Tag Archives: Mugging

When In Crime, Blame a Young Black Male

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in 1, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Abby Dean screenshot, Ferndale, WA, June 23, 2014. (Fox6News, WITI, Milwaukee, WI).

Abby Dean screenshot, Ferndale, WA, June 23, 2014. (Fox6News, WITI, Milwaukee, WI).

Yesterday morning, I was stuck watching ABC’s Good Morning America segment “4-Year-Old Leads Police to Prime Suspect in Burglary Case,” with the lead, “Real Life Nancy Drew.” The Whatcom County police (Ferndale, WA) interviewed Abby Dean, a four-year-old girl who witnessed two burglars breaking into and robbing her home. The four-year-old’s babysitter had identified “two armed Black men”  — including the next-door neighbor — as the perpetrators of this home invasion. But the brave little Abby Dean apparently went off script and bravely told the truth. “It wasn’t the right skin color,” as one of them had “beach-colored skin. And no one had dark skin,” the toddler said to police. It turned out that the babysitter, the babysitter’s boyfriend and another man had planned the burglary.

Meanwhile, the police handcuffed and questioned Cody Oaks, the next-door neighbor, for hours apparently, and prior to questioning, had a sniper trained on Oaks’ home. “It’s kinda sad ’cause I don’t think she realizes the dangerous position she put me in,” Oaks said.

Cody Oaks, Ferndale, WA, June 23, 2014. (Fox6News, WITI, Milwaukee).

Cody Oaks, Ferndale, WA, June 23, 2014. (Fox6News, WITI, Milwaukee).

Abby Dean’s no more Nancy Drew than I’m Sherlock Holmes. Truth is, the headline should be “Another Example of Overt Racism By Criminals and Police Foiled by Truthful Toddler.” While Dean deserves media coverage — she’s already done more at four than most people do about crimes in their whole lives — the real story is Cody Oaks. This could’ve very easily turned into a botched investigation, which could’ve led to Oaks’ death or serving serious jail time. For a crime in which he played NO role. All because in the minds of so many Whites, young and Black and male equals a violent criminal. That’s what that racist, seventeen-year-old, criminal mastermind babysitter thought, and apparently, so did the local police.

That this isn’t the story from this story shows how well colorblind racism has worked in the average American’s mind. It is obviously okay for Whites — especially White women — to blame Blacks for crimes they didn’t commit, no matter how outrageous. There’s Charles Stuart in Boston, who killed his pregnant wife, shot himself and then tried to blame a mysterious Black man (the boogie man) for his heinous acts in ’89-’90. There’s Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drove her car into a lake and drowned her child in that car in ’94. Only to then blame two young Black men for her insane crime, as these imaginary Black males attempted to carjack her. There’s Ashley Todd, the McCain presidential campaign staff who claimed that a Black guy robbed her and carved a backwards “B” on her left cheek in ’08. Only to learn that she mugged and mutilated herself for attention. Let’s not forget the Central Park 5, with whom the city of New York settled a lawsuit for $40 million over their wrongful arrests and convictions.

And people wonder why many of us continue to carry a public anger.

 

My First Mugging

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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New York mugging, Granger (1857), April 3, 2014. (http://chroniclevitae.com).

New York mugging, Granger (1857), April 3, 2014. (http://chroniclevitae.com).

This is another story not in Boy @ The Window, though it could’ve been. It was thirty-five years ago this week that a group of my preteen neighbors from the Pearsall Drive projects (now the Vernon Woods co-op community) jumped me on my way home from the store, beat me up and stole a grand total of four dollars. It seems like such a small thing now, getting mugged for the first time, a block from 616 East Lincoln, our apartment building on the eastern edge of Mount Vernon, New York. Still, I learned a few things on that first Saturday in April ’79 about myself, my older brother, my mother and humans in general, things that haven’t changed in the three and a half decades since.

That particular day was definitely a crisp early spring one, windy, partly sunny and cloudy, just warm enough not to need a winter coat. I’d barely been out the house at all since attempting to run away from home some four months earlier. In the months in between, I’d been engrossed in reading everything I could, especially World Book Encyclopedia, not to mention what I hadn’t already read in Charles Schulz’ Peanuts series.

