"We need to send a message that that is unacceptable," Hite told me yesterday. "If you threaten one of our citizens, you threaten all of us. We need to have a caring spirit and try to help her, but we also have to show that this urban terrorism can't be tolerated. We can't have people terrorizing the good, hardworking citizens of our city, not in a civil society."
Dennis has told me she is out of money, having spent her inheritance from her late husband renovating her house and making repairs after vandals set it on fire, burglarized it and repeatedly damaged her cars, all because she admonishes the dealers not to hide their drugs on her front lawn.
Hite said he wants to help Dennis feel comfortable in her home. That might mean putting her in a hotel until police can investigate and maybe make arrests so she can return later. It might mean finding a relative with whom she can stay. Hite noted that perceptions of safety are relative; some people on Queensberry have bars on their windows or alarms; others don't.
"I believe that she feels threatened," he told me. "We have an obligation to help her as much as we can." The colonel added that he has received calls from some of Hite's neighbors and a minister who are offering to help. "This whole idea of not getting involved is starting to wane a bit," he said.
Harrison said that police have just begun to investigate her complaints. There's a police camera a half-block from where Dennis lives, but no word yet on whether it caught the vandals or the drug dealing Dennis says goes on nightly outside her front door.
The police officer who responded Tuesday to the smashed car windows wrote up two reports - one for each car. He heard Dennis' rant about the drug dealers and her complaints she says have gone nowhere, about how scared she is and how she fears she will end up dead.
The report doesn't get into any of that. It is succinct and official-sounding, noting the broken glass and ending: "No suspect info available or witnesses." Perhaps the supplemental report, which is not public, puts her concerns on the official record, so that when someone checks it is not dismissed as another nuisance complaint about broken windows.
Dennis asked me for help. She wants Barack Obama to hear her story when he visits Baltimore next month, three days before the inauguration. She wanted to know how to get in touch with him when he arrives.
I had no idea what to tell her.
