I was pulling out of the Rainbow parking lot on Universityi around 6:30 last night, and noticed a small clutch of Saint Paul cops pulled up at the corner of Pascal and University.<\/p>\n
“Nothing new there”, <\/em>I thought.\u00a0 It’s not uncommon to see the cops pulling over drunk drivers, thieves, footpads and petty thugs up and down Uni after dark; it’s common enough in broad daylight in fact.\u00a0 I started filing it away…<\/p>\n …until I heard a “THUMP THUMP THUMP” sound through my open window, along with the kind of aggressive barking that doesn’t come from taking Fido out for a walk.<\/p>\n I was waiting to pull onto northbound Pascal to get home when I heard it, and sensed more than saw some kind of frenzied activity through the brightly-lit windows of an office space upstairs – a “computer repair shop and mini-arcade” that always seemed to be in the exact wrong location for either business, above an auto garage and a vacant former clothing store.\u00a0 Then I heard something new – a bright splintering sound.\u00a0 I focused on the office, as the big picture window overlooking University shattered, and a black-clad figure tumbled out in a welter of glass, landing on the sidewalk ten feet below on\u00a0 his side.\u00a0 He was instantly surrounded by cops, although the cars between the scene and I, fifty yards away, obscured the action.<\/p>\n I pulled out onto Pascal, and noticed that my way home was blocked by a couple of big, black police vans – SWAT trucks.\u00a0 I wheeled over onto University, parked in front of a vacant building, and walked over as close as I could get to the scene.\u00a0 The jumper, not apparently bad-enough-for-wear to rate an ambulance, was being led away.\u00a0 Two or three early twenty-something Afro-American men were sitting, sullen and uncomfortable-looking, in chairs visible through the window, surrounded by officers in kevlar “Fritz” helmets and flak jackets.<\/p>\n It appeared to be a drug raid, but of course nobody was talking.<\/p>\n Observation:\u00a0 Don’t know if I want to hear anymore how “outgunned” the police are on the street these days.\u00a0 Every single officer I saw was carrying an M4 carbine, not one degree behind the current special operations fashion curve;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was pulling out of the Rainbow parking lot on Universityi around 6:30 last night, and noticed a small clutch of Saint Paul cops pulled up at the corner of Pascal and University. “Nothing new there”, I thought.\u00a0 It’s not uncommon to see the cops pulling over drunk drivers, thieves, footpads and petty thugs up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6876,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6874\/revisions\/6876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}