I live in a college town that boast one of the lowest reported crime rates in the country. In fact, a few years back it was voted the friendliest town in America. I was shocked when I heard that one, I wonder if they even visited our little hamlet because anyone who spends any amount of time here sees that beneath the smiles and warm expressions is something considerably more sinister than most would like to admit possible.
While it is true that we have one of the lowest reported crime rates in the country; it is largely due to the fact that the local authorities are notorious for not prosecuting sex crimes, suspicious deaths and other crimes that would otherwise tarnish our image as the pristine small town that they have spend decades trying to promote as the safest place in the country. I know first hand how bad things can get, but then again I’ve lived here for most of my life and I have seen some of the things that so often go unreported that you begin to wonder if there isn’t some sort of agenda at work.
Back in the nineties a group of local kids got obsessed with a role-playing game and spent the next few months terrorizing the town. Any crimes they committed were buried. If they hadn’t gone done to Florida and killed a few people, I’m not sure anyone would have ever known about the Vampire Cult as they had referred to themselves. That event spawned a media firestorm, a true crime novel and shitty movie. However, since the murders happened out of state it ultimately did not reflect on the crime rate of the city. It’s been close to twenty years since then and no one even talks about it anymore. Heck, I play D&D with a few of the members who stayed behind.
This town is an engine that is fueled by the steady influx of youth coming to the local university. Kids go missing every semester. If you are up and moving around at the right time of night you can actually watch the campus police removing the missing persons posters that the families of the missing post on every cork board and lamp post that they can find. Every year around August up to ten students go missing and never return home or turn up anywhere else for that matter. These missing kids go largely unreported. Much like every other crime, the local police are rather efficient in their ability to make all the unsettling things that happen fall out of the view of the public.
When my friend Amanda survived and escaped a violent sexual assault last year she went to the hospital and suffered through the indignity of a rape kit and an interview with the local authorities. Rather than opening an investigation or doing anything to improve public safety, the local cops told her that it was her fault for walking across campus at night and that perhaps she shouldn’t have been dressed so provocatively. Yes, she was told that the fact she had been raped and stabbed was mostly her fault. She dropped out of school a month later and ended up going home. She killed herself shortly after.
I wondered how it could get so bad for so long that I eventually took to walking around town at night looking for trouble. I didn’t notice anything at first. In fact, after nearly two weeks of walking around I was starting to think that I was being paranoid and that things weren’t as bad as I had thought. Well, that was until I heard a scream. I rushed down the sidewalk and into a breezeway between two buildings on campus to see a man in dark clothing hunched over some young girl in one of the darker corners of the breezeway. I didn’t even stop to think. I started by kicking him in the head and continued kicking him in the ribs and face as the girl ran off. It was around that time that a street light kicked on just outside the breezeway and I found myself standing over a campus police officer in full uniform with his pants around his ankles.
I turned around in that moment and saw a camera pointing at both of us. He laid on the ground coughing and moaning as I couldn’t help but find myself overcome with a rage that burned hotter than the sun and slammed my heel down on his temple. I ran home in a panic and started writing this. I’m a local. It won’t take them very long to figure out who I am. I won’t have a trial. I won’t be arrested. I doubt the death will ever be reported. People go missing in this town all the time, and now I know why. This town has one of the lowest reported crime rates in the country. It is the friendliest town in America. People don’t die here, they just disappear when they become inconvenient.
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Credits to: waltermel
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