Halloween

The 911 caller was frantic, reporting that he heard a shot about fifteen minutes prior, went outside his house, and saw a body laying motionless on the ground in the housing projects on Hunter's Point. The caller thought the prone teenager was dead. The first officers to arrive on the scene didn't take long to reach the same conclusion, likely via stillness, abnormal pallor of dark brown skin, and the glassy stare into nothingness.

Sergeant White and I had already been rolling around the streets of the Mission and Bayview for a few hours, taking in the typical San Francisco Halloween sights of street thugs using the revelry as an excuse to wear masks and girls using the same excuse to not wear much of anything at all. From the police perspective, both of these phenomena are concerning. One is, however, much more entertaining to look at than the other. I'll let you guess which one that is.

The homicide scene was our first encounter with violence for the night. From the way the body was positioned, the look on his face, and the utter lack of emotion from the many onlookers ranging in age from young children to their parents - none of whom identified themselves as witnesses mind you - I could tell that the victim spent his last living moments on this earth in mortal terror. I could tell that he died awfully.

I also couldn't help but think of the cruel, wicked irony of dying afraid and alone on such a ridiculous holiday, in such a backwards town, in such a callous world.

What ensued throughout the night was a constant stream of radio chatter concerning gunfire, car crashes, robberies and drunken brawls. My team and I wound up working a non-fatal shooting that took place not more than a mile and a half from the earlier homicide, but was unrelated. We left the office at 0400 crispy and well done.

When I crawled into bed at about 0445 after having a beer and watching Jon Stewart rip on Fox News for a while, I resisted the temptation to drink a giant glass of whiskey or two. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to be able to shake the sight of that murdered teen from my mind for quite a while. I knew I wasn't going to forget his bulging left eyeball, so positioned because the bullet clearly tried but failed to exit through the left orbit. I knew the visage of the kid's sagging pants having fallen down around his motionless ankles in such an undignified manner would make my head shake for several days. So I made a mental note to write about it in the morning, and settled in for a fitful, nightmare-filled effort to sleep - an experience no doubt thematically appropriate for the holiday.

The cops I know HATE Halloween. I'm no different. And it's not because it's simply a pain in the ass. It's not because it's always so busy and filled with drama and drunks. It's not just the urine, the vomit, or the repeated slurred comments of, "Nice costume, officer!" For me, it's much more than that. It's because cops and other public servants know things about nights like Halloween that others often don't, or at least want to remain blissfully - and rather understandably - ignorant of.

It's this: the ghouls, the goblins, the ghosts, the demons, the witches, the zombies, the wounded, the dead, the raped, the tortured, the mutilated and the suffering... they're all real. They're out there every night, if you know where to look. And on nights like Halloween, they are in plain sight, not even bothering to hide. Evil and mayhem is in full swing, mingling in with intoxicated party-goers and looking for opportunities to hurt, destroy or take. More than one person always learns this the hard way on All Hallows Eve. Usually, it's lots of people.

But, then again, I guess it happens every other day of the year too: the murders, robberies, shootings, stabbings, abductions and sexual assaults. So maybe October 31st is just a pain in the ass, because the ghouls, ghosts and goblins never are far away.