the mellow tigger's musings

On the plus side, I'm pretty sure I've had fewer notices that sex offenders are moving nearby. I think I only had 1 of them this year? Maybe 2, depending on if the other one was December or January. I only remember that it was cold weather for anyone to be walking around leaving these notices.

Also relatively good news is that I think I've called 911 fewer times this year than usual. I did call again on on September 23rd. I was woken at 2am by several gunshots. They were barely within the 2-block radius that I use to determine if I call to report them. Still, though, I'm sure there are fewer of these events this year, rather than it just being that my bedroom has better sound insulation thanks to window frames that no longer have big holes in them. It's objectively different too, since a south Minneapolis neighborhood seems to be leading my neighborhood in shootings this year. As I've mentioned before, the RICO arrests seemed to help here. Their trial is ongoing. It included its own drama with accusations that one of our violence interrupter groups (supposedly helping to bring peace to the warzone) was paying money to these criminals.

I haven't been to the dentist in a while, but one woman my age was killed near that medical center I use for the dentist. It's sad to think about. This story mentions that her body was left at a church nearby, which is probably the church (just a few houses from that medical center) that I went to once by invitation from the old lady across the street from me. She was one of the two "instigators" of our neighborhood block parties once a year. We always held them in her yard. After she died, I think we've never had another one.

An official walk/bike path leads westward from my house towards a large park system. It's generally safer walking west than any other direction from my home, but it still has some hazards. About two weeks ago, I noticed a big memorial along the park path, with a name that I didn't remember hearing about. The memorial was beginning to show signs of wear. Last week, it was fixed up and looking very nice again. With this new photo, it is obvious why. She died on September 22nd last year, and somebody fixed up the memorial for the anniversary of her death. It turns out that maybe she wasn't killed. According to this GoFundMe page, she was found "in a tree kicked back peacefully resting on branch in Theodore Wirth Park".

I hope I die as peacefully someday... minus the likely self-medicating drug overdose.

On the first day, I think the yelling didn't start until I was already off of my work shift. The weather was drizzly. I looked out back and saw a police car parked directly behind my back fence gate. Two women were sheltering from the rain under the vehicle's raised back door. I saw at least half a dozen police and a few emergency vehicles. I expected violence, because the police at my alley were carrying equipment in their hands to break down a door. I didn't understand why I kept hearing a weed whacker, since it didn't make sense that a neighbor would be doing that chore in the drizzle. I finally noticed the police drone in the air, and I took this bad photo of it. That's what was making the whirring noise. After a while, though, everyone left, and the two women entered the back door of the house. A strange conclusion to the event.

The next day there was yelling again, during my lunch break at work. This time, there were some women in the back yard talking to the yelling man through a window. I suspect these are the crisis intervention crew that we asked for instead of police response to everything. They stayed there a while through the additional yelling. I continued back to work. During a particularly intense period of yelling, I took a break and went back to the window. I caught a photo of the police arresting the man in the back yard. I don't know if someone inside pushed him through the window or if he went willingly, but he seemed only vocal during the arrest rather than violent.

End of drama. No gunfire at all. I'll call it a win.

In similar news from the warzone, El Salvador was once famous for its homicide rate. Now, that rate has dropped so significantly in the last decade that it is approaching the homicide rate of the USA. Wide averages are misleading, of course, and some areas of El Salvador are more dangerous than others. (If you average me with Bill Gates, I'm a millionaire.) By the same token, some areas of the USA are probably more dangerous than most areas of El Salvador. I offer my neighborhood as one example. The Trace has updated their data for recent years, and here is the gun shooting map within a 1-mile (1.6km) radius of my house. Click "Explore the map" in that link to roam freely and have a good look at the USA. These bullets are only the few that contact a person. There are vastly many more bullets flying through the air around here that never hit a person.

That photo is clearly more dense than the same one I posted in 2020 when it had less data to display. I call this my beloved warzone for a reason.