2/2/94  Sheriff Artisan and the new Director of the Truancy Abatement and Burglary Suppression (TABS) program give a presentation to concerned residents at the local Boys and Girls Club 5 blocks away.  As evidenced in these diaries, it didn't have much of an effect on the out-of-control, nascent teens in our neighborhood.  Much of their dysfunctional behavior was acted out on days they should have been in school.  (That local club, built with millions of donated dollars has room for only 300 of the 14,000 eligible youth in the densely populated census tracts surrounding it.  In other words, kids starved for recreation, especially those needful of life skills helping them break out of the vicious circle of poverty, ignorance, stress, crime and more poverty into which their parents brought them, couldn't get into this fancy new building.)

2/3/94  The group home for girls next door shovels all the snow off their front sidewalk except for a nine foot section of   nearest to my property line on both Feb 3rd and Feb 9th.

This reflects an attitude (from 1994 to the present) common among neighborhoods re-segregating from all White to all Black.  Our block has had White occupants in 7 of the 30 houses on the block for the past 11 years.  But, regardless of that highly unusual record of relative stability, there do arrive on the block every now and then tenants, owners or workers who presume that all White people are their enemy and don't deserve respect.  And given that peer group pressure enforces this norm among those few residents who do spend time in public outside their homes, it's especially difficult for anyone to be seen helping a White person unless getting paid to do so.  Ergo, not shoveling close enough to possibly be mistaken for having done something for me, a White person.  Six feet away from the property line was as close as that worker wanted to get!


Upon first returning here in 1987, before becoming a property owner, when there was a lot more time, I shoveled the entire block of 15 houses - 600 feet, corner to corner a few times.  Many other times, to take advantage of the exercise potential, several adjoining sidewalks were shoveled.  That was also when daily, early morning litter pick-ups were made of both sides of the entire block.  Initially, it took 3 hours over 3 days to clean the entire block.  Eventually, after three years, because of the high turn-over of the rental flats on our block, it became unnecessary.

Incoming parents were able to keep their own areas clean because their kids could no longer use the excuse:  "It's all over the place, mom!  Why do we have to do it?"

I still pick-up litter, especially when others are around to witness it, but only in front of my own properties.  Others, witnessed in increasing numbers, are obviously doing likewise.  (One secret learned long ago in the area of management consulting is that the most effective way to change behavior in others on a relatively permanent basis is through role modeling - not through mandates, dictates, orders, or other linguistic means.  Peer group pressure (among those witnessing the role modeled behavior) then takes over and helps maintain that new behavior pattern.  That's what's returning our block to a modality where growing families can be safe and thrive - gradually replacing the former German with an equally strong African theme.  The next block south of us had an equally strong Italian theme back in the 1950s.)

3/12/94 The oldest brother, both sisters and two cousins are taken by me to the Easter party at our local shopping center 30 blocks away.  We stop for lunch at the nearby MacDonald's on the way home.  They love the plastic ball filled, netting enclosed playbox at MacDonald's.  [The youngest (holding dog and at bottom of 2001 group pic) didn't remember any of this six years later when encountered with the eldest girl (with hand over mouth) at the last Shermanfest held in 2001.]

The oldest two, along with their absent brother, the car borrower referenced hereinafter, were the kids who more or less adopted me from the time I began moving back here from the Land of Enchantment in June of 1987.  They lived across the alley, until being forced to move in November, 1997, when a new owner converted the duplex into the second group home facing our alley.  (Group homes aren't supposed to be closer than 2500 feet to each other, but since wealthy suburbs have smarter lawyers than our city, they're able to keep them out of their communities.  Ours become concentrated in the Inner City, because no one really cares about what happens here - especially not our elected politicians.  So now, we have two group homes within 100 feet of each other across the alley.  The neighbor two houses south of me already thinks the attempted garage burglary to get his nice truck was because of the 2nd group home across the alley.)

