in New Haven, the shopping carts rule the streets

This went down in front of the BHouse at 12:30am. My bedroom window faces the street and I saw it all.

First, there was a really loud clanking of shopping carts going down the street (not very unusual in our neighborhood). I looked out my window and saw two shopping carts, perfectly even but on opposite sides of the street, rolling slowly past our house. It was then that I noticed the car idling in front of the house.

Suddenly, a policeman and a rumpled looking person walk out from behind the house next door. It turns out the car in front of the house was a police car.

Policeman: (yelling) We'll get your DNA! Do you want us to get your DNA?! Tell us. Were you looking (licking?)in their windows?!

Rumpled crazy dude: (incoherent reply)

They talk together for a while; the policeman trying to figure out what the guy was doing behind the house next door. Then, another cop car shows up. The cop gets out of the car angrily. His voice sounds like one of the police dudes who came by the BHouse after the break-in.

Police guy #2: (very loudly) What were you doing back there? There's been a lot of burglaries in this area! (other angry words that I couldn't hear)

They talked to the guy for a while and in the end, I think, gave him a ticket or warning or something. The rumpled dude wandered away from the policeman and then walked up and down the block a few times yelling.

Crazy dude: You guys took it! What did you do with it! Where did it go? (etc.)

Policemen 1 and 2: (general confusion)

Eventually the police dudes left and the crazy guy wandered off down the street. A few minutes later, the rumble of a shopping cart echoes down the street and slowly gets louder. The crazy dude comes sprinting down the middle of the street with his shopping cart and his baggy T-shirt billowing behind him. It was intense.

This is about 2 weeks after an old man knocks on our door asking for the broken water heater in our back yard. Behind him was a young muscular dude with a shopping cart. weird.