Hilltop Trouble

[Mythsaje]

Last week I posted something about this group of African American teenagers and young adults who hang out on my street because they really have nowhere else to go, and how the local "Safe Streets" coordinator was getting all wound up calling them "hoodlums" and "gang members" based on nothing that I can see other than hearsay and what seems to be racist assumptions.

The fact is these young men have been doing this for months, and except for a problem with trash (which they started picking up after we asked them to) we really didn't have a problem with them. As a matter of fact, I felt comfortable knowing they were out there, and since they have, no one has had a problem with vehicle theft on this block at all. Or anything else to speak of, come to think of it. No property crime at all, even with all these young "hoodlums" and "gang members" hanging out nearly every night.

Across the street and up the block about two houses live the members of a family who've suffered a major loss less than two months ago. The mother, the owner of the house, died of cancer and left the house to her son and daughter. The son is friends with a lot of the guys who hang out on the street, so he's been associated with what they assume about this group.

I woke up this morning to find the street full of cop cars. Very early this morning (probably a dawn raid, as a matter of fact--they like that sort of thing) they woke the whole family up (including the twelve year old daughter of the woman who'd come to live there to take care of her dying mother), chased them out of the house and tore the place apart. All they found was a little pot in the possession of the son (who's now in jail on possession charges) and no sign of it being a "crack" house as assumed (the daughter doesn't do or tolerate drugs in her house, same as the mother).

Since they didn't find anything, they called in a bunch of inspectors to chase down ANY reason they could to shut the house down. They found building code violations and boarded up the doors, locking them out of their own house, passed down to them by their mother, and therefore tossing them out in street.

It seems to me to be a violation of the equal protection cause. It's not as though they went through every house on the neighborhood looking for code violations--just THIS one that was singled out for no particular reason but a neighbor's assumptions.

My wife and I are pissed about this. It stinks.

[Selatius]

1. It sounds like you need to get in touch with your local chapter of the NAACP

Or perhaps the ACLU as well.

[elleng]

2. I'd contact your city council member.

and talk with neighbors; see what they think.