Random Encounter With Black Guy

2/22/2009.

I was walking at 11 o' clock at night below freezing and wearing a gray hood when I saw a taller Black guy with a Black girl walkin in the oncoming direction. He probably saw me with a flashlight looking down a manhole while standing. As he approached he started sayin random things to me which I didn't follow but ignored him. Then I decided to make a left into a hallway underneath the Metra train tracks.

The hallway was white, with no graffiti. In the very center there was a manhole lid and I looked down. Nothin, so I continued on. Then, at the end of the hallway, to the next street, I stopped and decided to head back to the hallway again or make another look down the manhole. So back in the center again, before getting a chance to look down, the Black guy comes back and starts hollerin, sayin I don't need to fear him or anything. As we stop and he talks to me 1 on 1 I took my hood off. He was very suspicious of me, askin if I was a gang banger or here to spray graffiti the place. And that I better tell my buddies to get lost or he'll kick our ass. He tells me he never been to county jail or state prison before. So of course I tell him no and that I was just walkin around. He taps around my pants pockets, all 4 of them, probably to feel if I had a can to spray, which I didn't.

He asks my age and I say 20 and he says he's 27, and trust me, I really can kick your ass. He asks to see my I.D. and I show him my school I.D. and he asks for state I.D. which I said I don't have and he goes you don't have a state I.D. and then I say I have a passport I leave that at home. And he went on about me not wanting to show that and getting an alias and I say I don't want to get mugged. Then he asks where I live, and I say Balmoral, uh Balmoral and Artesian, and he points out west and tells me he wants to see me going in that direction right now, and gives me my I.D. back saying my name Neal J. Conroy and that if he saw me again that night at the same place somethin's gonna happen or so. So I walked out in the direction he told me too.. I think we ended around 11:10 p.m.

I really *hope* he was an undercover cop or someone along the lines of it. He did have an alcoholic breath.. But I guess if he was walkin with a girl and then stops to follow me, there might be something authentic about him.

This was at 5300 N. Berwyn. He obviously wouldn't have stopped me if I was a female or old looking, but, then again, there are guys that would only stop to talk to females and not males.

When I got home I made a non-emergency police call at 11:33 and asked to be directed to the local station and then asked if it's possible to know if a certain location or area is often a target for graffiti. The woman on the line said she personally wouldn't know, and to go to neighborhood relations, which is in the station, on the weekends (where today was a Sunday night). To go at 8 or 8:30 a.m.