On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

by Alice Goffman

  That afternoon, Chuck and this friend came to my apartment, took some wet (PCP), and lay on the couch and floor with covers over their heads.11 They didn’t eat, drink, or get up for almost twenty-four hours, occasionally murmuring curses at Mike about how close they had come to death.

  Two nights later, the police came to Mike’s old address, his uncle’s house, to arrest him for attempted murder. Mike’s uncle phoned his mother to let her know they were coming for him, so Mike left her place and hid out in various houses for the next two weeks, including my apartment for four days. The police raided his mother’s house twice, then his grandmother’s house, and then his children’s mother’s house. After two weeks he scraped together what money he could, found a lawyer, and turned himself in. He didn’t know who had called the police, but the lawyer showed us the testimony of the man who had robbed him, explaining that this man would be the main witness at the trial.

  When Mike made bail, the man got in touch with him through a mutual acquaintance. He explained that he wanted only three hundred dollars, which was what it would cost him to repair the shattered windows in his car. Mike considered this a very low sum to get out of an attempted murder charge and happily paid him. He also paid for a hotel room for this man to stay in on the appointed court dates, in case the police came to his house to escort him to court.12 This man then failed to show up as a witness for three court dates, and the judge dismissed the case. To my utter astonishment, Mike and this man now appeared to be “cool.” The night after the case ended, we had drinks with the man and played pool together at a local bar.

  People in legal jeopardy can pay others not to show up as a witness at a trial; they can also pay people in the neighborhood to alert them if the police are coming, or can pay those who know of their whereabouts, activities, or identity not to give this information to the police. With such a large number of wanted people in the neighborhood (as well as people committing illegal acts who are liable to be arrested should those acts be brought to the attention of the authorities), 6th Street engages in a brisk trade in this kind of information and cooperation.

  It should be noted that the payments legally precarious people make to the purveyors of false documents, or to those who might inform or testify, are in addition to the money they pay to lawyers and to the state directly in court fees and fines, bail, probation and parole costs, and tickets. These payouts for their continued freedom represent no small portion of their income.

  INFORMING

  If a young man exhausts the avenues discussed above, he may attempt to avoid confinement by giving the police someone they want more than they want him. In contrast to fleeing, avoidance, cultivating unpredictability, or paying to pass undetected, this strategy carries heavy social judgment. Indeed, informing is understood to be such a lowly way to get out of one’s legal problems that men tend not to admit when they have done it. Since young men and women typically inform inside police cars or interrogation rooms, behind closed doors, it was difficult for me to study.

  Chuck and Mike were close friends with a young man named Steve, who was about a year older than Chuck and a year younger than Mike. He lived across the street from Chuck with his mother and grandmother, his father having moved down south when he was a small child. Steve’s mother worked in administration at Drexel University, so the family was better off than many of the others on the block. With his small build, light skin, and light eyes, Steve looked sneaky, Chuck’s mom said, someone to keep your eye on. He was also notoriously hotheaded, pulling out his gun at inappropriate moments, like birthday parties for Mike’s children.

  Chuck and Mike hadn’t thought that anyone could make Steve give up the bachelor life, but after high school he fell in love with Taja, a young woman who had grown up a few blocks away. Their stormy romance lasted longer than anyone expected—longer than they expected, they sometimes laughed. For almost the entire time I knew Steve and Taja, they were trying hard to have a baby, but Taja would miscarry every time Steve got locked up: three times in their six-year relationship.

  Steve was a drug user more than a drug seller; when we met he was nineteen, and under house arrest awaiting the completion of a trial for possession of drugs.

  In the spring the police stopped Steve while he was carrying a gun, and charged him with possession without a license to carry. He made bail, but then got picked up soon after for drinking while driving, revoking his bail. Steve sat in county jail as the court dates dragged on.

  To our great surprise, Steve came home on house arrest three months later, still in the middle of his trial dates. He explained that the court released him for the remainder of the proceedings because the jails were overflowing, and the judge determined that he didn’t pose a flight risk.

  In confidence, Mike admitted to me that he did not believe Steve, since he’d never heard of a person coming home on house arrest during a trial for a gun case. He suspected that Steve had likely cut a deal to be at home during the lengthy court proceedings, most likely by giving up somebody the police seemed more interested in.

  A week later, a local man on trial for murder phoned Reggie and told him that his lawyer had shown him Steve’s statement. Apparently, Steve had signed an affidavit that he had been present at the time of the murder. A younger friend of Reggie’s was at his house when he got the phone call, and soon began spreading the news that Steve was a snitch.

  Faced with the public and personal disgrace of his betrayal, Steve spent three days threatening violence against Reggie’s young boy, and then he told him to come to his house so they could discuss it. As the young man entered, Steve began yelling, “Who the fuck told you I was a rat, nigga? Who?”

  “You just going to sit here and act like you ain’t say shit,” the young man said coolly. “They got your statement on file.”

  Steve said he would kill him, and the young man made a move toward Steve. Mike attempted to pull the two apart, but Steve pulled his gun and pistol-whipped the young man in the face and then in the back of his head.

