Jumped In Read online

 
  What Gangs Taught Me about Violence,

  Drugs, Love, and Redemption

  Jorja Leap

  Beacon Press

  Boston

  /body>

  This book is for Mark

  and for Shannon.

  To live outside the law,

  you must be honest.

  Bob Dylan

  Contents

  One. Napalm

  Two. Chameleon

  Three. Mi Vida Loca

  Four. Living with the LAPD

  Five. Big Mike

  Six. Adopting New Ideas

  Seven. Nuns and Bitches

  Eight. Poor Black Woman

  Nine. Mario

  Ten. Fear Rules over Love

  Eleven. Teardrops

  Twelve. The Lost Boys

  Thirteen. The Streets Will Be Me

  Fourteen. Intervention

  Fifteen. Business

  Sixteen. Self-Medication

  Seventeen. The Ties That Bind

  Eighteen. Fathers of the Community

  Nineteen. Answers

  One. Napalm

  Don’t go believin’ anything unless you see it.

  And even then, don’ be too sure.

  —Big T.

  I cannot say exactly when I saw my first dead body. Probably my earliest experience with one was when I was around eleven years old and my grandmother was diagnosed with brain cancer. My mother’s reaction was that I should go, as soon as possible, to a funeral, any funeral. There was a crazy kind of logic to this. Open caskets were de rigueur at Greek Orthodox funerals. My mother wanted to protect me from being surprised or upset when I eventually gazed upon the body of my soon-to-be-dead grandmother, who was terminally ill with brain cancer.

  She also decreed that I wear navy blue, because I was far too young for basic black. Consequently, my attendance at this first funeral was preceded by a shopping expedition. From then on, death and new outfits would be inextricably linked in my mind. And so, wearing a navy blue dress with white piping and matching jacket, I saw my first dead body. The body itself belonged to a distant and elderly relative and resembled nothing so much as a mannequin in a dress shop for “mature” women. I felt curiously detached. I had the same feeling eight months later when my grandmother actually died. Somehow the body remained abstract, unreal.

  Since then, I’ve been to many funerals and have seen a lot of bodies. These ceremonies involved godparents, aunts, uncles, and extended family. What I looked at seemed more some sort of cosmetic marvel—carefully made up, well dressed and artificial—a stand-in for the person who had died. I finally saw the real deal—bodies without benefit of a mortician’s makeover—when I was a young social worker at an LA County hospital emergency room. The bodies there had, for the most part, met some grim ending. Dead of a gunshot wound or decapitated in an auto accident. They were so freshly dead, they often appeared to be twitching (and in some cases were). These were the bodies of the barely departed, yet they still failed to register within me, emotionally. Even more extreme experiences awaited me beyond the ER. Several years later, serving as a UN volunteer in post-war Kosovo, I saw bodies in varying states of decomposition, twice at mass burial sites. Still I looked upon them with detachment, an example of “man’s inhumanity to man.”

  Until a summer night in August 2002.

  I do not remember all the details of this particular night. All I know is that some switch got flipped for me—all my cells turned over—and nothing was the same.

  It is after midnight, and I am standing inside the yellow police tape blocking off part of a neighborhood intersection in South Los Angeles. Small bungalows and ramshackle apartment buildings line both sides of the street, in an architectural style that can best be termed “urban depressed.” Each one comes equipped with burglar bars and dark screen doors, and behind the mesh it is possible to make out the faces of people peering out the windows tentatively. The more brazen among them—old women and young men—mill around in groups outside their houses or on the sidewalk or in the street, their expressions registering hostility or suspicion.

  Children play in the street, and even though it is summer and school is out, I keep wondering, What are those kids doing up? They should be in bed; they should be asleep, until I realize how idiotic this all sounds given the level of noise and confusion rising up from the street. I am struck by how strange it is that they are playing in the middle of all this, and I wonder if it’s nothing out of the ordinary, just another summer night, just another crime scene. A police helicopter flies noisily overhead. Four black-and-white patrol cars are parked at varying angles in the middle of the street, their headlights outlining three teenage boys lined up against a chain-link fence with their hands cuffed. The three adolescents appear so young, it looks like they haven’t even started shaving yet.

