Too busy to be depressed. Semi-follow-up to my AskMe.→[More:] The crew across the street are getting a little more volatile and it's worrying us.

Today we actually had some good news. The 14-year-old daughter of one of the tenants (two white women, several white kids, and several more black boyfriends, along with an ever-changing passel of "guests", mostly young white women and young black men, all packed into an ostensibly two-bedroom apartment) got herself arrested up the street after a 15-to-20-kid, well, girl brawl is the best word. So that's an arrest against the property, which will help our police chief in activating the nuisance ordinance.

It's been a kinda scary week, though, as the muscular, mean-ass boyfriend who is basically the capo of his crew has had several bellowing phone conversations which he broadcasts to the entire neighborhood. One of them was about a woman who got shot in the foot, which they all thought was funny and somewhat deserved. Another was about the guy who couldn't cross the state line into Wisconsin because he has a warrant. The latest was basically half-an-hour of various versions of "I'll meet you ANYTIME and ANYWHERE and I'll beat your ass", finishing off with "Don't you EVER forget I run this shit."

Monday, I reported a loud fight he had with the second tenant about the propriety of her having kicked out the third (apparently illegal) tenant on the basis of the third tenant having smoked crack in front of the aforementioned 14-year-old (who is not just "at risk" -- I would say she's surfing the risk breaker, playing the ho in a gangsta video (and let me tell you, a chirpy little white girl voice going all Ebonics is not attractive)), who is the first tenant's daughter.

Last Thursday, I reported the details of a drug deal on OUR driveway apron (they never do it on their property, always on a neighbor's, which is part of my AskMe motivation -- why? what legal protection does it give them?), involving two middle-school-aged buyers, one known to my social worker mother as an "at-risk" kid. Neither the dealer, the car, nor the kids have been around since, which is ... interesting.

On Friday, I called the cops because of the utterly habitual 1 a.m. porch party (why do they never smoke weed during these? Please God, give me some Drug War love!), and then an hour later because of the guy from the house who was having a nose-to-nose shouting match down at the stop sign with what may have been his "woman", who was then picked up by a sports car that sped off.

There was also some interesting activity involving the delivery of a box, which we speculate is a hydroponic-type device. (Size, shape, and approximate weight of a coffin ....) Apparently from certain angles not visible from the street you can see bright lights in the basement, all the time.

All of this, mind you, while I'm working my ass off to get an apartment ready for a new tenant, who will have this circus outside their bedroom window.

Anyway, after tonight's THIRD noise complaint, the lady of the house was loudly disputing with the officer that there was any reason for the litany of complaints except "the racists across the street", meaning my family. (Chutzpah, by the way, is telling the cop there was no noise when he says he saw people jumping on cars.) She had a series of bogus claims including that I run across the street at four in the morning, pound on their door, and yell "NIGGER!" and "BLACK BITCHES!" (Believe me, if ANYBODY in the neighborhood were doing that, I'd be able to hear it. And Kee-rist, I'd call the cops on them too.) Claims that they've lived in fear of US for weeks, that she has to keep her kids (who have no concept of property lines, and destroyed one neighbor's garden lights not to mention the lighted ALARM SERVICE sign) inside the house just in case we might "do something to them".

Now, yes, I have declared war on them, ever since the fight in the middle of the street that blocked our car with my elderly parents and DD nieces from getting into our driveway, and I shall not rest until they feel the wrath of a nuisance eviction. I can't quite understand why it hasn't happened yet, but every cop I talk to tells me to keep making the 911 calls until they can, in fact, fix the problem. (The 911 operators, from a different agency, are unfortunately a somewhat more skeptical bunch.)

I can list exactly why this is. There was a quiet first month they were there, just the women and their kids. Then the ghetto moved in with them, and ever since it's been noise and litter and noise and trespassing and noise and vandalism and noise and fighting in the street and noise and drug dealing and noise and loose pit bulls and noise and ... did I mention noise?

Now, ghetto culture is one thing, and I can in a way understand or even endorse why these women think it's exciting or taboo or whatnot to run with the thug life, but not on my fucking block.

Anyway, if one hair on my nieces or my parents gets disturbed by these clowns

THERE

WILL

BE

HELL

TO

PAY.