Title: All quiet on the Northside? (resend of misaddressed
po
My
apologies- I sent this last night to the wrong address.
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 02:47:55 -0500
To: mpls-mnforum.com
From: dyna <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: All quiet on the Northside?
Cc:
Bcc:
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After
the hell of last thursday night, thugs and cops alike were on their
best behavior over the weekend. The news crews are gone, and city hall
will return to worrying about the more genteel sectors of the City of
Lakes.
In this post I will draw on my own
experience and oral histories handed down from my family's elders to
describe how the Northside got to it's current lawless state. Both my
parents families moved from rural Minnespta and the Dakotas to the
Northside in the first few decades of the last century. They put down
roots here, bought or literally built homes, and worked in the
industries of this city.
My grandparents rented my house in Hawthorne in
1940. A year later they bought it on contract for deed, and owned it
free and clear by 1952. Grandpa passed away in 1942, leaving grandma
with 3 children. Grandma retired from her work as a seamstress at
Liemandt's in 1965, having been an ILGWU member and shop steward. With
her union pension and social security she lived a modest life in her
now long paid for home.
I rented a room here from grandma for a couple years
in the early 1970s. This was never a wealthy neighborhood, and our
home, a 2 story balloon frame structure with no basement or central
heat was typically modest. While the Northside may have a reputation
for roughness and the neighborhood working class, I felt quite safe
here. The worst injuries from altercations tended to be bloodied noses
and such.
With the Reagan Recession of the 1980s
came joblessness as blue collar jobs disappeared. To the kid who's mom
or dad just got laid off the american dream died. Drug dealing and
gang banging suddenly looked like a viable career option. By the early
1990s crack cocaine was the major economic engine in the Northside,
and the working class folks that could were moving out. Grandma and
roommate auntie Ricki were robbed at gunpoint, and a murder victims
body was dumped in our neighbors driveway. The houses on both sides of
mine had reverted to rental by then, and both were torched in the
early 1990s.
Grandma moved into
a nursing home in 1994, and roommate auntie Ricky passed away a few
months later. Grandma finally left us in 1995, and after 75 years not
a single member of my family lived on the Northside.
Then things got
better on the Northside. Unemployment fell during the Clinton
administration, and the city finally took the gang bangers seriously
and put many behind bars. Through 1995 my house stood empty but was
never violated, and until recently this was again a quite
neighborhood. I bought the tax forfeit lots the torched houses had
stood on, added a garage, and started rehabbing the house.
After 9/11 the hell started. This spring two
burglaries were attempted on my property. A drug and prostitution
house developed up the street, while the city's crime rate rose again.
By July the drug dealing and prostitution were causing traffic jams on
our formerly quiet residential streets, and one vacant house on my
block was broken into twice in one week.
I spent much
of July upgrading locks, barring windows, putting up a fence, etc.
Every night I would be kept up till nearly dawn by the commotion, the
scanner on to see what might be headed my way. And while multiple
felonies were being committed up the street, the building inspector
wrote me up for not painting my trim. Heck, I was having trouble
finding lulls in the action when it was safe to mow the lawn!
Fortunately, after many
calls by myself and my more law abiding neighbors Minneapolis Police
raided the drug house, effectively closing it down. Some smaller scale
dealing continued next store at a house owned by one of the city's
most notorious landlords, Bob Zeeman. The principal dealer looked a
lot like the dummy that made the mistake of pointing a gun at MPD
officers a couple weeks ago. Shortly thereafter these unwanted tenants
hurriedly moved out in the middle of the night.
After the
bust and riot on 26th Avenue thursday, new "neighbors" moved
in next door. In a familiar pattern first to move in was a woman with
several small children. Saturday night several men with too much time
on their hands arrived, spending the early morning hours smoking dope,
yacking on cell phones, acting like gang bangers, and in general
disturbing the peace. Yesterday afternoon what appears to be the first
crack sale went down, a handoff of product delivered by one of the
occupants of the house up the street busted but a month
ago.
We're losing
the Northside. Last year houses sold within hours, today they sit
unsold for months. Listening to Minneapolis Police 4th Precinct
(Northside) on the scanner is quite educational. Calls for property
crimes are often backed up for hours. Officers are often dispatched
for another call before a proper investigation can be done. Today I
was hit at work by a road raged courier. I waited two hours for MPD to
respond, and all the officer had time to due was hand us accident
forms to fill out. Fortunately my only injury was a bruised knee, and
hopefully management will at least ban the perpetrator from our
loading dock. Some aren't so lucku- last week a child was injured a
block from my home by a speeding hit and run driver.
All quiet on the
Northside? I wish it were so. The jobs are disappearing, and those
that are left won't hire exoffenders. Hawthorne has a median age of
about 20, with the most common family unit being a single mother with
a couple of kids. Fully 40 percent of Minneapolis students don't
finish high school, and those are the city wide numbers- I suspect the
graduation rate in Hawthorne is much lower. With the latest round of
budget cuts transportation for Hawthorne High School students was
eliminated. It's over a mile from my home to North High, and I can't
find any route that doesn't pass a drug house or cross some gangs
turf. Combine that with the various distractions on Broadway and I
suspect most of our high schoolers will never make it to school, never
mind graduate.
We can bust the drug houses again
and put away the dealers for a while. A veritable army of unemployable
kids is coming up to replace them. And the drug dealers will be
back, dumped in the Northside because no other community will have
them. More cops will quit, tired of low pay, overwork, the courts'
"catch and release" nonsense, and getting shot at.
It may be nice and quiet
in city hall, but It's neither quite or peaceful on the Northside.
peace,
Dyna Sluyter,
Inmate of Hawthorne, and shopping for an RV.
.
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