Phantom Joggers: conclusion -

After the raids, the bulldozers arrived and demolished the establishment. And then the lot was cleared of debris. It was as if the Abracadabra Motel had never existed.

It was only after the lot had been cleared that more street lighting was finally put there. This sequence of events suggested that the blight in the area was quite deliberately born of sinister and malicious motivations. This is a board game, after all, being played with a lot of very big guns.

In the aftermath of their success in using this approach, the police were rewarded with a new unit and new vehicles for it. Painted in black and white like the regular police cars, these new vehicles bear the legend: Code Enforcement. Thus, they have now become, in effect, a kind of Real Estate Militia.

This transformation is just one component in the overarching motif of militarizing local law enforcement, but in this case, they are militarizing what used to be civil departments of local government, as if we are now being ruled by a military junta.

It may be part of a larger contemporary trend, as noted by others, or it may be just one guy who secretly yearns to be a Generalissimo.

For they'll no more come a'roaming,
the naked joggers of the nights of yore . . .

- - - Finis - - -

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