by Jorja Leap
“I have memories—I don’t need to hang on to things.” Mark was remarkably matter-of-fact. “I’ve had a wonderful career and now it’s over. In fact, I’m glad it’s over. It’s time to move on.”
These were not just words. Over the next few months, it was clear Mark was finished with the LAPD. He rarely talked about the department and was only mildly interested when Bill Bratton announced he was stepping down as chief. While Greg, Celeste, and I madly handicapped who the next chief might be, Mark interviewed architects and contractors. He drove Shannon to school and experimented with different gourmet recipes. When I came home, he had a beautiful dinner prepared and was interested in the latest developments in the streets. Shannon was slowly adjusting to life with a full-time, stay-at-home parent. And I was learning to live without the black cloud of Mark’s profession hovering over me. Mark had definite thoughts about most of the homies, including Milagro.
“Y’know, you need to see how Milagro does with his recovery before you start figuring out how to help him,” Mark said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I remember with my own mom—she’d stop drinking, then start, stop, then start. Is Milagro really in recovery? Maybe he needs therapy too.”
This was another retirement dividend—Mark was much more emotionally open. He talked a great deal about his mother’s demons and his own. Still, I discounted what he said about Milagro. It took me almost two years and multiple relapses before I learned the extent of Milagro’s demons, which included an absent father, a neglectful mother, and sexual abuse. I also learned that Milagro’s story was not exceptional.
After interviewing gang members for ten years, I can safely say that the vast majority have been beaten, sexually abused, neglected, or some combination of all three. And they lie to themselves to compound the problem. Most men recall family memories that begin positively. Chino Sanchez, a gangbanger turned heroin addict, had assured me his father was “very loving. He was a good dad, he took care of me.” But over the course of several interviews, the stories of abuse began to pile up. This loving father would hit him with a “two by four,” burn him with cigarettes, and constantly tell him he was “trash, nothing, no good.” Still Chino insisted, “He tried to be a good father.” The women are less equivocal. They waste little time discussing the virtues of their mothers or fathers. Instead—when asked about their families—many of them, like Joanna, are off and running.
“My father was a motherfucker. He abused me. And I was his favorite! But he beat the crap out of me every chance he got.” None of this is a rationalization as much as an explanation. These homies and homegirls have been abused, and their only cure is more anger, more rage, more banging. Greg Boyle keeps telling me, “People don’t run to gangs; they are running away from something to the gang.” And many run from the gang to drugs.
I sometimes wonder if being part of the neighborhood serves as an antidepressant, taken to avoid the pain of everyday life. Many of the homies and homegirls are self-medicating, using the thrill of gang life to avoid feeling depression, emptiness, loss—maladies they have experienced since childhood. Anyone who tries to leave the neighborhood has to replace the gang with something. They need the high and the excitement.
Milagro Diaz fit into all of those categories. His father had died when he was eight; he had been raised by the neighborhood from the time he was ten. He told me how an older homie—who was probably mentally ill—sexually abused him when he was very young. Perhaps this was what led Milagro to pursue women, with both great energy and success, from an early age. He always consulted me about his women, but his latest problem required extra help.
“I need to ask you something,” Milagro began. “My girlfriend is the daughter of my cousin, so that would be—what, my niece? Can I marry her? I want to—I’ve never felt like this.” Milagro proceeded to describe how they met at a bar where she is an exotic dancer. There were so many things wrong with this revelation, I didn’t know how to respond. His presence in a bar doesn’t bode well for his recovery. “Exotic dancer” is, of course, code for stripper. As for marrying his cousin, I call Joe Kibre, my former attorney and brother in arms. He is busily dodging tabloid reporters who have leaked the news that he is drafting the divorce settlement of an actress who has won the Academy Award and discovered her husband’s infidelity all in the same month. Still, he takes a break from writing a forty-page brief to tell me that Joseph cannot marry his cousin. California case law is emphatic on that score.
“I don’t think anyone in the state of California would investigate this.” Joe pauses. “But what the fuck is going on with you? Who are these homies? Do you need a gun?”
