There Are No Children Here

by Alex Kotlowitz

  In one week’s time, in late June, the local management staff at Horner came under attack. The assistant manager had to fend off two teenagers with a camera he was carrying. Three days later, the manager’s 1989 Hyundai was vandalized while parked in front of the management office; the windows were smashed and the seats ripped. The office’s key-cutting machine was taken. An elevator repairman had an $800 gold chain ripped from his neck. Then the offices were broken into and only files were taken. In later weeks, two female maintenance employees were badly beaten by a group of teenage girls, and a bricklayer had a gun put to his head when he mistakenly bricked over a bag of cocaine.

  What’s more, the local manager, Gwen Anderson, was shot at while escorting a group of U.S. Census workers through the development. During their tour, she discovered on the eleventh floor of 111 North Wood a gaping hole in a wall, which led to another building, 120 North Hermitage. The passageway was six feet high and six feet wide, big enough for people to pass through. The gangs had punched it out for easy escape from the police—and the tenants hadn’t reported it because it gave them access to the other building’s elevators if theirs weren’t working. On seeing this makeshift tunnel, Anderson wept. No one had ever reported it to the office.

  The main drug-dealing operations were now carried on at the building immediately to the west of Lafeyette and Pharoah’s building, 1943 West Lake. The CHA had boarded over the windows of a first-floor vacant apartment there, but the gangs ripped out the wooden planks so that they had an escape route. In what became a war of nerves, the gangs ripped out the wooden boards and the CHA replaced them as often as four times a week.

  Anderson wrote in a memo to her boss, Lane, that “these acts are deliberate messages being sent to us to back off. We cannot emphasize the urgency of this situation with regards to our safety, and coping with this level of stress, fears, and pressure; not to mention the sounds of gunfire which can be heard throughout the day in the Management Office.” Anderson now wore gym shoes so that she could run if need be. She also carried a weapon in her purse and, though she wouldn’t admit to it, didn’t deny that it was a gun. The residents, had they known, certainly would have understood.

  The shooting continued. Pharoah told his mother he hoped Lane would sweep their building. It would be good, he told her, if people had to have identification cards to get in. LaJoe thought it would help make life safer, but Lane had had dozens of requests from tenants to secure their buildings. He didn’t have enough money to sweep them all. LaJoe’s building was one of 125 Lane felt needed to be swept. But to do all of them, Lane needed $30 million, money the CHA didn’t have.

  One night in July, amid the rat-a-tat-tat of a semi-automatic weapon, LaJoe heard a noise in the hallway. She turned to see what it was. In his sleep, Pharoah was crawling in the hallway to escape the gunfire.

  A few days later, Pharoah, now eleven, told a friend: “I worry about dying, dying at a young age, while you’re little. I’ll be thinking about I want to get out of the jects. I want to get out. It ain’t no joke when you die.”

  Twenty-eight

  LAFEYETTE sat on the edge of his bed as he quietly folded his shirts and his slacks and stuffed them into a cardboard box. His whole wardrobe fit without much fuss. Pharoah lay in bed and watched. The only sound was the water splashing against the bathtub and the occasional roar of the El outside. LaJoe poked her head through the door.

  “Come on, Laf, we got to get going,” she said. She looked at the box next to Lafeyette and realized how scared he must be.

  Four weeks earlier, on June 2, Lafeyette had been arrested, along with four other boys, for allegedly breaking into a small Toyota truck parked by the stadium. Taken from the truck were two speakers, a radar detector, twenty music tapes, and a box of shotgun shells. Lafeyette had insisted to his mother that he hadn’t done it, that he happened to be passing by when a boy he knew only slightly smashed the window of the truck. Lafeyette told his mother he ran for fear of getting blamed. The police caught him and four others racing toward the safety of Horner. Today was their first date in court. It was Lafeyette’s first arrest,

  “They’re not going to keep you locked up,” she assured Lafeyette. “They’re just going to hear the case.”

  “No, they kept Terence. I ain’t coming back. Remember that day you told Terence to come and go to court and he didn’t come back?” Lafeyette was referring to the time Terence had been falsely accused of shooting Maggie Atlas.

