On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (3 page)

In the current era, where police circle overhead and the threat of prison weighs heavily
on neighborhood residents, the long-standing social divides within the Black community
have been exacerbated by the issue of legal standing.

A central social fact about any person living in the community of 6th Street is his
or her legal status; more specifically, whether the person is likely to attract police
attention in the future: whether he can get through a police stop, or make it home
from a court hearing, or pass a “piss test” during a probation meeting. Those who
have no pending legal entanglements or who can successfully get through a police stop,
a court hearing, or a probation meeting are known as
clean
. Those likely to be arrested should the authorities stop them, run their names, or
search them are known as
dirty
.

These designations are occasioned ones, brought to the fore when an encounter with
the authorities is imminent or has just occurred. When friends and neighbors hear
that a young man has been stopped, their first question is often “Is he dirty?” This
question means: Does he have an open warrant? Any probation or parole sentence he’d
be violating by running into the police? Is he carrying any drugs? In short: if he
meets with the police, will he come home to his bed tonight, or will he be seized?

Yet the designations of clean and dirty aren’t just in-the-moment estimations occasioned
by contact with the criminal justice system. They also become more general labels
that attach to individuals or locations over time. While some people are widely known
to be in good standing with the law, others are generally assumed to be liable for
arrest should the authorities stop them. These designations become significant even
when a police stop isn’t imminent, because they’re linked to distinct kinds of behavior,
attitudes, and capabilities. For instance, a clean person can rent a car or a hotel
room, or show the ID required for entry into many buildings. A dirty person may be
taken advantage of in various ways, as it’s assumed he won’t be able to notify the
authorities.

As men are largely the ones caught up in the criminal justice system, there exists
in part a gendered divide—in many couples, the woman is clean, the man dirty. And
the woman is not only free from legal entanglements—she likely works in the formal
economy or receives government assistance, whereas the man makes his sporadic income
in the streets, doing things for which he could be arrested. There is also an age
divide—overwhelmingly, it is young people who are mired in legal entanglements, not
older people. And third, there is a class divide, for it is most typically unemployed
young men without high school diplomas who are dipping and dodging the police, who
have probation sentences to complete and court cases to attend.

Dirty people are likely more aware of their status than clean people are of theirs,
much in the same way that Black people may think about race more often than white
people do, or gay people may think about sexual orientation more often than straight
people do. But clean people
living in the 6th Street neighborhood and surrounding areas so often have relatives,
friends, and neighbors who are looking over their shoulder that these categories remain
somewhat salient no matter which side a person is on.
¹⁷

Residents of the neighborhood draw further distinctions between those likely to be
taken into custody if the authorities do a general sweep, and those for whom the authorities
are aggressively searching. The people the police are particularly interested in are
said to be “hot.” Places can also be hot, as in a block with a lot of recent police
activity or the funeral of a young man who was gunned down, where police are likely
to be looking for people related to the case or with other open warrants. In these
instances, it may be said that one should not enter the area or event, or associate
with the individual, until it or he cools down.

While the categories of clean/dirty and hot/cool focus on a person’s risk of arrest
or a place’s likelihood to draw police attention, residents also draw distinctions
among themselves according to how a person treats the legal entanglements of others.
Those who continue to have dealings with a young man once he becomes wanted, who protect
and aid him in his hiding and running, or who support him while locked up are known
as
riders
—a term signaling courage and commitment. Those who turn on a man once the warrant
has come in, or who fail to support a partner or family member once that person is
sent to jail or prison, are said to be “not riding right.” Those who go a step further
and provide the police with information about the whereabouts or actions of a legally
precarious person are known as “snitches” or “rats.” Designations such as the clean
person, the dirty person, the hot person, the snitch, and the rider have become basic
social categories for young men and women in heavily policed Black neighborhoods.

The first chapters of the book concern the dirty world: the young men spending their
teens and early twenties running from the police, going in and out of jail, and attempting
to complete probation and parole sentences. These chapters reflect my attempt to understand
this world through the eyes of Mike and Chuck and their friends—young men living with
the daily fear of capture and confinement. Because the reach of the penal system goes
beyond the young men who are its main targets, later chapters take up the perspective
of girlfriends
and mothers caught between the police and the men in their lives; of young people
who have found innovative ways to profit from the legal misfortunes of their neighbors;
and finally of neighborhood residents who have managed to steer clear of the penal
system and those enmeshed therein. The appendix recounts the research on which this
work is based, along with some personal reflection about the practical and ethical
dilemmas of a middle-class white young woman reporting on the experiences of poor
Black young men and women.

Together, the chapters make the case that historically high imprisonment rates and
the intensive policing and surveillance that have accompanied them are transforming
poor Black neighborhoods into communities of suspects and fugitives. A climate of
fear and suspicion pervades everyday life, and many residents live with the daily
concern that the authorities will seize them and take them away. A new social fabric
is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust, and
the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion, and unpredictability.

Still, neighborhood residents are carving out a meaningful life for themselves betwixt
and between the police stops and probation meetings. The scope of punishment and surveillance
does not prevent them from constructing a moral world in which they can find dignity
and honor; and the struggles of young men and women to negotiate work, family, romance,
and friendship in this hyper-policed zone, under threat of confinement, constitute
as much of the story as the late-night raids or full-body searches.

ONE

The 6th Street Boys and Their Legal Entanglements

CHUCK AND TIM

On quiet afternoons, Chuck would sometimes pass the time by teaching his twelve-year-old
brother, Tim, how to run from the police. They’d sit side by side on the iron back-porch
steps of their two-story home, facing the shared concrete alley that connects the
small fenced-in backyards of their block to those of the houses on the next.

