Born to a German woman and an American serviceman in Bonn, Germany, Dennis Jansen landed in Kansas as a child until separating with his mother to Miami. The gently rolling landscape of the Great Plains was easily forgotten. Kansas offered boredom. He was now a 16 year old in a vibrant dense urban core along the Atlantic — the cultural hub of the Gold Coast. Jansen’s step-father was a public defender for the City Attorney.

Originally from Central Florida, the decision to move the family to Miami was both job related and culturally inclined. For African Americans, there are only a few safe havens in the South.

Straddling the expanding downtown of Miami are neighborhoods not unlike Loring Park or Stevens Square. Just upstream of the restored Miami River, a former industrial corridor, is the Allapattah neighborhood, about as far as Uptown to Downtown. Living right along the river however had placed him closer to Booker T. Washington Senior High School in the adjacent black neighborhood of Overtown.

Miami’s difference from the rest of God’s Country is striking. The late Gianni Versace put Miami on the fashion map and made it a European hot spot. Consequently, the South Beach scene grew from Versace’s influence and the city became a celebrity retreat. Paris Hilton, right out of her overdramatized release from jail in 2007, hit the Miami clubs and a few bouncers. Nationally, Miami is famous for its Cuban heritage in exile but after so many decades, they’ve made themselves home as the dominant culture. Socially, Latin American norm has permeated to the point where some non-Hispanic citizens are moving out because they can’t speak Español. Physically, the city even had its own Modernist Architecture movement.

Even though Miami was a fresh start for the family, Jansen could never fit in as a Southern boy. He saw the whole city as a thriving mesh of districts. With a population similar to our own, the urban core density is not unlike Minneapolis. However with a metropolitan population of over five million, it is the eighth most densely populated region in the country, MSP being only half of that. He recalled that school life in inner city Kansas was actually more frightening because there wasn’t much to a teenager’s life in the Midwest. The drama and emotions of the empty Plains unhealthfully concentrated inside the walls of school. In Miami, youth could hit the beach year-round. He finished his high school years by day and hit the town at night. There was always something to do. Of course, that isn’t to say the area was entirely safe.

Booker T. Washington was at the heart of Miami’s original black community, Overtown, which, like Saint Paul’s Rondo, was devastated by highway construction. His step-father likely took on many cases involving narcotics which placed the neighborhood at the top of crime charts through 1990. Once vibrant and culturally rich, Overtown had become analogous to Minneapolis’ North Side by the end of the 20th century. Though it had lived with a less politically-correct name of “Central Negro District” and colloquially “Colored Town,” the district flourished in music from the 1930s to the 1950s. Soon after, the overturn of Jim Crow laws and lifting of segregation attitudes freed options for middle-class African Americans who flowered during the Harlem Renaissance and built Overtown’s reputation. The neighborhood went from 40,000 to 10,000 residents. Less eyes, less people, interrupted commerce, and abandoned housing was ripe for a neighborhood’s downfall — which defined by our Neighborhood Revitalization Program means “impacted.”

Naturally, transporation planners built two freeways intersecting the heart of Overtown.

Described as a place of vacant lots and a concrete jungle, the neighborhood is physically empty. Our North Side seems rather safe, vibrant, and lush in vegetation according to Jansen. In comparing both, the one similarity is the perception of danger versus statistical reality. By the time he arrived with his family, the “full-scale” riots and ethnic clashes between blacks and Cubans had passed their peak, much like the Plymouth Avenue Riots. Crime had already fallen dramatically through what the South Florida Community Development Coalition claimed is forced gentrification. The city government increasingly allowed downtown expansion to go north, enveloping the old neighborhood. The one reprieve for citizens holding-out is a proposal to demolish Interstate 395 crossing west to east. The raised highway is said to be ugly, blighted, and blocking sunlight. Abutting the southwest corner of this highway conglomeration is the high school.

Jansen recalls those years as being too nerdy and “not black enough.” It was the South after all and even Time magazine‘s coverage of interracial marriage hadn’t swayed centuries of cultural attitude. Of course Barack Obama wasn’t president, yet.

Later gaining a scholarship via Affirmative Action to the University of Miami, he chose the most unlikely major, English. Friends often asked him why he wasn’t in sports. He said Miami has a “brain-drain” of sorts where smart black students are heading out to prestigious schools even if UM will offer full rides. The UM site produced a scholarship list for “Black/African-Descent” students. I could not find an equivalent for the U of MN.

After graduation, Jansen sought the University of Minnesota Law School. I asked him why after living in the Heartland and then moving to the Sunshine State would he chose the coldest climate in the country. He actually had been looking at Minnesota since his undergraduate years but the final draw was Minnesota’s niche for corporate lawyers. The competition for legal jobs is apparently low compared to cities such as Chicago. Of course his decision was his own to make. Minnesota isn’t cheap. Of the four law schools in the Twin City (and in the State of Minnesota), none compete on price. Jansen stated the U of MN’s Law School admissions doesn’t stop a moment to think Affirmative Action, and accepts only the best and the brightest.

