Weekend Report

CORRECTION: In the below story, I referred to the person who was recently arrested as being Max's cousin. I now believe that this is incorrect and the two are probably not even related. My mistake was initiated by bad reading on my part (I mistakenly thought the two had the same last name), and was further supported by what turned out to be bad intelligence from my contacts in this neighborhood.


For this story which I am about to write, it probably won’t be difficult for many people to figure out the real name(s) of some of the people involved. And that is your prerogative to do so. But I will be keeping with protocol here and using pseudonyms. I ask that any readers do the same with their comments.
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Late last week, I was reading another local blog when I saw a name that I recognized. Apparently the police had conducted two SWAT raids on two different homes and during two different days. They were specifically looking for a person who they think may have been responsible for at least one recent drive-by shooting of a home. They had a warrant for this person’s arrest, but they were also “interested” in locating a relative of his to ask him a few questions.

The other person is who I have referred to here previously as Max. Max was arrested (and later convicted) a couple years ago for selling drugs in my neighborhood. His cousin Sheldon was also arrested at that same time. Max has recently engaged in cross-alley shootings with one of his associates. This happened at least two different days and both times it occurred right behind my house.

Max is also the person who was arguing so loudly with his own mother one afternoon (concerning his dangerous lifestyle) that the police were called to the area to check on a disturbance. When the police arrived, no one was left on the corner except for Max and his associate. They both told the officer there had been no disturbance and the officer then went on his merry little way.

Now, having said all this, I want to also add that Max and his cousin Sheldon are not altogether bad guys - at least not as far as they relate to me. I say this mostly because while they both used to be a magnet for bringing disquiet to my home, they are now more likely to be seen as calming things down. Don’t get me wrong, they both appear to be selling drugs quite regularly, they just do it far less obnoxiously then they used to and they actually discourage others from acting too obnoxiously. So as far as having drug dealers for neighbors is concerned, I guess I could do a lot worse than these two.

But there is another side to Max besides being a drug dealer. I am friends with Max’s uncle (even took a trip to Toronto once with him) and I have been inside his grandmother’s house on at least a few occasions. The first time was when my friend (Max’s uncle) asked me to come over and fix his mother’s leaky water faucet, and the most recent was when I went over to speak with Max’s grandmother about the problems here (some of which were being caused by Sheldon and Max).

I have also known Max for over ten years and Sheldon for about four. I met Max when he was either in his very early teens or perhaps even a pre-teen. When he was younger, I’m pretty sure he was among the kids that I would sometimes pay to help me do yard work. Over the years, I have had several meaningful conversations with him about a variety of topics. And judging by the amount of care and attention he gives to his infant daughter when he is walking her around the neighborhood, I would say that he is a good father.

I wanted to put all this out there for two reasons. First, as I have repeatedly tried to do throughout my blog, I am attempting to show that things here are usually a bit more complex than a short newspaper article might indicate. I would expect that most people reading that article would be surprised to hear me say that this person (a drug dealer and perhaps a co-conspirator in the drive-by shooting) is a good father and a decent person in other respects.

The second reason is I wanted you to have some idea of the complex relationships that I share with many of my neighbors here. I have said before that I do not totally shun someone here just because they, or a family member, is involved in the drug trade. My complete reasoning for this is a bit complex, but it should suffice to simply say that maintaining a certain level of dialogue with everyone here has benefited me many times.

So, getting back to that other blogger (and I’m sure most of you know who I’m talking about - right?) His story about the police raids were pretty descriptive, and in fact I thought he was merely summarizing what he had read in a newspaper article. I had no reason to suspect that this information was confidential, so when I happened to see Sheldon a day or two later, I mentioned this to him.

He was walking past and stopped to talk about the tree I was cutting down. As we chatted, I just innocently threw out “I see the police are looking for your cousin.” He seemed perplexed, so I said “Max, the police are looking for Max, right?” Apparently this was news to him, and he quickly rushed off towards his grandmother’s house (presumably to notify Max.)

This bothered me a bit, and I began to wonder where that other blogger had gotten his information. I went online to check out the local newspaper’s recent stories and they oddly left out Max’s name, although it did say that FWPD was looking for an unnamed relative of the guy they had just captured. At this point, I had a hunch as to the source of this information. So I called my friend (the other blogger I’m talking about) and confirmed that he had in fact gotten his information directly from the FWPD scanner.

Later that afternoon, Officer Rice and another officer passed by my house. I really would have liked to talk with one of them for a moment. I just thought it would be a good idea to make them aware that their secret was out, that Max knew he was being sought. But both whizzed by quickly and the opportunity was lost.

For a fleeting moment, I considered calling the FWPD front desk. But I realized that if those fools can’t even communicate a simple message from me to an officer presently on the scene about something, then they probably wouldn’t know what to do with this information. Hell, they’d probably think I was reporting that Max was here now and send a shitload of cars out for nothing.

Finally, about three nights later, I happened to run into an officer that I knew. I started out by simply saying “I heard that you guys are looking for Max.” To which Officer Clayton responded “He actually walked into the police station on Saturday and turned himself in. He really wasn’t wanted so much as we just wanted to question him.” Ironically, Saturday was the same day that I had mentioned to Sheldon that the police were looking for Max, so I can’t help but wonder if that is why he walked in.

Officer Clayton said that they simply questioned Max and let him go, so I shouldn’t be shocked if I saw him back on the block. Of course, a day or two later I read in the newspaper that Max had actually been arrested at the time, but that he was just released on bail. According to the article, FWPD believes that Max was driving the car when his cousin shot at the house. I have seen Max a couple times in the past few days, but he seems to be sticking close to his house.

I just wanted to close this by talking about Officer Clayton for a minute. Officer Clayton is a member of the FWPD Command Staff. You might recall that on at least one occasion I have said something to the effect of “Evidence proves that every member of the Command staff is either an idiot, a coward, or a criminal.” Now I don’t have any evidence to suggest that Officer Clayton actually reads my blog, but I know at least one of the officers in my neighborhood reads it, so I expect there are others.

Anyway, regardless of whether Officer Clayton has read my exact quotes, I think it is almost certain that he realizes that I am writing a critical appraisal of FWPD’s activities. With this in mind, I was actually a bit hesitant to approach him at first. I would have expected to be ignored at best. But he not only listened to what I had to say, but briefly engaged me in casual conversation afterwards. Officer Clayton seems like a genuinely decent guy, and I think the fact that he could maintain a professional and polite demeanor while talking with me supports this belief.

And so, I’ll close this post in a similar fashion to how it was opened. While at the beginning, I was actually urging my readers to broaden their minds a bit when reading about the drug dealers here. They are criminals, there is no mistake about that, and some of them do a lot of bad things. But that is just one side of the coin. They’re people, and like all people they are complex creatures. To simply think of someone as entirely evil or to assume you understand every detail of their lives, all from reading only a few lines in the paper, will most likely lead to an inaccurate assessment.

Perhaps my recent interaction with Officer Clayton was a reminder that the same rule applies to the police as well. I have certainly seen enough from this department to seriously call into question just what in the hell is going on there, but for me (or anyone else) to assume that my few little snapshots of activity here could really tell the whole story is not correct. I am certain that there is an extremely wide range of intelligence, professionalism, and other attributes among the various members of FWPD, and I am sure that this same rule applies to their Command Staff. And while I will stick by my assessment of FWPD as being correct in a general manner, I am quite certain that I have misunderstood or misstated quite a few of the details.