Diesel Heart

by Melvin Carter Jr

  We had our confrontations and challenges, but Toni and I backed each other while monitoring each other’s temper. (Yeah, the lady had a flash point to be avoided.) We’d all go our separate ways throughout the day, but everyone knew to come home for dinner-time discussion. As an innercity father, I decreed that there was no substitute for being home for dinner every evening. We gathered around the TV on Thursdays for pizza night. The Cosby Show and Different World series planted images of Black college campus life during my children’s high school years.

  I was a police detective in the Juvenile Division at a time when juvenile crime skyrocketed, and my phone rang off the hook in the office by day and at home by night. Ironically, my banishment from prestige turned out to be among my life’s biggest blessings. I discovered my purpose in life! All the issues, complexes, and syndromes I had experienced and survived had me overly prepared to be a juvenile detective. In effect, I could intervene in many lives at various intervals, heading off gang violence, calming family squabbles, providing character witness in courtrooms. The people who came to me the most for help were the friends and families of those who were the most critical of my decision to become a cop.

  My regular assigned duties had nothing to do with intervention or prevention. They only dealt with case-by-case dispositions of crimes that already happened, to get perpetrators charged as harshly as possible. It appeared that Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner justified her existence by pushing arrest and conviction rates higher and higher. As gangsta activities escalated, county prosecutors held special training on how to trap, charge, and convict young, dumb, naive gangstas. Training began with, “They are coming to get us!” and getting everybody scared with selected stats. One prosecutor concluded a training session promising, “You catch ’em and clean ’em, and I’ll cook ’em and fry ’em up!” To me, it almost sounded like cannibalism.

  In the event of gangland shootings, sometimes I’d have a phone on each side of my face, talking to gang rivals on both sides. Out of abject desperation, having found guns, stolen property, crack, or marijuana under pillows and under beds, mothers who didn’t want their sons to go to prison, but especially didn’t want them dead, called me. A police detective is the last thing any gangsta wants to see anytime. So my sitting in a chair in his bedroom when he woke up gave my little visit a unique impact. “So ya’ wanna’ be a gangsta, huh?” Mothers entrusted me with dangerous incriminating information: Drive-by shooting tonight; Central ’n’ St. Albans at 8:00 PM. I’d assure them, “I’ll take care of it.”

  In many cases, I’d know things about young men they didn’t know about themselves. I had lots of tactics. Showing up in the housing projects, paying a surprise visit in plain clothes while gangstas were in the heat of planning a drive-by. Strategic, well-placed statements: “I baby-sat your parents” and “I remember when you were born” and, especially, “I used to change your diapers!” Coming from the mouth of a police officer, these words had a stun gun effect, creating a special wavelength, giving me leverage to go to the heart. Sometimes I could defuse deadly situations the nice soft way. But then—knowing who had the guns, who had the dope, and the time and place of the next drive-by shooting—I’d revert to the old badge ’n’ gun hard-nose tactics and issue alternatives that could not be ignored or refused. I only used the sacred entrusted authority and information as leverage to defuse and avert deadly shootings. To have used it as formal, official evidence would have been betrayal.

  In other cases, I may have given these young men some kind of break—but it was exactly the same kind of break that Mr. Mann and Mr. Thomas gave me back in my knucklehead days, also the kind that I saw other officers and judges give white kids when they made a mistake. Usually these kids were locked into something that they really didn’t want to have to do, and my intervention gave them a way out. I got good at negotiating truces, running back and forth between bunkers, telling one group that the others would stand down if you all would stand down, invoking police powers and an ultimate ultimatum. At times I’d even construct written peace treaties and get signatures on both sides.

  My personal off-duty life (more so than my official police life) ricocheted across the city with emergency interventions. The badge ’n’ gun gave me tremendous leverage.

  One high school student who just turned eighteen with zero criminal record snatched a purse and got caught. Mom called me. My police credibility gave me leverage with prosecutors and judges. The felony charge was dropped to a misdemeanor. He was released to my care. He wrote me a thank-you letter, promising to stay out of trouble forever. He kept his word. To this day, I still have the letter.

