Helicopters

 I hate the helicopters.

They started in earnest last summer, during the uprisings. Before then you would hear the occasional copter, more often than not headed to the pads at the hospitals, and you would stop and think "I hope they make it." 

But in June, the police helicopters and the news copters flew overhead, sometimes mixed with the sounds of the chants from the street — but more often at night, when the noise of the blades was all the more apparent in comparison to the quiet of the curfew.

And then they stayed for the summer. For awhile I was told it was a temporary covid response, that police were being pulled of the street for fear of infection and they were utilizing the helicopters more.

And now it's literally almost every night. A constant whirring, often loud enough to shake the windows. The Citizen app has stopped even bothering to note it. You can't tell me that there is that much news to cover, or that there is so much danger that the police choppers need to be that close above us every night like a malevolent Goodyear blimp.

You see, it's not about searching down the one purported criminal who theoretically is dashing through yards and somehow can be caught by lights flashing down from above. They don't care about that one incident, or they would be on the ground dealing with it.

It's about reminding us, in the inner-city neighborhoods, that they are quite literally above us, watching us and affecting our nights, our homes, our rest. It's not doing anything. And it needs to stop.