FUCK the one Dawn in the ass
One eye Dawn Blow Job $5.00
She live aroun here
Wear waching you Dawn
You need money Dawn you kown where to to fine us
RAPE & KILL DAWN
These words are scrawled in Sharpie on the walls of the sidewalk under the bridge near Centennial and Coburg in Eugene, Oregon. The lettering is huge — you can't miss it. I came upon it walking home from the dry cleaner earlier today. I wasn't as disturbed as perhaps I should've been; after all, it's just graffiti. Probably just some Neanderthal's display. But after a moment I realized that, at the very least, the police should know if they don't already.
So I called the non-emergency police line and described the scene: “‘Rape and kill Dawn,’ among other things.” The response:
“Unless it's race-related, or a threat against a specific person who's willing to press charges, there's really nothing we can do.”
I mumbled something about how I just thought they should know, and she cut me off, ushering me briskly off the line.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. Between Homicide, Oz, Boston Legal, and The Wire, I've been a big fan of plenty of crime shows, more than enough to have seen that response coming. Police simply don't have the resources to start a major investigation every time some delinquent scribbles something threatening under a bridge.
But nothing? You say there's nothing you can do? The fuck there isn't. You could look for other reports of violence or threats against someone named Dawn in the area; maybe a quick search would turn up this Dawn so someone can warn her. You could let officers who patrol the area know so they can be aware. You could at the very least write it down, so that if someone named Dawn winds up murdered, detectives might have a free lead from the start.
What bothers me most, oddly enough, is that the operator wouldn't even lie to me — thank me, tell me they'll let someone know, give me a pat on the head, send me on my merry way. Since there's no body and no hate crime, and since the target herself isn't on the line, it was a non-event. I was an annoyance, a bothersome caller to be dealt with quickly lest I clog the system for the ten seconds it would've taken to feign interest.
What does it say, when we have become so blasé about such inhumanity that our police don't even pretend to care? Eugene isn't crime-free, but it's hardly west Baltimore. Things are calm enough that we should at least be worried about a death threat writ large near a major intersection just across the Willamette River from downtown. But no — apparently the preferred approach is “wake us up when there's a body.”
Maybe I'm worrying too much. Maybe it really is just tough talk: hateful, semi-literate sound and fury, signifying nothing. And Lord knows that if this is the closest I ever personally get to a violent crime, I should count myself very lucky. But I can't help but wish I lived in a world where such brutality, even in words scribbled under a bridge, isn't tolerated.
Location
Note: My apologies for the photo quality. My iPhone did very poorly under the lighting conditions (the shadow of a bridge on a sunny afternoon). To enjoy the rest of the spew, see the full Flickr set here.