  “You been home less than a week!” Chuck admonished, as the young man covered his bloody face with his hands. “You can’t pistol-whip a nigga that calls you a snitch. Plus, that makes you look like you really did do that shit.”

  “You ain’t mature in jail at all,” Mike added.

  Mike asked the young man if he could go to the hospital, and he replied that he had a couple of open cases, but no warrants. We took him to the ER for stitches. Mike, who had a bench warrant for failure to appear in court, hovered in the parking lot, checking in every half hour or so via cell phone.

  To my knowledge, this young man never again mentioned that Steve had snitched. A few days later there was another shootout, and the whole affair took a backseat in the local gossip.

  Most of the time, young men don’t resort to violence to rebuild their reputations after they snitch. Instead, they attempt to regain the trust and goodwill of the person they wronged.

  When he was sixteen, Ronny and a few other young men from 6th Street drove to Montgomery County late one night and tried unsuccessfully to break into a motorcycle store. When they couldn’t get in, they returned to their ’89 Bonneville, only to find that the car wouldn’t start. Ronny called Mike to come get them.

  When Mike got the call, he and Chuck and I were watching movies in the apartment. It was around 2:00 a.m. I heard Mike on the phone to Ronny as follows: “Where the fuck is that at? Okay. Gimme like, a hour [to get out there].”

  Mike turned to me.

  MIKE: This lil’ nigga out in the middle of nowhere. Car ain’t starting. We still got them cables [jumper cables]?

  ALICE: No. Who is he with?

  MIKE: The boy Dre, couple other niggas.

  ALICE: Why is he out there?

  MIKE: I don’t fucking know—probably because he trying to steal something. I’ma beat his lil’ ass to the ground when I see that nigga. Now I got to get up. [shakes his head as he puts on his boots] Fuck it. I’ma just wear my lo
ng johns.

  ALICE: I’ll see you later.

  Mike cursed the boys but went out anyway to retrieve them, saying that he couldn’t refuse his young boy anything. Chuck and I waited until around four. Mike didn’t come back. The next afternoon, I got a call from a cop at a Montgomery County police station, asking if I knew a man named Keshon Jackson. After a beat I realized that this was likely the fake name that Mike had used when he got booked so that any outstanding warrants wouldn’t come up.

  Apparently, when Mike pulled up, the dealership’s silent alarm had already gone off, and the cops were waiting behind a hill for the boys to try to break in again. The cops ran out from behind the hill and chased Mike and Ronny, along with the other boys, across covered pools and sandboxes and through bushes. Two of the boys got away; Ronny, Mike, and another young man were caught and taken into custody.

  According to the signed affidavit that Mike’s lawyer read to us later, Ronny and his friend, both sixteen, were separately interrogated and agreed to name Mike as the one who had put them up to it. In exchange, the police dropped the charges against the minors and drove Ronny and his friend home. Mike, who was twenty-one at the time, was charged with attempted breaking and entering, vandalism, and trespassing.

  When Ronny got back home, he fervently denied that he had informed, claiming he would never betray Mike like the other boys had. But Mike had seen the police report. On the phone to me from jail, he said he was deeply hurt by Ronny’s betrayal, since he considered Ronny a younger brother:

  Even if they [the police] was telling him like, look, just say it was Mike and we’ll let you go home tonight, he should have played his part [remained silent; done the right thing] just on the strength of everything I done been through for that lil’ nigga. Almost everything he got on his back was shit I passed off [gave to him], you feel me? Any time he need a couple dollars, who he coming to? He ain’t going to his nut-ass pop, he ain’t going to Nanna [his grandmother]. He come straight to me like, “Yo, Mike. Let me hold [borrow] this, let me hold that.” I done broke him off, like, so much change. Who he think keeping him fed out here? Nigga, you ain’t eating [making money] by yourself! Ain’t no other motherfucker out here looking out.

  Mike spread the word that Ronny had snitched. It was worse than that, in fact, because Ronny had blamed Mike for a crime that he didn’t even commit. For almost two weeks, Ronny didn’t come out of his grandmother’s house except to go to school. Then he took Mike’s gun and robbed a house in Southwest Philadelphia. He sold the TV, stereo, and jewelry, and paid Mike’s bail.

  Mike came home and still refused to speak to Ronny. He wouldn’t allow Ronny to come to the apartment where he was staying, though Ronny came to the door a number of times.

  By the time Mike drove out to Montgomery County for the preliminary hearing, he and Ronny appeared to be on better terms. In fact, Ronny accompanied him to all the subsequent court dates to show his support. As we were walking out of the courthouse on one of these occasions, Mike said to me:

  I know, you know, he a snitch, but that’s my little nigga. I raised that nigga from this tall. Plus, like, he don’t have no real family, like, his pops gone, his mom out there in the streets. Nigga had to look out for himself.

  The support Ronny gave Mike during his court dates, and the money he risked his life to obtain to pay Mike’s bail, seemed to have prompted a reconciliation between them. Though Mike treated Ronny somewhat coldly in the following months, he stopped telling people that Ronny had snitched.

