Dean Zimmermann assaulted

by Ed Felien

    When Dean Zimmermann decided to run for a seat on the City Council he didn't think he'd run into gang trouble in his own backyard.
    On Sept. 15, at about 1:30 a.m., he was awakened by some loud noises in his alley. He got up and looked out and saw some kids beating windows out of a neighbor's car. There had been a number of incidents of windows being broken out of cars in the East Phillips neighborhood recently.
    One of the kids had double zeros on the back of his jacket, Zimmermann said. He called the police, described the situation, and said he was going out after them (thinking this would encourage the police to come more quickly).
    He went out with the intention of delaying the kids until the proper authorities arrived.
    “I danced behind them, but probably not at quite a prudent distance, talking to them, 'Why don't you guys leave us alone?' I was about 150 feet away. They answered back, 'Why don't you go home, old man?' Then, they gave a gang signal, whistling, and three guys came up behind me throwing rocks. I turned around and ran at one of the guys. I tackled him. But the other four jumped me, and that's how I got the black eyes. Some women neighbors came out, and the young men beat them also. The kids took off. Twenty minutes after they were called, the police showed up. They were able to pick up one of the kids. He was 13.
    “When we were standing around talking to the police two young kids show up. I asked them what they were doing out that late? One of the boys, Chaz A. Eagle, said, 'We're just protecting property.'
    “After the police left, we all went back to our houses. Three hours later I'm awakened again by noise, and I see a large fire in our alley. Only after I get up and go outside do I see it's a car and not a garage or a house. The police and fire come again, and they tow it away.
    “Later that week I found out there was a large gang fight at Cockroach [East Phillips] Park.         After the fight Chaz A. Eagle was run over by a woman in a minivan. The Saturday Star Tribune reported that a woman (probably a mother of two of the boys involved in the fight) ran up on the sidewalk and hit and drove over him and then backed over him. The 12-year-old Chaz A. Eagle is in Hennepin County Medical Center with a skull fracture and several broken bones. He is breathing on his own.
    “I understand why people don't get more involved in prosecuting crime. I went down to the county attorney's office to file charges regarding the incident in back of my house, and I was given the runaround, 'We haven't got a police report yet, etc.'
    “We need a new attitude from the county attorney and the police department. The county attorney should do everything it can to make it as easy as possible to prosecute crime. And the police should come out of the community and serve the community. When they know there's a crime in progress, they should respond immediately.
    “The police shouldn't say to my neighbors, 'Why do you live here?' when responding to a call.
    “There should be plainclothes police officers on bikes patrolling the neighborhood. The mayor arrested a drug dealer in plainclothes last month. I'm sure if they put more plainclothes people in the neighborhood, we could catch a lot more. And it wouldn't even have to be the mayor.
    “Just the other day a Somali woman was accosted by a gang of young kids. They wanted her purse. She wouldn't give it to them. They took her baby and threatened to smash it. This happened in Cockroach Park.
    “We're living in the center of a storm. There's a lot of gang violence in our community, and we need help from the city to deal with it. We need to do more to support the block clubs. We need someone on every block who cares about their neighborhood. We need to be supporting those people. They're more relevant and more important than SAFE officers.
    “The thing that really brought our block together was our community garden. Lyn Mayo did that, and she knows every kid on our block. The kids on our block aren't a problem. But we can't control kids that come in here from other blocks. Every block should have a community garden. It's the best way to reach the parents of these kids. We're out working in the garden alongside people who speak Hmong, Somali or Spanish, but we're all able to communicate about the important stuff,” Zimmermann said.
    Zimmermann said he promises big changes in the way the city deals with crime if he's elected to the city council from the 6th ward in November.