Arrest-Proof Yourself (21 page)

Lest you condemn prematurely, consider that jits are really hunter-gatherers who had the misfortune to be born several thousand years too late. Foraging, hunting, wandering, and raiding are primal male activities. They feel right. To jits, the fact that so many people object to the way they live is puzzling. As for women, you give them protection and money; they give you food and companionship. What could be more natural?

PRECAVEMAN LIFE—ALPHA MALES ROAMING THE URBAN SAVANNAH

Culturally, jits are at a
precaveman
level. Outrageous, you say? Hold your horses and read on. When we encounter evidence of our most distant forebears, we see that they were already living in groups. Already there was a social order headed by an alpha male. Other males were subordinate. The pecking order reduced fighting among the men and competition for women. It allowed the men to hunt and face hostile outsiders as a group.

In the city, the caveman stage of social organization is provided by street and motorcycle gangs. As abhorrent as gangs are, their advantages for members are obvious. In the gang, an alpha male enforces a pecking order that protects subordinate males. Lower-ranking men may kill outsiders, but they don’t kill each other. Gangs assign women to lower-order males, which also reduces fighting. In the case of motorcycle gangs, the leader decides which women belong to a single male and which are communal and can be shared sexually by all. In many motorcycle gangs, the leader will not speak to or look at a woman for purposes other than sex, since women are considered subhuman. (Why women continue to hang with these goons is one of the great mysteries.)

In a city like mine, where there are few street gangs, motorcycle gangs stay out in the boondocks away from police and, thankfully, the citizenry. Thus, jits lack even the rudimentary socialization of a small group. Socially, they’re
pre
cavemen.

Worse, they’re
all
alpha males, living alone or with a woman. All it takes for someone to become an alpha is a gun. The current favorite is a nine-millimeter automatic pistol, the “nine.” All these guys consider themselves the top dog. That’s why there’s so much random violence. When alpha males collide, they don’t know how to subordinate themselves or dominate others, so they fight. This is the reason jits have to carry guns on their persons. If they’re not alpha males (men with guns), they’re nothing. They can’t be subordinate males because they don’t know how. Naturally, alpha males strutting on the street or driving beat-up cars are easy pickings for sophisticated hunters like cops. Those illegal firearms turn a traffic stop into a felony bust worth
mucho
points.

HOODLUM CHIC

Here’s a really weird thing. “Staying at” places means you always have to have new clothes. It’s tough to carry clothes around, and anything you leave behind, like expensive NBA sneakers, gets swiped. Even when you have a long-term crib with a woman, the washing machine is often broken or nonexistent. So you toss dirty clothes. My clients tell me that their women shoplift clothes for them, or that people knock on the door to sell stuff that’s “fallen off the truck.” This is also known as the Homeboy Shopping Network. Naturally it’s hard to get clothes that fit. The solution is to swipe only large sizes, because anyone can tighten the belt. The fad for oversized hip-hop clothes, and athletic pants that have stretch bands and string ties is making a virtue of jit necessity.

INNOCENT SAVAGES

Middle-class people have multiple priorities such as work, family, religion, politics, and so forth. Jits have only one—to feel good. That’s it, just feel good. Nothing more. Understand this and you understand all. For example, eating feels good; cleaning up does not. So you eat, then toss the trash over your shoulder. As for those mice and cockroaches that swarm over the mess, as long as they don’t crawl over you, they don’t matter. They don’t feel good or bad; they’re just there. Having women give you food and sex feels good; having them get pregnant and nag you about responsibilities feels bad. It’s simple. Women spread ’em, you bed ’em; they nag, you walk. Smoking dope feels good; being straight feels bad. Hanging out feels good; working feels bad. You get the picture.

So far I’ve described jits as violence-prone, lazy, unorganized, irresponsible, and messy, but this misses an innocent quality that is the essence of the jit life. These people have no desire to accumulate money or power; they just want to feel good. They are quite ingenious at doing so. Getting money and resources by theft or living off the public dole seems to them merely making use of the resources at hand. There’s no shame in it. It’s merely what you do to eat. Selling drugs isn’t good or bad; it’s what you do to get some for yourself and feel good. Money feels good too. Get some.

