Booting The Drug Dealers: For The First Time In Memory, Little Children Play On The Sidewalk Across From The Apartment Complex Of Anarchy

Photo by John Hoff (with deep gratitude to the anonymous businessman who gave me a digital camera)

The evacuation of 3101 ("The Apartment Complex of Anarchy") began exactly when my anonymous source, Commander Tough Glove, said it would. It began almost exactly at noon...

The Tide Turns

First there was one squad car and a city inspector, Faroukh, who was at the meeting of the neighborhood where everybody rallied over the outrageous break-in at a longtime resident's house, a resident who considered leaving the neighborhood because of it. So I knew him when I saw him in front of 3101 6th Street, that's good ol' Faroukh.

There was a bald, calm police officer...he seemed to be giving the people inside enough time to vent their emotions, to say their peace, but he was standing firm. The place was being evacuated. There had been warnings. There had been time. There had, in fact, been many days of a grace period. Now it was time to leave.

One young black man had a paper in his hand, and he spoke, he gestured repeatedly to the paperwork. A lease of some kind, I assume. He spoke, he argued, he articulated, he made his points but there was no stopping what was going to happen. The Apartment Complex of Anarchy had been an open air drug market for months. In the last week, there were seven arrests in three incidents, including (according to my source, Commander Tough Glove) a sixteen-year-old hiding a stash of crack cocaine inside his butt. There was no rental license. There was, in fact, nobody clearly in charge. The people inside were incapable of so much as cleaning up the mess in the back yard, let alone preventing rampant crack cocaine sales from inside the front door.

At some point, the dam of denial and resistance broke. I saw an older black man take the young black man aside, speak to him urgently, shake his head. There was no stopping what would happen. No sense saying anything stupid to a cop. Time to accept reality. Time to evacuate.

Out came the possessions, many in dehumanizing and depressing black garbage bags. Mattresses. Bedding. Even a hobby horse. Vehicles began appearing to help people evacuate, a mish-mash of friends pressed into duty on short notice, like the English fishing fleet during the retreat at Dunkirk. One of those trucks you can rent at Menard's pulled up, and men from the truck began casually taking measurements of the windows and slapping on boards.

These were not city boards or a city truck. Who was it, I wondered? The mortgage company? Somebody from the company hoping to take over and manage the building? Several black people who were well-dressed and had some sort of identification tags hanging on their neck showed up, and were in the middle of everything, but didn't seem to be lending assistance to the persons being evacuated, except perhaps a polite word, now and then. Was it the new management company? More police arrived, three squad cars in all.

Little Children Come Out To Play

With so many police present, I felt comfortable sitting at a distance, taking pictures. At some point, when the maximum number of police and city officials were present, the Hmong family who lives across the street came out, and children played on the sidewalk under careful adult supervision. I never even knew they had children. I'd never seen them dare to play outside before. A little baby who couldn't quite walk was assisted by its mother, or perhaps an older sister.

Sidewalk. This is what sidewalk feels like, little one.

A few times individuals gestured toward me. Well, let them. Let them see the neighborhood isn't afraid, and this wasn't the city in some inhumane and accidental act of bureaucracy, evacuating an entire building for drug dealing. This was the NEIGHBORHOOD. The neighborhood WANTED this to happen, worked for a long time so it would happen.

No Victims In That Apartment Complex

Nobody in that building was innocent, except perhaps some children. The drug dealing in the front stair landing was so frequent, so blatant, nobody who lived in the building could have NOT KNOWN it was taking place. Even some of the children were not innocent, like the sixteen-year-old hiding crack in his butt.

Peter Teachout called his church and asked if there could be help and compassion for these individuals. I sat and watched, hoping they had all the time they needed to get possessions out, making sure they weren't roughed up...but the police were, if anything, indulgent and tolerant, almost playing the role of social workers.

The Neighborhood Watches With Relief And Delight

At some point I got hungry, and wandered into Bangkok Market to see if I could get a nice pig testes stir fry, but I had to settle for some meaty rolls and sticky rice, delicately flavored with banana leaf wrapping. Really an amazing dish! Two Buddhist monks were inside the store, in saffron robes. If the monks had been buying food, I would have said, "Let me get this for him," but they seemed to be discussing some other matter with the owner.

I told the owner of Bangkok Market what was up at the apartment complex. Standing behind his counter, selling sweet sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, he wasn't aware of what was going on just around the corner. Later I saw him walk around the corner and look. His face was impassive, but I saw his head go back a little, in suppressed amazement. I saw the Polish woman go by. I told her what was up but urged her not to walk up to my vehicle. She was so excited by the evacuation that she called Jeff Skrenes.

"It is war!" she said. "They are finally throwing them out. They are finally making them leave."