I know Joe is half-joking, but I laugh, imagining what the homies would say if I walked around “strapped.” I thank him for his concern. I am less amused when another one of Mark’s former colleagues—a Gang Intervention Team (GIT) lieutenant—asks if I would consider working undercover for the LAPD. I consult Elie Miller, and she starts to giggle.
“How stupid are they?” she asks me. “Do you want to report this?”
I am not interested in reporting anything or anyone. I just don’t want information about this offer on the street. I don’t need this latest incident to convince me that the LAPD leaks like a sieve. I know which city officials and county supervisors are informants, who smoked marijuana in college, and who Daryl Gates used to jam up in the good old days. I am careful when I talk to people from the neighborhood. It is important for them to know that Mark is now retired, in therapy, and that we have a daughter.
I don’t answer the phone when the GIT lieutenant calls again—blessing the gods for caller ID. I learned from what has happened to Mario Corona that the LAPD watches gangbangers carefully. Joanna has told me how vigilant the cops have grown, openly surveilling people in Florencia. Angel Duarte has been busted.
“I always knew Angel was big in the drug industry,” Joanna tells me, and I feel like we are in Detroit discussing what the new line of Fords and Chevies will look like.
I ask Joanna what she thinks of Milagro.
“He’s an addict, Mama,” she announces. “Y’know you can’t fucking trust an addict. I’ve been through it with Bullet. The first time they put a needle in his arm, he was fuckin’ eleven years old—he’s been an addict his whole life. That’s why he can’t fuckin’ make it in the neighborhood. And he can’t fuckin’ make it on the outside.”
Milagro’s struggle with drugs was emblematic of so many struggles. I had seen this happen too many times. And when a homie replaces their attachment to a gang with an attachment to a drug, there is more trouble. It is a twisting road of negative attachments that invariably leads to the same destination—the criminal justice system.
The good news is that in 2000 voters in the state of California passed Proposition 36—the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act. Prop 36 decreed that “a non-violent” individual arrested for “simple drug possession” (i.e., an addict, not a dealer) should be sentenced to substance-abuse treatment instead of incarceration. But before anyone can start celebrating a “Prop 36 sentence,” he quickly learns there is an entire convoluted system of drug court and drug testing and sobriety groups and antidrug education he is required to undertake. No one skips out free. This approach has saved the already overcrowded California state prison system from housing even more inmates who were simply addicts caught with a controlled substance. Most people agree with the basic philosophy behind Prop 36. Virtually every active and retired police officer I know, including Mark, believes that drugs should be legalized so that addicts can get what they need, the state can tax the product, and cops can be freed up to do what they really want—fight crime.
At any give time, about 10 percent of the homies I connect with, including Milagro, are involved in some sort of Prop 36 arrangement—although their tendency to relapse is stunning. Right now, after another relapse, Milagro is on his way to rehab again. My cell phone rings. My brother Tony is calling to update me that Nick
has resurfaced and once again gone into rehab—this time at the Salvation Army facility. It’s a long way from Betty Ford. He’s out of money and out of luck. The state of California is proceeding with action to take away his medical license, and rehab is a dodge to avoid any sort of punishment. My brilliant, beloved cousin. Tony gives me the address of the rehab center, but I don’t write it down. I’m not sure I can be around Nick right now.
People from the neighborhoods share this sentiment. They don’t want to be around drug addicts. They are dangerous. This lesson is reinforced two days later when Joanna’s cousin Carlos comes into Homeboy to talk with me.
He has moved out of Bell and relocated to a small shack in back of his sister’s house in Pacoima. I don’t know what this means in terms of his standing with Florencia. Is he moving away from them? While Carlos is safe in Pacoima, there are new problems. His cousin, Michael, has failed to pay his drug dealer.
“He burned his connect,” Carlos tells me, “and they’re looking for him.” In the meantime, Michael has been arrested on narcotics charges, and his grandmother has used her house to secure bail.
