A colleague in Minneapolis

has left me the following message this morning,
   "Hi Cat, we are safe but everyone is confined indoors. It is not safe to be out on the streets. Hoping the situation will calm down soon and I can at least get some groceries."
I had asked what the situation was with his family. He has two teenage boys who, from all accounts, seem to be very decent and hardworking boys. There was another message from his daughter, aged about eleven, a similarly nice child. She sent me several emails last year when she was doing a school project and always said "thank you".  In it she simply said, "I'm scared and T.... and S.... are scared too." (T... and S... are her brothers.) 
An eleven year old should never have to write that. I would be "scared" too. They are African-American or "people of colour" or, as they like to say, "just American". Their father is a doctor, their mother is a biochemist. They are all intelligent and able people who go to church, pay their taxes and try to do the right thing by other people. 
Right now it is not safe for them to be out on the streets of their own home city because they live in an area where the worst of the rioting has occurred. Other parts of the city may well be safe but it is not safe for them yet. 
Over the weekend we had two incidents here. One involved a twelve year old and a fifteen year old,  both girls. They rammed a shopping trolley into the window of a bank in a shopping centre. When asked "why" the younger one apparently just shrugged and said, "Because..." Did they think they were going to rob the bank? It would all have been caught on security cameras. If that  had happened in Minneapolis right now I wonder how the police would have responded. Would the twelve year old have been given bail?
The other incident was even more serious and involved three teenagers, one of whom was caught on camera earlier this year seriously injuring a younger girl. This time she has allegedly been involved in the bashing of a taxi driver and then driving the taxi two hundred kilometres to a country town. She was caught there with two young accomplices also alleged to be involved. It would seem she is seriously disturbed and out of control. It was her behaviour which prompted me to inquire as to the safety of my colleague and his family. 
I have tried not to watch the news footage from America. It is too disturbing. While the vast majority of the country is probably as quiet as usual people must be on edge and wondering whether trouble could flare up where they live. It makes me realise how easy it is for such things to get started. It also makes me realise how easy it would be for innocent and decent young people to be adversely affected or - worse - become involved because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or went to the aid of someone else.
I just hope they stay safe.