  There is another boy. He resembles the other three children in every way except one. He is lying in a pool of blood and his body is being photographed and probed by members of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is nameless, unknown, and he is dead. I cannot stop staring at the body as the blood slowly spreads on the pavement. It is impossible to turn away. My heart is beating and I am thinking, Whose baby is this? Whose brother? Whose grandson? He is frozen, forever, dead. I am trying not to cry.

  The three handcuffed youngsters deny having any idea who he may be. Whatever the question, they uniformly mumble, “I d’know.” The police officers show varying signs of sadness, resignation, anger, and detachment, establishing a makeshift command post and dolefully noting that the shooting is “gang related.” They are taking notes, making jokes, and gossiping. One woman wearing the LAPD uniform looks over at me and we exchange nods of recognition. I have a grudging respect for Sergeant Mitzi Grasso, a small, wiry force of nature. She has just finished a term as president of the Police Protective League—the officers union. She, for one, is not talking about gangs. Grasso is focused on a work-schedule issue and I hear her saying, “Look, the mayor is going to listen because he wants to be reelected.” Meanwhile, the dead boy’s body is being covered and prepared for transfer to the coroner’s office. Several conversations are going on at once, and no one is speaking in hushed or respectful tones. Talk ricochets between a discussion of which gang sets are currently warring and a debate over who might be selected as the next chief of police for the LAPD. I hear snippets of gang names—the Grape Street Crips, the Rollin 60s, Florencia, MS-13—coupled with speculation over how Bill Bratton, the current favorite to become chief, will get along with Mayor Jim Hahn, given how frequently Bratton, as New York City commissioner, once clashed with Rudy Giuliani.

  Police radios crackle. Even though everyone is tuned to the same frequency, the multiple radios set up an echo chamber—it’s almost like the police operator is channeling a rap singer—and the new locations of police activity reverberate through the night. “Two-A-Fifty-One: handle a 211 in progress at Seventh and Alvarado, Code 3. Suspects are three male Hispanics armed with a gun attacking a transient at the bus bench.”

  “Two-A-Ninety-One: handle an unknown-trouble 911 open line at the Hamburger Stand, Seventeenth and Vermont, Code 3.”

  It’s all static interrupted by voices interrupted by more static—until there is almost a rhythm to the cacophony of noise. The radio operator keeps announcing streets, intersections, locations, incidents. It is the city of Los Angeles as performance art, courtesy the LAPD.

  The police helicopter continues to circle overhead and I can hear its blades cutting the air. The co-pilot directs a spotlight down on the organized chaos, which will endure for approximately an hour and then be restored to normal, with no traces left of “the crime scene.” And inexplicably, over and over in my head, there is the antic voice of R
obert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, declaring, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” The noise and the people and the warmth of the night feel altogether unreal, as if I have stumbled upon the filming of some television cop show.

  Instead, it is 2002, and the city of Los Angeles is experiencing one of the bloodiest outbursts of gang violence on record. And I am standing in the middle of it. I am one of the few non-uniformed individuals here. I am one of the few white people inside the yellow tape. I am one of the few women here, and I am definitely the only woman not wearing a police uniform. I do not fit in, and I cannot stop staring at the body of the young boy. His skin is light, coffee colored and unmarked. It is the skin of a child—there are no blemishes, no signs of a beard. This boy—not yet a man—looks impossibly young, on the edge of adulthood. He has no tattoos, and his hair rings his face in soft curls, partially covered by a sweatshirt hood. I keep looking at his skin, almost wanting to reach out and touch its softness.

