On November 1st, I woke up to find about a half-dozen police cars (marked and unmarked) parked on my corner. One in my driveway, one in my neighbor’s driveway, a couple around the street. My girlfriend, who watches cop shows, noted that there were detectives as well as patrol officers on the scene (they dress differently, I guess) and that the detectives had on rubber gloves. Crime Scene tape went up across the driveway of one neighbor. Within a few minutes, though, everything looked pretty normal… I mean, aside from the cops. There wasn’t any tension, they were standing around talking, no ambulances running around, no helicopters or SWAT teams or obvious CSI type stuff.
I felt like it would be rude to go and ask, but the subject did come up on the Davis Square livejournal community. We waited for the Somerville Journal’s weekly police blotter, but that didn’t have anything in it.
Later I heard from a neighbor who did have the guts to go ask the police: It wasn’t a crime, so it didn’t get into the police blotter. What it was was just horribly sad. The people who live at that house have a couple cars they’re fixing up, parked ’round back. A homeless guy broke into one of those cars (were they even locked?), sat down, fell asleep, and didn’t wake up. Cause of death not known.
Secretly Ironic 