“Everyone argued with my grandmother,” Carlos explains. “We don’t wanna give up our property. We’ve lived in Bell a long, long time.” I never knew that Carlos and Joanna’s sweet little drug dealer grandmother lived in Bell. This all makes sense. The city of Bell, in southeast Los Angeles County, has swamped the news headlines in recent weeks, including reports of a city manager earning nearly $1 million a year in salary and benefits. Local talk shows were devoted to answering the question, “Is Bell governable?” I want to answer, “Of course it is. And the lunatics are running the asylum.”
Carlos’s family is part of something most people can’t imagine. The American dream sometimes reaches into the gang, as midlevel drug dealers work at accumulating enough money to buy houses—usually in impoverished areas. The cash in the bureau drawer graduates to the single-family residence—it’s the offshore bank account of choice. No one trusts his or her local savings and loan, with good reason.
But there are problems with homie alternative-investment strategies. A few days later, Carlos is back at Homeboy, breathless with fury. When I ask what’s happened, he starts by explaining that he puts his cash in a hiding place in his drawer and always pays his landlord two months in advance.
“But now my cousin—Michael—bailed out of jail, found my money, and took $600. Y’know, I remember, when I first got outta prison, he stole all my clothes. After he did that, I didn’t say anything. I waited until one night when my grandmother went to play bingo and then I gave him a beatin’. I told him, ya better not steal anything else muthafucka, and now—fuck—he steals my $600. It doesn’t matter that I beat the shit out of him before—he still stole my fuckin’ money.
“He needs rehab,” Carlos goes on, and then outlines an elaborate plan to get the “dog” team or the “cat” team—to go “get” his cousin.
I have to explain that the PET unit, the Psychiatric Emergency Team he has renamed, does not act like a vigilante force. “I’m not worried about his addiction right now,” I tell Carlos. “You know your cousin is gonna get himself killed. He’s burning his connects, he’s upsetting you, he’s selling out everyone.” Carlos nods vigorously while I wonder, Why on earth am I advising a member of Florencia? He knows more about what’s in store for his cousin than I can ever imagine.
“I know!!!” Carlos shouts in agreement. “I don’t wanna kill him, but I would like the neighborhood to give him a whuppin’.” But then Carlos openly admits that he’s worried about something happening to his cousin because “it would kill my grandmother, she has a heart problem—she has a bad heart. And if she gets sick, I gotta take care of her.”
There’s something wrong with Carlos’s story. Just exactly where is Michael? Right now, according to the latest FBI reports, Florencia is one of the biggest gangs in America. It’s hard for me to believe that the neighborhood has not tracked down one small-time drug addict. And the grandmother owned one of three houses on one lot—why didn’t they just take her into one of the other houses? Carlos has a single in Pacoima and she is living there? It doesn’t make sense.
Meanwhile, Joanna walks by and motions that she wants to talk to me, ignoring Carlos.
“Joanna is pissed at me,” Carlos admits.
I assume that this has something to do with Bullet, and I am right. Bullet is using again—for what feels like the millionth time. Joanna has told Bullet that if he doesn’t go to rehab he is not a man. While I disapprove of her particular brand of therapy crossed with tough love, I am keeping my mouth shut. Carlos, who is not on a first-name basis with sensitivity, has intervened.
“I told Joanna—you’re just gonna drive him into using more. Leave Bullet alone.” Joanna overhears Carlos’s explanation and turns around.
“Mind your own fuckin’ business,” she spits out. “You’re still in the fuckin’ neighborhood. I’m tryin’ to get out, and I’m tryin’ to get Little Marcos’s father off of crystal meth. I don’t need your drama.”
Two weeks later, Carlos tests dirty for THC—the derivative of marijuana. He is fired from Homeboy, which practices zero tolerance for drug use and routinely tests its employees. Carlos goes walking with me and tells me the news. He is near tears.
“Can I come in and volunteer at Homeboy while I get my unemployment?” he asks. I look at him with a jaundiced eye. Between Nick and Milagro and Bullet, I’ve lost my virginity. I’m channeling Fabian: you have got to want your recovery. Meanwhile, Carlos is adamant that he will come in—with or without pay.
That afternoon, I meet a homie in Rampart who tells me he has just gotten out of rehab at the Salvation Army. I describe Nick, and he immediately says, “I know him—the doctor!!!” I am not sure I can take much more of this, when I get a text from Elena who wants to see me “right away.”
