Cheese Holes

They kicked me out of the meeting. Very politely, but, you know: They're cops. They don't really have to raise their voices. Afterward, DiMarco said, "They never said anything, because they were so nervous about you being there."

Always glad to help.

Chief Kunkle later told me the meeting I got kicked out of was "non-adversarial, non-threatening, not part of the nuisance abatement process."

Mmm, not too sure about that. The opening paragraph of the letters property owners are receiving from the police summoning them to these meetings contains close paraphrases of Chapter 125 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, titled "suit to abate certain common nuisances." That act gives the city the power to sue property owners.

Freddy Davenport, who owns the car wash, has already been hit for hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs and penalties in such a lawsuit. So he would be a fool if he took the letter or a meeting with police about it as "non-adversarial" or "non-threatening."

I have studied the property around the car wash pretty closely. Many lots in that immediate two-block area have been bought up by foundations and entities doing the good work of trying to clean up MLK, an important historic artery through one of the city's oldest black neighborhoods. I have also talked about the car wash with people involved in that effort.

There is an animus against the car wash. I have to admit the same feeling probably would crop up if the car wash were in my part of town (one and a half miles away). By camping out across the street from it, I have been able to witness lots of loitering and other activity that may be drug- and prostitution-related all around the car wash and on the car wash lot.

But the main car wash guy—the son of the owner—is fighting the crime in this area, not encouraging it. And even though he is a white guy from East Texas, he's not a bigot and does care about the neighborhood.

Nevertheless, that general animus against the car wash, and maybe against DiMarco, for all I know, is in the air and insinuates itself into the political pipeline.

I asked Chief Paulhill if she or her officers have any obligation to tell anybody back at headquarters when they get calls from the city council offices asking for things to be done.

She said, "No. It's no different than a citizen calling up here and saying, 'We think there's a drug house down the street.' We don't have to call the chief's office. We go and try to act on it."

But see, it is different. It's totally different if a council member or an assistant or even a secretary to a council member calls a deputy chief at a regional headquarters, as opposed to if you or I call.

And it's not just that the council office gets better service. The council office is able to get things going, to make things happen that the chief of police and the city manager and the mayor never see and may know little or nothing about.

Kunkle defends the city council on this. He says a city council request for police action "doesn't need to go through the city manager's office or even my office.

"In a city this size with the number of council members we have and the number of issues all of them are dealing with, it's practical that the council members deal a lot with our patrol chiefs on issues. Some council members are much more active with that than others, depending on what their priorities are."

I see his point. I respect Kunkle. I also don't expect him to bad-mouth the city council. But I also think this is why I get an official story from Kunkle and City Hall, and the legislative committee gets an official story from Kunkle and City Hall, and everybody gets an official story, but that story has little or nothing to do with what really happens out there in the neighborhoods.

The deal is hot-wired around City Hall. The chief and the city manager are down there mainly to deal with us, the media, and with people such as the legislative committee. They are the face but not the hands.

You can tell me that's just responsiveness. But police matters are different. When police matters get a little too responsive, things get a little too weird. Things start to smell bad, like my car wash case.

You know what would restore everybody's credibility? Knock the hell out of those dope houses. It's what the cops would rather be doing anyway. Just a suggestion.