That’s when we heard gunshots — not from anyone in our group, but from the back fence where one of the neighbors had fired into the air to scare us off. It was chaos for a moment — sirens blaring, kids crying, officers shouting commands. But through all of it, Jackson stood calm, hands raised, voice steady.
“No one’s here to fight,” he said. “We’re here to give these kids a week of peace. You want to arrest someone, arrest me.”
The police moved in cautiously. They saw the bikes, the patches, the noise — and assumed the worst. But then they saw the kids. They saw the packed lunches, the medical kits, the sleeping bags. They saw Emma clutching Jackson’s leg and Maya holding a teddy bear bigger than her backpack.
It wasn’t what they’d been told.
I stepped forward, hands trembling but heart steady. “My name’s Robert Chen. I’m a licensed social worker. I’ve been these kids’ caseworker for eight months. The state hasn’t moved them to safer housing. These men offered to help me give them a break — a week in the fresh air. That’s all this is.”
One of the officers — a woman named Martinez — looked at me long and hard. “You know what this looks like, right?”
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