Insomnia is a nice thing when you have events like the Charlotte riots of last night. I tuned in to the news, muted it and opened the scanner app on my phone to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department. While not transmitting what the anti-riot units were doing, the scanner was giving detailed accounts of what was happening outside that area and in the rest of Charlotte.  That turned to be interesting.

Lesson One: Regular critters decided to take advantage of the situation. Figuring the cops were too busy with the “peaceful” protest, your regular brand of criminal went out in force. I caught at least three call of Armed Robbery and several attempts to break in occupied residences and business alarms going off.

Lesson Two: Regular crime did not take a vacation. Domestic abuse call, strong-are robbery, theft, missing juveniles, argument between neighbors, fistfights, etc. all continued as if the major event was not happening. And cops had to be sent to each one to deal with them. It was a great example of asset management to listen to all ranks attending calls other than the riot.

Lesson Three: Charlotte Firecrackers. There were three calls that were interesting. The first one was an attempt to break in to a residence (two males IRRC) followed a couple of minutes later by a “shots fired” in or around the same location.  The responding unit closed that one and mentioned that the “shots fired” were firecrackers. Other than “who the hell would be setting fireworks on a night like this?” I did not give it another thought. Later on, another call came in about a vehicle full of males screaming , threatening people and that shots were fired; again the responding unit closed the call with firecrackers. And there was a third case, almost at the same time as the second, but an attempted break-in to an occupied location with 3 shots fired called in by a neighbor…and the responding officer also closed it with firecrackers and his tone of voice was professional but there was a hint of mirth in it.

If I was a suspicious man, I’d guess that those events were solved with “firecrackers” by the local neighbors or home owners.  Firecrackers delivered by items like this:

Because you damn well know, good Law-Abiding people would never use the real thing to scare the bad guys, right? 😀