Neighborhood patrol

A neighborhood patrol had been organized for some time. I went occasionally. Three, four, sometimes five neighbors got together to walk at dusk twice a week. Only white neighbors showed up on patrol, a fact I was beginning to understand. A young white man named Dave lead patrol. I felt foolish and vulnerable on patrol, I felt weird, but I went anyway because I didn’t know what else to do and someone had to do something. The police were not going to save the neighborhood.

Also, it was a way to show a presence, as Dave explained, meaning the criminals and sluggards in the neighborhood saw that we were keeping an eye on them. Dave always carried a paper and pencil and wrote down the addresses of houses that looked abandoned or like gang hangouts or were in violation of city codes. The next day, Dave called them in to the Neighborhood Crime Prevention program or the city inspector.

By the first of July, when it was hotter than hell, and patrol members were dwindling, Dave arranged for our patrol to meet with the patrols of adjoining neighborhoods, Folwell and Jordan. I walked from my house to Dave’s. It was the first Saturday evening I'd walked in the neighborhood alone for years and I was nervous. Earlier in the day when I had driven down my block, a group of white teenagers had stood in the street talking to someone in a car; leaving only a narrow space between the group and the curb. As I drew closer, two of the boys had walked further into the street making the passageway even more narrow. Since I had become used to turf challenges from kids, I had reduced my speed only slightly before I squeezed past the kids.

This evening, after I walked two blocks from my house, I saw a black boy about eleven years old with a smaller black boy. I did not want to deal with any more kids; I crossed the street and continued walking. When I was directly across from the boys, I glanced in their direction.

"EXCU-U-U-SE ME ," the older boy said in a loud voice looking at me. He pushed the smaller boy. "I am somebody. I am somebody very important." Still looking at me, he pushed the smaller boy again. I looked away and continued to Dave's house.

He was waiting in front. The yard of the house next to his had been transformed since I had last met him at his house three weeks earlier. Under the evergreens, were sculpted beds of decorative rocks. I could see dark plastic peeking out from under the rocks at the edges. The rock mulch extended to the foundation of the house in front and to the side. The little remaining grass in the small yard was cut close.

"Transformed!" I said to Dave waving at his neighbor's yard.

"Yeah, she's been working real hard. Backyard too. It's mainly to cut down on the mowing." We stood with our hands on our hips, looking.

"I understand completely."

"Some to bank up the house, too."

"Everyone in north Minneapolis has water in their basement."

"She's had it real bad. So I told her to dig a ditch and line it with rock and run it far out into the back yard. She's working on it."

"Good for her. That's hard work."

Dave guffawed and began walking toward Penn. I fell in next to him. "I don't know if it's on account of her, but I've had more water in my basement this year than any other year I've been in my house."

"I've had more than usual in my basement too. It's been real wet this year."

"You hear a cop died this week?"

"No. How?"

"There was a scuffle up 43rd street and 6th avenue north. He was involved in it and died of cardiac arrest. They thought he was shot and arrested everyone at the site, but it was cardiac arrest."

"Gee. How’d you here about it?"

“I’ve got a scanner at my house. It’s on all the time. I just listen so I know what’s going on.”

“Yeah, we never get much information otherwise.”

“Yeah. Then a break-in, 36th and Thomas. Woman had a fan in a first floor window at night. Guy pulled out the fan, came in with a baseball bat. He knocked out the woman's husband, accosted her, burglarized the place. She recognized his voice and identified him as being from the house in the middle of the block of 35th and Thomas. The problem house we keep an eye on."

"That one. The white guy with the pitbulls and the flower truck."

"They picked up the guy and searched the house."

"They find her stuff?"

"I don't know.” He leaned over and picked up a broken bottle. He threw it in a garbage can we passed. “That's enough bad news for now. How about some good news? I heard a barbeque was moving in at Penn and Lowry where the plumbing business used to be. Let's check it out tonight."

When we arrived, ten people had congregated in front of the former plumbing business. Dave and I were the only Cleveland neighborhood people to show up. Folwell neighborhood was well-represented by six men and women, all wearing name tags. Char, the patrol leader, wore a clear plastic water bottle on a string around her neck. The other four people were from the Jordan neighborhood. The group ranged in age from thirties up to sixties, with an equal mix of men and women. All white, except for a black boy about ten years old. I introduced myself to him and asked which neighborhood he was from.

"He's from Jordan where I'm from," a man with a long thin beard and a cowboy hat answered.

"I heard a barbeque take-out was going in here," said Dave. I read the lettering on the store. ‘EMPLOYMENT ACTION CENTER.’ Underneath was written ‘WINGS.’ "So it's a restaurant and employment center together?"

