After a pleasant half-awakening by the inevitable 4:15 am American Robin alarm, I had long since drifted into a deep sleep. “Woooop! Wooop!  Woooooop! This is the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department. Occupants of number eight one eight—lower apartment—we have a search warrant. Come out the side door with your hands up, nothing in your hands!” blaring through the open, street-facing window of our second floor bedroom. Thus was I rudely awakened at 7 am on this 9 June, hot summer morning, a short walk from downtown Appleton, Wisconsin.

It had been less than a year since new tenants moved into the first floor apartment of the house next door. We had barely ever seen them—only brief glimpses, apart from the young, overly-barky dog often tied out back last Winter. But one day a van was parked at the end of our shared driveway, blocking me in, and so I knocked on their door to explain the logistics of it all. She introduced herself,  apologizing profusely that he must not have known how it worked, and the van soon disappeared.  A couple of times, after the weather warmed, I saw the kids tossing a ball back and forth in their small backyard, adjacent to ours.  I rarely saw him at all.

Once, as we were backing out, she happened by with the dog on leash, as awkward and jumpy as the untrained young shepherd, gesturing for me to roll down the window. She wanted to apologize for the barking.  The van appeared once more, this time parked next to my car, but with its back end sticking out so much that I was again blocked in.  Not needing to go anywhere soon, I this time put a post-it on its window, politely (I hope) explaining the rocket science of pulling forward all the way.

The last time I saw her clearly was on Memorial Day. The parade passes down our street at about 9:30, and Vali and I watch, coffee in hand, from the front step. We are interested mostly in the high school bands and the watchers, who have brought folding chairs to the city-managed strip of grass between the sidewalk and street.  We (myself in particular) are mostly out of the loop, but there is always someone to talk to.  Ty and Kathleen at least, will arrive on their bikes and camp out front. There was the smiling and waving Outagamie County Sheriff, walking at pace in front of the occasionally-tooting “K-9 Unit” Sheriff-mobile, and there was one of the big military vehicles shared  by the Sheriff’s Department and the Appleton Police Department, a BAE Caiman MRAP.  Somewhere in there I saw her with the dog, trying to cross the street, flustered, looking for a thin spot in a parade she seemed to have no idea would occur. Below is a long-exposure picture I took of the parade, as seen from our house.

Throwing on some PJs and looking out the bedroom window, I could tell the noise came from a large, black armored vehicle parked askew on the front sidewalk next door—apparently the Lenco BearCat [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenco_BearCat] Outagamie County shares with the Appleton Police Department.  The much-larger Caiman MRAP I saw at the parade, with its three axles, would have extended most of the way across the street.   The makers of the BearCat and Caiman are based in Massachusetts and Virginia.  Whatever happened to “buy local?”  Oshkosh Defense LLC is only 20 miles down I-41 South. One of their models [https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/12/01/israels-oshkosh-tactical-vehicle-buy-to-keep-line-open-longer/] has been eagerly bought up by the Israeli defense industry, kitted out for use in Gaza.  What’s good enough for the ID[sic]F should be good enough for Outagamie County.  Below is Oshkosh Has the Right to Defend Itself, a 3-color photographic print I made in 2024.  It shows a Google-Earth view of completed vehicles lined up on the grounds of Oshkosh Defense, with photogram objects added during the exposures.

Racing Kitty Tobias down the stairs, I started some coffee and then looked out the front door, which opens to the windowed-in porch. Arrayed on our front step outside were four men in full tactical gear, their assault rifles  facing the neighbors.  Still unclear to me what was going on, I slightly opened the front door.  “Stay inside, sir!”  Well that cleared things up.  Looking out back, through the sliding door, four more helmet-vest-rifle combinations were about 25 feet away in the back yard, using my car as cover.  One had what appeared to be a shotgun-like tear gas launcher.

The triple siren whoop and amplified message repeated every minute or so.  Back upstairs for a better view, an acute-angle glimpse through the bedroom window showed her one last time, being herded into a car with the kids.  There was a Sheriff guy nearby, emerging from what looked like the same K-9 sheriff car I’d seen two weeks earlier at the parade. Was it really the Sheriff, or only the Deputy? In the moment, I Googled, to determine if this Sheriff-like apparition was the real deal, and I swear to God I couldn’t tell.  They all looked the same to me.

The message from the BearCat changed from “the occupants” to “the occupant,” with an added, “We know you’re in there!”  Fortunately, they were patient and waited, instead of busting down the door.  After another half hour or so, he must have come out.  The siren stopped, the BearCat, guns and most of the vans left, and an evidence truck arrived.  “Can I help you?” I asked the young woman in a black vest marked “evidence”, busily photographing my car.

I thought of the cluster of cops on our front step, pressed against the porch window and screen door.  I suddenly realized that their helmeted heads had been only inches from Cat’s poster!   I was trapped inside, but Crystal across the street got some video, and here is a still that shows the police at my door, before they took up their tactical ready positions on the steps.  On the right is an unobstructed view I captured later in the day.

Appleton-based comedian and illustrator Cat Tervo designed the Ice Out poster back in February, at the request of Lauretta of  Amano Print House [https://www.amanoprintshop.com/].  The community project to print and distribute the posters was Lauretta’s idea.   Cat tells me:

I’m a bird nerd. I was struck by the imagery of loons (the state bird of Minnesota) carrying their babies on their backs.  Appleton is a family-oriented community, and it’s common to see mothers with their kids at protests. I used the image of a loon and her baby to highlight the role mothers have in the resistance movement.  My style can be very `cute’ but it was important to me that the loons looked angry in their declaration of ICE OUT.

If Martians ever come to study us they would certainly conclude, despite our protestations, that humans are humans. Cops are humans too, as a corollary, but also cops are cops. It wasn’t an ICE raid by ICE officers; neighborhood scuttlebutt suggests the search warrant related to some alleged illegal methods of sale and service.  But how did these County law enforcement employees feel about their roles in an over-the-top militarized approach to serving a search warrant?  And how did they feel about an ICE-OUT-mama-baby-loon breathing down their necks for the better part of an hour? I hope they at least felt uncomfortable, and I confess that my reasons for this are partly petty.

I feel uncomfortable 50 out of every 60 minutes I spend contemplating pretty much anything of importance. I like to think this low-grade, chronic queasiness helps keep me both honest and on my toes.  Nothing will ever get better until a lot of folks start to feel significantly more uncomfortable than they do at present. For 45 minutes anyway, Cat’s poster was far more in-your-face than I ever could have dreamed when I hung it back in February.  And that leaves me with a peaceful, easy feeling.