As an unmarked patrol car crosses Seventh Street heading east toward Eighth Street, the teens give it no notice. But when the identity of the driver becomes clear, the group's collective attention shifts to the car.

Emerson.

Officer Keith Emerson, who spends the school year working as a police liaison officer with the Brainerd School District, has been spending a good amount of time during the summer cruising downtown Brainerd at night keeping an eye on the town's young people.

While on this Tuesday night an overcast sky and occasional sprinkles have cut down on the number of people congregating downtown, Emerson says that on a typical weekend several hundred teens may be found hanging out and driving around the downtown Brainerd business district.

Complaints from downtown residents and business owners combined with increasing rates of vandalism, littering, underaged smoking and drinking have caused the Brainerd Police to create the downtown patrol that generally has two officers working the business district watching the youth.

"I've seen four cops in five minutes," one of the disgusted teens would later say. "But I never see one anywhere near my house."

The general consensus among the teens is that for the number of problems that law officers witness, the police are wasting their time with the saturation patrols through the area.

"The police need to do their jobs and enforce the laws," 20 year-old Devan Thoe said. "But it seems that they go out of their way to harass us, and all of the problems of downtown eventually seem to get blamed on us."

Emerson said that while he agrees the majority of the kids are basically law-abiding, he said the ones who cause problems have created the need for the police patrols.

"I'd say that 99 percent of these are good kids," he said. "But there is also always that certain percent that need monitoring."

Emerson credits the teens with keeping gangs from gaining a foothold in Brainerd.

"There have been gang members in town, and they have even hooked up with local kids, but the bottom line is that they don't seem to stick around very long."

Luke Ulm, 15, concurred with Emerson's assessment.

"The stories people are hearing (about gang activity) are way out of proportion," he said. "We don't have any gangs here."

Respect is the issue that seems to drive the relationship between the police and the teens, but the two sides differ on how well the goal is being accomplished.

While Emerson says that through respect it is possible to build trust, many of the teens said the excessive number of officers who always seem to be watching over them make them question the amount of trust they can ever gain with the police.

"It seems," Thoe said, "they are here more to harass us than to protect and serve."

The one area where the respect issue is achieving greater success is the parking lot that surrounds the old Skate Center. A friendly agreement struck between the police and the teens seems to have provided an amicable accord.

"We have told them that as long as they work to keep the lot clean and police themselves we won't come in an hassle them," Emerson said. "All they are really asking for is a place they can go without being bothered."

Emily Noble, who was with a group of approximately 50 teens in the lot on Thursday night, said that since they have been informed that with the added responsibility there will be more freedom, the situation in the lot has greatly improved.

"After they said that this would be ours if we helped out, it has really gotten better down here," she said.

She agreed with the sentiment expressed by the teens downtown that there were some officers who are not as understanding of their need to hang out, but she said the new plan had caused a few officers to seemingly give a little more effort to the issue.

But ask any of the teen-agers who routinely hang out on Laurel Street and they would tell you that they are a misunderstood lot who are being regulated out of existence by the civic and commercial leaders of an increasingly edgy city.

In response to a number of complaints from downtown business owners about property damage caused by skate boarders and in-line skaters, the city established a skate-free zone that encompasses a majority of Brainerd's central business district. The ordinance, passed by the city council in December, prohibits skating in an area bordered by Oak and Washington Streets to the north and south and South Fifth and Ninth Streets to the east and west.

This ordinance is at the root of the issue that has the teens searching for a new way to pass time while the city ponders a loitering ordinance that would further restrict their flow through town.

"They need to quit taking things away from us and start doing things for us," said 17-year-old Shantel Pint. "This is what we like to do, we sit and talk."

Pint cited the now-closed Buster's restaurant which hosted teen nights, and the Skate Center which the city is in the process of purchasing to create additional downtown parking as former teen hangouts that had gone by the wayside in recent years. She said in the past when the young people would all get together at a private home to hang out, the police would assume that it was a house party and hassle them anyway.

While they believe they are getting hassled excessively by the city, each of the teens interviewed last week admitted there have been problems with the youths downtown. However, they say the perception of a few is hurting the reputations of all.