I got the boys ready for school and we were walking out to the car when a large man, armed and wearing body armor, approached me. He was a US Marshall and his task force was trying to serve a warrant for one of my neighbors.

There were a couple other officers trying to get my neighbor to come to the door but they weren’t answering.

The Marshall showed me a picture of who they were looking for and I’ve both seen and spoken to this person before. Always seemed really nice and maybe a little developmentally delayed. That part was pretty obvious.

Anyway, this guy had been living in my neighbors house for awhile but I haven’t seen him recently. I have no idea what he was wanted for and I didn’t ask.

The kids were a little concerned about this and Emmett thought he heard the Marshall say something about a murder, but nothing like that was said. The Marshall was really nice and told the kids to have a good day at school before heading back to the of his team.

When we got home about 10 minutes later, the task force had at least doubled in size and there was now a large group of law enforcement officers from various agencies standing in the middle of the road. Emmett’s immediate reaction was that we weren’t going to be able to get him to his appointment now because the road was blocked.

It didn’t occur to him that we didn’t have to leave for thirty minutes, or that could go a different direction or that they would move out of the way, if they were still standing there when we went to leave.

We headed straight into the house and having been unable to take this guy into custody, they dispersed. I imagine they will be back and perhaps not be so nice about knocking on the door. Hopefully, we won’t be here, if or when that goes down. That’s often what seems to happen.

Once again, it’s painfully obvious how badly I need to get my kids into a safer neighborhood. It’s an uphill battle but I need to make this happen.