A Local Shooting

Last night was Halloween. We only had three or four groups of trick-or-treaters, lots fewer than we have seen in the past but it's a trend, last year was pretty quiet too.

Somebody shot the cashier at the neighborhood Safeway early in the evening, that might have had something to do with it, but I don't really think so. Let me talk about that for a minute, even though I'll probably say all the wrong things.

We live on the "right side" of Viers Mill (or "Veirs Mill," interestingly both spellings are correct) in Twinbrook Forest, not Twinbrook. Houses here are taken care of, there aren't many rentals, it's the classic little suburban neighborhood, not ritzy but nice enough. Lots of people in our neighborhood have lived here their whole lives; at the Little League games they talk about who babysat for whose little sister and who dated whose brother in high school, just like a small town. I saw the police gang report last year, and Rockville has a tiny percentage of the number of gang members that places like Germantown or Wheaton have. Almost none. I noticed recently that some cars have been broken into in our neighborhood, I expect they'll catch some kids and that will be that. A couple of years ago there were some teenagers setting cars on fire around here, and they bragged about it on their MySpace and got caught and that stopped. All within the expected range of stuff that happens.

Like a lot of American neighborhoods, Twinbrook Forest has seen a big wave of immigrants come in, lots of Hispanics and lots of Koreans and other Asian groups, too, some Africans. You know me, I like that, it means I get to practice my Spanish and there's good picante food in the neighborhood, plus one of those places where you cook your meat on a grill in the middle of the table, and there's a Vietnamese guy that can fix anything like watches and cell phones. It means you feel a little strange sometimes, like when you go to the neighborhood strip-mall and realize you're the only English-speaking white person there; for some of us who grew up among people like ourselves it can be a bit of a shock, and I know some people who have not adapted well to it, but like I said, I think it's cool. To me it's like traveling without going anywhere.

Something goes with that, though. "Our" Safeway, at Twinbrook mall, has gone downhill, and we stopped going there long ago, unless we really need something quick. The inventory is always all over the floor, it's dirty, they don't hire enough people or keep enough on the schedule so there are always terrible lines, and the people that work there are underpaid, inexperienced, they tend to be both rude and clueless.

You know, as I read those last lines I was thinking, I'll bet some Safeway executive could show you a spreadsheet proving that what I said was not correct, that they care just as much about this Safeway as their other ones. And that's a funny thought, because that same executive would know exactly what I mean if he walked into that store. I'm not talking about numbers on a spreadsheet, I'm talking about people. Employees and customers.

Over towards Aspen Hill is a neighborhood that has not seen this kind of change, and there's a Safeway there on Bauer and Norbeck that's well-lighted, with good music coming out of the ceiling, Bonnie Raitt or Talking Heads or Aaron Neville, the food is on the shelves and not scattered all over the place, the clerks are, well they're just people but they know what they're doing, at least. When the line gets long they call for back-up. It's like night and day. Like, the electricity went out several weeks ago at Twinbrook mall, and the owner never did come out and throw the breaker, so all the signs are dark, the whole mall is dark every night, and nobody does anything about it. Store owners told me they called, but nobody comes out. That wouldn't happen at the "other" Safeway's mall. It's a half mile away I guess, maybe a mile, and this one is just a few hundred yards from our house, but if we're going to be stocking up we make the drive without thinking twice.

So here's what you get. Reported in this morning's Washington Post:

Four young men dressed in red and wearing bandannas over their faces barged into a crowded Rockville supermarket last night and shot a cashier, Montgomery County police said.

The cashier, whom police identified as a 23-year-old man from Silver Spring, was taken to a hospital with injuries that are not considered life-threatening, police said.

The men ran out of the store and were at large last night, Capt. Terry Pierce said.

"They fled on foot with a handgun," he said. "We have done everything we could to locate the suspects."

The victim and the men had argued in the moments before the shooting, Pierce said. At one point, the cashier threw a 24-can case of Coca-Cola toward the men, he added.

"That's when they shot him," Pierce said.

Police were dispatched to the Safeway store at 1902 Veirs Mill Rd. shortly after 6:40 p.m. Pierce said about 30 people were in the store when the shooting occurred.

"Some were hysterical," he said. Cashier Shot After Argument With Four Masked Men

I talked with a guy who talked with somebody who saw it happen. Some black guys in red Halloween costumes came in and got in an argument with the cashier. The cashier, this guy said, started throwing stuff at them and there was yelling, and then one of the guys pulled out a gun and shot him.

I'm not saying that's gospel truth, but that's how the story is going in the neighborhood here. The word "gang" comes up, and there's a chance the cashier knew the guys.

Normally this is the quietest neighborhood you can imagine. I've talked here about the cops hassling people, and a couple of things that have happened, but it's all within the expected range, I mean, c'mon, cops hassle teenagers everywhere. And of course, fuzzy dice are a serious problem in today's society. Around here, our worst problem usually is people crossing the street in the middle of the block, in the dark, and getting run over. It happens pretty often, I think they come from a country where it's okay to do that. And sometimes they have been drinking.

The story here, to me, isn't immigration, it isn't the shifting demographics of the area. Because listen, people move here because it's a nice place to live, they don't come here to run it down, they come here to lift themselves up to a new way of life. Maybe they don't figure out how to do that right away, but that's why they're here. The story is the way the Safeway corporation has let this place go. It's like there are two standards for everything, for cleanliness, for hiring qualifications, for inventory. There's the "suburban" standard and there's the "ghetto" standard, or let us be straightforward and say there are white and "other" Safeway stores. Twinbrook got on the ghetto list for some reason, probably because some monkey-monk came out and saw a lot of brown faces, and the Bauer Safeway is still on the suburban standard. Trust me, nobody's going to get shot at Bauer.