I hadn’t been out the apartment to do much of anything other than go to school or to the store. So little was my time outside that when I had to do a full food shop, I’d forgotten a few basic rules about protecting myself. Like making sure that a group of nine-to-fourteen-year-olds weren’t following us home from the local grocery store. And making sure to take the most direct route home when I could, or a circuitous route home when necessary. Going west on the north side of East Lincoln, making a left on Station Place, then a left on Lafayette Avenue, then a final left on Bradley, walking four short blocks that would’ve left us in front of 616.

134 Pearsall Drive (now part of the Vernon Woods co-op complex), April 3, 2014. (http://trulia.com)

134 Pearsall Drive (now part of the Vernon Woods co-op complex), April 3, 2014. (http://trulia.com)

On this day, the circuitous route would’ve been better. But that would’ve meant me being better, too. I was already not feeling well when I left with Darren for the grocery store. I had a stomach ache, and the diarrhea that came with it. So my best bet was to go to the store at 671 East Lincoln with Darren, cross over to the south side of East Lincoln, and walk as quickly as we could back to 616.

Only, the half-dozen boys trailing me and Darren back home had crossed with us, and immediately tried to surround us near East Lincoln and Pearsall. Darren, to his credit, ran off for home, leaving me alone and holding two paper bags of groceries. Somewhere between “nigga” and “muthafucka” and “giv’ me the money,” I struggled and ran away with the groceries, where after a minute or two, I ended up in the bottom floor of one of the project buildings.

I was jumped again, punched in the face and the mouth until one of the wannabe thugs had busted my lip and left me bleeding down the side of my face. I somehow crapped on myself during the run, but hadn’t noticed because I was too busy trying to not get mugged. After they took the four dollars’ worth of change I had in my right pant pocket, another wannabe said, “Oh shit, the punk dukeyed on hisself!” They laughed and left me there, in this abandoned, junky apartment, garbage and groceries and two ripped grocery bags all over the room, bloodied and soiled.

I picked up all I could from what remained of the groceries and began the long one-block walk home. By the time I walked through the front door, there was my Mom, angry with me about the groceries. “What I’m gonna do with this!” she said. It was afterward that she noticed my condition. “You let them kids scare the shit out of you!,” she gasped with what seemed like a bit of laughter in her voice. I said, very angrily, “I told you before I left that I had diarrhea!,” then went into the bathroom and cried.

Oscar de la Hoya's face after his beat-down via Manny Pacquiao, December 6, 2008. (AP via http://boxingscene.com).

Oscar de la Hoya’s face after his beat-down via Manny Pacquiao, December 6, 2008. (AP via http://boxingscene.com).

My Mom came in later to help me wash myself down. In the meantime, I had a bruised left cheek, a busted lip, feces all over my lower body, and soreness all over my ribs and stomach. It took about twenty minutes in all, but by the time I was done and washed, I went into mine and Darren’s bedroom and fell asleep.

It was April 7, ’79, and I already knew that I couldn’t count on my older brother to help whenever there would be a crisis. I knew that my Mom cared about me, but apparently not enough to keep me protected. I knew that the assholes that lived around me wouldn’t have minded it if I’d been run over by a Mack truck, as long as they could get a dollar out of me. I knew, most of all, that I needed to look out for myself as much as I could, since there weren’t any cousins or other family around to look out for me.

So when at the end of ’83, the city had sold the projects at Pearsall Drive to a real estate developer, though I was sad for a few individuals, I wasn’t sad in general. Those wannabes had helped make one relatively small aspect of my life — going to the store, going outside and going to Wilson’s Woods — miserable. And with so much misery in my life already, I was glad to see many of those kids move away.

Muggers’ Delight and The Aftermath

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Champagne popping, December 5, 2013. ( ).

Champagne popping, May 2011. (Brian Freedman via http://www.uncorklife.com).