The car borrower and another of his peers (the out-of-control nephew to be referenced, later) were the two who motivated me to get involved in youth activities and volunteer community organizing back in 1988.  After having just completed seven months of highly intensive computer reprogramming, which had been put-off for lack of time since around 1984, I was resting on the concrete bunker in back of the garage across the alley (behind the blue recycling carts in the picture - those were the years when garbage wasn't covering it and wild vegetation wasn't growing through the cracks to gradually destroy it.)  I was also contemplating re-growing the business just moved up here from New Mexico - in the much more bureaucratically complex environment of Wisconsin.

Suddenly, these two four year olds began a fight meant to beat each other bloody.  With several of their older siblings and cousins also in the alley, I said,

The fight stopped immediately and all the kids excitedly lined up to begin the race of around 160 feet.

After explaining that I was the starter and not another participant, we began a series of foot races.  The only prize was in the satisfaction of having won.  Pairing off by size and/or age was an immediate adjustment.  After a few races, the older 11/12 year olds wanted to be the starter, and the races took on a life of their own WITH ONLY VERBAL ENCOURAGEMENT BEING NEEDED FROM ME.  (That was the objective becoming successful for the umpteenth time in a life of occasionally supervising youth recreational activities.  It wasn't the first time the technique was used to distract very young kids from a just beginning altercation.)

The kids acted as if they were in Disney World.  Although pretty jaded myself and not prone to get excited about routine crises or other matters, the reaction of these kids to this simple, lousy foot race was astonishing.  It became immediately apparent that these kids were seriously starved for any kind of organized recreation and adult attention.

That motivated my decision to shut-down my business and reorient all my time and resources over the next seven years to local children and their need for 'non-abusive attention' and guidance toward skilled decency.  Getting to know the names and addresses of our local children was the first step needed to be able to control, and thereby minimize, their dysfunctional behavior.  I was able to ring doorbells AT NIGHT, WHEN NOBODY around here usually answered their door, to obtain signatures for various petitions and other causes because the kids would tell their parents,

Efforts to get others to do the same and establish local recreational outlets in their neighborhoods made community organizing the natural adjunct.  Those activities lasted 7 years until late 1994.  (After retiring from community activism from 1995 through 1997 and to which the incidents in these diaries attest, our neighborhood was pretty much out-of-control during that same period.)  (The   show the local building a few others and I had attempted to convert into a local recreation center.)

Having been used to helping my brothers and sisters guide their children toward skilled decency since 1959, it was an easy decision to make.  Those who know what they're doing, know the satisfaction that's obtained from witnessing the mental gears in a child's brain mesh in synchronized efficiency as new life skills or knowledge is acquired.  It was something the intrinsic rewards for which would be more than worth the inevitable frustration, danger and confrontation that was to follow - especially regarding race relations between Blacks and Whites - relations never having been highly developed except in a confrontational sense in Milwaukee.  Having read every child psychology text I could find before minoring in psychology as an undergraduate made the decision easier.  The child in me is always eager to come out - making it easier to speak child-speak and relate to children of differing age groups.

3/19/94  A formerly very caring and role modeling [ he used to sweep the front of his house (picture taken in May 1993 shows new shingling that was done in 1992), including the gutter IN PUBLIC ] neighbor destroys the front, side lawn of his house and part of mine in the process of moving dozens of large bags full of unflattened empty soda and beer cans out of his roach infested basement.  Discovering that he was not going to make it whole, the police were called and a ticket was issue to him.  He drove the van over the curb, across the sidewalk and up the lawn in reverse.  Having just rained, the ensuing mud wouldn't provide traction to get up the steep incline, but did spread a half inch of mud over the sidewalk as the pictures show.  This went to court with no consequences because the judge felt there weren't enough monetary damages to warrant action by him.  I cleaned it up.  His lawn got much worse later and was barren for several years - another blight on the neighborhood.

At this period in time, a neighborhood group was still meeting at the local public library.  A recent meeting, attended by some influential attorneys living within the broader neighborhood highlighted the fact that this type of destruction of front lawns was going unresolved for the 'bureaucracy, including the police' doing nothing even after neighborhood property owners cared enough to risk getting involved.  One attorney said she would follow up on such problems in her neighborhood to ensure the 'laws were enforced'.  It appeared to be a good opportunity to leverage that commitment on her part.  It got the police to issue the ticket, but then the judicial system dropped the ball.

