There was a raid next door this morning. It happened pretty early, I'd say around 5:30 or so. Not a Hollywood style raid either--no tanks or screaming and yelling. No swat teams or helicopters. I heard a strange crunch-thud and the sound of clanking metal, but I figured it was just the neighbor dropping a fence post or something...

So, I didn't really notice anything weird, until I opened the shade to my bedroom window. Then, I noticed some grey and blue sedans parked in front of the house, and in front of the driveway. The first thing I thought was geeze! some more assholes probably playing Let's Make a Dope Deal and can't even be considerate enough to block the driveway.

But the guys that were walking around had things around their neck, like security guards....and I thought I saw a cop car parked around the block on the corner.

That's when I realized they were cops. I looked out the side window, and there was a cop car in the driveway. I saw Uniformed in the yard.

I went out to find out what was going on. The downstairs front door of the house was busted open (there's the crunch-thud) and I heard someone inside. The Uniformed seargent came over and told me they were looking for someone, and then someone else came over to show me a mugshot. I'd never seen the guy, thank god. That's one thing about living on the third floor--I'm pretty much above everybody. They don't see/hear me and I don't see/hear them.

Things in this neighborhood have been going steadily downhill over the past six months. The young couple that bought the house next door as an "investment property" discovered after two years that the place was a money pit. They were putting more money into it than they'd ever get in return because of the neighborhood. Took them several months to sell it, though.

And I thought the new neighbors were okay...but I've been hearing things....stories about screaming and yelling. I've heard a bit of it, but apparently not the entierty. My downstairs neighbor's been the one getting the earful.

We both heard a number of "pow! pow!" sounds yesterday--like cars backfiring, or fireworks. But the sounds could have been gunshots, too.

The drug activity on the other side's stepped up, too. Saw a huge, white, Cadillac Esplinade pull out of the driveway next door yesterday--a very young guy driving it. Young guys don't drive those kinds of behemonths. A couple of months ago, a woman moved in with a pit bull. There was already one pit bull there, so now there are two. She seems to be wrangling both of them, but they tend to get away from her. They are rather vicious.

And one of Steady Eddie's tires got slashed when he parked in front of the house recently. So did the first floor neighbor's--because she, too, was parked there. We can't park anywhere other than in front of our own house, apparently, even though it's a public street.

Second floor neighbor told me how one Sunday she watched a guy pull up, go in the house, and come out a couple of minutes later. He tried to pull away real fast and hit one of the Church People who was pulling up to another spot.

I'm sure that didn't make the dealer all that happy. That's probably why they started slashing tires. Give the clients plenty of space for quick getaways.

This was always a bad neighborhood. Now it's a Really Bad neighborhood. Before it was just rambunctious teen-agers. Now it's U.S. Marshalls and slashed tires.

All in a couple of years.

I've lived in bad neighborhoods before, but this is a little too much...

I can hear the upstairs next door neighbor, the owner of the house, on the phone. I wonder what's going on now.

Maybe I don't want to know.

Maybe I just want to move and forget about the whole thing.