  Two years later, Mike was in state prison for a gun case, and Ronny’s botched motorcycle theft came up in conversation in the visiting room. Mike and I had a good laugh about how stupid Ronny and his friends had been to try to break into the motorcycle store, and Mike recalled that he had run across a covered pool for the first time in his life. Then Mike cursed Ronny’s friend for snitching on him. He said that if he ever saw the kid again, he’d beat the shit out of him. I didn’t mention that Ronny had snitched, too, and Mike didn’t, either.

  Five years after this initial snitching incident, Mike was back home, and Ronny got into a fight with a young man who, after Ronny had beaten him soundly, began talking about how Ronny had snitched on Mike a while ago, though “a lot of niggas don’t know that.” Mike handed Ronny his T-shirt to clean himself off and said to the offending young man, “Get your fucking facts straight, nigga. Everybody knows Ronny ain’t do that shit.”

  Ronny’s strategy to repair his public persona and his relationship with Mike after he had informed on him was to post Mike’s bail, attend his court dates, and slowly regain his trust and forgiveness. He also denied that he had snitched, and after a time Mike denied it along with him, even sticking up for Ronny when others tried to revisit this piece of history.

  . . .

  For young men around 6th Street who worry that the police will take them into custody, the everyday relations, localities, and activities that others rely on for their basic needs become a net of entrapment. The police and the courts become dangerous to interact with, as does showing up to work or to places like hospitals. Instead of a safe place to sleep, eat, and find acceptance and support, their mother’s home is transformed into a last known address, one of the first places the police will look for them. Close relatives, friends, and neighbors become potential informants.

  One strategy for coping with the risky nature of everyday life is to avoid dangerous places, people, and interactions entirely. Thus, a young man learns to run and hide when the police are coming. He doesn’t show up at the hospital when his child is born, nor does he seek medical help when he is badly beaten. He doesn’t seek formal employment. He doesn’t attend the funerals of his close friends or visit them in prison. He avoids calling the police when harmed or using the courts to settle disputes. A second strategy is to cultivate unpredictability—to remain secretive and to dip and dodge. Thus, to ensure that those close to him won’t inform on him, a young man comes and goes in irregular and unpredictable ways, remaining elusive and untrusting, sleeping in different beds, and deceiving those close to him about his whereabouts and plans. He steadfastly avoids using his own name. He also lays out a good deal of money to silence potential informants and to purchase fake documents, clean urine, and the like. If a man exhausts these possibilities and does encounter the police, he may flee, hide, or try to bargain for his freedom by informing on the people he knows.

  The danger a wanted man comes to see in the mundane aspects of everyday life, and the strategies he uses to avoid or reduce these risks, have some larger implications for the way he sees the world, the way others view him, and consequently the course his life may take. At a minimum, his hesitancy to go to the authorities when harmed leads him to become the target of others who are looking for someone to prey upon. His fear of the hospital means that he doesn’t seek medical care when he’s badly beaten, turning instead to underground assistance of questionable repute.

  More broadly, a man in this position comes to see that the activities, relations, and localities that others rely on to maintain a decent and respectable identity become for him a system that the authorities exploit to arrest and confine him. Such a man finds that as long as he is at risk of confinement, staying out of prison and maintaining family, work, and friend relationships become contradictory goals: engaging in one reduces his chance of achieving the other. Once a man fears that he will be taken by the police, it is precisely a stable and public daily routine of work and family life, with all the paper trail that it entails, that allows the police to locate him. It is precisely his trust in his nearest and dearest that will land him in police custody. A man in legal jeopardy finds that his efforts to stay out of prison are aligned not with upstanding, respectable action but with being a shady and distrustful character.

  THREE

  When the Police Knock Your Door In

  To round up enough young men to meet their informal quotas and satisfy their superiors, the police wait outside hospitals ser
ving poor Black communities and run the IDs of the men walking inside. They stop young men sitting on the stoop and search their pockets for drugs. But the police also deploy a less direct strategy to make their stats: they turn to girlfriends, mothers, and relatives to provide information about these young men’s whereabouts and activities.

  The reliance on intimates as informants is not the dirty dealing of a few rogue cops or the purview of a few specialized officers. Police don’t reserve this treatment for the families of those few men who make their most wanted list. In our 2007 household survey of the 6th Street neighborhood, 139 of 146 women reported that in the past three years, a partner, neighbor, or close male relative was either wanted by the police, serving a probation or parole sentence, going through a trial, living in a halfway house, or on house arrest. Of the women we interviewed, 67 percent said that during that same period, the police had pressured them to provide information about that person.

  As the police lean on women to help round up their partners, brothers, and sons, women face a crisis in their relationship and their self-image. Most help the police locate and convict the young men in their lives, and so must find a way to cope publicly and privately with their betrayals. A rare few manage to resist police pressure outright, garnering significant local acclaim. A greater number work to rebuild themselves and their relationships after they have informed, which is sometimes successful and sometimes not. These cases are considered at the end.

  GETTING THE NEWS

  The journey from intimate to informant (or, in rarer cases, from intimate to resister) often begins when a woman discovers that the man in her life has become wanted by the police, or has become more legally precarious than he had been.1