3/31/94  Our senior Senator, Herb Kohl, holds a forum on Juvenile Crime at both his and our familial high school alma mater.  A former Aldermanic candidate who was in a gang prevention and youth diversion program, was spoken with to try to get some help for the out-of-control 14 year old across the alley - to no avail.  The 14 year old was eventually arrested for armed robbery.
4/12/94 Three neighborhood children accompany me to Herb Kohl's re-election announcement at Turner Hall, downtown.  Arriving simultaneous with him, they get to shake his hand.  He's made aware that a couple of them helped distribute flyers on his behalf before his first election victory back in 1988.

4/23/94  Twelve neighborhood kids and one from elsewhere were on the empty, unfenced garage slab in back of the group home for delinquent girls next door.  A section of the cheap wooden fence was pushed down so an older, non-local youth could expose himself to girls 'dancing nasty' in the rear yard.  Three children's moms were notified and came for their children.  One mother argued with me about actually witnessing her son doing anything - as though we were in a court of law instead of being two concerned adult neighbors.  The parents across the alley were informed and handled their children.

While talking with the MPD desk sergeant about this latest in a long series of problems associated with this group home, he hung up on me for being an irate citizen wasting his time.

The oldest youth walked here almost daily from his home 16 blocks away to interact with the girls in the group home.  Such interaction may have involved witnessing girls undress at the front windows facing our street.  Not all the girls did so, but enough did to warrant this and other local teens' continued interest.  (Needless to say, my contacts with workers within the group home resulted in the,

attitudes.  Two pictures of this incident didn't come back but the negatives show some figures.  This is the same group home that refused to shovel their sidewalk within 6 feet of my property several times.) A few years before this latest incident, some teen boys, presumably fellow gang members of one of the girls recently placed in the house, climbed all over the properties both across the street and adjacent to the group home to get to 'their' homey.  Although the director of the group home stated that the girls were free to leave anytime, their friends seemed to enjoy 'breaking' them out via the front windows above the front porch, instead.

Arson used as a distraction for other misdeeds:  In another incident around the same time, while waiting for the police, who came an hour after being called, long after everything had transpired, I witnessed one group start a garbage cart fire in the next alley to distract attention while the same type of assault was enacted.  I put the fire out with a bucket of water from my yard coincident with the arrival of the fire department.  The police were called to handle the dangerous gang of teens having just set fire to a garbage cart.  The police sent the fire department.  That was the last time time was wasted calling about garbage cart fires that could put out faster by us than the fire department.

In many cases, since I was the only person in the neighborhood willing to clean-up the mess, it became a better strategy to let them burn all the way down - thereby lessening the resultant clean-up time and effort.  In a couple later incidents not witnessed by me, two of the more than half-dozen garage fires started from burning garbage or recycling carts resulted in their complete destruction.  One was destroyed twice, the second time probably from a cigarette left in a couch when it was converted into a clubhouse by local youth unaffected by laws regarding trespass.  Neither garage has been rebuilt.  Our two alleys have 48 garages and 9 empty slabs.  In other neighborhoods, where no one's left to attempt to maintain some semblance of sanity and order, those numbers are reversed. [ 10/3/02 update:  The number of empty slabs has doubled. ]

5/5/94 An 18 year old across the alley and a group of his friends played basketball on a hoop they illegally nailed to the face of the garage next to where he lives.  Until opened and left that way, they continually kicked my opposite facing garage door.  The other garage, itself subsequently burned to the ground, had been in perfect shape, with a new roof in 1990.  Numerous pictures track the decline of that property.

This 18 year old was the most aggressively anti-White youth in the neighborhood back in 1987.  He'd make race baiting comments about "White people" when I rode by his house on my bicycle.  Haven't seen him for the past few years.  (His cousin of the same age spread the rumors on his street that I was a child molester.  Both were also apparently involved in small time drug dealing on their street for the entire decade of the '90's).

