Consider this scenario: It’s 3 AM on a Sunday morning\/Saturday night, whichever you want to call it. You’re walking home, going north on Second, approaching Union. You see a guy crossing the street, approaching people, crossing back, changing direction, looking people over good, not appearing to have any destination in particular.<\/p>\n
What could this guy be up to? Here are the possibilities that run through my mind:<\/p>\n
1) He’s panhandling, which is illegal after dark;<\/p>\n
2) He’s trying to get people to pay for something illegal, such as drugs or a hooker;<\/p>\n
3) He’s sizing people up, seeing who might be a good target to rob if they turn down a dark alley;<\/p>\n
4) He’s legitimately lost and\/or in need of assistance.<\/p>\n
In the last case, he would be delighted to talk to a police officer if one were to roll up to him. In the other three cases, of course, he definitely would NOT be interested in interaction with a police officer.<\/p>\n
But the thing is, you see these guys on the streets ALL THE TIME in the wee hours, doing exactly the kind of activity I described above, because the police DON’T roll up and ask them what they’re doing, where they’re going.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, doubling back across streets several times and approaching people and casing people out qualifies as “suspicious activity.” Then again, I haven’t been through the police academy so I don’t know the official definition. But it sure seems suspicious to me. It’s not that the cops necessarily have to arrest these guys for anything; just roll up to them and say hello. Nothing wrong with saying hello to one of your town’s citizens, after all. Maybe drive by a couple of times in the 10 minutes following, to communicate, “I’m watching you.” If the cops did that, I promise you, these guys wouldn’t find Downtown Memphis such a hospitable place to conduct their activities, and they’d move on.<\/p>\n
It makes my blood boil that Memphis is so permissive of this kind of behavior. I’m about to go home to Little Rock for Christmas, and I can tell you, you never see that kind of activity on the streets of Downtown Little Rock.<\/p>\n
I had one of these guys look me over good last night as I walked home from Beale Street. I made it home safe and sound but this morning I learned that one of my neighbors, who had also been on Beale Street, had been mugged walking home.<\/p>\n
The police need to be proactive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Consider this scenario: It’s 3 AM on a Sunday morning\/Saturday night, whichever you want to call it. You’re walking home, going north on Second, approaching Union. You see a guy crossing the street, approaching people, crossing back, changing direction, looking people over good, not appearing to have any destination in particular. What could this guy … Continue reading “Suspicious activity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}