Small Town Gangs

[annundriel]

ginnith got to hear about this yesterday when I texted her because I was mildly freaked out, but I'm going to post about it here now.

Yesterday I covered the library for three and half hours, from two until closing, because the regular librarian had an appointment to go to. When I got there, she first told me about some trouble they had in one of the other branches in which a patron became angry over the wireless internet situation and got so agitated they had to call the police. Apparently he was arrested.

First, it's just the internet. Calm the fuck down. Second, apparently the first mistake made was that the person working that day was a sub and told him so. Because if you don't know procedure, generally it's okay to say, "I'm just the sub, I'm not familiar with that [whatever]." So what we're supposed to do is just call the IT department and get them to take care of that. Because we're not allowed to touch laptops or look at them without permission as that opens us up to lawsuits.

Anyway. That was sort of no big deal to me. But then I hear about how our library was tagged. One of the gangs tagged one of the newspapers on the computer desk and left some not very nice things aimed at the librarian. The regular librarian and I both think that this was probably aimed at the other sub, since she'd mentioned three teenage boys coming in and using the computer that she kind of butted heads with. Not too surprising since she can be...kind of grating. And I can't imagine anyone thinking horrible things about the regular librarian.

I'm the "nice" sub. There was one incident a few months ago where one of the semi-regulars was in and he told the librarian, "I'll see you tomorrow." She said, "Actually, it'll be my sub. I have two of them, and one of them's a bit harsh and the other one's nice. She'll be in tomorrow. You'll like her." Unfortunately, she'd forgotten to ask me to work, so the other sub came in. When the man came in the next week, he said, "If that's what you call nice, I don't want to meet the other one."

So, yeah, I'm the nice one.

I'm hoping that's enough to save me from anyone tagging newspapers with horrible things regarding me. I am clinging to my tendency to be too nice.

I also explained to the librarian that I feel safer at that library than I do down in Mattawa, since down there the library is kind of out of the way at one end of town should anything happen. Except then she just had to say, "But we're perfectly situated for drive-bys here."

::facepalm::

The bank across the street got robbed a couple of years ago. By two guys on foot. That they never caught.

::double facepalm::

When I was telling Neesha this yesterday, she pointed out that a drive-by would take out half the town. We only really have the one main street.

I know it's a stupid kind of fear because the chances of it actually happen are, I'm hoping, relatively small. But it's still there.

Comments

[michelerz.livejournal.com]

who knew such things occurred in small towns?!?! those thing don't even happen here and I live in a wasteland of morons, druggies, and thugs.

blah, though we have things that occur here that are better handled by Haz-mat.

Speaking of... there should be either a drama or reality show based on the those on the haz-mat crew... imagine all the stuff they encounter!

finally, take care! don't let those people push you around or intimidate you! they're just insecure and lame.

[annundriel.livejournal.com]

Stuff like this never happened on The Andy Griffith show.

I think part of it has to do with the fact that we get a lot of families who arrive from Mexico through California and they're being influenced by that as well as anything that may have been around in the more populated areas where they originally came from. And since there was less of that here, there's more room for it to move in.

That last bit - well, all of it but the last especially - is pure speculation. I mean, I know there were gangs when I was in high school there, but I wasn't aware of them at the time. So. I don't know. Oh, small town.

At the all staff day for the librarians that we had last week, we were told to be professional and polite. Like I'd be with anyone. And that they're usually in gangs to feel like they have power and belong because, yes, they're insecure.

We were also told that Wenatchee, the closest "big town," has between 30-40,000 people, about 30-40 police officers, and only 6 of them are on duty at any time. In Royal we have...3 officers now.