No Place on the Corner

by Jan Haldipur

  This can translate to astronomical costs to the community. The total annual cost of prison expenditures in the Bronx has been estimated at $310 million. In the Melrose neighborhood alone, costs are estimated at nearly $33.6 million.7 Perhaps even more discouraging, data suggest that more than 22 percent of Bronx youth age 16–24 are considered “disconnected” as they are not working (“on the books”) and are not enrolled in school. This rate is the highest in the city. In the Mott Haven and Melrose sections of the borough, this number spikes to nearly 36 percent.8

  Grams is but one face among many trying to “get by” with a felony. As much of the prisoner reentry literature indicates, this is often an uphill battle fraught with restrictions on housing, employment, voting rights, and even educational opportunities.9 For residents of the southwest Bronx, these barriers to reentry are compounded by a looming police presence that can hinder their ability to remain outside of the law.

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  Reese, who is 20, has recently reached the halfway point of his five-year probation sentence, part of a “6–5” split (six months in jail and five years on probation) the judge ordered for him after being arrested for robbery when he was 17. Although Reese received a felony as part of his conviction, his record is now sealed as part of the “Youthful Offender” adjudication.10

  For Reese, “coming home” presented its own set of unique issues with his peers back home in the Webster Houses, a public housing complex in the 42nd Precinct. “I’m known by everybody over there and stuff like that,” he said. “When I came home and just started acting different, everybody was looking at me, like . . . that’s not the Reese we knew from before.” Reese tried to go “straight” by minimizing the contact he had with his old crew in the neighborhood, often staying indoors for extended periods to avoid seeing his former peers.

  He elaborates on his transformation: “[Before] I’d just ride out for my homeboys. So, whatever, if they was like ‘Oh, we doing this,’ I’m doing that too. So, that’s how it was until reality hit me and I got arrested. Nobody was there but me. I ain’t have no homeboys. I ain’t have no family.”

  His incarceration and the feelings of abandonment that followed seemed to serve as a turning point. Both his real and kinship families had abandoned him while he was incarcerated. As a result, when he was released, he tried to focus inwards by obtaining “on the books” employment, most recently through a seasonal job at a nearby Party City store. Reese dropped out of school in the 10th grade and is now trying to go back and get his GED.

  His efforts to stay on the straight and narrow are continuously stifled by police in his neighborhood. Over the past 12 months, Reese reports that he has been stopped and frisked more than 30 times. Additionally, the previous October, while spending time with friends, the police raided his apartment. According to Reese, a friend had recently bought a phone on the street, which, as it turned out, was stolen. Using the GPS system on the device, police followed the phone to Reese’s place. Despite the friend admitting that the phone was his, officers handcuffed and arrested both youths as well as Reese’s younger brother:

  I’m like, “What is this for, Officer?” He was like, “Don’t worry about it! Shut your effin’ mouth!” Just talking crazy, so I’m like, “all right.” We get down to the Precinct. Now, they put us all in a lineup. They ain’t put my brother in a lineup because he don’t really got a criminal background. Because me and my friend got the criminal background, they automatically, basically tried to railroad us.

  So they put us in a lineup and the person ain’t pick us out cuz it wasn’t us that did anything. So they tried to make me and my friend go against us, telling us that, well, he was telling on me saying that I did it. I told them, saying that he did it, whatever the case may be . . . they sent us to the DA’s office because they couldn’t get nothing from us, so they put us on camera and stuff, and they was “blah blah blah blah blah.”

  And I was telling them that one of the officers told me to tell them that I did it, or they was going to go to my house and take my brothers away. They was going to send ACS [Administration for Children’s Services] to my house and take my brothers away. So I’m like, “Alright, I did the crime.” I said it on camera to the DA that the officer told me to do it or this was going to happen. So they seen it on camera and they let me go from Rikers. I was already on Rikers being processed, so I’m thinking to myself what did I do to be in here, and stuff like that? And they just called and said I had bail. I ain’t really have bail, they just let me go, because they ain’t have no evidence on me.

  Reese’s already profound sense of vulnerability was further magnified by the series of events that followed the police raid—the coercive interrogation techniques and, perhaps most notably, the threat of being separated from his brothers. Despite what transpired, Reese feels fortunate he was not reincarcerated. His friend was not so lucky, however, and ended up doing a year upstate for his role in the incident. As is apparent in Reese’s story, aggressive police tactics often go beyond the street and extend into the homes of residents in so-called high-risk neighborhoods. He feels that he was unfairly targeted because of his past (although his record is technically sealed). Reese is aware of his precarious situation and, in his view, tried to “do the right thing” by not hanging out with his old crew on the benches outside. As he recounts:

  They wanted me because my record is basically bad. They was basically trying to do everything in they power to get me arrested. That’s why they sent me to Rikers. I came home the same day, and I’m just messed up in the head, like, what did I do? I just came home. I’m not trying to get into any trouble. I stay in the house all day. Right there, that caused me to not want to hang with my friends or nothing because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I hang out with them. Anything can happen.

  Like some of the more achievement-oriented young adults, Reese resorted to an isolationist strategy after “coming home” from his first felony arrest. He quickly discovered that even this approach could present its own set of issues that might compromise his freedom.