  “Yeah, I remember that day.” LaJoe didn’t know what else to say. Though she knew better, LaJoe got to worrying too. What if they did keep Lafeyette? If they locked him up? What would she do? Could she last through another child’s going off to jail? LaJoe gathered herself before her fears overran her.

  “Take that stuff out of that box, Laf. You ain’t going nowhere. Now come on; I’ll meet you outside.” LaJoe walked out of the room.

  Lafeyette didn’t take his clothes from the box. Instead, he placed the box on the highest shelf in the open closet.

  “Don’t you go wearing none of these,” he instructed Pharoah, who remained tucked beneath the covers. “You hear me?”

  “See you,” Pharoah said softly. “Good luck.” He too wasn’t sure that Lafeyette was coming back.

  Since the shoplifting incident and the altercation at the stadium last December, Lafeyette hadn’t been in any trouble with the police. LaJoe had watched him closely. As she had requested, he no longer wore a baseball cap or his earring. He stopped going to the other side of Damen Avenue to the Four Corners’ building. Lafeyette had been hanging out with a fast crowd, but he excused himself when it looked as if things might get out of hand. Just a couple of weeks ago, Rickey had asked Lafeyette if he wanted to go outside, but Lafeyette had had a bad feeling. Rickey seemed nervous and antsy, as if he were ready to do something. Lafeyette told him to go on without him. Later that day, Rickey was arrested for snatching a chain off a motorist stopped at the traffic light.

  If anything, Lafeyette seemed to be spending more time in the house. He didn’t trust going outside. Too much going on, he’d say. Too many wrongheaded people. But cooped up inside the sweaty, noisy apartment wasn’t without its tensions. LaShawn often left in the mornings and didn’t return until nightfall. “I’m going to the store,” she’d tell Lafeyette or their mother. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” “Shawnie, you better be back. I ain’t watching after your Baldheaded and DeShaun,” Lafeyette or LaJoe would warn her. LaShawn wouldn’t come back until evening. This scene repeated itself with such regularity that whenever LaShawn left home, it was assumed that LaJoe or Lafeyette or Tyisha would baby-sit for her kids. Lafeyette let her know how he felt. He’d yell at her for leaving her children behind. He’d tell friends of hers who came over that she wasn’t home even if she was. He spoke his mind when it came to family and drugs. Though LaShawn denied taking anything since she’d gone cold turkey shortly before the birth of DeShaun four months earlier, Lafeyette suspected her of still dabbling, and like his mother, he’d have none of it.

  Late in the afternoon of June 2, Lafeyette went to the stadium to watch the Chicago Bulls go in early for a playoff game. The kids often stood by the entranceway to catch a glimpse of their heroes, particularly Michael Jordan. Lafeyette was with a boy named Curtis. They craned their necks to see players Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. No Michael Jordan.

  At the same time, Michael Berger, who worked for a catering service, pulled up to the stadium in his white Toyota four-wheel drive. His company had been hired to cater a party for the Bulls and CBS. When he arrived, a young boy, no older than fourteen, asked Berger whether he couldn’t watch his vehicle. Berger told him no. “I’d sure hate for something to happen to your truck, mister,” the boy said. It was a not uncommon ploy: scare them into paying you to watch their car. But Berger refused. He locked the doors and pretended to set a burglar alarm.

  Forty-five minutes later Berger came out of the stadium to find police surrounding the truck and t
he right passenger window smashed. The dash had been ripped apart. Whoever had broken in couldn’t get the radio out, but had ripped it apart in trying. A few minutes later, a police officer spotted five black teens running toward Horner. They started dropping things from their pockets: a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and five of Berger’s tapes. Though he didn’t know who dropped what, the officer arrested all five boys, including Lafeyette.

  The Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, a five-story building, takes up an entire block. Only a mile and a half south of Horner, it was built in 1973, though it looks much newer. Everyone calls it the Audy Home, the name of the building it had replaced. Any child seventeen and under who has committed a crime is tried here unless the violation is heinous and violent, like murder or rape, in which case he or she can be tried in the adult courts.

