Police Raid

Last night my two older girl pals showed up on the doorstep to take home some chocolate soymilk, when the cops showed up at a house across the street. I came to the door and four cop cars were out front, two marked, two unmarked, and two guys in bulletproof vests were running up the steps, hollering, "Warrant!" I didn't see any warrant displayed, though.

There were two more cop cars out behind their house. Eventually, six cars were parked facing south on our one-way north street. The officers searched the parked car out back (I'm told by a neighbor), used flashlights along the side of the house, and six of them spent a long time smoking cigarettes out front, the tips glowing orange in the fading sunset. A neighbor told me later a man was taken out in handcuffs.

The lady of that house came to our very first block club meeting last month. She did the ribs for my housewarming party. Her daughters gave me Block wineglasses as a housewarming gift. I brought them tamales at New Year's. Frankly, I think they got the wrong house.

Meanwhile, the same group of guys who hang on the northwest corner of the intersection north of my house kept right on hanging. Their friends joined them. I'm sure some of the dozen or more kids staring at the raid from there were just gapers, but I think some of them do sell drugs on that corner. The house where we know the absentee landlord doesn't give a s--t sat untouched.

Meanwhile, the girls and I watched the stormtroopers in bulletproof vests unload their enormous rifles into the trunk of one of the cop cars. One girl wants to be an investigator. "I want to go see that," she said.

"When you do your internship at the Police Department in high school, you can see them," I suggested.

I have a call in to the CAPS officer newly assigned to our beat meetings to find out what that was all about. Sheesh!