Upon arrival, as far as he could see he was one of two African Americans in the program even though the Provost claimed there were a few more. With the entire burden of law school debt, the risk and payoff will be all his when he graduates, and that’s the way he wants it.

I met Dennis Jansen on a waning Dinkytown night and we find an outdoor seat at the Espresso Royale on 14th Street SE. He’s clean cut, straight-forward to the point, caddy, and absent of any awkward MN Nice.  We noticed the crowd across the street was demur, taking their smoke break somberly. It was the very last day of the Dinkytowner Cafe, the end of nearly a decade of music.

He recalled the weekend of April 25 carrying the stress of moving out of his apartment. His friend pestered him on Sunday to take a break and join him. Little did he know he was first to help volunteer at a local homeless shelter.  In the evening, another friend joined and they went out to the Gay 90′s, the Twin Cities’ popular gay bar. For the various genre rooms — techno, hip hop, retro, sex, and drag — Gay 90′s exemplifies Minnesota “different.” Diversity aside, he also knew one of the bartenders. It was an uneventful night.

They left at closing time with the club’s patrons in tow. A middle-aged man to their rear began forcibly flirting, grabbing at men like hot tickets. First the crowd crossed north on 4th Street and then east on Hennepin. Suddenly pops rang out. Screams erupted and the crowd scattered. Jansen felt a slap on his back. Still cognizant, he finished crossing the road and stopped awkwardly on the curb. On his blog, he said his friend began screaming.

He got shot! They got you! They got you!

He couldn’t recall how many shots had rang out. Realizing the bullet had not done the damage most would expect of pop culture movies, he moved diagonally across Hennepin toward the police officers standing watch on the corner. MPD officers, accustomed to the nightly crowd control of the First Avenue entertainment district, looked at him incredulously. Confirming the wound, they instructed Jansen to sit on the curb for the ambulance. As his friends prodded at the wound, Jansen calls his mother who is more outraged he was out on a Sunday night before school. He would later blog a woman brought a bottle of water to him and stayed to pray. The horde of crowds still coming from the 90′s and other clubs along Hennepin squirmed at the sight of blood streaming onto the concrete.

When the ambulance came, Jansen climbed into the rear and two EMTs began inserting needles and tubes. He recalled the one thing that annoyed him through the whole ordeal was the constant questioning of if he had any allergies. As a law student, he figured medical personnel covered their bases anytime something was to be administered. Laying in the racing ambulance, he tried to process what had happened. A relatively boring night had led into a life-threatening situation. His first instinct was to be upset about the delay in moving out of the apartment. Then he remembered he had to walk the dog. In Miami’s inner neighborhoods, the sounds of shots and pops would not deter even regular families from checking out the window. In Minneapolis, neighbors are ever watchful whether it be Kenwood or Phillips. If nothing had happened to him, he would have been laughing the incident off and riding home.

His two friends were not able to ride along and stayed behind when local news crews KARE 11 and KSTP Channel 5 jumped onto the scene. Apparently it was a busy news weekend. That Saturday, the Spring Jam block party in north Dinkytown became violent. An impromptu bonfire and car damage from rioting students brought tear gas grenades and foam bullet rounds from MPD. On Sunday one man died and his companion rescued from the Mississippi after they were flushed out of exploring a drainage tunnel. Just nearby hours earlier, a car with five women headed to the 90′s ran a red light and was broadsided by a Postal Service semi-truck. Four were seriously injured.

Arriving at Hennepin County Medical Center’s emergency room finalized Jansen’s indoctrination to statistics and biases. He was ethnically biracial but by grace of Minnesotan attitudes, identifiably a young black man with a bullet wound in his back. HCMC doctors would not be surprised to see him. The level one trauma center of the region is the receiver of critical shooting victims. He was allowed to walk into the E.R. with the EMTs in tow. He greeted a team of six staff. Like hospital television shows, the technicians and nurses ushered him to a critical ward bed. Their Minnesota Nice was overbearing.

One nurse politely asked if he had a problem having all his clothes removed. This time Jansen looked on incredulously — there was a bullet in his chest, it wasn’t a time for modesty. For the next few hours, he lay anxious as to what was to be done. It wasn’t a dog bite, but a sharp piece of metal lodged in near his ribs. A local gun expert tells me it was likely a hollow-point bullet which mushrooms on impact, explosively expanding in a person’s body. It’s meant to stop assailants instead of piercing through and wounding them. For that reason, these bullets are often used in personal handguns.

Fortunately for all signs, the bullet had not done its intended job, regardless if the shooter’s intention was likely elsewhere. Naked under hospital sheets, a MPD homicide detective casually walked up, asking him a series of questions. Crudely eliciting his statement, it is well known that critical information is extracted from shooting victims in case they don’t make it through.

