A shocking discovery

Last week when I arrived at the hotel, my co-workers informed me that a man had come in a few hours earlier and beat one of our guests with a gun. Apparently, in the afternoon a large man walked through the lobby, up some stairs and into the room of two of our female guests. He pulled a gun and demanded that they give him all their money. They refused so he began to beat one over the head with a handgun. The other girl began to scream and he ran out into the hall.

The housekeepers reported that they saw a black man running down the hall, pursued by a woman very scantily clothed. Another woman, bleeding profusely from the head, stumbled into the hall after them and collapsed; so they applied pressure to her wounds and radioed the front desk. At that point, 911 got called and everyone started looking for the man and his pursuer. The attacker ran outside and almost right into a maintenance man, who dove behind a small building because he knew the man had a gun. Within a few minutes the police arrived but the man had gotten away without a trace.

Neither of the women wanted to press charges and it seemed a bit suspicious. Shockingly, they stayed another night at our hotel. I would want to get as far away as possible, unless I didn't have anywhere safe to go. I reached a conclusion of domestic violence. How else would the man have known what room they were in and why would they let him in? I felt sadness for them because I can't imagine how life might feel when reasonable and legitimate fear of violence is added on a daily basis. I can't imagine being beat over the head with a gun. I'm not too far removed to not experience deep empathy and compassion for their situations.

Yesterday, I found out why reading the entire Nancy Drew mystery novel series in my childhood doesn't qualify me to be a detective. Even though I read all 56 of those books, they apparently forgot to mention the part where prostitutes get a hotel room, advertise themselves on Craig's List, and then get beat up on Sundays, when the drug addicts pose as clients or "Johns" to steal all the cash (which the women have earned during their lucrative Friday and Saturday nights) to buy drugs. What??!? I didn't believe my co-worker when she told me so my manager showed me the Craig's list ad that the detective gave him when they came back to arrest the women.

Either Buffalo is the most violent place I've lived or I'm just more aware of it here. I did some research on prostitution in Buffalo and found out it used to be a huge problem but because of a big change initiative in the late nineties, the streets have cleaned up a bit. Check out these diagrams.

Here's the map of reported prostitution in 1996. No lie, Zach in I live at the very center of the darkest red area or the highest concentration of 911 calls!


Here's after the efforts to clean up the community. The hotel that I work at is just off the map. I don't know what the map would look like for 2010 but I can only hope it has continued to improve.

I don't actually like the phrase "to clean up the community" that I used earlier. I think because it implies that prostitutes and drug dealers are dirt or scum that make the streets unclean. Maybe some people feel that way but I don't think anyone is born a prostitute or a drug dealer and just because I had parents who taught me that drugs are bad, doesn't mean that I'm any cleaner than anyone else. When I'm my best self, I try not to judge people because their life experiences have led them to different places than mine have led me. Sadly though, I'm not always my best self.