On The Street Where I Live - 9

The Drug Bust

The second time a swat team came through our street, I had just come home from doing the groceries. At the bottom of our street, there were police cars blocking access to the street. They weren't there an hour ago when I left the house. I pulled my car over and walked to a neighbour's house. He was out too wondering what was going on.

We stood in his front yard, which was slightly raised from the street and fenced in by a row of hedge. We looked over the hedge just in time to see a swat team of helmetted men in uniforms and guns running up the street, all with serious, determined looks on their faces.

I called out to a policeman at the end of the line, "What's happening?"

He said, "Can't tell you, m'am."

"Okay, but does it have to do with September 11?"

"No." He looked up at us. "Can you two stay closer to the house please. You are too exposed."

So we pasted ourselves against the wall of my neighbour's house to see the swat team once again position themselves around a house further up from us, behind trees, in between cars, and on top of a roof.

Two officers walked up to the house, again a tenanted house.

This house has had problems before. The previous tenant owned pit bulls that he let roam free on the street and into people's backyards. The police were called in several times. But they were always more sympathetic with the dog owners than the neighbours with young kids, saying, "The dogs won't attack if you don't bother them." But what about them straying uninvited into backyards where young kids are eating and playing? What about when they want food and the kids won't give it to them? Why are the neighbours forced to incorporate someone else's dogs into their lives? But I digress.

The dogs and their owners had moved out by this time. The new tenants obviously brought their own baggage.

From where we stood, we saw the officers bring a young man out. He had obviously just woke up. Incredible. A mild, good looking black man in his twenties, early thirties at most. You wouldn't think he was dangerous enough to warrant all that covert attention. The officers had the man spread his arms on the police cruiser and lean into it. Then they searched him and put him inside the car. Two others went into the house, I assume to search it.

Ten minutes later, they drove the man away. As if in reverse motion, the swat team came out of hiding, marched back down the street across our field of vision, and got into their cars. A straggling office walked behind them.

I couldn't resist. I ran out to the hedge and said, "Hey, are we safe now? Was he a terrorist?"

He smirked. "No, he's not a terrorist. You are as safe as you've always been." My neighbour and I looked at each other, amused by the lack of reassurance, almost flippant response from the officer.

"Can you talk about it now?" I persisted.

"No."

"Okay, that means he is a terrorist, and you're not talking because you don't want to scare us. Give us a hint what that was about or we won't be able to sleep at night."

"It was drug related." By this time, the officer had walked past us and could talk to us no more, to his relief I'm sure.

Our street gives tenants a bad name.