I was mugged for the last time on this date thirty years ago, the first Monday in December ’83. I’ve talked about this before, the experience of being jumped by four teenagers, who in the end, made away with $13 and change, the dumb asses. It was the beginning of a long and emotional month for me, mostly because of how my classmates responded to finding out about it.

From Boy @ The Window:

The first person who came up to me to ask what happened was Craig. He saw me as I was leaving Carapella’s office, on my way to gym. We talked for several minutes about what had happened. He gave me a high-five, which completely surprised me. It was maybe the second or third time in three years that anyone cared to ask me about what was going on with me outside of school.

It wasn’t just Craig. From Phyllis and Wendy to Joe and Danny, they all seemed to care that I was all right. It was the first time in three years that I knew anyone actually cared about me even in the most basic sense. That whole twenty-four-hour period was overwhelming. Fighting off four muggers and chasing them for over a mile, Mom responding by taking me to the police and their tracking down of Corey, to my classmates’ genuine concern left me emotionally exhausted. I spent most of that evening at 616 asleep.

It was the last of four muggings and robberies in four years, at ages nine and twelve, and two at thirteen. People said that Harlem was rough, and from my trips on the Subway through and times in Harlem with Jimme, it was. It didn’t mean that Mount Vernon was soft or a place for only wannabe-thugs. Within a couple of months, Corey and his gang had all gone to juvenile detention for what they had done to me.

It would also be the last straw for me as far as my identifying myself as a Hebrew-Israelite. The fifth and sixth of December had taught me a lot about the human condition. My classmates had shown me their maturity upon learning about my mugging. Mom took more initiative on my behalf in taking me to the police than I’d seen her take in years. The police actually cared about my case and didn’t play around in tracking down my assailants. It took about three weeks, but I tracked Jimme down, and, after collecting some money for the holiday season, gave Maurice his thirteen dollars.

I guess I also learned a small lesson in redemption. The fact that I had even a teaspoonful of support was very different from the way my classmates might’ve treated me if Corey and company had gone after me two years before. I must’ve done something right in middle school and in ninth grade, enough to where I redeemed myself as a decent human being in the eyes of my classmates. Despite this, I didn’t trust it, not completely. I realized that things would get back to normal in a week or two, and I’d go back to my loner role. And while I was happy that Mom came to my aid, I knew that this was a rare event. Expecting Mom to be there to support me was really too much to ask.

Behind the emotionless mask based on Itachi Uchiha, a ninja from the Village Hidden In The Leaves (Konohagure) of the anime, Naruto, January 25, 2013. (http://sites.psu.edu).

Behind the emotionless mask based on Itachi Uchiha, a ninja from the Village Hidden In The Leaves (Konohagure) of the anime, Naruto, January 25, 2013. (JeiGoWay via http://sites.psu.edu).

Emotionally, it was as if someone had uncorked a bottle half-filled with warm champagne. I had gotten used to my role as nerdy loner at school and blank, unemotional eldest child in resistance to my idiot stepfather’s abuse at home. My classmates’ positive expressions toward me caused a psychological systems error, one that meant I could no longer avoid a simple truth. That it had been more than two and a half years since the last time I’d felt any connections to any person in my life. I had no friends, no family with which I shared an emotional or psychological bond. I hadn’t had a hug in at least two years. At least, until the day after my mugging.

After years of being weird and odd, of being made fun of (luckily Facebook, Twitter and cyber-bullying didn’t exist in ’83) and beaten up (with the constant threat of abuse to boot), and our plunge into welfare poverty, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make it to be fourteen, much less become a full-grown adult. I was approaching a crossroads, where my previously bottled-up emotions of the period between April ’81 and the mugging were coming directly into contact with my emotionless persona. It was an explosive mix, leaving me to question my very need to exist at all.

Lightning On A Cloudless Day

25 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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When lightning strikes out of a blue sky, July 29, 2011. (http://news.discovery.com via Getty Images).

