You know how police cars have the ability to broadcast their instructions? Well, last night we learned that the helicopters do too. We had just gone to bed after watching King Kong, and we were already a little tense with thoughts of giant bugs eating our heads, when we starting hearing some really crazy noises outside. The helicopters were soon hovering close, and at one point a round of gunfire went off. In the midst of all of this, we could hear that the helicopter was broadcasting something–something about a white car? Something about staying in our houses? (It was 1am so not a problem there).
The worst part about the helicopters coming is that when they are so close overhead, you know you have reason to be nervous and you want to be vigilant in listening to what is going on around you. But of course the noise from the helicopters is truly deafening and you honestly cannot hear if the back door did indeed just open (how many trips my poor husband has made to verify this one in the middle of the night…).
I checked the LAPD website this morning–sure enough, a white car was involved in a drive-by shooting where a pregnant woman, an eight year old boy, and an eighteen year old man were all shot. It happened earlier in the evening so my best guess is that maybe what we heard was them finding the car/people involved and there was likely a chase, which would explain why there was such a commotion for so long.
Yesterday I read this on Mark Galli’s blog in response to a NYT piece on the plight of Black Americans:
I can tell you that living under the shout and shadow of hovering helicopters makes me long for more white, suburban Christians (those who could invest time, money, political capital, whatever for the sake of the underserved and under-represented) to hear a call from Jesus to do something.