Red Rock Road is a thorn in the side of the St. Paul police. “You actually have to go into Newport to get to this part of town,” Officer Tim LeGarde tells me, as we career through the Highway 61 off-ramp at about fifty. We stay in the turn lane on I-494 for the exit to Maxwell Road, which leads to Red Rock.
The street is situated on a long strip of land running parallel to the railroad tracks south of downtown St. Paul. It is the address of truck depots, metal scrap yards, and warehouses. Most nights, it’s also the domain of illicit drag racers. Red Rock is a private street, but the businesses along it have declined to put up a gate with a guard. Closing it each night isn’t an option, because of the number of trucks that come and go at all hours. So when someone calls and complains about the drag racers, the best the cops can do is hand out tickets and shoo the crowds across the city line. There they’ll wait for the squad to leave, at which point they’ll go right back to what they were doing. A sharp scofflaw knows another patrol is at least twenty minutes away.
Just driving down here takes a cop out of circulation in the rest of the district for most of an hour. If anyone is actually busted, it can be much longer. When we pull up, we see a battered white Crown Victoria, almost a twin to the car we’re in, and an even more damaged Dodge Spirit. The driver of the Crown Vic hands over his license. It says he’s sixteen. He looks younger. His eyes are red—from crying, probably. Officer Tim takes the license, then goes to talk to the stocky boy standing next to the Dodge. Its grill and hood have imploded, and he’s looking at the car in disbelief. The red-eyed boy is back in his car, digging for his insurance card. I see wavy skid marks going about a hundred feet south, and chunks of pavement and dirt erupt next to a fire hydrant, ten feet from the Dodge. Tim takes license and insurance from chubby and walks over to the crier. “Have you been drinking?” “I had three shots of eighty proof.” Tim isn’t happy to hear this. He expresses his displeasure as he drags the boy back to the squad. Tim asks him to take a Breathalyzer. He refuses, and is then frisked and cuffed and deposited in the back seat. “Might as well sit; we’ll be here for a while,” he says, taking blank forms out of a box in the trunk. We get into the squad and he calls for a tow, then starts on the first form. The kid tries to suck up, saying he could have left, he was doing the right thing by staying, but it’s all lost on the cop. The kid admitted to driving under the influence, refused the test, and now Tim has much paperwork to do.
About ten minutes later, the kid’s father shows up. Dad doesn’t help things much. He’s noisy and pushy, asking why Dodge isn’t getting a ticket. He tries to sneak past us, apparently to get to the cars. This annoys Tim to the point that he threatens Dad with arrest for interfering with a crime scene. He calls for some backup to watch Dad while he does the paperwork. A K-9 unit arrives, but Dad’s simmered down, and the dog stays in the car. Tim explains that the kid refused the test, that he’ll be taken downtown and photographed. After the paperwork is all done, he can probably be released to Dad’s custody rather than landing in juvenile detention for the weekend. But that’s an option, if the behavior of father or son deteriorates. The car will be impounded, and he can get it in the next day or so.
As we pass the city line near the freeway, cars start streaming back in. They know we won’t be back tonight, not with someone in the back seat.
In downtown St. Paul, we pull around to the back of the station and park in a small garage. Tim walks the kid up a flight of stairs to the juvenile holding cells on the right, and then we go into the report room. Four hours later, we’re back in Officer Tim’s squad. His shift is half over, and he’s made one arrest. —Matthew Green
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