  I keep my head down until my tears drain out, then I look up past the boy’s body at a beautiful, silent man wearing a beige T-shirt, black jeans, and a menacing expression. His black skin shines in the streetlight and his eyes are olives, angry and impenetrable. Khalid Washington, the silent man, looks back at me, but we do not acknowledge each other. We are not speaking—yet. We will call each other in a few hours and meet in the late morning at a small barbecue restaurant in South Los Angeles and talk quietly about what happened, dissecting who might be involved, who might retaliate, and what he has done in the early-morning hours. This is later.

  Right now, I cannot acknowledge Khalid’s presence in front of the LAPD and I am frightened by the rage that I see in his eyes. He is recently released from prison and is working as a gang-intervention “street worker.” In the eyes of the LAPD he is just another knucklehead, just another gangbanger probably getting into trouble, connecting with his homies and trying to avoid arrest. He is an outsider here, muttering “Muthafuckas” under his breath as a uniformed officer approaches him and, ignoring me completely, asks, “Can I help you, sir? Did you know the deceased?”

  “No, I did not know the deceased,” Khalid enunciates with exaggerated formality.

  The officer stares at him and masks a demand as a question. “May I ask what you are doing here?”

  “I’m a street interventionist with the Unity Collaborative,” he announces tersely. “I got a call from Bo Taylor, who heard about the shooting. We were called in to try to help stop any more shooting or retaliation.” He produces a business card that the officer considers while grimacing.

  The officer’s eyes narrow. “Mind if I keep this?” he asks while pocketing the card. Khalid shrugs.

  The exchange is brief but speaks volumes.

  They hate each other.

  The current law-enforcement ethos equates joining a gang with losing one’s virginity. It’s a permanent state, and you can never go back, no matter what you may claim about your purity. Khalid may or may not still be gang affiliated. I would bet he is. But it really does not matter. The only thing of which I am certain is that he is going to leave the scene soon to connect with individuals who belong to conflicting sets and gangs. He will try to negotiate a cease-fire of some sort, after the shooting, to prevent retaliation and further bloodshed. The agreement will be fragile, informal, and with luck will hold for a few days, weeks, or months. There is no way of knowing if it will work or if the violence will continue. And in the end, Khalid will never get credit for any lives saved.

  I don’t know if I trust Khalid. While I have spent time alone with him, I have never felt completely safe. Some of it is sexual tension; some of it is the impact of listening to his seemingly endless supply of stories about shooting people, the force of his telling me, “I’ve felt the fuckin’ blood running through my hands.” I don’t know if he is lying, and I definitely don’t want to ask. Still, I recognize his strengths. He is tough, angry, and articulate. He is also a natural-born leader. Of course, if I utter those words in front of the LAPD, they will fill out a field interview card on me and I will undoubtedly join Khalid on the federal crime database or the CalGang list.

  So far I have been completely ignored by the cops. I don’t feel particularly afraid in this situation, because my badass rebellious streak has kicked in. Just in case that isn’t enough, there is one man nearby who would step in if any of these uniformed officers started to hassle me. He is wearing the lightweight, short-sleeved LAPD summer uniform and he is neat, pressed, and in complete control. He has one star on each lapel indicating that he is a commander—only one of seventeen—in the LAPD. He is standing quietly by, although everyone present is deferential and respectful toward him. No one knows we are seeing each other. “Dating” seems too idiotic a word to describe the texture of our relationship. No one knows that four hours earlier we left his home thirty miles northwest of Los Angeles and drove into the city together.

  Mark Leap is nowhere near me, though; he is engaged on the far-opposite side of the incident—talking to several other uniformed officers about what has happened. Instead, David Gascon, an assistant chief, has hovered around me, practically on top of me, all night. He is blissfully unaware that I have arrived with Mark Leap. Instead, because he knows I am “working on the gang problem,” he just assumes I have shown up after learning about the shooting. He probably even believes I have come to find him. With a kind of territoriality that I suspect is imprinted in the DNA of every sworn member of the LAPD, he takes for granted that I am there to stay with him, under his protection. He begins lecturing me on what has occurred at the crime scene.