The detective soon became uninterested when it was clear Jansen was not a drug lord — no matter a stray bullet was still a crime. Were they going to go after the shooter? Likely not.

For the next 8 hours, doctors debated whether the bullet should be removed and decide not to. His two friends came to stay with him. After being forgotten over the late shift change, he is finally discharged at 9am on Monday morning. The last care he received was an intensely painful wound washing. The waning days of Minnesotan spring bring bright daylight with moderate humidity. Windows are often open all hours of the day. While Minneapolitans busily start their week, Dennis Jansen felt grateful to finally arrived home, bandaged, bruised, but alive. He walked Harley. Each jerk of the string from the 100 pound Bullmastiff sent shocking pain through his chest. Later, his mother remained distraught over the phone.

I have to study for finals…

Jansen slept away the day. Later that night he blogged the incident to little fanfare. The post detailed the ordeal without sensation and included photos of his bloody shirt and bandaged wound. Then on Tuesday he went to class. Hardly anyone noticed the bullet still lodged in his chest. By the afternoon, popular blawg Above the Law picked up the story. On Wednesday, everyone knew in his section. Soon enough, the internet blawg community knew as well.

Law students apparently have a scene all their own, he said. Like elementary school homerooms, students are separated into sections and will see only these faces for two to four years. As such, their experiences are highly insulated from the norm of college education. This so much in fact that a whole scene of aspiring lawyers blogging has developed. Thus the neologism is born, blawg.

Traffic spiked on No634.org to nearly 5,000 visitors. His career services counselor warned him about being too public with his life. While career services for the University population are rather generalized, law schools instead carefully cultivate their students for the precarious field ahead of them. Saying too much on whim could make corporations taint you as rogue and unreliable. Jansen didn’t mind the publicity, he had already published a semester and a half of 1L (First Year Law Student) experiences. Some students eagerly watched for any fallout. Others were terrified of Jansen having offended potential employers.

Actually the blog had done just the opposite. Two months earlier, a recruiter at Thomson Reuters, familiar with his blog, encouraged him to interview for a position at Westlaw, a legal summaries online database. In a few weeks, Jansen was working for Westlaw in Eagan. Five months before that, FOX News’ Greta Van Susteren (temporary link) featured his story on her blog, bringing national attention. For the month of May, the word about Jansen’s plight crossed over the walls of Walter F. Mondale Hall. Students from Liberal Arts to Theater approached daily, prodding with questions and fingers.

A few days later, as he was walking Harley, the dog lunged for something. Stupidly using the arm on the damaged side of his chest, Jansen felt something move. Pain started radiating. Looking down at what was to be the exit wound, he saw the faint blur of the casing like a splinter.

“The University of Minnesota is not a place for the weak,” said Kashmir Hill of AbovetheLaw.

Fearing the fragments might be hitting something important, he was soon back in HCMC’s emergency room. This time, he had to wait for his turn. After getting a room, he was forgotten. Then after trying to find a technician, he returned to find another patient in it. After waiting, forgotten again, and reassigned, he finally meets a doctor who pokes a finger right onto the bullet. Jansen managed not to scream. The doctor pondered for a moment and then told him he was removing it. The dénouement of the stray bullet could not have come soon enough. As Jansen lied on the bed sideways, the doctor numbed his upper chest. He carefully sliced the skin open near the casing and quickly removed the bullet with tweezers. He digged around for a few stray fragments and satisfied, stitched the cut up.

Several days later, Jansen returned to HCMC’s trauma center to have the stitches removed. With expediency unlike the E.R., a young doctor soon approaches Jansen with an upbeat attitude.

“So, we’re taking out a bullet today!”

Oh, actually a doctor in the E.R. had already done so and he needed the stitches out. He recalled the young doctor reacted “like a queen”, loudly denouncing that the emergency room shouldn’t be operating on patients and that was the job of the trauma center.

The slight chill of evening sets into Dinkytown and our coffees go cold. A month has passed and Dennis Jansen doesn’t seem to think the incident is even notable anymore. He only moved one final, Civil Procedures, to May 18th and overall finished splendidly across the board. 1L was over, 2L was next. MPD took possession of the bullet. Supposedly there is a filed report on the incident. As far as Jansen knows, MPD is not trying to find the shooter or even investigate what transpired literally several feet away from the block beat officers on April 26. Even news media present at the scene did not follow through reporting on the incident. It may be because Jansen wasn’t an 11-year-old girl, retired police officer, or saved by his cell phone. No, he was just another 1L.

As of this post date, another close incident occurred. Last Saturday while walking his dog, Jansen encountered a gunman who thought firing into the wind was smart. This time, Minneapolis Police sent seven squad cars.