The Devil Also Watches

"The Devil" came by in a big dark green Escalade, and talked to me. (See my previous blog entry about "A Steak Dinner With The Devil," a businessman who owns--let it be charitably called--low income rental properties)

The Devil said the evictions at 3101 6th Street didn't matter. The neighborhood would never change. As he stood talking to me, a young black street walker passed by, and asked if it was true she couldn't stay at his house.

"I'm kicking everybody out of that house," he said.

"But me, too?" she pleaded.

"Talk to Leon," he snapped, and jerked his head toward me as though to say, "Let's not have this conversation in front of Johnny Northside." She walked away, her face downcast. I asked The Devil if he was really kicking everybody out of the house. He said he was, yes, so he could sell it.

Me and The Devil talked about blackjack. We have this in common. It is our favorite card game. But I don't play for money. The Devil, on the other hand, claims he is up about $30,000 from playing blackjack. He takes his winnings and rolls them into property investments, always maintaining a stake for playing but not pouring in any more money. He claims to be that good.

I asked if I could take his picture, but he declined. I told him if I snapped his picture, nothing would appear in the frame but his vehicle because he was, after all, The Devil. He laughed and said, "I'm not the devil, you're the devil." He said white people were the ones who first started burning petroleum, because of their endless greed, and white people have polluted the world.

"Before white people came along we would lay on couches and eat grapes," he said. "We would eat grapes and (expletive) (expletives) all day long."

"It sounds nice," I conceded.

As he left, The Devil asserted nothing would change in the neighborhood. And I would get myself killed for making the effort to try.

Broke And Out On The Street

The people who had the most possessions seemed to have the least transportation. The front lawn looked like a rummage sale when the police and the city inspector finally left. Now I knew people wouldn't be on their best behavior, and it was time to leave, too.

I went by 3119 almost by accident, and I discovered the evacuation was just beginning. Five or six individuals stood on the front steps, with a pile of orderly boxes. It seemed more low-key, more orderly, more subdued than 3101. This has always been the case. But as I watched, two women who had been in front of 3101 came by, toting possessions.

They stopped dead in their tracks for a moment when they saw the police, the boxes on the front steps, and realized what was happening at 3101 was ALSO happening at 3119, the other apartment complex owned by Shirley Guevara. The plan to flee from 3101 6th to 3119 4th was suddenly unworkable. Where would they go? What would they do?

One woman on the steps cried, "I am going to snap out of this. I am going to SNAP OUT." But there was no waking up from reality. As Ayn Rand said, "Reality is real."

As I watched, a red truck pulled up near 3119, and a black woman ran from the front steps toward the truck. The truck sped away, with a Latino woman at the wheel and somebody in the passenger seat. The black woman violently struck the truck just behind the driver's window, and shouted, "Shirley!" as the truck sped down the street.

That was Shirley Guevera, the black woman shouted to the assembled crowd. That was the woman who took her rent money, who said there would be a WHOLE YEAR before leaving the building was necessary. Furthermore, the woman shouted, "That was Jack Sissy Pants in the truck with her." I'm not sure who that was, unless it was the same older gay man from The Towers who once told me he was Shirley's former caretaker.

In the presence of a police officer, the woman shouted she would kill Shirley Guevera. She didn't care who heard. She would KILL THAT WOMAN.

The police officer shook his head. He walked to his squad car and got inside, driving in the direction of the truck, leaving the people on the porch with their boxes. Jeff Skrenes called my cell phone at that moment. He wanted an update. As I drove by 3101 6th Street, the older black man (the same one who had calmed down the young guy) howled his rage at the sight of my vehicle.

"That yell is for me, Jeff," I said. "I'll come by and see you personally."

The Media Are All Over It And So Is My Blog

Word on the street is Channel 5 is at The Apartment Complex of Anarchy with a television crew. The Star Tribune is all over the story, too. Jeff Skrenes got in his vehicle and left to go over there and make sure somebody was able to speak for the neighborhood.

I got to a computer as quickly as I could so I could upload the most important picture and video of the 117 photo and video images I captured.

Little children play in the street under the gaze of three squad cars, and the adults quietly watch this wonderful, and long-awaited day when the drug dealers get booted out of the buildings left in a state of anarchy by Shirley Guevara and the absentee mortgage company.

I look forward to making sure trespass will not take place at those two properties. It is a big day on "the block," but the battle is far from over. One member of the neighborhood council said he could feel the "steely stares" and asked me to watch his house, watch out for his wife and children.

I told him, "I watched your wife and kids go in the house while I was there. I did not drive away until she was in the house."

"I'm not backing down, though," he said. "We can't back down."

I agreed. It is war. And we can't back down. Now we determine the destiny of our little piece of the neighborhood for generations to come. We must fight and we must win.