  Illinois’s juvenile court system, founded in 1899, is the oldest in the country. It had once been staffed mostly by social workers. The lawyers have begun to take over. There are 250 probation officers and 137 state’s attorneys, public guardians, and public defenders operating in the juvenile court. For many lawyers and judges, it’s a training ground, a place where they can prove their mettle and move on to the real thing, adult court. Some attorneys derisively refer to it as “the kiddie court.” It is not a friendly place. The attorneys and judges are overworked. Public defenders frequently have only a few minutes to prepare for a case. Judges handle seventy-five to eighty cases a day, twice the load of a judge in adult criminal court. Each probation officer keeps watch over thirty-eight to forty children.

  The number of cases had jumped 40 percent in the three years since 1986. No one is quite sure why; speculation varies. It could be the rampant use of drugs or the unwillingness of the police to let juveniles go with just a warning, or the greater effort, for political reasons, to prosecute even the most minor of offenses.

  The fourteen courtrooms line both sides of the first floor. The juvenile jail occupies the other four floors. The jail—or detention center, as it’s called—houses up to five hundred children at a time. Some children have been sent here as many as fourteen or fifteen times. Many kids like it here. They’re guaranteed three square meals a day, and the school is among the best in the city because of the low teacher-student ratio. Nonetheless, imprisonment can drive children crazy. Since the center’s staff doesn’t practice corporal punishment, misbehaving children are locked in their cells, narrow brick rooms six feet by thirteen. Some restrained children have, for lack of anything better to do, used their fingers to scrape away the mortar that holds the bricks in place. Some have dug deep enough to remove a brick and then urinate into the cell next to theirs. On the day Lafeyette went to court, Rickey was just completing a two-week stay here for the smash and grab he had committed on Damen Avenue.

  LaJoe pushed her way through the revolving doors. A quiet and despondent Lafeyette followed. All LaJoe could think about was Terence. How often she had walked through these doors with Terence straggling behind her. Often, she didn’t know if they’d leave together. Sometimes, they locked him up. Theft. Shoplifting. The shooting of which he was eventually exonerated. It exhausted LaJoe. But she always came with her son. She never let him come alone, as other mothers did. She waited with Terence on the hard-backed benches for their case to be called. Sometimes it took hours. She knew the building well by now. All cases involving children from Horner were heard in the same courtroom, Calendar 14. She could get tea from the vending machines in the basement, or, if they had to wait an especially long time, she could go across the street to Lu-Lu’s for a hamburger or a pork chop sandwich. It was all so familiar. But it had been a while since she’d been here; Terence last had a case tried as a juvenile over two years ago. Now, she thought, here we go all over again.

  The hearing was set for one-thirty. They had gotten there fifteen minutes early. It was to be a long, anxiety-ridden day.

  After they walked through the metal detectors, LaJoe and Lafeyette went to the information desk.

  “My son has a court date today. Can you tell me what courtroom he’s in?” LaJoe asked the gray-haired lady behind the desk.

  “What’s his name?” the woman asked.

  “Lafeyette Rivers.”

  The woman leisurely flipped through a pile of papers on her desk to the R’s. “Is his name Derrick?” she asked.

  “No. Lafeyette,” LaJoe said patiently.

  She flipped through another pile on her desk. “There’s no Lafeyette.”

  “We were told to be in court today,” LaJoe insisted. The gray-haired lady told LaJoe to go to the clerk’s office. They, too, had nothing. So they sent LaJoe and Lafeyette to yet a third person who, like the others, flipped through a pile of papers. Nothing. LaJoe went back to the gray-haired lady.

  “I know we got a court date today,” LaJoe insisted. “I know it.”

  The woman sifted through her piles of paper again. “Lafeyette Rivers?” she asked, her finger resting on Lafeyette’s name. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “It was my fault. Just have a seat over there until Mr. Smith gets back from lunch.”

  LaJoe and Lafeyette joined the four other accused boys and their mothers on a marble bench in the lobby. Lafeyette took some ribbing for his T-shirt, which hailed the Detroit Pistons as the NBA champions. He had let his hair grow long and combed it straight back, so that now it almost reached his shoulders. Usually well groomed, he looked a bit ragged, though he had pressed his black Levi’s and the T-shirt for the occasion. LaJoe wished she had gotten his hair trimmed.