"No! Just employment,” said Char. “That stands for ‘women in’ something." We crowded around the window .

"You mean there's no food at all?" Dave and I looked at each other in deep disappointment.

"Wings don't mean chicken!" said the man in the cowboy hat, laughing.

“All social services going in here,” said a woman. “What we need is businesses generating money.”

We began walking east on Lowry avenue. When a police car was spotted moving towards us, Char yelled out "Let's all wave at the cop car." Several of us did. The officer driving waved back. The other man in the front seat looked at us with a bored expression. We continued and passed a two story brick apartment building. The paint around the windows was peeling and there was litter in the small yard. A black man, about age forty, neatly dressed, stood in the doorway. Parked in front was a black car, the motor running, a booming bass coming from it, no one in it. The man in the doorway looked at us with a worried expression. We continued walking.

"Let's all wave at the fire truck," Char called out. A red fire truck, loaded with people wearing street clothes, passed us. Several of us waved at it. It was not using the siren and did not seem to be in a hurry. Some of the people on it waved back.

"So what kind of work do you do?" I asked Dave. We’d been walking together on patrol for months but I knew little about his private life.

"Right now I'm working at a foundry. Been there three months. All kinds of metal. It's a job, not a career, just a job."

"It pays the bills," I suggested.

"They laid off a bunch of guys, but I didn't hear anything, so I guess I still have a job. I'm a temporary; usually after three months they make you permanent, but I haven't heard anything."

"I work in healthcare. We had two lay-offs this year. Luckily, my division has been adding people, so I guess I've got about as much job security as a person can have these days."

"There isn't much security anywhere. At the foundry, you start at six-fifty an hour. I've got a friend who's been there a year and he's making seven an hour now. When I graduated high school I was making seven an hour." Dave looked to be in his mid-thirties, a long time past graduation.

"I thought a foundry would pay better. It's hard work."

"Any idiot can do what I do. It's setting up wax forms, then molds are made. A monkey can do the job, but most of the guys been there don't do it right. It's got to be done right. I'm waiting to see if I can get on permanent."

At Emerson avenue, Char waved across the street at a group of white people. I had been watching a black man dressed in a matching shorts and shirt across the street from us. He was talking to two younger black men. He gestured broadly, tipped to one side as though slightly off balance, righted himself.

"Every time we walk up to this corner, those guys are there," Dave said to me. "Wonder what kind of business they're doing. One night on patrol, I said hello to them. One said to me, 'When you guys come through here, everybody scatters.'"

A group of four white people was crossing the street. One of them, a man, wore a red tee-shirt. Char introduced him as Gary, the Hawthorne neighborhood patrol leader. Gary grinned at everyone, shook hands with people standing near him. We crossed Lowry and walked south on Emerson.

We passed a newly paved parking lot in front of an auto parts store. A sign advertising a GRAND OPENING was in the front windows.

"How do you like that?" shouted the man in the cowboy hat, pointing at the store.

"Better than a used furniture store!" answered Gary.

"The neighborhood was real involved in deciding what would go in on this corner," Dave explained to me. "Someone wanted to put in a second-hand shop; they said there's enough of them around. They wanted something new." He raised his voice to the group. "Look at that. Every window has steel bars across it."

We passed a couple of dark old houses, then a large empty lot.

"Hawthorne's really got problems," Dave informed me. "Lot of rundown property, abandoned houses. Some houses had fires last winter, been condemned, still got families living in them."

Across the street, several small black children played quietly on the sidewalk in front of a two-story wood-frame house badly in need of paint. Most of the yards on this block were littered with paper; the sidewalk was full of shattered glass. On our side of the street, we passed a stucco house with dark green trim nearly hidden by overgrown shrubbery. A dog barked ferociously at us. I looked closely before I located an overweight, dark brown dog with a snub nose jumping against a chain-link wire fence.

"What kind of dog is that?"

"Pitbull," said the man in the cowboy hat. I looked at the dog more closely. Heard about them, never seen one before.

We continued to walk past houses with peeling paint, ripped window screens, crumbling cement. Every once in a while I saw a house and yard that was clean and in good repair.

"Dick's son is the one that got beat up so bad five years ago, if you remember that," said Dave nodding to the man in the cowboy hat. I caught my breath; I remembered vaguely a boy being beaten on a Sunday morning when he stepped out of the car his father was driving. It had been random and brutal; the father had been unable to defend his son.

"He's doing real good now," said Dick, looking over at us. "He's graduating high school."

"Was that him on patrol with us last week, Dick?"

