Police officials claimed the practice was partly responsible for the ongoing drop in crime citywide. Critics called it racist and pointed out that less than 10 percent of stops led to an arrest. Prosecutors found that police officers often lied in reports to justify some of those arrests—particularly arrests for trespassing in housing projects. These cops would report that a person didn’t know anybody at the complex even when the person cited a resident’s name and contact information. It happened so often that Bronx district attorney Robert Johnson announced his office would no longer prosecute housing project trespassing cases unless his staff had first interviewed the arresting officer. Prosecutors in Brooklyn said that they faced the same problem.
Bill de Blasio had campaigned on a promise to end stop-and-frisk, and, earlier in the year, a judge had ruled it unconstitutional, a violation of civil rights. “I know it’s not the best thing and I’m sure they do target black and brown kids,” James said. “But, I dunno, I’m for whatever they gotta do to get these guns outta the neighborhood.”
New York City, Brownsville included, had become safer than it had been in decades. There had been a time, just a generation earlier, when nearly every resident had a constant fear of getting mugged, when public safety was a pivotal political issue. Back then, a politician needed to show he was tough on crime to get elected and stay in office. Mayor Ed Koch declared in 1988 that the pendulum had “swung too far,” meaning that protections for people who broke the law were too great. “The pendulum has to swing back to protect society,” he’d said.
By the mayoral election of 2013, though, the climate had shifted, and most residents weren’t blinded by fear as before. These days, headlines showed stories about the injustices triggered by the policies of the tough-on-crime era: decades in prison for drug possession, innocent people spending years behind bars because of aggressive detectives and prosecutors, young black and brown men stopped and detained without probable cause. De Blasio’s platform vowed to swing the pendulum back toward protecting civil rights. His Republican opponent, Joe Lhota, called this a “recklessly dangerous agenda on crime,” and ran campaign ads showing subway cars covered in graffiti, scowling young black and brown men, fires, looting, and blight—a return to the bad old days of the ’70s and ’80s.
New York City’s overall crime rate decreased during de Blasio’s first five months in office, but not every neighborhood felt safer. The number of shootings climbed in the roughest neighborhoods: Jamaica, Queens, the northern tip of the Bronx, East New York, and Brownsville. Through the first five months of 2014, 35 people were shot in Brownsville, more than in all of Manhattan and a 75 percent jump from the previous year. Locals feared a violent summer. “It might get bad this year,” Chris said. “At this point, everybody’s just waiting and hoping, praying.”
The police department had plans to counter this surge in shootings before the summer hit. New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton, who had been appointed by de Blasio, announced his policing strategy for Brownsville and several other neighborhoods. First, Bratton said that the department would end its decade-long practice of sending rookies to patrol the city’s highest-crime beats. Since 2004, rookie cops started in places like Brownsville, to train and gain experience, before moving on to assignments they found easier and more comfortable in places with lower crime rates. Locals became accustomed to a constantly rotating cast of young, white, fresh-out-the-academy faces, sometimes scared shitless and thin-skinned, sometimes channeling that fear into aggression. These young cops barged through housing projects like soldiers in battle, screaming and shouting, guns drawn, stopping and detaining and searching every person in sight. “Some guys who aren’t from the streets and are now policing the streets, they sometimes see the community in a certain kind of way,” said Warren Bond, a Brownsville native who spent 22 years as an NYPD officer in Brooklyn. “They can be a little rougher on the residents. They can give ’em a little less slack. They marginalize folks. They see ’em as adversaries. While for me, I was arresting folks I knew when I was a kid. Anybody I arrested could have been people I grew up with or people my daughter knew or, hell, they could have been me if things had worked out differently.” The rookie cops were strangers in the community and before they were around long enough to build strong ties to residents, they were gone, off to the next beat. One afternoon earlier that spring, Chris had watched two young white cops tip-toeing through Garvey, peeking their heads around corners, stern looks on their faces. He shook his head. “Look at these guys,” Chris said. “Making no effort to get to know the community.” Bratton sought to change that. In March, he said that new officers would train in their home districts and that more experienced officers would patrol the highest-crime neighborhoods.
The second prong of the department’s Brownsville strategy focused on the neighborhood’s crews. Operation Crew Cut, as the NYPD called it, aimed to track and gather intelligence on the loosely organized groups of young people who officers claimed were responsible for most of the city’s violent crime. Law enforcement officials across the country had taken to calling these groups “crews” because they didn’t qualify as gangs. Gangs were organized enterprises, with a structured hierarchy and an initiation process, devoted to criminal activity. Crews were groups of kids who lived near each other, hung out, and gave their collective a name, and some of them happened to commit crimes sometimes. NYPD officials claimed that more than 300 crews were active across the five boroughs and that they were behind 40 percent of shootings in the city. “It’s like belonging to an evil fraternity,” Inspector Kevin Catalina, commander of the NYPD gang division, told the Associated Press in May.
