If It Bleeds It Leads. Truer words were never spoken.

Bad, a collection of cop cars. Really bad, TV trucks. Really, really bad? a collection of cop cars and a TV truck within sight of your house. And helicopters. The sight and sound of helicopters buzzing overhead drowns out the sound your property values make as they plunge.

I saw this as I was approaching my turn off. I took one look at the circus thought to myself Good! They finally busted that house over there with all those shifty, thug- looking guys with their too many loud cars. I knew they were bad news. Now Dogger and I can walk on the street again and not worry about that house anymore. And then I drove past said house and it wasn't busted. I could tell because I was permitted to drive past it .

I tooled on back to my house and pulled into the driveway. I still wanted to know what happened so I decided to go ask. I  walked down my street and thought about asking a man washing his car if he knew anything but I didn't want to know about what he thought of what may or may not have happened. I wasn't looking for an opinion piece, I wanted cold, hard facts so I kept going, I stopped into one of the gas stations to see if the clerk knew anything but he was on the phone and ignored me and the other customer in the store. Ass. Hole. I left and moved on to the corner where the cops and TV truck were parked.

I thought about asking one of the cops, as they weren't doing anything at this point, but I decided I didn't to be told to go about my business, which translates as Go Away. I didn't want to go away, because  this neighborhood is my business. I live here, everything that happens here is my business. I was dressed like a grown up today and I was in no mood to be told to go away. I wore a blue blazer today damn it and I expect the blazer to be respected. I have questions and I want answers.

 My limited experience with talking to cops at crime scenes has taught me that they aren't really chatty and tend to want people like me to go about their business and leave them to there's. Which is fine I guess, but a child can learn about sex from their parents or they can learn about it from their friends and its infinitely more interesting and salacious if your friends tell you how it works.  If  Mom and Dad  want the kiddos to know the facts, they need to get there first.  In this case, I preferred Officer A and Officer B needed to give me the facts of life-or-death before I literally learned about it on the streets. I wasn't interested in  questioning the neighborhood six year old to tell me what he over heard his Mother telling her friends. If something bad really happened, I wanted it straight.

So I went to the TV truck and asked what happened.

Two guys got shot over on Fisher Street and one of them ran and made it to the ABC store where he fell out. One of the guys was shot in the leg and one in the arm, no one died. They sent them to Wake Med.

The end. I went online and found the story  . It's short. I hear sirens all the time here. Morning, noon and night there are cops rushing down Tarboro and New Bern and I never, ever see the story anywhere of what they are rushing off to with such urgency.  I guess there are going somewhere where no one is bleeding, because apparently its not news worthy unless there is some blood loss.