Skip to main content

Update and Help Desperately Needed

The witness family has been promised some, but not enough money from the DA's office. If anyone is reacting with "Why are my tax dollars paying for this?" or "Why does the DA's office have responsibility to do this?" (which I hope they are not,) keep in mind that the reason they are in danger is because of the brilliant brilliant police of this fair city, which are fully living up (or down) to their reputation. The reasons the kids are in danger are:

1. The police didn't do anything when the kids' mom called six months ago because one of the suspects in Joshua's killing was threatening her son with a gun. They came to the house and told her "If no one is dead, we can't do anything." Interesting. Now someone is dead. Really? We had to wait for that?

2. After the shooting, the police took the witnesses down the street and had them point out the house where the suspects lived. The whole family (of the suspects) saw exactly who they are.

Like I said, brilliant.

Anyway. I spent half of yesterday at the DA's office with their mom, who we'll call "Rosa." My friend Warren spent the other half helping Rosa find a hotel that took cash and look for housing. He took the day off and did it again today.

Where we are:

Rosa filled out an application for an apartment in a safe neighborhood, and we're anxiously waiting for the landlord to get back to us. He knows this is time-sensitive. If this is finalized before 4:00 and the landlord signs the papers, Rosa can rush back to the DA's office and get the $1800 they're giving her in a check made out to the landlord. Then the family will have a place to stay through July at least.

Two problems:

1. If the landlord does not get back to Rosa before 4:00, the family has to stay in hotels all weekend. They can't afford this (got $200 from the DA's office for hotels and food, which lasted two nights. Since they don't have any more money, they will have to go back to their homes, which are NOT safe places right now.

2. If the landlord DOES get back to her, she collects the $1800 from the DA's office and is still $800 short for first and last month's rent and a deposit. I wish I had the money to cover them but I don't. We're waiting for Catholic charities, and I have a couple of friends who are sending some money. If anyone wants to help, PLEASE contact me right away. If you pray, please pray.

If this all works out, then they've got till July 31 to figure something out.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals.  This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle.  For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people.  It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them.  Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how
1 comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part Two

  Second very long part of the prison visit report.   After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk.    First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other prison but I still
Post a Comment
Read more

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.
Post a Comment
Read more