What do solid citizens look like to jits? Like space aliens, that’s what. They see us rushing around always in a hurry. They see us stressed out, looking at watches, and juggling schedules. We’re doing things that don’t appear to feel good, so perhaps we’re mentally unbalanced. Worse, we’re always bugging them. What business is it of ours if jits want to smoke some dope and feel good? Why the emphasis on being here, being there, at this hour or that? There’s always money and food around, and places to stay, and you can hunt and gather them after you’ve had a good sleep, some cigarettes and coffee, and a joint to mellow out the whole process.

The jit solution to dealing with middle-class America is to sleep through it. Jits live at night and sleep during the day. That way they avoid all that bewildering middle-class bustle. Naturally they sleep through court appearances, drug tests, probation meetings, and so forth. Just as naturally they spend years in jails and prisons, where at last they stay awake during the day because The Man controls the food and the lights. One reason the criminal justice system finds pretrial detention so convenient is that, when defendants are in jail, they can always be located, and guaranteed to be awake, 9:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M., as needed.

And the paper! Always paper! Letters, subpoenas, probation notices, license-suspension letters, child-support demands, tag renewal notifications, insurance cancellation notices, and bills, bills, bills. On and on. It’s The Man reaching out and hassling someone. When you’re Jitus Americanus, all you want is to be left
alone
so you can feel good. Is this too much to ask? Isn’t this America?

Sometimes when I’m in the office with the telephone ringing, the cell phone squawking, the fax humming, and the e-mail box filling up, when I’m facing a pile of legal documents that have to be replied to in a timely manner and writing out checks for the car tag, the boat permit, the child support, the mortgage, the health/home/life/car insurance, the credit cards, and
my
attorneys (for heaven’s sake), I start dreaming of a simpler life. I think about living on a small boat, with my woman, and sleeping as much as I need to. I want to hang out with my buddies with no place to go and nothing to do. Sometimes I don’t want to defend my jit clients; I want to join them.

Of course, I’m not going to do that. Don’t you do it either. Get savvy, not clueless. Stay free.

SCENARIO #4

THE DAY-GLO RABBIT

Our subject is an 18-year-old African American boy who lives with his mother in an apartment in a marginal area of town. His mother, an English teacher and staunch Baptist, works hard to support herself and her son, and insists that he attend church at least twice a week. She does not allow him to use obscenity or profanity in the house, and requires that he speak standard English. She calls use of the double negative (“I didn’t say nothing”) a misdemeanor and the present subjunctive (“I be going”) a felony.

She insists that he wear neatly pressed slacks and a button-down dress shirt to school, and she has ignored his protests that this makes him uncool and a wimp. Naturally he is teased by other boys who wear hip-hop slacks, sideways baseball hats, and gigantic sneakers. He is razzed for his high grades. The other students don’t understand that making straight As is actually easier than facing his mother with a B. Girls are not impressed by his brains, and they torment him by ignoring his attempts at conversation and by going out with tough guys who’ve been to jail.

After listening to several thousand repetitions of his mother’s insight that “idle hands are the devil’s plaything,” our subject has obtained a part-time job on weekends at an ice cream store in a suburban mall. He has saved several hundred dollars from his wages and tips and has, after much importunity, secured a promise from his mother that he can spend it on anything he wants “as long as it’s legal.”

At last his big day has come, and he sets out to shop that mall for once instead of being a worker bee. He buys the coolest Kangol beret to set off an authentic NBA jersey, which is the real thing with the heavy mesh nylon, as worn by the superstars, and not a cheap knockoff from the flea market. He buys giant, below-the-knee pants with pockets everywhere and a crimson nylon wind-breaker with the embroidered signature of his favorite NBA center. The topper? Limited edition sneakers (fewer than 5,000 pairs for the entire United States!) that are the signature design of the most famous power forward in the history of the game. The tab is near $600, more than three times what his mother pays for his Sunday suits, but he’s proud of how authentic everything is. He knows that many of the kids at school wear clothes that are shoplifted by their girlfriends. These clothes are usually too big. He’s proud that his NBA clothes are all the real thing and that they actually fit.