A common theme among drug dealers seems to be to harass, intimidate, spread rumors about, vandalize, burglarize or otherwise try to neutralize decent, law abiding citizens who DO CALL THE POLICE.  Eventually, those upstanding citizens move out - giving the gang and/or drug dealers a free reign.  Their criminality can be accomplished without interference from law enforcement.  In the past, I'd heard adults - always of dysfunctional kids tell me they'd heard I molested children, had anal sex with cats, was gay, a faggot and just this past week, raped little children.
 
Needless to say, none of those adults ever called the police about these "slanders", most likely because they didn't want to draw attention to themselves.  (Buster was known to have been one such slander mongeror.  Several times, children he'd just been with came to me and asked if I was gay or had sex with cats - no child has ever asked if I molested or raped little children.)

5/10/94  The latest in a long series of evictions occurs at the house one block east across the alley from my rental duplex.  Not having seen Sheriff's deputies around for many of these types of evictions, some involving throwing the items off the upper rear porch onto the back lawn where it lay for months, it's assumed that many slumlords have their own private squads and don't bother with the BUREAUCRATICALLY INSANE EVICTION PROCESS.  (A book could be written about this one house - more pictures are below.)

3/15/90 - new roofs appear on both my garage and the one across the alley.

-   of destroying the roof (and door) of the garage across the alley.  (When called after the parents would not communicate with me regarding their children, the police said that they have to witness the activity themselves before anything could be done.  On another occasion with a garage in the next alley, the police said that only the owner of the property could complain about its ongoing destruction.)

Other, much younger kids from other households, witnessing the others getting away with their destructive activities, began doing so themselves - me having my camera handy while taking before and after pictures of rehabilitation work ongoing across the alley.  They were caught climbing onto their own garage before I yelled at them to reverse their behavior - they being young enough and new enough at this latest game to heed my admonitions.
[ Both these garages and 5 others in this alley were burned to their slabs subsequent to these pictures.
Note that many of the pictures represent before and after garbage collections and the evidence of the lack of thoroughness thereof.

It was about this time that the Mayor began having meetings within various Inner City neighborhoods where problems were most concentrated.  He brought along most of his department heads.  The meeting on September 17th, 1990 to be held in the basement of the old St. Anne's school building was discovered by me that same morning.  I spent all day preparing a letter to the Mayor and his department heads and, taking along a bunch of shingles from the roof across the alley, delivered a Jerry Spence type "Bird in the Hand" presentation to them summarizing the contents of the letter.  Conditions didn't improve much - it probably wouldn't have been much better having had Jerry Spence himself deliver the summarization to the dunderheaded bureaucrats in this city! ]
July 1991 - clothes dumped in alley
8/26/91 - construction material
11/2/92 - typical post-collection trash residue
11/30/92 - typical trash heap
1/17/93 - snow covers large item trash
  - typical trash before and after pick-up
  - before collection
8/5/93{pre-collection(x3) • after-8/6/93)
5/5/94 - illegal hoop nailed to garage
5/10/94 - eviction trash heap

5/10/94  The owners of the group home for girls accepted my recommendation for a 6 foot high 'see through' chain link fence in the rear yard to the alley and front side yard property lines.  (I paid the same contractor $300 to fence my adjoining rear yard.)

1998 update:  So far, the new fencing seems to have solved the problems with youth rampaging through our adjoining yards at will.  In early 1997, the group home placed another 4 foot fence in the front to keep the numerous out-of-control neighborhood children off their front lawn.  It helped keep them off mine, too, although every now and then one of the 14-17 year old teens still rides a bicycle up and down my front lawn as an act of defiance against one of the people in the neighborhood who does call the police - who also happens to be White, The Man, in general the convenient object for whatever anger teens and pre-teens happen to have at the moment.  (Ask an Inner City kid what a "lawn" is?!  Many don't have it in their vocabulary.  One of the hundreds of terms appearing in standardized tests making them biased against these children.)

(6/16/01:  For the past year, one child from one of the worst homes on the block has been calling me the "raper man" - indicating there probably are adults in her family who are in the drug business -- a status confirmed by subsequent observation and events.)

6/4/94  Two neighborhood children and their two cousins (EasterPic) accompany me to help clean-up the vacant lot eventually becoming the Victory Over Violence Park.