A beef between crews, police officials noted, led to a shocking shooting on a public bus earlier that spring. Angel Rojas had been working two jobs, and during his break between jobs in the afternoons, he often dropped by his home to spend time with his two kids. One of them, an 8-year-old girl, was Puerto Rico’s classmate. On March 20, Rojas was on the B15 bus in Bed-Stuy when somebody stepped on and opened fire. A bullet hit him in the head. He was 39 years old. Police arrested 14-year-old Kahton Anderson. Authorities said that Anderson ran with a crew called the Stack Money Goons, who were beefing with a crew called the Twain Family. Kids from the Twain Family had shot at him and missed that morning, police said, and Anderson had gone out to get back at them that afternoon. Anderson saw them on the B15, police said, and followed them on. Prosecutors charged him as an adult with second-degree murder. They claimed that Anderson had acquired the gun when he was 12 years old. His first trial ended with a hung jury, then he was retried, convicted, and sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison.
The killing was front-page news in New York City: A workingman, father of young children, slain in the crossfire of street warfare. “Big Gun, Small Punk,” blared the front page of the Daily News. “The stupidity of those gangs that basically, over nothing, are trying to kill each other,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said in a press conference. “Unfortunately, in the process, they kill innocents.” The incident brought back memories of the city’s recent—but long gone—past.
To get ahead of the violence, the NYPD kept close watch over the social media accounts of suspected crew members. Officers created fake Facebook profiles, posed as pretty girls, and flirted with their targets. The department boasted, in press conferences and official statements, that the tactics had netted hundreds of arrests over the past two years. With summer approaching, Bratton said that he would increase the number of officers patrolling the areas where the most violent crews were most active. This effort mostly targeted housing projects: Though less than 5 percent of the city’s population lived in housing projects, nearly 20 percent of shootings happened there. It was part of a wider policing strategy that emphasized a heavy presence and brought in lots of arrests. Crime was at an all-time low in the city in 2013, but the department still made nearly 400,000 arrests, around 60,000 more than in 2003.
For de Blasio and Bratton
, there was much at stake in the coming summer. It was the first big test of whether the administration’s new policies might push Brownsville and other neighborhoods back into the bad old days. By the end of May, the new police presence was noticeable. Officers strolled through Betsy Head Park two, three, four, or more times a day. Police cars rolled slowly down the blocks day and night. Two officers posted up outside the bodega on the corner of Saratoga and Livonia, right in front of the subway station steps, a block away from the park. “It’s gonna be a long summer,” one officer said to another.
FOR THE THIRD time in a day, Chris tried calling Gio. He hadn’t seen him in weeks. After four rings, Gio picked up. Chris’s voice was sharp but calm.
“Your mother put a bench warrant out on you. You know what that is? No? Well you better find out what that is. You spoke to your mother?”
“No,” said Gio, in nearly a whisper.
“You gotta understand what I’m saying to you. You gotta call her. You gotta find out what she’s gonna do. If they put out a bench warrant, that means they can pick you up on the streets at any time. I don’t know what the issues are but she don’t think she can handle you. She’s gonna take that step. Now I don’t want her to do that ’cause I don’t wanna see you get into that system. Most guys think they can run from it but they really can’t.”
Gio stayed quiet.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Chris. “You ain’t telling me what’s going on. Do you care? That’s the first thing I wanna know. Do you care what happens to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah or yes?”
“Yes.”
“Listen, I love you but this ain’t no baby time. Now this is real. If you start messing with these courts that changes everything. It ain’t gonna be your mother calling the shots. The other thing I got a problem with is you staying at your friend’s house—he got parents there?”
“Yeah.”
“What is it about your mother that you don’t wanna be around her?”
“Nothing really.”
“Why is it so hard for you to tell me the truth? It’s gotta be something, man. Are you involved with any gang?”
Gio didn’t answer.
“Which one?”
“Not anything like… not anything like that… or something like that.”
“You selling anything?”
“No, no, no,” Gio said quickly.
“But you’re with a group, though? With a crew?
Silence.
“I just gotta know what’s going on. Do you think that that’s gonna lead to something good, whatever you’re doing, honestly?”
“No.”
“What do you want to do? Tell me. What you wanna do?”
“I dunno.”
“Your mother’s about to sic the courts on you. I think I can hold that off, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“She wanna act like she… I dunno,” Gio said. “She, like, I dunno. She don’t wanna listen to anything I say.”
“She don’t trust you no more. I’m keeping it real with you. You broke her trust. She only doing what a parent do. She can’t do nothing with you. What could she do? Tie you to the bed? You ain’t no baby.”
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Chris said, “You ain’t the first guy. I’ve been around guys like you a lot of years and I know the signs. I’m always worried about you getting hooked up with the wrong people. You could get out of it and get on the right track, but you gotta be honest with me and I got to know what you want. Some guys don’t wanna be helped. The coaches, they were looking for you the other day. Because I think you got a future. You got a chance. But no one wants to deal with problems. Courts, cops, gangs, stealing, drugs. The fast money bullshit, nobody wants to deal with that.”
“Yeah.”