So this Saturday afternoon he’s decked out in all his glory back in the neighborhood, and he’s sure one of the girls will notice. He’s strutting, not on the sidewalk but in the street, just like the tough guys, and making cars slow or stop in order to get around him. This game is called Make Whitey Stop. It’s a rush. All the people who generally ignore him in this part of town have to look up and show some respect. They’ve got to stop! So he’s getting off doing the hoodlum strut, with cars swerving right and left, and he’s giving the wink to the startled girls who do a double take when they see him and all that money he’s wearing.

Suddenly, in a car heading toward him, a driver, distracted by a cell phone, slams on the brakes. The car swerves, then fishtails, and its rear quarter panel brushes our subject before the car slams into a streetlight. The car’s front end crumples, oil pours onto the asphalt, and a geyser of green fluid boils out of the radiator. The air bag deploys, and the car alarm starts an ear-splitting wail as the vehicle skids to a stop.

Our hero is momentarily frozen by the crash and doesn’t see a police car race around the corner with lights spinning and siren whooping. Two cops jump out. One heads for the car as he calls in the accident on his shoulder microphone. The second officer spots our subject and yells out, “Hey you. C’mere!”

Our guy panics. He just can’t get arrested. What would his mother say? So he bolts down the street. He hears a police officer running behind him and shouting “foot pursuit” into his radio just as other cruisers pull up and more cops jump out and run after him. How can the cops get organized so fast? They’re coming out of nowhere, cruiser after cruiser, lights flashing, sirens wailing, and beefy guys in blue thundering down the pavement.

He’s pulling ahead. Those NBA sneakers have heels like springs, and the cops are wearing crazy leather clodhoppers and dragging around a lot of iron on their belts. Still, he regrets the clothes. All those colors! He’s a Day-Glo rabbit with a pack of mastiffs in hot pursuit.

All at once a cop, who had jumped from his cruiser several blocks ahead, is coming toward him! Our hero swerves, trips, and takes a header into the dirt, which grinds into his fancy threads. Now all $600 of clothes, all those thousands of ice cream cones’ worth of work, look like they came off a ditch digger. They’re torn, filthy, and ruined.

He gets jerked to his feet and surrounded by cops. One of them is shouting at him, something about an ID. All he can think about, however, is the ruined clothes, all that work. He’s weeping with shame and anger. One of the cops puts his hand on his chest with fingers outspread. The cop doesn’t ask permission, just pokes his hand out and
touches
him! This is too much. Our hero grabs the cop’s hand and struggles to get away. Within seconds he’s back on the ground, handcuffed, then frog-marched into the police cruiser. He’s taken downtown and charged with resisting arrest and felony assault on a law enforcement officer.

Later he is taken to the juvenile detention center, where he is strip-searched. When the corrections officer puts on a glove and touches his scrotum, he starts screaming and struggling. Without saying a word, corrections officers strap him down in a plastic chair and lock him into a soundproofed cell, where he cries for hours. It takes two days for his mother to get money from her church friends and hire an attorney. At a preliminary hearing, after the attorney reviews the facts with the prosecutor and the judge and presents the boy’s stellar academic record and character references from teachers and ministers, the charges are dropped. Total cost is about $5,000 and a juvenile arrest record.

THE MORALS OF THIS STORY

1.
Here’s a kid who has everything going for him—brains, education, and a strict, loving home. He’s the kind of minority youth that the best colleges would
throw money at
to get him to matriculate at their institution. In many states lottery funds would pay his tuition at state universities.

2.
Liketoomanybrightminoritychildren,heisostracizedsocially for doing well in school. The road to freedom is paved with education, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a hard road.