The park is 37 blocks east of us.  At noon, the oldest girl (2001pic) walks with me to (now Mayor) Congressman Tom Barrett's "wants to hear your views" meeting at the Martin Luther King Library 3 blocks north.  She gets to meet him and shake his hand for the first time.

6/6/94  While working on my newly acquired used IBM XT computer, the electricity began to pulse.  Going outside to inspect, it's discovered that the electric lines running from the house two houses north to the alley were rubbed bare where they contacted the tree and were sparking on this windy day.  Called the electric company.  They made a temporary fix and replaced the wires 2 weeks later.  (That was the second of two houses owned by this landlord having immigrated to the United States.  The other is three houses south on the same side of the street - the one directly across from me, now, but next door at that time.  Both of his houses had been involved in numerous drug dealing tenancies and probably involved more than two dozen calls to the police, each, during his 8 year ownership.)

6/15/94 The garage in the alley diagonal from mine displays fresh .  Neighborhood and other youth use it as a billboard for the girls in the group home facing it directly across the alley.
July 1994 -   is created by adding vegetation to and renaming an existing park in the neighborhood.  (The Milwaukee Jaycees provided the womanpower for the event - the girl volunteers I brought especially bonding with them - I was a Milwaukee Jaycee back in 1968 & 1969.)
July 94  The suddenly destructive neighbor and his family moved out of both flats and Buster and his family moved in.  Buster's mother worked with him at his workplace.  Since then, there were numerous instances of illegal drug sales from both the front porch and rear side door.  While the tenants in the lower flat remained constant, those in the upper (and possibly some in the basement) turned over at least 4 times from 1994 through 1997.  Each of the last two tenants in the upper flat had been observed transacting closed hand exchanges with car drivers on the street - presumably drug deals, though it's not necessarily the primary tenants doing the exchanges but temporary guests (or basement tenants) of theirs.

Almost immediately, the older youths began disrespecting the adjacent properties.  One thought to be 13 years old, based upon his behavior, was 17.  He used a garden hose to spray everything within reach, including my front porch and siding.  Upon witnessing this, I requested that he keep the water in their yard, along with the kids running through it.

(This was the first year of the past 6 that I hadn't obtained a legal, fire hydrant sprinkler.  What with the constant turnover of absentee owned flats, including even mine up to this time, most of my spare time was spent trying to protect my property.  I'd also just purchased a used IBM computer and was in the process of learning its capabilities and re-writing all my programs to it from the prior TRS-80 based system.  I was also intensively involved in the Empowerment Zone application process for our city, the Social Development Commission and producing and hosting a neighborhood empowering type local access cable television show.  There wasn't much time for anything else.)

1999 update:  Some time around early 1997, the owner abandoned this property and left the city for ?Florida?.  HUD took it back in November, 1997.  It's been boarded since then with someone actually buying it but, so far, not fixing the code violations in order to occupy it.
2001:  A minister has moved in to rent the place - even though it was sold by HUD on the condition that it be owner occupied -- thereby preventing any of us neighbors from purchasing it.  He immediately put up a new chain link fence in the front and back - the fencing moved from his previous home.  His wife is running a day care center out of the upper flat.  It hasn't been a problem since they moved in - a statement still true as of 7/18/2004.

July/94  Around this time, both my neatly painted garbage carts were burned to the ground at the edge of my freshly re-painted garage.  It caused smoke damage to the new paint job.  Neither tenant informed me of this, probably because like most tenants in this neighborhood, they hardly ever go to the alley except when placing garbage in the carts.  (That's why I make it a point to make those trips myself as often each day as possible - I'm usually the only adult checking on what's happening in the alleys or on our streets.)  For reasons unremembered right now, Buster became the most immediate, likely suspect.  He has never "denied" setting them on fire - either vociferously or passively.  (During the ensuing 3 years, there were more than three dozen garbage/recycling cart fires in our two alleys.)

7/29~31/94  Shermanfest weekend.  Both their mother and I contribute funds to treat her 4 kids and their two cousins to whatever they want to buy for themselves.  I help officiate at the softball tournament while the kids have fun.  When not officiating, I look after the youngest while watching the games from the bleachers behind the backstop. 