“What you going to do when you hear the sirens?” Chuck asked.

“I’m out,” his little brother replied.

“Where you running to?”

“Here.”

“You can’t run here—they know you live here.”

“I’ma hide in the back room in the basement.”

“You think they ain’t tearing down that little door?”

Tim shrugged.

“You know Miss Toya?”

“Yeah.”

“You can go over there.”

“But I don’t even know her like that.”

“Exactly.”

“Why I can’t go to Uncle Jean’s?”

“
’Cause they know that’s your uncle. You can’t go to nobody that’s connected to you.”

Tim nodded his head, seeming happy to get his brother’s attention no matter what he
was saying.

Chuck was the eldest of three brothers. He shared a small, second-floor bedroom with
Tim, seven years his junior, and Reggie, born right between them. Reggie had left
for juvenile detention centers by the time he turned eleven, so Tim didn’t know his
middle brother very well. He looked up to Chuck almost like a father.

When Tim was a baby, his dad had moved down to South Carolina and married a woman
there; he did not keep in touch. Reggie’s father was worse: an in-the-way (no-account)
man of no consequence or merit, in prison on long bids and then out for stints of
drunken robberies. Reggie said he wouldn’t recognize him in the street. By contrast,
Chuck’s father came around a lot during his early years, a fact that Chuck sometimes
mentioned when trying to explain why he knew right from wrong and his younger brothers
did not.

The boys’ mother, Miss Linda, had been five years into a heavy crack habit when she
became pregnant with Chuck, and continued using as the boys grew up. With welfare
cuts the family had very little government assistance, and Miss Linda never could
hold a job for more than a few months at a time. Her father’s post office pension
paid the household bills, but he didn’t pay for food or clothes or school supplies.
He said it was beyond what he could do, and not his responsibility anyway.

At thirteen Chuck began working for a local dealer, which meant that he could buy
food for himself and Tim instead of asking his mother for money she didn’t have. His
access to crack also meant that he could better regulate his mother’s addiction. Now
she came to him to get drugs, and mostly stopped prostituting herself and selling
off their household possessions when she needed a hit. In high school Chuck got arrested
a number of times, but the cases didn’t stick and he continued working for the dealer.

By his sophomore year, Chuck’s legs were sticking out past the edge of the bunk bed
he shared with Tim. He cleared out the unfinished basement and moved his mattress
and clothing down there. The basement flooded and smelled like mildew and sometimes
the rats bit him, but at least he had his own space.

Tim was eight when Chuck moved out of their room, and he tried to put a brave face
on it. When he couldn’t sleep, he padded down to the basement and crawled into bed
with his brother.

In his senior year, when we met, Chuck stood six feet tall and had a build
shaped by basketball and boxing—his two favorite sports. That winter, he got into
a fight in the school yard with a kid who had called his mom a crack whore. According
to the police report, Chuck didn’t hurt the other guy much, only pushed his face into
the snow, but the school cops charged him with aggravated assault. It didn’t matter,
Chuck said, that he was on the basketball team, and making Cs and Bs. Since he’d just
turned eighteen, the aggravated assault case landed him in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional
Facility, a large pink and gray county jail on State Road in Northeast Philadelphia,
known locally as CFCF or simply the F.

About a month after Chuck went to jail, Tim stopped speaking. He would nod his head
yes or no, but didn’t say any words. When Chuck called home from jail he asked his
mother to put Tim on the phone, and he would talk to his little brother about what
he imagined was happening back at home.

“Mike prolly don’t be coming around no more, now that his baby-mom about to pop. She
probably big as shit right now. If it’s a boy he going to be skinny like his pops,
but if it’s a girl she’ll be a fat-ass like her mom.”

Tim never answered, but sometimes he smiled. Chuck kept talking until his minutes
ran out.

In his letters and phone calls home, Chuck tried to persuade his mother to take his
little brother to the jail for visiting hours. “He just need to see me, like, he ain’t
got nobody out there.”

Miss Linda didn’t have the state ID required to visit inmates in county jail, only
a social security card and an old voter registration card, and anyway she hated seeing
her sons locked up. Chuck’s friends Mike and Alex offered to take Tim along with them,
but since Tim was a minor, his parent or guardian had to go, too.

Eight months after Chuck was taken into custody, the judge threw out most of the charges
and Chuck came home, with only a couple hundred dollars in court fees hanging over
his head. When Tim saw his brother walking up the alley, he cried and clung to his
leg. He tried to stay awake through the evening festivities but finally fell asleep
with his head in Chuck’s lap.

Over the next few months, Chuck patiently coaxed his brother to start speaking again.
He stayed in most nights and played video games with Tim on the old TV in the living
room. He even moved back up to Tim’s room for a while, so Tim wouldn’t be alone at
night. He extended
his bed with a folding chair, propping his legs up on it and cursing when they fell
through.

“He’ll get it back,” Chuck said. “He just needs some QT [quality time].”

Tim nodded hopefully.

The following fall, Chuck tried to re-enroll as a senior, but the high school would
not admit him; he had already turned nineteen. Then the judge on his old assault case
issued a warrant for his arrest, because he hadn’t paid $225 in court fees that came
due a few weeks after his assault case ended. He spent a few months on the run before
going downtown to the Warrant and Surrender Office of the Criminal Justice Center
to see if he could work something out with the judge. It was a big risk: Chuck wasn’t
sure if they’d take him into custody on the spot. Instead, the court clerk worked
out a monthly payment plan, and Chuck came home, jubilant, that afternoon.