The worst summer of my entire life began thirty years ago on this date, within hours of having survived the worst school year I ever had. Between unrequited love and low-level ostracism, Crush #1 and Captain Zimbabwe, I made a pact with myself on the twenty-fifth of June, the last day of seventh grade, to keep the humiliation that I endured that year from ever happening again (see my post “The Legend of ‘Captain Zimbabwe’” from May ’09).

After school that balmy Friday afternoon, me, Mom, my baby brothers Maurice (or Menelek, his Hebrew-Israelite name) and Yiscoc, and my older brother Darren’s “counselor” Mrs. Karen Holtslag went to Willson’s Woods Pool. The pool and the park were about two blocks from 616, the largest park in Mount Vernon. It included large picnic areas, a children’s playground, a large municipal pool (one of the few public pools in the city), and a concessions stand.

Mom and Mrs. Holtslag met to discuss Darren’s “progress” and his psychological needs (see my post “Summer Camp” from June ’09). The rest of us were there to have fun. It was one of those rare times where I got a chance to spend time with my younger siblings without thinking about their terrible fate, to have Maurice as their biological father. It would be like having Damien from The Omen movie series as the man of the house. Baby Maurice and Yiscoc needed this time out of the house more than I did, at least that’s what I thought at the time.

Vernon Woods condo community (once public housing or projects) on Pearsall Drive, 2012. (http://trulia.com)

I witnessed their father Maurice abuse baby Maurice and neglect Yiscoc on too many occasions. My stepfather once beat the six-month-old Maurice with a belt to keep him quiet because he was trying to sleep, and would forget to change his diapers while we were in school. Mom eventually found a babysitter to watch baby Maurice, but the damage was already done. Even though nearly three years old, baby Maurice had never said a word. The eleven-month-old Yiscoc had been stunningly quiet since his birth. Maybe Mrs. Holtslag should’ve been counseling Mom about them, not Darren.

Mom gave me a $10 bill to buy some snacks at the concession stand for everyone. As I walked over dreaming of hot dogs and mini-pizzas, careless me had the bill only half in my right hand. A big kid magically materialized, ran by and snatched the money from my hand. It seemed like God suspended the rules of time as soon as it happened. The moment that the thief grabbed the bill it felt as if a lightning bolt had ripped through the clear blue sky on that bright summer day. I knew deep down that my summer would mirror the previous fall, winter, and spring.

Chris Rock as “Pookie” from New Jack City (1991), June 24, 2012. (http://truthaboutit.net)

When my stepfather found out about my tragic error, he demanded that I tell him exactly who stole the money. “I’m not sure. I think it’s some guy named ‘Pookie’,” I said. Maurice walked over to me, poked me in the chest, and told me to get the money back from Pookie in two weeks. I said, “I can get the money from Jimme,” but he didn’t want to hear that, shaking his head in the process. I pointed out that Pookie was much bigger than me, and that I didn’t know where he lived. Maurice told me to “find out where he lives!” Otherwise I would get a “whuppin’.”

I spent nearly two weeks asking questions and running around the Pearsall Drive projects (now the more affluent Vernon Woods condo community, bought from the city and converted in ’84 or ’85) looking for Pookie after that. I learned that he was sixteen years old, about five-foot-ten, and lived with his mother on the fourth floor of one of the six buildings in the project community. I hadn’t seen him once in my eleven days of snooping since the robbery. I was terrified to be at 616, and too scared to be outside. I spent my afternoons when I wasn’t out on one of my Pookie hunts in 616’s stairwells and basements crying and thinking. I thought, “Why me?”

But not-so-deep-down, I knew why. I stopped acting like Maurice was my father and a changed man after what he did to Mom. This was punishment for not fulfilling the Torah’s law regarding fathers and mothers, “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days be long on the land that the Lord hath giveth thee.” “Yeah, right!,” I thought. We had no land, no promised land, and no prayed-for-land either. And Maurice, well, if he was my father, then what did that mean for me, Darren, and Jimme? Torah or no Torah, I swore that I’d never call my bastard stepfather “Dad” again.

