Tree and Sympathy

Eastwood Field

A few years ago, I was robbed at gunpoint in Herring Run Park. I say this now, as I have said it before, not out of a desire for sympathy. We called the police moments after the robbery, and the 911 operator asked for a street address.

Herring Run has no street address; technically, it has a street, but it’s a service road, used only by the folks who provide city services (forestry, recreation and parks, water, and emergency) and some soccer teams, who drop off the food and tents and drive back out.

If you’re lucky, and you can remember the hundred block of the closest street after a harrowing experience, the police will arrive; they are approximately three-tenths of a mile away.

We’ve had occasion throughout the years to ask for help from the police (see Test Kitchen), and lack of a street address has always been a problem. The entire emergency system is ADC map encoded.

After a short community meeting and a lot of badgering, I and others got some signs installed at various points along the bike/foot path. These signs tell visitors to use the 911 and 311 system to report emergencies and sewer, illegal dumping, and other City matters. They give a park location –Fox Den, Deep Woods, First Tributary, Hooper Field—and assure those in need of assistance, “These signs are part of the emergency dispatch system and act as street addresses in the park.”

So when a tulip poplar fell in the park overnight, crushing a backstop on the field and rendering a few dozen bees homeless and angry, I called 311.

“I’d like to report a fallen tree in Herring Run Park,” I say to the operator.

“What’s the street address?” she asks.

“Eastwood Field,” I tell her.

“I need a street address.”

“That is the street address. It says right here, on the bottom of this sign—“

“I need a street address, ma’am. I can’t file a report without a street address.”

“What is your name?”

“Karen.”

“Karen, listen carefully to me. When I was robbed at gunpoint in this park, the operator asked me repeatedly for a street address. Herring Run Park has no streets. There is no street address. It’s why I got the City to put up these signs. They are ADC coded. Just use Eastwood Field as the street address.”

“I need a street address.”

I asked for the woman’s supervisor, and Karen put me on hold. For twenty minutes. At the halfway point, she returned, and I read her the sign again, the part that says the sign acts as a street address. I told her the sign has 911 and 311 on it. She put me back on hold.

After twenty minutes, I hung up and called the Mayor’s office. After a bit of transferring, I got, “Good morning, Recreation and Parks!” The woman was smiling, and she listened to my story. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry you had to go through that! Let me transfer you directly to Forestry. Here is the number, sweetie.”

At that moment, an image flashed before me. I was looking at a cheerful woman dressed in a flowered, button-down shirt and matching skirt. She was in an air-conditioned office outside the director’s. A sweater hung on the back of her chair, and a water cooler bubbled near her desk. She wore attractive, sensible shoes and had her own desk with framed pictures of her kids and husband and dog. A Company Store catalog sat neatly with her lunch bag, waiting for her break.

Then I pictured the 311 operator, Karen, in a windowless room of cubicles, a floor fan whirring away because of the broken air conditioning. She was leaning back in her chair, fimouthing the word “bitch” to the woman in the next cubicle. She had on a warm up suit and flip flops.

The Forestry division broke my reverie. “May I help you?”

“Yes, I’d like to report a fallen tree in Herring Run Park.”

“Did you call 311 first? You’re supposed to call 311.”

When I explained to her all that I’d been through, she told me 311 had already called that tree in. A crew had been assigned and would be there shortly.

Maybe the 311 supervisor has an air-conditioned office. Maybe Karen, realizing she was wrong but unwilling to admit it, tried filling out the electronic form with the words “Eastwood Field” in the place of the street address and discovered it worked. Or maybe someone with dogs and city clout had beaten me to the phone to report this.

As I revisit my comparison of the two offices, I know I’m not far off with regard to cubicles and windows. But Karen probably works in a room that is comfortable enough to keep out the Baltimore summer, and she is probably treated well enough that her surliness is a product of her general dissatisfaction with life in the city, rather than with her job.

She is typical of our government work force. (Reading The Death of Common Sense, by Philip Howard, got my dander up a decade ago.) In fact, the same day I sent my neighborhood (which is full of government bigwigs, including the mayor and many of his administrative aides) an e-mail about the event, an e-mail came from someone complaining about her water bill. She said, “I’m fed up with city workers, and I work for the city!”

Gittin' 'R Done

Late yesterday, I received word that the Mayor’s office was investigating the “situation [I] brought to [their] attention.” As it turns out, no one briefed the service end of the 311 department with regard to the park signs. Now, thanks to some fine folks at the Watershed and the Mayor’s office, each staff member is being trained.

But Karen’s not off the hook. Instead of providing a brick wall upon which I should bang my head repeatedly, she could have said she wasn’t aware of this exception to the street address rule, could have asked me to hold a moment while she checked with her supervisor.

I don’t believe that the customer is always right, but people who work for the city, people who put residents with problems in touch with the people who resolve them, should be expected to help toward that end, not stand, hands firmly on hips, in the way of achieving it.

The lesson for you and me, however, is perseverance. “Thank you for your diligence in trying to report a problem,” said an e-mail at the end of the day. Prior to that, I’d received a number of them from unhappy residents who hit that brick wall and gave up, people who didn’t bother pursuing their own stolen cars and bank cards because they just couldn’t take the lack of follow-up and were swallowed by their own ambivalence.

After my robbery, I asked for a photo array, a lineup, mug shots. I called the police twice a day. I called Verizon to see if my perps made a phone call on my phone. I reported the phone number to the police. I called them again to make sure the right person got the phone number. Soon, they were calling me every day with updates, even when there was no news. It took little time to get an arrest.

What we all need to remember when dealing with bureaucracy is that while only some people in it have a conscience, all of them have a boss.*

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*To file a complaint about this entry or any other blog entry, please contact my supervisor. When doing so, please remember to use clean language and words small enough for a seven year old.