A community meeting.

The other week, I was at the local community policing meeting, like the second time I had gone, to put in some face time out in the community and to meet some folks and whatnot, since this is my life nowadays, as I get ready for the public phase of my campaign.

Anyhow, these meetings are really interesting.

One was in a church basement and then the other in a community room in the police station and you sit at these tables and there's some officers up front with two community liaisons, and they go over beat statistics, and then there's a Q&A section where people ask about that stuff or raise other issues that are happening out in the community and need attention.

Like, the first time I went, someone was talking about a "low life" who would be out by the elementary school with a baby carriage, but he was really just a drug dealer who had done time and that baby carriage didn't have a baby in it, just drugs, and everyone knew his family, they were that type.

This time, the head officer was reminding people not to leave their keys in their car and running, so he told a story about a woman who was dropping off food and clothing donations at a local church and left her car running while she was bringing stuff in, and when she came back from the second trip, her car was gone.

"That's the world we live in, folks," he was like.  "You're not even safe leaving your car running outside a church to bring in donations."

At that, everyone grimaced and shook their heads, but there was a look of gleaming satisfaction in their eyes, at the sheer depraved audacity of the crime.

To be honest, it almost felt a bit like Fox News, like a simple morality tale, and the whole thing struck me like a modern form of storytelling, where people gather and just sit around like once a month, to hear stories of crime and trouble, but at the end social order is restored.

People really did love details, though.  When a carjacking was discussed, someone raised their hand and wanted to know if it was a repeat offender, and you could tell they hungered for the story about the carjacker's rapsheet.

Most touching was this (old) (ninety-something) (white) (guy), though, who had asked about traffic out by one alley in a kind of off-topic question, but then also wanted to know how we could get people from the Chinese community more involved, since "this is their neighborhood, too."

He also encouraged everyone to just go and say hi to their (Chinese) neighbors when you pass them on the streets, because "that's how it starts."

You could tell it was something that had been on his mind.