  A neighbor kid who just turned eighteen with zero criminal record decided to sell marijuana, got a gun to defend himself, and got caught his very first night out. Inexperienced as a criminal, he readily admitted intent to sell drugs, explaining to the police, “I only carry a gun to protect myself when selling mj.” And got charged with possession of a gun with intent to sell drugs. His gun possession charge came with a mandatory three-year prison sentence. “Your Honor, don’t send that boy to prison! Give him to me.” This was to become my battle cry. Judge Chonen departed from the mandatory guidelines and gave him to me instead. The prosecutor and the SPPD narcotics unit complained about me to internal affairs. But I hadn’t violated any technical procedure or law. I testified as a citizen, who happened to live in the community, who happened to be a cop.

  Another mother sent me a copy of her son’s report card with straight As, with a note saying, “Sergeant Carter, this is what you did for my son.” To this day, I still have the letter.

  It didn’t always work. One day, Carlos, the cutest thirteen-year-old boy, was arrested and brought to HQ. The kid reminded me of the Jackson Five. He was way too casual, almost fulfilled, about getting arrested. It seemed imperative that this not be a good experience for him, and I decided it to be in his best interest that I hard-nose him. I went on to describe what happens to cute young men in prisons. But over the years he became more and more endangered, and dangerous. His mother made me her ally. She called me at home a few times, asking me to intervene. But my efforts became more and more ineffective. Carlos as an adult was among the most dangerous men to confront me, frequently reminded me of the time I hard-nosed him as a juvenile, and never forgave me. I was always braced, fully expecting him to force me into a deadly showdown. So I was saddened but partially relieved when, in his late twenties, he was sentenced to serve twenty life sentences. His mother contacted me just as she was dying. She wanted to thank me and to let me know that she knew how hard I had tried to save her son.

  But by and large, the difference I was able to make as one man was astonishing. My off-duty calls for intervention competed with my official workload. As a single individual, I was making determinative impacts on young lives. I kept wanting to do more.

  28

  Save Our Sons

  ’Bout this time, in 1991, I was in church one Sunday, feeling disdain for all these pious holier-than-thou people, filled with self-indulgent feel-goodism, while children perished. Reminded me of Nero fiddling while Rome burned and the people suffered. Thoughts of what everybody else ought to be doing raced through my mind when a thundering silent voice commanded, You Do It!

  I listened.

  The idea of working with youth was not new. St. Paul, like many departments across the nation, initiated the Officer Friendly program, in which officers went into schools and conducted anti-drug and anti-violence initiatives. To me, this program had my name on it. I didn’t get the assignment. Beyond the personal insult of being rejected, this confirmed to me that the program was invalid.

  By the late 1980s, guns and drugs exacerbated inner-city violence. Greater America shuddered at the thought of organized Blacks with guns and loved being afraid. Fear validated overreaction, using the old, “They’re coming to get us!” to make tougher and escape-proof laws, mandatory sentencing. For instance, federal laws passed in 1986 had establishe
d minimum penalties for possessing different versions of cocaine. Being caught with five grams of crack—a cheaper form of the drug, more often used by Blacks—brought a mandatory five-year prison sentence, which was exactly the same penalty for being caught with FIVE HUNDRED grams of powder cocaine, usually used by whites. The new laws eviscerated the previous juvenile second-chance provisions and souped up prosecution procedures. Without possibility of parole became the language.

  Researchers have clearly demonstrated that whites and Blacks use drugs at about the same rates. But Blacks are treated more harshly at every interval of justice: the point of arrest, charging, and sentencing. Law enforcement and politicians build up arrest and conviction stats at the expense of those who can’t defend themselves. The “War on Drugs,” declared by President Nixon in 1971, had leveled off as a War on Black Males. To many of us, the fear frenzy proved to take advantage of—and exploit—old-fashioned, routine, predictable, teenager male stupidity of boys who didn’t have sense enough to pull up their pants.