I drive over to Homeboy and find Elena working in the café. I am overjoyed to see her. She looks healthy and happy.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I’m pregnant.”
Seventeen. The Ties That Bind
I don’t know what it would be like to have love without pain.
—Dimples
The Homeboy case managers are meeting to discuss their clients. I half-listen, but my mind is on Elena, who has just purchased her new membership card for Dysfunctional Families, Inc. I signal to one of the therapists, Christina Dominguez, that I need to talk with her, and we walk outside.
“What are we gonna do about Elena?” I ask her.
“We can’t do anything now—she needs to report him for abuse and she won’t.” What we both avoid saying is that we’re pretty sure Elena got pregnant to resolve her problems with Kevin.
I can’t find Kevin anywhere. I finally drive down to Leimert Park so I can talk to Maniac.
“Man, I knew you would ask me,” he sighs. “I don’t know much except he’s doin’ a lotta meth.” While he’s talking I notice something. As so many homies would put it, he looks “tame.” His cornrows are shorn and his new appearance renders him photo-ready for GQ. “He’s never gonna be able to get out of the neighborhood unless he stops doin’ alla this shit.”
“Do you think he’s got a problem—should he go to rehab?” I think out loud about the extent of Kevin’s addiction.
“I don’t think so—I think it’s worse than drugs. I think he’s really fucked up.”
We are reaching critical mass here—Maniac, Greg, Hector, me—all agreeing that Kevin Williams is mentally ill.
Maniac, however, wants to change the subject. His girlfriend has just given birth to a boy and he scrolls through photo after photo on his cell phone. He also shows me the new gold ring he has bought himself in honor of his son’s birth.
“I got my baby mama some diamond earrings,” he adds.
At this point I want to ask him his investment strategy. There’s no way he can afford all this—the laptop, the bling—with no visible means
of support. “So, what’s going on?” I ask.
“Oh, this and that.” Maniac is evasive.
“Are you dealing?”
He bursts out laughing. “Nah, but I got some stuff goin’. Some hardware.”
I remain silent.
“I’m not really workin’ anymore. I’m just helpin’ the neighborhood.”
I wince. “You’re so smart—why are you doing this?”
But I already know the answer to the question. Maniac has not been caught. Maniac has never been caught. Maniac has been in the Rollin 60s for twelve years and has never gone to prison. Why fix it if it isn’t broken? The threat is minimal, and the economic reward is way too great. So he’s not committing crimes—he’s just putting guns in the hands of his homies. I am shaken. I leave. I never find Kevin. The next day Elena texts me that she and Kevin are fine. He is looking for a new job. “No worries,” her message ends.
It is the day after Easter, and Homeboy is filled to the rafters. Joanna texts me and asks me to come upstairs to the office she shares with three other staff members. She is alone.
“Bullet relapsed—again,” she announces.
“I was afraid of that,” I tell her.
“It’s because of all the trouble.”
“Have you heard from DCFS?”
“Those fuckers—they closed the case.”
In the past two weeks Joanna’s life has grown increasingly complicated. She has stopped her outside enterprises and is back working at Homeboy. With Bullet in rehab, she assumed responsibility for his twelve-year-old son, Joaquin. So now she was watching Joaquin along with her own kids, Sonia, Juan, Lupita, and Little Marcos. A few days later, the hood version of Eight Is Enough went off the rails. Lupita, who is six, told Joanna that Joaquin had tried to fondle her. Reluctantly, Joanna called the Department of Children and Family Services and reported what had occurred. This is probably the most dramatic sign yet that Joanna wants to change. It is no small thing that she contacted the same agency that had previously investigated her and temporarily removed Sonia, Juan, and Lupita from her. Everyone I knew who belonged to a neighborhood feared DCFS second only to law enforcement. So many of them had been “in the system” as children themselves. Now, they might be abusive, neglectful, indifferent parents—but no gang family wanted DCFS to take their babies away. Still, Joanna had logged a complaint and met with a social worker.