The Last Mugging

06 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Hebrew-Israelite, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Politics, race, Religion, Youth

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East Prospect, Mount Vernon, New York, where Foodtown (once Waldbaum’s) and Rite Aid (formerly Genovese) are today – about 30m from where I was mugged in ’83. (http://maps.google.com).

Twenty-eight years ago yesterday was the last time I was mugged, the last time I had to fend off wannabe thugs. As important as the challenges I face in my life are now, the ones I faced just before my fourteenth birthday were a thousand times more intense, if for no other reason than I nearly took the path of suicide back then.

For whatever the reason, December ’83 was spent without food at 616, this time in the welfare and food stamps era. My mother hadn’t received her welfare check on time. She went to Maurice for money to buy groceries, a necessarily rare move. I’d rather had gone to A (see “The Legend of ‘Captain Zimbabwe‘” post from May ’09) for grocery money than to my stepfather. He came to me and gave me twenty dollars to go to the store.

“Donald, do not lose this money. I don’t want no excuses. I want all my change back. If you have to, catch the bus,” Maurice said to me. I had already missed the last 7 bus going into Mount Vernon, and I knew that by the time I’d finish shopping that I would miss the last 7 for the return.

After shopping for Great Northern beans and rice and some beef neck bones and spinach at the Waldbaum’s on East Prospect — which cost $6.50 by the way —  I walked out with the intent of cutting down Park Avenue to East Lincoln and avoiding most of the potential for a mugging. But it seemed that Maurice’s God had other plans for me. I barely got to the poorly lit corner of Prospect and Park before I was ambushed by four guys, all around my age and size. Part of it was my fault, as the Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips that held that corner had closed the year before, a casualty of the recent recession. I saw other people around, but none came to my aid.

So here it was that I was jumped by a bunch of dumb kids with dumb parents trying to beat me up and take thirteen dollars from me. Apparently I must’ve learned something from my idiot stepfather, because I was able to kick, punch, and bite my way out of the mugging at first. I kicked one dumb ass in the balls, bit another’s arm, punched someone else in the jaw. I kept going until someone was able to hold me long enough to reach into my pocket and take the money. Then they took off, running across one of the bridges into the South Side.

Grocery bag torn to shreds, food on the ground, shirttail hanging out, I took off after them, now thinking only about what I’d face at home if I didn’t come in with Maurice’s money. They went east up First Street, turned right up South Fulton, and then left on East Third. With groceries in tow, I just couldn’t keep up.

It was after 9 by the time I got back from Waldbaum’s and my mugging. Mom was worried, actually worried, while Maurice was just pissed.

My mother was more concerned about what happened during the actual fight. I told her about what happened.

“You see someone you know?”

“I think one of them’s named C,” I said.

C and his older brother lived in the equally impoverished building next door, 630 East Lincoln. C’s older brother was in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade with me at Holmes. I hadn’t seen either of them much since elementary school, but I recognized him immediately as the one who said, “Give me the money, muthafucka!” Those were some ugly kids, inside and out.

In an unbelievable turn, my mother took me the next morning to the Mount Vernon Police Station, its juvenile division, to have me press charges, look at mug shots and ID my attackers. It didn’t take me long to ID C and his henchmen, all of whom had juvenile records. Before I left, they had hauled C into the station for booking. I was glad to see that my fists had done some damage to his face.

I went to school that day with my mother and ended up signing in around sixth period. One of my classmates saw me as I was leaving Vice Principal Carapella’s office, on my way to gym. We talked for several minutes about what had happened. He gave me a high-five. It was maybe the second or third time in three years that anyone cared to ask me about what was going on with me outside of school.

That whole twenty-four-hour period was overwhelming. I spent most of that evening at 616 asleep. I spent the rest of the month until my fourteenth birthday considering how to off myself. I spent part of my birthday standing thirteen feet over the Hutchinson River Parkway, on top of the stone facing looking down at the traffic while tears streamed down my cheeks.

All because I had lost hope, and my life was filled with contradiction. Luckily, I found a reason to live, and a reason to begin to see good in others, at least outside of 616.