  My mind reactivated the old “thump call” alarm, the “brothers unite” signal, Black Power fist raised to the sky alarm. If ever there was a need to stand up on behalf of our children, this was it. We as Black men were being called out. This is a job for BLACK MEN. So I called together dynamic Black men from two churches, all from various walks of life—educators, historians, janitors, musicians, politicians, and physicians. Big Willie, Glenn, Kamou, Lutalo, and Maurice Jr. were among the many who responded to my call. Our conversations ranged from engaging to explosive. We had some stuff to discuss. Meetings that were scheduled for two hours went late into the night without ever getting to the agenda. After several weeks at the drawing board, we came up with the Save Our Sons Academy.

  We designed ongoing courses for troubled youth, taking on the toughest issues of growing up in America while Black. “Look, kid, here’s the deal!” It was our application of Mandinkan African traditions of men bringing boys into manhood. “Night raids” became our code phrase for late-night home visits in response to distress signals from single mothers. Having a police badge gave me leverage in certain situations. For example, a young gangsta saw me coming and headed out the door. I knew that he was in over his head and his life was in grave danger. Using my police authority, I blocked his exit, bluffing him into sitting down to force conversation between his mother and him. It wasn’t dainty. She cried tears of gratitude and couldn’t thank us enough. He got shot the next night and lived to get shot years later.

  SOS was determined to head off mass incarceration of young African American males at the racially coded floodgates. The blindfolded Lady Justice was always peeking, after all. She knew who was rich. She knew who was poor. The revelation that she knew who was Black or white and was targeting my precious babies created a personal insult with special challenge for a Black cop. Not only did I see myself, Henry, John Gee, Jay Jay, Skeeter, Jasper, and Fatso in the faces of these kids, but many turned out to be their nephews or somehow related to them. My police colleagues hid information from me. The narcotics division and other investigative divisions launched formal complaints against me as we snatched morsel after morsel from the jaws of justice. I had every intention to work the correction industry out of a job, to put them out of business. And it was personal!

  About that same time, the early 1990s, in response to the urgency of the times, Toni, along with Rose McGee and Kathy Beecham, founded an organization for youth called ARTS-US, with a focus on teaching youth the art of storytelling. SOS and ARTS-US hosted PEACE JAMS, declaring peace in the hood, waging peace at Concordia College, honoring a couple of local peacemongers. Those years of my life consisted of transporting children, providing security, hosting informal events at our home, and chaperoning young teenagers. Between the two programs, it seemed we impacted every Black family in the city, one way or the other.

  Miraculously, in 1992 Mayor Jim Scheibel named William Finney—known to all as Corky, an extremely capable and conscientious Black man, a true justice champion, perhaps the Barack Obama of police work—to be chief of police. The traditional hierarchy saw him coming and tried to stop his appointment at every interval of his career, but he always stayed ahead of them. Since they couldn’t get him, the bounty on Black officers skyrocketed. His closest friends and allies were set up with contrived and trumped-up charges and allegations. So one by one, he was forced to severely reprimand, suspend, and even fire three of his closest allies.

  It was divine providence that Corky’s mother and my mother had delivered us in the same hospital at the same time. Our mothers made sure we both knew it. Corky appointed me as an internal affairs inspector, with the authority and power to investigate fellow police officers. The ante raised the price on my head, and I deliberately allowed myself to be a decoy, hoping to take pressure off him as well as fellow Black officers. Besides, I had already absorbed the worst they could bring.

  The newspaper did a story on Save Our Sons in about 1998 and illustrated it with this picture of me in front of headquarters at 100 East Tenth Street. Courtesy Pioneer Press, photo by Joe Oden

  Racism, the subcomponent of white supremacy, is shifty and crafty like viruses and plagues. It cloaks, hibernates, lays dormant, and changes forms to ambush attacks. I knew the virus of white supremacy, recognized and diagnosed the symptoms instantly. Been gored by the horns of the stampeding raging bull and now turned matador! Olé, motherfuckers! I had gotten better at processing discrimination than these new kids were at discriminating. Assassinating my career at this point was way more difficult, and coming after me brought greater risks.