“What you wanna be doing three years from now? Do you have any idea?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“All right. If you keep doing what you’re doing, what you think you’ll be doing three years from now? Something good?”
“Nope.”
“You want me to tell her to keep the courts out of this and figure something out?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. But you can’t make me look stupid. I need to know who you dealing with. Is there a leader or somebody?
“Mm-hmm.”
“Can you talk now about it?”
“Nope,” he said. Then, after a pause, “I’m about to go home soon.”
“When can we talk about it?”
“I dunno.”
“There’s that answer again.”
“Later in the day.”
“Better call me. You say you’re going home. Pretty soon you might not have a home to go home to. If you get shot, right, who gotta come to the hospital?”
“My moms.”
“Yeah, I know. It ain’t gonna be nobody that you hang out with. You gon’ let me help you or not? If I’m wasting my time, tell me right now.”
“No.”
“Good. ’Cause I think you’re worth saving. You’re a good kid, man. We’ll deal with one thing at a time.”
“A’ight.”
“What time you gon’ call me?”
“Like about seven.”
“A’ight, that’s cool. Be careful, all right?”
“A’ight.”
Gio didn’t call that evening and he didn’t show up for practice that Saturday.
8
WHAT’S BEST FOR ISAIAH
May 2014
CHRIS WISHED THE BEST FOR GIO, BUT HE HAD OTHER boys to spend his energy on. He would never admit that he had his favorites, but every coach has favorites. Gio had been at the top of Chris’s list—the one he bragged about most, the one he considered the most likely future superstar under the right guidance, the one who got the lion’s share of his attention. But he had a new favorite now, and you couldn’t blame him: everybody had high hopes for Isaiah.
ISAIAH OFTEN THOUGHT about his first Junior Midget game. It was his first time playing an official opponent in pads, and he was nervous before the opening kickoff. Skinny and long-limbed, he looked downfield at the 11 adversaries lined up in formation: the heavyset ones crouched in front, their fingers wiggling in anticipation; the lean ones standing tall in back, hands on their hips, waiting to catch the kickoff. Then he looked back at his own team, spread across the field in a straight line, and at the boy at the center of them, Gio, the biggest and strongest one. Gio raised his right arm then dropped it, jogged forward a few steps, and kicked the hell out of the football. Isaiah raced down the field. The ball bounced, and one of the boys in the back picked it out of the air and started upfield. Isaiah kept his eyes on him. He eased off the gas and veered to the right, angling for the boy, instinctively calculating where on the field their paths would intersect. He accelerated into a sprint. Bodies passed in and out of his periphery, movement swirling all around him, pads colliding, but his eyes were locked on the boy with the ball. The nerves were gone, replaced by a single-mindedness: he would make this tackle. The chaos seemed to part, leaving an alley, and there was the ballcarrier with nothing but 10 or so yards of open grass between the boy and Isaiah. Isaiah slowed and squared his body, feet chopping, hips balanced, shoulders back, arms cocked and ready to pounce, and he—
Crack!
Isaiah was on his back looking at the sky. He had caught a block he didn’t see coming. His ears were ringing, and the noises all around, the oohs from the crowd and the whistle from above and the shouts from the sideline, were muffled. He let himself lie there for a second or two. He didn’t feel any pain, but he felt embarrassed. Perhaps he didn’t belong on that field. Perhaps this was a mistake, he recalled thinking. At 11 years old and barely 100 pounds, Isaiah was playing against boys as old as 13 and as heavy as 159. Despite that, he was committed to playing out the season. Isaiah had loved football for as long as he could
remember. His older brother got him into it when he was little and taught him the game. Isaiah appreciated its strategic complexities, the matchups and adjustments, the idea that you had to outthink your opponent before you outran him, the chess match behind the brutality. He’d watched his older brother play in high school and wanted to play himself. One day in the summer before Isaiah’s first game, his brother was on the subway when he saw a large man in a purple windbreaker that said “Mo Better Football” across the chest. He asked the man—Coach Chris—about it, then brought Isaiah out to Betsy Head, just a few blocks from their home, the following Saturday.
After a few seconds on the ground, Isaiah popped up to his feet and took his spot on defense. He’d taken a hard hit but he was not sure how hard it really was. He had nothing to compare it to. Had he been laid out by a weak hit? Were there bigger hits to come? He braced himself for the next play.
AT THE START of the season, Coach Chris rarely gave him the ball. He worried about Isaiah’s size and inexperience. But Isaiah proved to be tough and resilient. Fast as a motherfucker, too. By the middle of the season, Isaiah was getting more carries with each game—mostly unofficial scrimmages at this point, thanks to the forfeits. In the second half of the last game, Isaiah got the ball on a pitch. He jogged a few steps and saw an opening between the linebackers and the sideline. He accelerated to the outside, turned the corner, and hit full speed. The defenders had no chance. In the final game of his first season playing tackle football, Isaiah scored an 85-yard touchdown. It was the first touchdown he’d ever scored. When he got back to the sidelines, Chris said to him, “Bet you can’t wait to do that again.”
Never Ran, Never Will Page 13