Dick nodded. "He's doin' real good."

At the next street corner, a car stopped for the sign and we crossed in front of it. Gary went to the rider's side, said a few words to a young white woman in the car and handed her a flyer. She smiled and took it.

"Every time I see Gary, he's full of energy, running around introducing himself to people," commented Dave, smiling.

We turned east on 28th street. The sidewalk had a hopscotch drawn in colored chalk on it. Across the street, an elderly white woman walked a tall, muscular, black brindled dog.

"Everyone's got a rottweiler or a pitbull nowdays," commented a man in our group, shaking his head. “Even the little old ladies.”

After a few blocks, Gary and his contingency separated from our larger group. They called out goodbyes and Gary yelled to us, "There was a shooting down at 23rd and Emerson earlier in the week. We've got to go down there tonight and show them normal people live here too!" He waved gaily.

Dave laughed. "He's always like that--upbeat and full of energy. You here there's some new mortgage financing out? To qualify, your income has to be between eighteen thousand and forty thousand per year. That's too high. I couldn't even qualify and I already own a house; I don't make eighteen thousand. And anyone making over twenty-five goes out to the suburbs."

"Gee, I don't think so," I disagreed. "The low end of houses in the suburbs is one hundred thousand."

"A friend of mine just bought a house in Robbinsdale for fifty thousand. There's lots of houses in that range in Robbinsdale, Crystal, Brooklyn Park. 'Course those suburbs aren't in the best of shape either, but it's better than here," he countered.

We were on a corner again and other members of the group were debating whether to turn north or continue east. Someone suggested we walk east to Jordan Park. When we reached Jordan Park, it was luscious, green and clean. A sidewalk curved into it between two low hills. I felt like I was entering a private garden.

"Hills! Not good for crime control!" commented Char emphatically. "Didn't they think about that when they were landscaping this?" I looked about. The ground dipped and rose; there were many bushes.

“There's a lot of places to hide, isn't there?"

A woman from Folwell said wistfully, "But it is pretty."

The sidewalk wound past small trees and high bushes until we were suddenly in an open expanse that was laid out in several play areas: a set of low swings and slides where two Asian women played with toddlers, a wading pool filled with pale aquamarine water, a jungle gym where three black girls sat at the highest point.

"Hi," I said and waved at them. They looked back at me without saying anything. Several other patrol members called out greetings. The biggest girl shyly waved back.

"Everything here's so clean. This is a beautiful park," I said to Dave.

"Jordan neighborhood's been organized a long time and they were the first to get Neighborhood Revitalization Project money. I wish we'd put in a pool when we updated Cleveland Park. It's been a while since I smelled that disinfectant they use in pools," replied Dave.

"Chlorine has a nice clean smell out in the open air, doesn't it?" We passed long, neatly raked beds of sand with stakes set for throwing horseshoes. At the edge of the park were basketball courts. Three black adolescent boys stood under a hoop talking. We continued up Queen avenue to Lowry.

At Penn and Lowry we paused. The Folwell group decided to walk the east side of Penn going north, the Jordan group joined Dave and I on the west side. When Char was in front of Barbara's beauty shop, she yelled at us.

"That's your SAFE officer on duty!"

"What's a SAFE officer?" asked someone in my group.

"That's the crime prevention division of the police department," answered Dick. "Hey, that's Officer Day. He must be picking up some extra duty, doing security at the liquor store."

We congregated around Officer Day, some people introduced themselves, others reminded him of when they last met. Officer Day was affable.

"Neighborhood patrol, huh. Good, good. There's safety in numbers. Keep it up."

At the corner of 34th and Penn, Dave and a man from Folwell offered to walk me to my house. When we arrived, we stood awkwardly on the front walk. I noticed that my hedge was badly in need of a trim, a crushed beer can lay on the boulevard, and some papers had blown up against the hedge.

"It’s good to have Officer Day up here; he lives in the neighborhood, he really cares.”

“Yeah, and he’s native American, that’s good, too. Sounds like the new police chief bought a house up on 43rd and Queen," said the man from Folwell.

"I've noticed more patrol cars around already," added Dave. "That neighborhood's nicer than here, but they could go bad."

"So many city officials, they don't want to live in the city," said the Folwell man. "They take all that big money out of here. The new chief's going to keep it in the city and he'll know what's going on better than them others. And he’ll care."

"Thanks for walking me home," I said. I picked up the can and pulled the papers out of the hedge. “And for getting out on patrol. I'll talk to some of my neighbors about coming on patrol."

"Word of mouth works the best," said Dave.

“Yeah.” I looked hard at my house. It needed a few things.