  Never having the luxury of failure, I tried my best to keep out of trouble, but sometimes I slipped. I’d be on my way to a special event, hop out of my car, defuse deadly street skirmishes, jump back in my car, and attend the event. Making an arrest and writing a report for every incident would have absorbed too much of my time. But occasionally this strategy backfired.

  Like the time at the VFW. Yvonne, the bartender, had greeted me warmly. She set down my plate, and out of nowhere she told me, “Melvin, out of all these good cops, you are the one that God sent.”

  I pondered that for a minute, then began slammin’ a plate of soul food. Just then the door exploded open. Big Johnny crashed in, brandishing a handgun. Everyone in the bar screamed; some dove under tables. Big Johnny raced across the dance floor, commenced to pistol-whippin’ Pretty Paul, slammed him against the wall, and shoved his gun into Pretty Paul’s face, his finger trembling on the trigger. Still chewing my food, I hopped up from my table and leveled my gun at Big Johnny’s head, yelling, “Police! Freeze!”

  Big Johnny saw me, stalled and trembled for a brief eternity. Together we determined if death was imminent. Gradually he put the gun away, backed out the door, and ran down the street. I sat back down and polished off my chicken, greens, and corn bread (burp!). I thought I done good, but Pretty Paul went straight to a pay phone and called Corky at home, complaining that I had let Johnny go. Corky called me the next morning, furious—and rightfully so. By not writing a report, I had put him in a position to have to defend me again. But I had so many of these kinds of confrontations that if I stopped, made an arrest, and wrote a report every time I intervened in deadly situations in my neighborhood, I’d never be able to finish a meal or get to where I was going.

  I took direct action closer to home as well. As gangs flocked to St. Paul from Los Angeles, Chicago, and St. Louis, drugs and gang violence exploded in my neighborhood, even in my back yard. The MO was to stake out territory, post an armed “foot soldier,” then execute someone to establish and stake the territorial claim. So I knew exactly what it was that stood guard outside the gate of my back fence as I drove up. I established a gentle eye contact and soft face.

  “Whatchu lookin’ at, bitch-ass mahfukkah?” he threatened. Predators always select prey they perceive as easy. His attempt to intimidate me meant that he had no idea what he was getting himself into. Pretending to be intimi
dated, I parked my car in my driveway, got out, went into my Bambi act, walking up to him. Gently I asked if I could get him anything or if he needed help. Stepping up his intimidation game, he edged toward me, fully expecting me to flee. But I did not.

  “Sir, you’re welcome to stay here. May I see a permit for whatever you are selling?” I was leading him around, playing him like a puppet. He turned, stomping at me with extreme threatening gestures. When I didn’t jump back as he expected, it jammed up his senses.

  All life is sacred, especially my own! All my career, I had been successful in defusing deadly situations. On one occasion, I ran from an attacker with a butcher knife; on another, I ran from a man swinging a baseball bat, even though I was armed—in order not to have to kill them. But a “soldier” was a different story. He ignited a situation in which one of us was probably about to die right here, right now. And it wasn’t gonna be me! Spirituality was my highest innermost significant checkpoint. Before God Almighty: Is there anywhere to run, anywhere to hide? … NOPE! (This guy threatening me at my home was a threat to my family as well.) Can I think of any possible alternative? … NOPE! Can I live with that which I must do? … YEP! Then came the legal and professional checkpoints. Will I be able to stay out of prison or keep my job? How will this be interpreted in the court of law? The street soldier was armed, absolutely dangerous, poised to kill. It was O. K. Corral right now, right here in my yard. Watching him like a spider on a housefly, like a cat watching a canary, trigger finger itching and twitching for the quick draw, giving him the first move. He was just a half burp away from an eternal dirt nap!

  Human, manmade checkpoints mattered, but mattered less. This is my home, where my wife and I are raising our children, to me hallowed ground. The only way this was going to be gang territory outside my door was over my dead body. And since I didn’t start it and couldn’t back down, and if someone was to die right here and now, I had no alternative but to honor his suicidal choice. My checkpoints were satisfied.