So, one morning this last summer (during the 90 days of summer that we have here in Minnesota), I was sitting at my desk with the main front door open so that we got some air flow. (It was not hot enough to turn on the A/C yet, according to my southern-born internal regulator, but everyone else had already turned theirs on. They usually do when it hits 75F around here.) The storm door has a screen, so that was still in place. (And, locked as well.) It was around 5:30 am. Suddenly, I see a bright light shining through the door at me. I rise up out of my chair, trying to see who it is. Then, I realize that it is a police officer. Now, I live in an area north of Minneapolis that has had issues with the police. (This particular police department had already committed two high-profile killings and were already being protested against.) And, although I am white, I am also from a poor family and one of the poorest counties in my home state. So, I was a bit concerned about cops just showing up and creeping around my house in the dark. He asked me if I had seen anyone around, that they had gotten a report of someone in a dark shirt standing down on the greenway that surrounds the pond we live on. (They call it a 'lake'.) I replied that I had not seen anyone, and that I had been up sitting here for the last hour. He acknowledged and then walked around the unit I live in (townhouses) and then left. I was a bit curious about this, but I was not surprised. There are a few older people here and one couple in particular has become the de-facto freakazoids of the area. They recently mounted a nice, big, movable camera on their back deck, like the ones you see at malls and stuff. The white arm with a smoky globe on it kind. In the five years I have been here, they have called the cops on a multiple occasions to report someone walking down the greenway. Now, bear in mind that this is a public greenway and there are apartments and other townhomes all around this side of the pond. They once called the cops on a boy around 13 or so who was walking along with a large cardboard box that he was going to use for some Scout merit badge thing. The police had to come here and scare this kid just to tell him not to leave any trash on the greenway. (I bet you won't be able to guess the race of the old couple or of those that keep generating the calls, but that is another story. This incident was when I realized that the couple was starting to really lose it as the boy with the box was a white boy who was very Nordic looking, so it was hard to not see that he was Caucasian.) Of course, the couple actually mentioned to another neighbor that they felt bad about making that call. They never said anything about the other times they wasted resources on calls that basically were made because someone darker than a sheet of copy paper dared to walk by on a public greenway at a time that was not to the couple's liking. And, no, I cannot wait to get away from this place.
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