Category: Crazy
I'm woking in Fresno. Wasn't sure if I wanted to rent an apt right away, so instead I rent a room from a motherly old woman. Nice enough place in a nice enough area.
One day after work she comes knocking at the door: "wTw, come outside. HURRY"! I'm thinking one of her dogs got run over or some other silliness. I head out the back door and see her standing on a stepstool, peering over the privacy fence.
Immendiately, my spidey sense begins to tingle
"What is this crazy old battleaxe doing"? I think to myself. Suddenly, I see a shadow move past the garage on my left. At least I thought it was shadow. I look again, but it's gone. "Hmmm".. Anyway, I head for the fence and look over the top to discover:
11 heavily armed Fresno PD SWAT team members with weapons drawn down on the house directly behind where I live. They are so close I can read the engraving on the rather large handguns that are pointed at the house behind the one I reside in. And the shadow I saw was another officer moving quietly around the side of my garage to draw down on a side window of the house.
"VICTOR SIFUENTES (I forget the real name) COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP! THE HOUSE IS SURROUNDED! IF YOU DON'T COME OUT, WE WILL SEND IN THE K-9 UNIT, FOLLOWED BY THE SWAT TEAM"!!! (Repeated 9 times per department protocol by bullhorn).
So I see this action and I immediately move away from the fence and head back toward my room. The landlady is still standing on the footstool, like a kid looking though the knotholes to watch a baseball game at Ebbetts Field.
After calling the guy out 9 times, they send in the dog. And then the SWAT team follows. Thankfully it was empty. As the streetshow was wrapping up, the neighbors are all milling about. And in Fresno, the demographics are a little different than here. It's about 60% hispanic. And again, the ENTIRE neighborhood is out watching when my landlady says to the SWAT team leader: "You should check that house over there too. These guys here and those guys there, are all in cahoots*.
Immediately, my spidey sense tingles again as all the neighbors begin staring at my landlady. Some of them are rather shady looking. (If you've ever resided in Fresno, you know what I mean.) Quickly, I slink back to the house and decide to sleep on the floor that night with my matress covering me in the event somebody straifs the house with an AR-15.
Turns out the guy they were looking for was a Fresno Bulldog gang dude, who shot six people at a party the previous October. Not a nice guy at all.
*Cahoots = In it together.
