And there's this. Charlie Turner said he called the hotline established to receive tips three times after he saw that white man, and nobody called him back. The fire department, through spokesman Bill Wade, said that shouldn't have happened. That would be small consolation to Charlie Turner. Fear is fear.
Racial anxiety is racial anxiety.
Even without the fires, Tampa Heights is changing, and the change has racial implications. The Heights is undergoing revitalization. Revitalization almost always means driving out the poor and the black and replacing them with the wealthy and the white. And Dick Greco, who doesn't have a lot of fans among black people, has made the Heights a pet project. The city's program to turn the neighborhood around even calls the area the Mayor's Heights Project, as if it is to be rebuilt just as Greco wants it.