  Mecca, an African American male who lives a few blocks north of Reese, in the Butler Houses, shares a similar experience trying to “stay straight.” At 22, he was arrested for gun possession, after stashing a friend’s gun at his girlfriend’s apartment. The police raided the apartment based on information from a confidential informant. Mecca was arrested and given a plea deal: “They started off trying to give me a felony, but it became some type of misdemeanor, you know they got Class A, B, all that . . . some type of misdemeanor. I figured once they said misdemeanor, I could still keep my license, my security license, and I could just move on from there.”

  As a doorman at a midtown nightclub, Mecca works late into the night, often not arriving home until 5 or 6 a.m. Less than a year after the first incident, police again came to raid his girlfriend’s apartment, this time searching for a gun allegedly used in a shooting involving a police officer. Officers from the 42nd Precinct, along with those from an ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) unit, descended upon his girlfriend’s apartment at approximately 7 a.m. on a Friday morning.

  Officers spent the morning searching the apartment as his family looked on. The questioning and search extended into the evening, but no gun was found. As Mecca says, “I’m telling them, listen, there’s nothing here! I’ve been in the hood long enough to know, once you get a gun charge, that’s it, it’s a wrap. Now y’all gonna be on me. It’s a wrap. I’m not going to do it again. It’s over.”

  The investigation caused him to miss his evening shift and the accompanying “under-the-table” wages he receives after a night’s work, a valuable source of income he uses to supplement his earnings from his minimum-wage security job in lower Manhattan:

  I hit ‘em up and told them [his employer] I’m not going to be able to make it. He was like, “all right.” Next Thursday I ain’t get no phone call, next Wednesday I ain’t get no phone call. It kept going for wee
ks and after that I was like, I guess I’m fired. No notice, no nothing. They just let me go, so it was just like, all right, whatever. So, damn near the whole January, I picked up one check from Madison, and from there on it was just like, struggling . . . I’ve been struggling.

  Mecca is expecting a child with his girlfriend, although their future together remains unclear. The loss of his night job created an even more unsteady financial situation for the couple. Furthermore, the police raids have created a wedge between Mecca and his girlfriend’s family. “Her sister, she don’t even like me no more,” he said. “They went in there, they broke something of hers, so from there she started flipping. . . . Her mother brought it up too. ‘Oh, we got you staying here and you got police coming!’”

  Mecca’s attempts to eke out a living and create a sense of stability for his family are only made more complicated by his past convictions. While he has largely moved past this phase of his life, he is well aware that past transgressions will likely continue to haunt him. At first glance, the police search caused only a momentary disruption in the lives of Mecca and his family. Upon closer examination, however, the residual effects become abundantly clear, as Mecca must pick up the pieces and again try to improve his situation.

  Violent Interactions

  In late 2012, a video featuring “Alvin,” an East Harlem teenager, went viral.11 The video detailed a particularly negative encounter with police, recorded on his iPod, in which the teenager was verbally and physically assaulted by officers executing a frisk. The reaction of many New Yorkers was outrage. For those who had experienced this type of contact firsthand, there was finally something to validate their own negative experiences with police.

  Many of the young people I spent time with were able to recount aggressive and sometimes violent interactions with police that they had either experienced personally or had observed. Among young men involved with the justice system, these interactions took on a whole other meaning, with a dramatic increase in both frequency and severity. Of all of the local residents I spoke to, this subgroup often experienced some of the harshest treatment from police.

  As one African-American young adult, Marcus, reported:

  They [police] don’t care, because they know you don’t, you can’t say nothing. One time he ran up on me . . . he just moved up on me like, “Motherfucker, don’t move or I’ll break your face!” . . . the way they talk to you is crazy, man. They just, they don’t even care.

  Others, like Desmond, a multiracial African American and Puerto Rican male in his late twenties, have experienced more explicit forms of physical violence. Desmond, who grew up in the Lincoln Houses, a public housing complex in Harlem, but currently lives in the 40th Precinct, described a particularly harrowing experience from the previous summer when a large fight broke out in his neighborhood:

  I left out my building with slippers, swim shorts, and a tank top. I went around the corner to go to the “loosey” spot, and three detectives jumped out on me. I didn’t see them coming. And instead of, like, “freeze,” you know, “get on the wall” so they could pat me down, the first thing they did was take my head and smash it into the wall . . . turned around on me and punched me in the face and then told me “stay still” while he was choking me. I’m like, “What is this for!?” He was like, “We had rumors, y’all had guns over here.” Officer, I got flip-flops on with swimming shorts and a tank top where you could see my waist. Where do you see a gun? Why did you have to punch me in my face?

  The search did not find any guns, nor was Desmond issued a ticket. The following week, upon showing his probation officer his bruised face and arms, she urged him to file a formal grievance. Fearing reprisal, Desmond opted to not address what had happened with the police. Apathy and dejection are unfortunately commonly shared sentiments among many of the justice-involved young adults I spoke to. As Charles, an African American parolee who lives in the 42nd Precinct, summed up the situation: “I think the mentality is like, ‘What am I to do about it?’ It’s been going on. I’ve seen this forever. What am I going to do about it that’s going to make it different? Even after me too, right? You get the mind-set, like, this is the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Ambivalence

  In response to many of these often horrific acts of brutality, I came to expect that resentment toward police would be consistent among the group. I held to the simplistic notion that a universal antipolice sentiment would be shared by all of the young adults involved in the criminal justice system whom I met. To my surprise, I discovered a much more complicated relationship with the police.

