|
John Morin stories
John Morin is a former Lansing resident who now lives in Holt.
Marijuana thieves I don't go out looking for trouble, but when trouble comes to my door, I face it head on. In some of the stories there is video support. In each one the LPD failed, sometimes failed may not be appropriate and I should say enabled the criminals. On September 21, 2016, my shed was broken into and all of my yard tools were stolen. I had just purchased a new mower, blower and weed whip, and of course the loss was less than my insurance deductible. As usual it was reported to LPD, just added paperwork that would lead nowhere and just add to my mounting losses. As a solution I had put up cameras that recorded activity in my yard. I further purchased a yard alarm that I set up in my office area, just inside the man door to the garage. Like most I figured they would attempt to get into my garage that way, and if they succeeded, I would be alerted immediately as the alarm would sound in the house. It was my intention of catching the crew that had been terrorizing the neighborhood for years. The LPD never did solve this break in and after fixing the damage, I made the shed more difficult to rob, after which I went out and bought all new equipment. I am not a quitter, I had gone back to growing marijuana and tried to reestablish the operation as it had been before the police raid. That required more money and a great deal of patience. On October 24, 2017 I had gotten up from bed to get ready for work. I had gotten cleaned up and was drinking a cup of coffee when a unknown sound drew me to look out my back door window. Standing in front of my garage were three men and they had peeled the bottom panel of my garage door back. I went and woke Sheri up and told her to call the police, that there were people trying to break in the garage. I then went to the back door with the intent of seeing how I could do with 3 on 1, I have no fear. Instead of doing what I told Sheri to do, she followed me and as I swung open the back door, she pushed it shut with a slam. She was afraid, they might have guns. A chance to catch some bad guys and she stopped me. I was able to reopen the door quickly, but like frightened deer, they ran haphazardly between my garage and fence, escaping by running through the wood picket fence. I suspect they were shocked when they accessed the front of my garage and realized I had turned it into storage and there were steel walls and a steel door that was deadbolted both directions preventing any further advance. So much work and left with nothing for the effort except potentially going to jail. After watching the actions of so many attempts, instead of crime they need to go to school and get a real job, as criminals they were never very good. I spent the early morning repairing the damage and further reinforcing my garage. It would be months before the next attempt, and this time they were hoping to get lucky. On March 22, 2018 a crew pulled into the alleyway behind my house and spent several minutes checking out the area. Eventually one of them came through the gate I had installed and went up to my car in the driveway, searching it, I'm sure he was looking for a garage door opener. Over the years, I found it is smarter to leave vehicle doors unlocked, otherwise they will still get in by breaking a window out. I had taken the garage door opener out of the car months earlier just for this reason. The actions made me suspicious of who was behind this attempt, someone who knew I had kept the opener in my car in the past. There were so many suspects, hard to point a finger at any one person. I did believe then and still believe that others not there were sending the criminals in my direction. On October 19, I had attracted what I could only call "the crew". This was a group of around 10 individuals with the sole desire to break into my garage. Sure, there were plants inside, none of them were ready, months of growing was still needed. But they spent an hour on my garage roof, adjusting cameras, trying to get in through the roof skylights. They soon discovered that even that route led to nowhere and prevented access to any of the rooms. As usual, I contacted the police who came out and did the usual report. It wasn't until I reviewed camera footage that I discovered how many and found myself calling the police back to look over the footage and see if any of it was usable to make arrests. Many businesses and homes had been robbed and this was obviously the crew doing it. The police officer agreed and told me that LPD detectives would contact me later about the videos. I did get a smile when they all lined up by my garage door and went to kicking at it. LPD with battering rams couldn't get in, they soon discovered for themselves that they had failed over the course of trying every avenue to break in. I felt secure with their failure and hoped that they had given up. But no, they were just as determined to rob me as I was to keep them out. So what should we talk about next, oh yeah, another attempt, only this time they were successful. On November 5, 2018, once again a smaller crew set their sites on breaking into my garage. No one knew what I was involved in, other than the police and the crooks. They were able to get through a vent that was about a 6" x 6" opening. It had to be a young kid they recruited to have fit into an opening that size. In reviewing camera footage, I knew the moment they got in as one of them ran to the garage entry door to be let in. What they had not realized was that each room had the same reinforcement as the entry door and without a key, gaining access from one room to the other was going to be difficult. How they realized that they had found the bloom room is open for debate, but only a few knew the garage layout. They could not take the plants whole, so they stripped them of bud. It was a shame that the plants still had over a month of growing before being ready. They found jars and plastic bags to put the weed in. I found it sad that as a group at best each one might have gotten an once or two. To jeopardize freedom over a couple hundred dollars each. Anyways, they got my attention and I knew they would never give up, so I invested in more yard alarms and set them up around my property. A cat couldn't go through the alley or cross onto my property without me knowing about it. The detectives who were to go over the videos had called, involved in a murder trial, they chose to wait until after the trial to investigate the videos. Now I was ready for anything that came my way. And as I suspected, it did not take long.
