A Night-Time Standoff in the North End
A curious police officer patrolling the North End finds himself staring down the barrel of a resident's revolver.
A member of the police force, who lives in the North End, admits now that he has been bluffed. The officer was returning home after midnight and saw a light burning in the front room of a house across the street. He knocked to investigate. He was greeted by a young woman at a sewing machine. When he explained he was a policeman in plain clothes, she rushed back into the room. She returned pointing a cocked revolver at his forehead while another woman inside screamed, 'Shoot him, Cleo! Shoot him!' The officer finally convinced them of his identity by showing his badge.
“Put that gun down; I put it away, I tell you I'm a policeman.”
This story highlights the volatile atmosphere of the city’s quiet residential streets at night in 1909. The 'North End' remains a prominent residential district in Tacoma today, where the tension between neighborhood watchfulness and police overreach still finds an echo in modern discourse.
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