  Two of the boys were called into a nearby office. A few minutes later, the woman who was interviewing them peered out the door. “Were both those boys with you?” she asked of the remaining three children sitting nervously on the marble bench. Nobody answered. LaJoe was about to tell Lafeyette and the others not to respond. If they did, they might incriminate themselves, she thought. But before she could say anything one of the boys spoke up. “Yeah,” Curtis told the woman. A bit ashamed at having put his friends at the scene of the crime, Curtis bowed his head. “They’re only kids,” LaJoe muttered to one of the other mothers. “She shouldn’t do them like that.” Though nobody explained it to the parents, such statements couldn’t be used in court.

  Lafeyette was called next. Each child who comes to juvenile court goes through an initial screening process in which a court official interviews the child to ascertain whether there is a real case. No statements made in the interview can be used in court. It is a way to weed out cases that do not have to go to trial. Children who have been arrested for stealing candy or toilet paper, for example, may just get a lecture and be sent home.

  Lafeyette sat next to LaJoe across the desk from Mr. Smith, the court official. Lafeyette’s eyes focused on the wall behind his inquisitor. He had admitted to LaJoe just before they walked into the room that he was scared.

  “What’s your name?” Mr. Smith asked.

  “Lafeyette.” His voice was barely audible.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Nineteen-twenty West Washington.”

  “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “LaJoe Rivers.”

  “Your father’s?”

  “Paul Rivers.”

  “Where do you go to school?”

  “Suder.”

  The questions were quick and impersonal. Lafeyette responded in kind. His hollow voice didn’t carry. He refused to look at Mr. Smith.

  Mr. Smith straightened a piece of paper in front of him and read it through quickly before reading it to Lafeyette and LaJoe. It was the allegation that he, with four others, had broken into a car and stolen over $300 worth of goods. “Did you do it?” Mr. Smith asked.

  “No,” Lafeyette replied and then proceeded to tell his version of the story. It was what he had told his mother. He and Curtis had been at the stadium to view the players after getting something to eat at a nearby store. When they were leaving, they saw a boy smash the window of the Toyota. Worried that the police
might show up and blame them, they ran toward home. Lafeyette told it without any trace of emotion. He had insisted from the start that he was innocent.

  Mr. Smith paused. It was clear that he didn’t believe Lafeyette. He didn’t seem even to have listened to his explanation. “You know better,” Mr. Smith proceeded to lecture. “If one of your buddies is breaking into a car, leave.”

  “We did,” insisted Lafeyette, his eyes still focused on the wall. Mr. Smith continued, talking as much to himself as to LaJoe and Lafeyette.

  “It’s called extortion. They ask to watch your car. If you don’t let them, they’ll break into it. That’s extortion. I’m smart. When I go to the stadium I give the kids a couple of bucks. Nothing will happen to it. If you don’t give them any money, you know you better watch out. You just might have a window smashed. I’m smarter than that.” And on he went, lecturing LaJoe and Lafeyette about all that he took into consideration when parking by the stadium. LaJoe shifted restlessly in her chair. Lafeyette continued to stare, his thoughts far away from Mr. Smith’s reproof.

  Finished, Mr. Smith handed LaJoe a copy of the complaint. He told her that the man whose car the boys had robbed had identified some of them. “It could be a problem,” he said. He directed them to Calendar 7. Calendar 14, where the cases from Horner were usually heard, was closed down for the afternoon.

  The waiting rooms are the size of racquetball courts. On each side are five rows of wooden benches. The courtroom is sealed off. Outsiders aren’t allowed to view the proceedings, as they are in adult courts. People may wait hours for their cases to be called. Women have given birth in these waiting rooms, and gangs have brawled.

  LaJoe gave her name to the deputy sheriff in charge of this courtroom. He told her he’d call them when their name came up. That was at two-thirty. Lafeyette and LaJoe sat. Occasionally, LaJoe would go out into the hallway for a smoke or would strike up a conversation with another mother. Lafeyette remained silent. He slumped on a bench next to Curtis. Curtis’s name was called around three-thirty, and he left with his mother. Lafeyette sat and waited. He ran his fingers along the carvings on the bench. A dollar sign. A six-pointed star. The numeral four with a C and an H, for Four Corner Hustlers. He wondered what they’d been carved with. A screwdriver? A knife? A key? How did they get a tool through the metal detectors? His mind wandered. He wanted to go home.