  Despite having actively sold crack and marijuana up until his recent indictment, Grams spoke fondly about a particular officer he got to know intimately during his time in the street. Grams described a specific encounter he had had with Officer Schultz as a child, one in which he was granted an all too rare second chance. Although this encounter was in many ways an anomaly, it marks a return to an increasingly rare form of community engagement that otherwise seems to have been lost and forgotten in the push for more aggressive tactics:

  It was a cop on my block named Officer Schulz. Nobody liked him, everybody used to be like, “Ah, Schultz is coming! Schultz is coming!” Out of everything bad that I did, feel me, out of all the bad shit I did, I was always a respectful child. So for some reason Schultz liked me out of everybody . . . so he actually told me one day . . . I was probably like 13 this time. He came up to me while we all on the bench and everybody surprised. He come up to us, “Grams, how you doing?” I’m like, “I’m all right.” [Shultz responds], “Bet you if I check that pocket, you got a lot of 5s in there.” So now, I’m looking like, “huh?” He’s like, “Yeah, I see you going back and forth from that building.” So, I’m like, oh shit, I got the weed on me and all that. I’m scared now. I’m like, damn, he about to arrest me. But he’s like, “You’re lucky, I’m gonna let you go . . . I know what you’re doing out here.”

  Many of the young people currently or formerly involved in street transgressions implicitly understood why the police targeted them. In their opinion, they were harassed only when they “deserved” it and were engaging in illegal activities. Moreover, they rationalized persistent police contact and frequent stops as part of keeping their communities, where their wives, girlfriends, mothers, and children also lived, safe.

  One young person who held these beliefs was Justin, a Puerto Rican male in his early twenties who does construction work for his uncle in Queens. He works long days, often starting at 5 a.m. and working late into the afternoon. He spends much of his free time with his younger brothers at his mother’s house in Queens, although he calls his father’s place near Prospect Avenue in the 42nd Precinct home.

  Life for Justin has changed dramatically in recent years. Apart from a fading “20” tattoo on his left hand, there are few visible reminders of his former circumstances. Starting in his early teens, he and his crew, the Rollin’ 20s Crips, an East Coast iteration of the infamous Los Angeles-based gang, began their careers as stickup kids. According to Justin, “It was fast. At the time, I felt like it was easy, you know. I tried hustling [selling drugs]. . . . I didn’t really like it. I guess it wasn’t really for me.”

  Justin and his friends continued robbing and chain snatching until, at 17, he was arrested and convicted of felony robbery. Even after being sentenced to five years of probation supervision, he and his crew continued these activities. Only two years later Justin was arrested again, this time for robbing an off-duty officer in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. Despite having fled from the scene, his codefendant, another Crip, cooperated with authorities and implicated Justin in order to reduce his own sentence. Sentenced to eight months on Rikers Island, a sentence reduced to encourage good behavior, Justin made it a point to leave the gang before his jail stay:

  It just didn’t feel the same no more. I felt like I was betrayed by my right-hand man. I felt like I was betrayed by everybody. And I noticed, like, they really didn
’t care, so, I was like all right, and one day I left. I told them what they had to do to get me out the game. Basically jump me out.

  During this window of time, Justin made a few visits to a tattoo removal center, though the process proved costly and time consuming. As he explains, “I didn’t want to ask my parents for money or anything, so I just went in [to jail] with it. People already knew. They just asked me what it was, and I guess they was expecting me to lie. For me telling them the truth, I guess they respected it, you know.”

  Upon release, Justin tried to disentangle himself from everything that reminded him of his former life. The police, who he once held in a thoroughly negative light, took on a different meaning in his life:

  To be honest, [they] make me feel safer. If I was a criminal . . . still doing crime, of course I would say I don’t trust them, they’re a threat. But, since I changed my whole life around, I feel a lot safer with them being around.

  Israel, a young adult who has spent nearly a quarter of his life behind bars, echoed many of these sentiments. One afternoon, while chatting with two other young men, Tony and Gordon, at a neighborhood center in the 42nd Precinct, he offered his outlook on policing in the neighborhood. Much to our surprise, Israel seemed to largely empathize with the officers, downplaying some of the negative effects that aggressive policing tactics were having on people in the neighborhood:

  I probably did more time in prison than anyone here. I got more than five years and I’m only 22 . . . and I got a positive outlook on police. . . . police officers, it’s like every time I went to jail it’s because I did a crime. But every other time I don’t get stopped or none of that. . . . Police always gonna mess with you if you doing something wrong. I never get bothered by the police like that. It’s because I’m never doing nothing wrong. If you’re doing something wrong standing on the corner at 12 o’clock at night, of course . . . just imagine you as a police officer—you riding around see dude on the corner.