earlier. As the patrol car went down Prospect, he shined the searchlight down the alley right at their car. The patrol car kept going and turned onto Foster toward Kalamazoo, and once again hitting the vehicle with the searchlight. As soon as the patrol car passed by the alley, I had Sheri once again call 911 to tell them that the bad guys are in the alley. And then a third time when after minutes of packing up their tools, they got into the vehicle and started to escape down the alley. I could not stand doing nothing any longer and quickly bolted out my front door to at least get a plate number, or damage their vehicle, anything to keep them from getting away. As I rounded onto Prospect, I could see their headlights going down the alley. They had already crossed Prospect and were headed toward Michigan Ave. Seconds from confronting them, an LPD officer in a SUV pulled up behind me and demanded to know who I was. I told him I was the one who called and the bad guys are in the alley and see, you can see their headlights, they are getting away. The officer demanded I return home, which I did. The officer never moved and allowed the criminals to drive away. Afterwards, while speaking with the police involved, I asked why they failed to block the alley and easily capture the criminals. The excuse was that 911 had never told the officers that they were in the alley. Once again 911 had failed to do their job. Or was that the case? The police officer had also just sat there and had also allowed the criminals to drive away freely. They claimed that they had chased one guy who dropped a backpack with a machine pistol in it. The gun was all they had captured. And 911, after my house was shot up, getting a police officer to come and do a report had to be debated. The fish fry shooting, trying to give them the license plate number and told they did not need it. So much failure on the part of the LPD and 911. At this point I believed that my picture was hung up in the squad room of LPD with the caption, "no justice for John." I had lost all hope of actually living in Lansing after this incident. On a number of occasions I had called the City Council member for ward 1. That was Jody Washington. I had left her numerous voice mails on her cell phone # 517-599-5271, but she was like any other city politician and never once called me back. I have seen over the years as she ran for office, she was a big supporter of the police, but I guess she never thought of ever helping out a resident in her ward. To her I would say that I am sorry to hear about your latest losses while on vacation when property was stolen, I know the feeling. Would have loved to have shown you my real red oak floor I had put in my house, it took me weeks of hard work and thousands of dollars, but I lost that house from all of the losses and costs of starting over. I will never enjoy the fruits of labor I put into that house over the many years we lived there. I'm sure they will figure out your flooring problem and I hope you enjoy what you have as I once did with my own. But I still had more crooks and crooks with badges to still deal with. On January 26, 2019, two guys walking down the alley decided to take a shot. Alarms had gone off, they had adjusted the camera, I never figured why they did that, but once again I was racing to put on clothes and see if I could trail them. Before I could get out though, they were spooked and took off. I still had plenty of video and hoped that it would aid in arrests. The two LPD detectives eventually showed up and I took time off from work to allow them access to my system. They spent an hour going over video, one went out and dusted for prints on the cameras. I spoke to one officer about the crime that seemed to be rampant in Lansing and that there is no place in Lansing safe. He corrected me and said that there are two safe areas in Lansing, to which I thought to myself, downtown and south precincts. He also informed me that there were around forty youths that were involved with most of the criminal activity throughout the city. There you go, a Lansing State Journal headline: Forty youths have laid siege to the City of Lansing as the police are unable to capture them. But what happened next makes my skin crawl and the reason I left Lansing after having to go chapter 7 bankruptcy. Still trying to resolve the December 19 failure to capture the bad guys, I showed the detectives the video from that day. I pointed out myself standing in the middle of Prospect with my hands up pointing to the alley where the bad guys were escaping. I had FOIA requested the police video cams from that day. That officer who had stopped me, they never sent me that video. But now that I am showing the detectives the video I have, the one on my computer was interested. He then called the State Police about having my hard drive copied so they would have more time to review it and use other means to enhance the video. I agreed to allow them to take the hard drive for copying. They left, I went back to work. About forty minutes afterward, I called Sheri to let me know when they returned with the hard drive. She told me that they had already dropped it off ten minutes earlier. I was a bit concerned because what they planned should have taken longer. When I tell this story to a few former LPD, their reaction was to shake their head, I should have never gave it to them. Sure enough my hard drive was damaged and video was not available. I can only surmise that they felt my video was a threat and possible liability to the city. I was left with few choices other than to give up on Lansing, file bankruptcy and move. It is sad to say that the only success I had while living in Lansing was filing bankruptcy, everything else was either stolen, destroyed, and no help from anyone. I chose to stay fairly close to Lansing, only for the reason of writing this story. This is a warning to anyone who lives in Lansing, whether a victim or defendant, always FOIA request a police report. They cannot always be trusted to do the right thing and police officers are just as human as anyone else, they make mistakes, lie, cheat, and steal, and sometimes they use their badge to get away with it. I am now 65 years old. I worked nearly every day for the twenty years in Lansing to make a home, give Sheri the safety and security she never had before in her life. I realize the reason why they dropped the charges and then brought up the Crack positive test Sheri had, trying to keep from being held accountable for what they had done. I suspect a few lawyers will read this and want to sit down and talk about the liability the City of Lansing bears over all that happened. I would suggest that the citizens of Lansing demand accountability on the part of the police and the politicians who choose to turn a blind eye. I also have purposely gave every person's name who has been involved over the years. If the police lie on me when I was a victim, how many others have been lied on as defendants and need the truth to come out to get the freedom they deserve. As Dunnings said while picking up Stephanie Kirby one day when asked about the why. He said loveless marriage, no job enjoyment, only a couple LPD in the entire department are honest. No one can survive with a corrupt police department, no one can survive with a political system that fails the residents. I have done my part for now. There are other issues that I will address at a later date. This has encouraged me to now continue, but a different group who failed badly. This one involves a Police Lieutenant and his son, and the hundreds of crimes another police department allowed the son to commit with no justice for the victims. When I speak with them I will be sure to tell them how Lansing inspired me. There are more failed lawyers and prosecutors and maybe a judge or two who are about to find out it is never to late for the truth, never to late for justice.
|
