Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

We currently rent a small house just off a very busy intersection and a few blocks from a huge magnet school. (A 'magnet" school is a school that is placed in a poor neighborhood and offers a very specialized science, math, arts or other program to attract students from other parts of the city, and theoretically to officer a better education to inner city kids...I don't think it works, but that is another blog.)

I took my husband for a walk near a lake and on the way back drove into the nearby gas station to get some gas. About 40 students were congregated near the bus stop on the corner. They were about 70% black, 25% Latino, and 5% white from my quick survey. Everyone was dressed in large hanging black clothes, as if they belonged to the same private school or club. They all looked in their early teens. They were loud, active and truly enjoying the beginning of spring and those flowing hormones. I proceeded to fill up my car.

Suddenly 5 or six of the black boys ran through the gas station, laughing and looking back. Some of the other kids called out to them. There was no aura of danger or anger...just noisy kids. Then a police car came around the corner and drove into the gas station and parked just in front of my car. Another large police officer appeared from the bus station corner walking behind the kids with a flak jacket on. The kids were like a large anemone...they instantly shrunk into little black mounds and watched quietly for their bus.

I finished getting gas, and squeezed past the police car and out onto the busy road. As I turned the corner past where the bus stop was, I had to make a wide right turn as three more police cars were parked with lights flashing in that lane of the busy street.

I couldn't see anything happening or even any police talking to the kids. I am guessing that it was gang related and that the police are on alert that time of the day in the spring...who knows. I have always lived in a middle-class white neighborhood (except for when I lived in various countries overseas) and so I am totally ignorant of this stuff! I do know that my son who is a BIG 26-year-old guy, never goes to the fast food places past this bus stop between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon because of all the kids hanging out after school.

I was never afraid during this incident...just curious. They look like nice normal kids to me. But, maybe they have issues.