While My Hammer Sits Silent This House Is Unsecured And Used By Crackheads Nightly (Photo One)

The door to the left is unsecured. There are shoes on the stairwell. But not the same shoes as the first time I looked a few days ago.

This is directly across from a Minneapolis "water works" building, near Lyndale Ave. N. and 4th Street North. I have called 311 about it. Days have gone by. Nothing has happened yet. I stand in front of it with a board, a hammer, and nails. I can secure it easily, but I do not.

I wait. I wait for somebody official to address my very public critique of the flaws in the system (primarily slowness and lack of resources, both understandable) and to delegate conscientious citizens the necessary authority and permission to do what must be done, not "on the sly while we in authority look away" but openly and proudly, as good citizens.

I ask that citizens be allowed under the legal theory of "necessity" to secure (without owner permission) vacant houses left wide open to trespass, therefore to prevent multiple likely criminal acts included but not limited to unlawful occupancy, theft of copper pipes, prostitution, sale and use of controlled substances, theft of property such as antique cabinets, vandalism, and (my personal favorite) ripping the tag off urine-stained mattresses.

Such securing of property by highly-motived volunteers will also prevent numerous unintended but unsafe conditions, including but not limited to accidental fire by squatters, (who may perish themselves and/or endanger neighboring persons and property) dangerous gas leaks as an unintended result of copper theft, and injury by minors who will undoubtedly find the houses an "attractive nuisance."

All these things are likely to happen if a house is wide open to trespass in North Minneapolis. These issues are more pressing than minor damage which may occur to a door frame, or that a crack-addicted squatter could be unintentionally boarded inside. (They broke in, god knows they will break out)

I have tried to catch somebody going inside this one. I have sat in my car and watched for activity in the busted second story windows open to barn swallows, so I can do my duty and call 911. But I can't babysit crack houses for days at a time while hundreds of properties are open to trespass and results from 311 take days, even weeks.

Somebody in power needs to listen and respond. I am not one who skulks like a crack head looking for a score on scrap metal. What I do I do openly, and under a validly-constructed legal theory of "necessity," to be helpful to my neighborhood which is in a state of distress, indeed, a state of emergency.

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