Wake up call

When the phone rings at 2:40 am it is never going to be good news. I got word that seven people were shot at a nightclub near the Tracy Press. I threw on some warm clothes and headed out to yet another crime scene in Tracy.

Amore’s Italian Restaurant on 11th Street was ringed with crime scene tape as I arrived at 3:00 am. The parking lot was bathed in the floodlights of the mobile command center as Tracy Police officers sifted through the evidence. Shell casings in the parking lot were numbered as were the blood stains on the hardwood floor. Shivering in the early-morning cold I began to realize how different Tracy has become.

We have always had crime here in Tracy and we always will, it’s just a fact of life. But it is the sheer brutality that has emerged this year that has me stunned. Just a day or so ago working at my desk I listened to the police scanner for a call of shots fired at a local park. It seems so ordinary now I just waited to see if anyone had been hit.

Covering the crimes in Tracy I am tired now of standing behind the yellow crime scene tape. I have enough of the candlelight vigils and the despair in the eyes of mourning family members. I am tired of the parade of criminals and their orange jumpsuits in the courthouses as they make their way through the legal system. And most of all I am sickened by the outpouring of hate and racism on the web comments. As if there was not enough problems in our community were are subjected to the diatribes of those anonymous readers who seem to have almost as much hate and anger as those who commit the crimes.

I am not “grizzled veteran” as someone once accused me of being. I am just a reporter who has seen too much of the ugliness in our town. It sickens me. I think if I had somewhere to go I would, but with family here I try to stick it out and hope things will improve. Just when I think things can’t get much worse I get another early morning call.

It could be a wake up call for a lot of us. For those who think our town is still too small for big city crimes they know different now. For those who would put public safety behind other comfort issues ranging from sports fields to swim parks maybe they will reconsider. And for those who can only lash out at someone’s ethnicity with hatred maybe they will rethink their words. It was a wake up call for more than just me that night; I just wonder how many people got the message.