One would think that if you lived in a house that was being constantly vandalized you would develop good rapport with the local police. Nothing could further from the truth. As bad as the students who attend the University are, the Amherst police are worse. From experience, the police in Amherst are not interested in solving crime, but instead are interested in maintaining a level fear in the population of the town.
Because 143 Fearing Street is the last house before the University, all sorts of things get left on the property in addition to the beer bottles thrown on the lawn. Several times while I lived there I found bicycles thrown in the bushes. The first time this happened, I left the bicycle there and in a few days someone took it away. The next time there was a bicycle left on my property, I noticed a sticker on the frame that had the name of the bike shop and the registration number in the town where it was purchased. I copied down these numbers and I called the police. The police came and took a report and picked up the bicycle. I then called the bike shop and gave them the registration number. They were able to give me the name of the person who owned it. I then called the woman and told her where her bike was. She told me that the bike had been stolen and that she was very happy that I had called. I then called the police and told them that I had found the owner of the bike, and that she would be coming to the police station to pick it up. The officer told me that they didn’t release bikes to people. He told me that stolen bikes were sold at the police auction at the end of the year. I don’t know if that woman was ever able to get her bike back from the police. The next bike that was left on my property I just used for a while before giving it away to one of my tenants. I didn’t see any reason to contribute more bikes to the Amherst police fundraising efforts.
One morning I looked out my kitchen window and saw that there was a car parked on my lawn. It was a big car. As I remember, a mid-seventies Chevy Impala four door. What was scary was that the place where it was pulled in was only a few feet from hitting the filler pipes for my home heating oil tank. For a day I didn’t call anyone, figuring that the owner of the car would come pick it up and it would be gone as it had arrived. On the second day I called the police and asked them to tow it away. They told me that they could not because it was parked on private property. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I did notice that the car was unlocked. I looked in the glove compartment and found the registration. In the UMass directory there was a student on campus with that name and I called him. The young man I spoke with was happy that I called him and reply was priceless. He said, “Hey man, I am so glad that you called. I couldn’t remember where I left it.” The car was gone later that day. After that I placed large boulders on the edge of the property so that no one else could pull in on the lawn.
A few years later I noticed that during the day there was a large black SUV that would park in my driveway. At first I thought it was one of my tenants friends, and asked each of them about it. One of my tenants told me that he had seen the guy leaving the SUV there that morning. When I saw the vehicle there again I left a note on the windshield saying that the vehicle was parked on private property and that if I saw it there again I would have it towed. Two days later the vehicle was back. Again I left a note on the windshield that I would have it towed. On the following week when the same vehicle was back in the same place I did call the tow company and have it taken away. That night I was out working on my yard when a kid in a white baseball cap came around the corner and threw a full can of beer at my house, breaking one of my windows and spraying beer inside the house and down the outside of the building. I called the police and filed a report. I told the officer that I had a pretty good idea of who had done it. I told him about the SUV parked in my driveway and about the kid in the white baseball cap that I chased away. I even gave him the licence plate number of the SUV. I pointed out to him that the beer can was still lying in the yard and that he could take finger prints off of it to match with the person who owned the SUV. The officer said, “What do you want me to do, run those fingerprints through the FBI crime database?” And I said, “Yes, I want you to do whatever is necessary to prosecute the person who broke the window on my house.” The officer said, “Well, we’re not going to do that.” I asked if he could at least give me the name of the person who owned the SUV based on the license plate number. He told me he wouldn’t do that either. That left me cleaning up the beer and replacing the window so the cold air wouldn’t blow in the house and my tenants would not get hurt on the broken glass. There are really no laws in Amherst, Massachusetts.
At one time I had a charcoal grill out behind my house on Fearing Street. One day I went out back to cook dinner and found that it had been stolen. I had already had my first set of chairs stolen off of my front porch and the second set of chairs were then kept there by locks and chains. But even though I knew that I needed to chain down my chairs on the front porch I didn’t know that I had to chain down my barbecue grill behind the house. 143 Fearing Street is on a corner lot and there is frequent walk through traffic across the property. What I later learned is that houses located on corner lots have statistically higher incidences of burglary, theft, and vandalism. I would never buy another house on a corner lot. After my grill was stolen I called the police to file yet another report. The policeman who arrived listened politely to my description of the grill. I assumed that he then went back to the station and filed a theft report. A day later, working in the back yard I realized that my barbecue grill tools and the stand they were in had also been stolen and I called the police to amend my report. The person I spoke with at the police station told me that no police report had been filed for my stolen barbecue grill. About a week later I called the police again because one of the stop signs at the corner of Fearing Street and Lincoln Avenue had been broken off and thrown in the bushes next to my house. Coincidentally, the same officer who had come to take the report of my stolen barbecue grill came to take the report of the vandalized stop sign. I told him that I had called back to the station to amend the report of the stolen barbecue grill and found that he had never filed it at all. That officer stood in front of me and yelled in my face like a drill sergeant saying, “Here in Amherst we have a low crime rate. We’re not going to mess that up just because of what happens at your house.” I didn’t call the police so often after that. What was the point?