Saturday, March 08, 2008

Potshots in Podunk?


Something worrisome seems to have happened on the downtown streets of Podunk a few nights back. That at least is the opinion of many local readers of the hackingthemainframe boards who are busy discussing the latest developments of the downtown area.

The local bulletin board seems to be of the opinion that a random shooting incident of some sort took place along 2nd Avenue West earlier this week, in the area of the Prince Rupert Cinemas and Subway.

In fact, a picture posted on the htmf website does seem to indicate that something quite unusual for Rupert took place in front of the local sandwich shop. The picture posted to the site, shows what appears to be a bullet hole having pierced through the glass at the front of the store.

Anecdotal commentary on that site also seems to indicate that something strange has taken place, apparently on last Wednesday evening, requiring the investigation of the local RCMP.

So with the word of the hacking the main framers as our guide, the Podunkian headed on downtown for our own look at the situation. And there it was in the upper portion of the main window, featuring a nice little impact spot and the ancillary spider web of cracked glass.

The owner of the store expressed a bit of wonderment at what had happened. As it seems that indeed it was a night of unwanted excitement for the staff a few evenings ago, as the local constabulary poked and prodded the building, looking for casings and perhaps a few answers to what exactly had gone on in the streets of Podunk.

No definitive word seems to have been provided, and as they say the investigation we suspect is still ongoing. With the exception of the damage to the window, no one fortunately was hurt in the bizarre incident, but it’s certainly a potentially dangerous step up from the usual cases of vandalism that have caused citizens to become concerned about the downtown area over the last few years.

So the question for Podunkians now is how come this hasn’t become mainstream news? You would think that an incident of this nature would be something that would not only be of interest to the community, but of concern to it as well. Yet there was no indication of the incident in the Daily newspaper, nor to our knowledge on local radio or television.

The local RCMP have long since stopped posting local items to the RCMP’s provincial information website, so there’s no report to be found there about such an incident in town during the week just passed. Perhaps the details will appear in the weekly crime report that the Daily News publishes.

Normally, these kind of things would be passed off as just another Prince Rumour story (and there are certainly no shortage of those floating around this town), but as they say a picture is worth a thousand words and between the posted picture on htmf, and some of the comments that have flowed in to that site, not to mention the damage in plain view from the street, you get the feeling that there’s a story to be told there by somebody.

Of even more concern is the idea that this kind of activity (more common in the larger centers) may have taken place, and that the public should be advised accordingly. Not to create any element of fear, but rather to educate us to the fact that things may be changing in this town and to urge us to be more proactive in reporting anything suspicious.

While the idea of the incident is hopefully just an isolated thing and more of a stupid and dangerous prank than anything else. It could be that additional resources and measures need to be provided to help the police keep a handle on any troublesome incidents such as these, in order to keep them from becoming more frequent.

It all might make for an interesting talking point or two at the next city council meeting.

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