unfortunately I don't have any pictures of this night. But here's a picture of Turtleboy instead because, well, Turtleboy is awesome.