Denzel

 Back at the club a day later, the Constitutional man from the day before was in the street, distraught, and gesturing at another man lying facedown against the doors of the club in a small pool of his own blood.

I've been seeing this a lot lately. Whatever the formulation of the latest batch of spice they're smoking is, it's making them lose consciousness almost immediately.

I knelt and checked for a pulse, but then could see the man breathe.

Right after I stood up, a medic police officer showed up. She began giving the man, whose name I had now learned was Denzel, a sternum rub.

Eventually the ambulance arrived, and Denzel grew combative as the cop tried to keep Denzel still while the paramedics got a stretcher ready.

During all this a crowd started growing, and among the crowd I recognized by their clothes and demeanor some young drug dealers.

Several other cops were there, and I began to ask them why they couldn't do something about all the drug dealing going on. The most senior said he'd talk to the Narcotics Squad.

I had some Pocky sticks with me, and began to hand them around. 

When I got to the dealers, I handed them the candy along with a request they move their operation. 

One, a big guy, was immediately hostile. 

"What happens on this side of the street is none of your business," he said. 

"I live here," I replied. 

We went back and forth through a few exchanges before I said I had said what I had come to say, and walked away. 

He kept shouting, and the last thing I heard him say was that my house was on the corner.

It's an unsettling feeling being threatened like that. It's not great to be sitting in your living room wondering if some young punk is going to decide to take a few shots through your window.

So far it hasn't come to that over the years we've been here, and I console myself with the realization that while these kids are undoubtedly capable of it, they get arrested and sent off for decades-long prison sentences pretty frequently.

One of our previous neighborhood terrors got sent to juvie, then got his GED while there and was the subject of a few hopeful articles in the local media.

About a year later I saw him in the arrest reports for Attempted Murder.