PRISON TIME DOESN’T WORK FOR EVERYONE

If you do prison time, what are you supposed to learn?

Is education even part of the sentence, or is it a waiting game?

People I know have been to prison. One of them twice.

Three times is a bigger problem in some states.

Oregon has its own sentencing guideline grid.

I moved to Tigard, Oregon in the early 90’s and been here ever since.

It’s been a good town to raise a family in, to educate children in, to coach in.

All in all, no complaints, just people living their best lives, or trying to.

I moved into a house after living in Portland apartments, three in NW Portland, the last one in inner-SE industrial on 11th and Lincoln.

My time in Portland was before everything was a cool new discovery for new cool people. NW Portland was a dive neighborhood when I moved there. Rent started at $155/mo.

SE was divey in a gritty way. I rented a dive three bedroom walk-up for $240.

This is how I learned about ‘dive’ neighborhoods:

From a small town upbringing on the Oregon coast in a town like North Bend (it was North Bend) I developed an eye for the dive.

Actually, I had an eye for cheap rent, and as a single man no neighborhood was too awful if the rent was low.

I’ve lived in college dorms, Army barracks, and two different apartments in Center City Philadelphia that had a comfy dive feel and great rent. I split a $120/month dive with a roommate in medical school. Do the math.

The one bedroom apartment I rented in Brooklyn was in a ‘white flight’ neighborhood where I was a minority. The building’s owner flew to Staten Island with his wife and kids, but left his mom behind. Her husband had owned the building and bar before her son.

Eighty year old Anne wasn’t going anywhere. She was my neighbor across the hall on the third floor, the only two apartments up there. She climbed those stairs like an exhausted mountaineer pulling themselves up one of the Seven Summits every day.

And she didn’t want any help. None. Don’t even ask. It was a most unfriendly friendly warning.

The second floor was a two bedroom the whole length of the building. The renter used the phone in the ground floor bar to make phone calls to Colombia. She didn’t speak English so the landlord did the interpreting needed to make her connection, then she took over.

She may have been a King Pin. There were more than a few of them in Brooklyn.

Prison Time For King Pin

My college dorm neighbor on one side ran California weed, the guy on the other side had a cocaine thing. I was there on an athletic scholarship. Since it was all new to me, the traffic seemed normal.

It wasn’t normal, and those boys took a deeper dive in the drug life later.

Were they King Pins?

The manager of my first Portland apartment reserved one unit for hourly rental. That ended when his girlfriend found out her pimp daddy wasn’t retired like he promised.

In SE, the drug house was around the block on 12th with iron barred windows and shades drawn all day and night. The locals were used to the traffic. What they didn’t like was the dealer’s dog out at night.

I was no longer Mr. Single And Carefree. By then I was a new father with a year and a half clocked into marriage. We talked and agreed the time was right for urban-flight.

My first neighbor in Tigard had done prison time twice, and during the second he volunteered for prison boot camp for a reduced sentence.

I believe he was a King Pin in the best light possible. The only traffic he brought in were in-mates on early release because he gave them a job and a place to stay.

I lived on the safest street in town.

So, I’ve been around.

Now It’s A Different Street

During my decades in Tigard I’ve read about two police shootings, the most recent near Hall and Bonita.

The first police shooting with city and county law enforcement came in 2006 and involved a kid who had just graduated from Tigard High School with my kid. They’d been teammates. His mom had been my kid’s youth soccer coach.

I had shootings in mind the first time city and county law enforcement showed up with guns out for a house down the road. They parked and gathered in front of my house. The first time was in daylight. They brought a dog.

The second time was early morning darkness. They brought flash-bang house gifts to the same address. As the morning broke I looked at all of the equipment from my front window: police cars, ambulance, armored personnel carrier. Long guns.

The dog had retired in between raids.

I’d had a conversation with the woman of the house in between raids where I begged her to stop whatever was bringing an armed response to my front window so I don’t get fucking shot in a crossfire while being mistaken for one of her mules.

She cried and said she didn’t know what to do. I felt like a shit.

Evolution Of A Life In Drugs

After the second SWAT raid, a man from the house down the street went away for two years, the time for the crime.

In two years, he got out and came home.

Since then, traffic in front picked up as sketchy cars came and left on their re-supply schedule.

These are lived-in cars, hoarder cars, the rides of choice for a smooth meth cruise. They park around the corner and send their runner.

If there’s a dented up car with different paint on different panels and a backseat full of trash, along with a roof rack full of random trunks, then it’s Meth-O’clock on my street. And that’s not prison time.

Why should I care? It’s the traffic. These aren’t crazy college kids getting high in a dorm, not ex-cons on the straight and narrow.

I’ve got a feeling from what I’ve seen that these are prison buddies doing favors for each other.

Since this is a drug house neighborhood with night traffic, a dealer who did two years of prison time and just got out, people have video set-ups.

My neighbor checked their video and saw a customer’s car pull up and a woman from the house get in.

Not long after, they saw the same car, an opened door, and the woman pushed out on the street unconscious.

The car drove away like it was nothing. Just party people getting down? Unsatisfied customers making a statement? Or was their shit laced with fentanyl?

If I know anything about addiction and prison time alumni, things can go wrong. From an “I’m so wasted” misunderstanding, to threatening words that lead to threatening actions, the time feels ripe.

One of my neighbors has a security camera with enough range to catch my front yard. And what do you know, he sent an action picture of curbside business.

Letter To The Chief

Dear Commander McDonald,

My name is David Gillaspie. I live near the author of the email I’m forwarding. The house and yard pictured in his email is my house and yard.

I’ve lived in Tigard for thirty years, the past twenty in the house in the picture. I share concerns about the neighborhood.

The house down the street has had two SWAT raids over the past years, and what’s been described as a drug incident last week that brought out police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck.

My concern, and reason for this Saturday email, is the willingness for the people down the street to do business in my front yard.

While I’m not an expert, I’ve heard that bad things happen when drug deals go wrong with the wrong people. I’ve seen the car in the photo trolling the neighborhood, parked and waiting for their runner. and now meeting up in front of my house.

Maybe it’s just a friendly visit among friends, or maybe casing the street for open garage opportunities, or maybe prison buddies doing favors for each other?

With my friend keeping an eye out, and giving updates to the other neighbors like the one I’m forwarding, I feel there’s some progress.

The proximity of these exchanges to my front door is sobering. What advice can you give a concerned long-time resident regarding approaching the car, recording and reporting activity, and dealing with the anxiety of ‘what’s going to happen next?’