  Khalid Washington looks on with disgust as Gascon asserts, “We’re never gonna know who did this. And it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna go on killing each other.” His voice is authoritative. I smile involuntarily. This is the same voice that officiated at the media event of 1994: the press conference during which Gascon had to admit that the LAPD had inadvertently “lost” murder suspect O. J. Simpson, adding that the football great was currently on the freeway in a white Ford Bronco driven by Al Cowlings. The intervening years have not been kind to Gascon. He has lost out in his bid to become the next chief of police. Gascon also possesses critics within the power structure of the LAPD and LA city government. Tonight he is an unwelcome reminder wearing a polo shirt, a symbol of the recent bad press that outgoing chief Bernard Parks and the LAPD have received.

  Gascon is well into his lecture on how the gang problem should be solved. While there is confusion all around, he holds forth as if there is no noise, no helicopter cutting at the air above him. It’s clear that he knows what he is talking about, but the trouble is he is slightly off in his logic. He is deriding the whole idea of gang interventionists—all within earshot of Khalid Washington. “Y’know, you got cops who think some of these interventionists are gonna help us. But they’re nothing but double agents—gangsters who know how to talk to the powers that be.” I am distinctly uncomfortable with this conversation. The gunshots I keep hearing do not appear to be the only threat to my safety in these early morning hours.

  Why am I here in the dark, on this anonymous street in South Los Angeles, in the middle of the night? I should be at home in my cottage in Rustic Canyon, sitting on my patio, finishing a glass of wine. Instead all my nerve endings are on red alert as I watch and listen and try to stay still when I hear the popping sound of gunshots.

  What am I doing here?

  I suppose I could be glib and say I am here because of my personal and professional commitment. I have a reputation to uphold, after all. I was this tough little UCLA professor who studied violence, writing and lecturing on the “gang problem.”

  The gang problem consists of stories and police reports and rumor. There are accounts of young women being subjected to brutal gang rapes. And descriptions of suspected snitches getting their tongues cut out because they have shared information with the police. And if that’s not enough, there’s always the media. For the past few days a vid
eo has been making the rounds on the Internet, offering up a drive-by shooting filmed in the kind of bloody detail that only Quentin Tarantino fans could love.

  The gang problem involves a world where tattoos are not merely decorative but threatening and sinister. I think of the adolescent who had let’s fuck tattooed on his eyelids, along with his friend, who had fuck you on his cheek.

  There is a multiple choice of personal motives for me. I am here because I am looking for a solution. Or to give kids hope. Or to help save lives.

  I am here for all of the above but I am also here for the strange sort of electricity that’s in the air. Along with all the danger and sadness, at every crime scene there is a pulsating high. This night, like other nights, I am feeling it again. And I find the excitement narcotic.

  Standing between Dave Gascon and Khalid Washington, I hear a low series of pops—more gunfire—and the cocktail of terror and excitement drives up the adrenaline of everyone inside the yellow tape. One of the cops calls out, “There’s a shooter!” and for a split second everyone freezes.

  I am a walking, talking, multiple-personality disorder of fear. I am scared that Khalid will discover I am on a first-name basis with some of the LAPD; I am frightened that this familiarity will incite his mistrust or, worse still, his anger. But I am also scared of the LAPD and how many of these Boy Scouts on steroids have demonized every adolescent in the vicinity; I am frightened someone may shoot at them or that they may shoot at the wrong person. I am afraid of the random, rampant danger in the air. And there is no doubt in my mind that in an instant, someone could drive by and shoot into the crowd—campaigning to be immortalized as a cop killer.

  More than anything, I am overwhelmed, knowing that at any moment, if something were to go wrong, someone could die—including me. And still there is the body of the young boy. Who was he?