8/3/94  The first piece of green roofing shingle was found on the ground.  It came off the rental duplex.  We had thunderstorm and tornado warnings for the area.  It was assumed that this came off as a result of such winds.  That may not have been the case!
8/29/94  Saved the green 'caution' card regarding the installation of a new Ford Corporation water stop valve with the notation "24..-40 new water main east side curb" - probably found on the sidewalk and relating to a water shut-off valve for one of the houses on our block.
9/18/94 An abandoned 'borrowed car' overheats and destroys the BILLBOARD garage door facing the group home for girls across the alley.  The fire was brought to my attention by my upper flat tenant who thought my other house - the one into which she was to move in six weeks was on fire.  The pictures show the freshly installed green plywood covering the entire garage doorway and the fire damage to the roof above.  The property stayed that way, house and garage empty, until the Spring of 1997.
All four of my flats turned over during November & December of 1994 with only two involving terminating tenancies.  Since tenants couldn't be found who respected the extra fine woodwork and accommodations of our family homestead, I moved back into it.  The best tenants snapped at the chance to move from the worst to the best upper flat.  Then, both flats of the house purchased in 1990 were rented.  My mother sold the family homestead to me in 1991 when she decided to move into one of the nicest retirement complexes in the city.  That was a logical decision, since over the past 25 years, I'd made most of the improvements to the house, anyway.
9/94 My other garage has fresh .  This is pretty much how it stayed and looked until the burglary the next July - me having dozens of other safeguarding tasks and higher priorities on my TODO list and not having the proper paint at hand, yet.
9/18/94 A new fire plug is placed at the corner house on Meinecke.  At the same time, the street appears caved-in and begins leaking water.  Which came first isn't known, but the street had just been freshly re-done - including new concrete base, gutters and asphalt overlay.  [ Our street was completely asphalted 4 times from 1988 through 1998 - notices to us residents weren't provided before any of the work -- the first such asphalting, with gravel overlay, was done the day before a big block party --- the smell of the fresh asphalt making the party not as nice as it should have been. ]

19th:  The New Covenant Housing Corp. apartments are going up between 38th and 39th streets and Meinecke and North avenues.  ('Us' kids from the 2400 blocks of 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st play football, volleyball, softball and horseshoes on those empty lots until they disappear.)

27th:  Found the Milwaukee Water Works WATER SHUT-OFF NOTICE hanging on my front doorknob - 9 days after the fire hydrant and water leakage at the corner.  A trench was dug along the entire east side through the fresh construction in order to lay a new, plastic-type water pipe.  Given that us home owners are never notified about these projects and our elected representatives are oblivious to what's going on aside from which day their paychecks arrive, it's not known whether we had lead in our water, a leaking main line, damages caused by previous construction projects at the time, alien invaders or ???

10/1/94 My next door neighbor organizes a block clean-up & party for our block and creates a flyer.  She and her four little kids (3 older ones lived in Chicago with their grandmother) and some of their friends distribute it to all the households.  I made copies of the flyer and donated food and soda, others cooked the hot dogs and a whole lot of residents on the block participated and had a good time.  • admonitionsHeeded  • arsonAsDestraction  • attitudes  • BirdInTheHandPresentation  • blockCleanUpParty  • ButterflyParkCreated  • CANDOpresentation  • CapitolCourt-Easter  • Delinquency  • dissingWhitey  • evictions  • F E N C I N G  • fireByAutomobile
GARAGE:  asBillboard  • attemptedBurglary  • climbingOnto  • concreteBunker  • destructionByKids  • DisneyWorld  • firesBegin  • graffiti  • illegalHoop  • KidsAdoptMe
     • newRoofs  • repainted  • slab
GARBAGE:  before&After  • cartFiresBegin  • lawnDestroyed  • motivation  • NCHChousingBuilt  • newStreetDugup  • raceBaiting  • roleModeling  • shinglesBegin  • unshoveledSnow  • VictoryOverViolencePark  

Website link/location/URL: http://www.KidsRiot.com or http://www.Jamrent.com/ic/index.html