On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (5 page)

According to contacts at the Philadelphia Warrant Unit, there were about eighty thousand
open warrants in the city in the winter of 2010. A small portion of these warrants
were for new criminal cases—so-called body warrants. Most were bench warrants for
missing court or for unpaid court fees, or technical warrants issued for violations
of probation or parole.

Until the 1970s, the city’s efforts to round up people with outstanding warrants consisted
of two men who sat at a desk in the evening and
made calls to the people on the warrant list, encouraging them to either come in and
get a new court date or get on a payment plan for their unpaid court fees. During
the day, these same men transported prisoners. In the 1970s, a special Warrant Unit
was created in the Philadelphia courts to actively pursue people with open warrants.
Its new captain prided himself on improving and updating the unit’s tracking system,
and getting the case files onto a computer.

By the 1990s, every detective division in the Philadelphia Police Department had its
own Warrant Unit. Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and the US Marshals all run their own separate
Warrant Units out of the Philadelphia force as well.

As the number of police officers and special units focused on rounding up people with
warrants increased, the technology to locate and identify people with warrants improved.
Computers were installed in police cars, and records of citizens’ legal histories
and pending legal actions became synchronized—first across the city’s police force
and then among police departments across the country. It became possible to run a
person’s name for any kind of warrant, from any jurisdiction in the country, almost
instantly.

The number of arrests an officer or a unit makes had been a key indication of performance
since at least the 1960s.
⁴
When technology improved, taking people in on warrants became a ready way for police
to show they were actively fighting crime. Those officers or units who cleared more
warrants or arrested more people were informally rewarded; those who cleared or arrested
fewer people were encouraged to catch up.

In interviews, Philadelphia police officers explained that when they are looking for
a particular man, they access social security records, court records, hospital admission
records, electric and gas bills, and employment records. They visit a suspect’s usual
haunts (for example, his home, his workplace, and his street corner) at the times
he is likely to be there, and will threaten his family or friends with arrest if they
don’t cooperate, particularly when they themselves have their own lower-level warrants,
are on probation, or have a pending court case. In addition to these methods, the
Warrant Units operating out of the Philadelphia Police Department use a sophisticated
computer-mapping program that tracks people who have warrants, are on probation or
parole, or have been released on bail. Officers round up these potential informants
and threaten them with jail time if they don’t provide information about the person
the police are looking for. A local FBI officer got inspired to develop the computer
program after watching a documentary about the Stasi—the East German secret police.
With another program, officers follow wanted people in real time by tracking their
cell phones.

.   .   .

On 6th Street, the fear of capture and confinement weighs not only on young men with
warrants out for their arrest but also on those going through a court case or attempting
to complete probation or parole sentences. The supervisory restrictions of probation
and parole bar these men from going out at night, driving a car, crossing state lines,
drinking alcohol, seeing their friends, and visiting certain areas in the city. Coupled
with an intense policing climate, these restrictions mean that encounters with the
authorities are highly likely, and may result in a violation of the terms of release
and a swift return to jail or prison. The threat of confinement similarly follows
men on house arrest or living in halfway houses. Those out on bail understand that
any new arrest allows a judge to revoke the terms of their release and return them
to confinement, even if the charges are later dropped. And many young men, with and
without legal entanglements, worry about new charges. At any moment, they may be stopped
by police and their tenuous claim to freedom revoked.

When Mike, Chuck, and their friends assembled outside in the mid-mornings, the first
topics of the day were frequently who had been taken into custody the night before,
and who had outrun the cops and gotten away. They discussed how the police identified
and located the person, what the charges were likely to be, what physical harm had
been done to the man as he was caught and arrested, what property the police had taken,
and what had been wrecked or lost during the chase.

Police, jail, and court language permeated general conversation. Chuck and Mike referred
to their girlfriends as Co-Ds (codefendants) and spoke of catching a case (to be arrested
and charged with a crime) when accused of some wrong by their friends and family.
Call list, the
term for the phone numbers of family and friends one is allowed to call from prison
or jail, became the term for close friends.

The first week I spent on 6th Street, I saw two boys, five and seven years old, play
a game of chase in which one boy assumed the role of the cop who must run after the
other. When the “cop” caught up to the other child, he pushed him down and cuffed
him with imaginary handcuffs. He then patted down the other child and felt in his
pockets, asking if he had warrants or was carrying a gun or any drugs. The child then
took a quarter out of the other child’s pocket, laughing and yelling, “I’m seizing
that!” In the following months, I saw children give up running and simply stick their
hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without
being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children
yelled, “I’m going to lock you up! I’m going to lock you up, and you ain’t never coming
home!” I once saw a six-year-old pull another child’s pants down to do a “cavity search.”

By the time Chuck and Mike were in their early teens, they had learned to fear the
police and to flee when they approached.

TWO

The Art of Running

A young man concerned that the police will take him into custody comes to see danger
and risk in the mundane doings of everyday life. To survive outside prison, he learns
to hesitate when others walk casually forward, to see what others fail to notice,
to fear what others trust or take for granted.

One of the first things that such a man develops is a heightened awareness of police
officers—what they look like, how they move, where and when they are likely to appear.
He learns the models of their undercover cars, the ways they hold their bodies and
the cut of their hair, the timing and location of their typical routes. His awareness
of the police never seems to leave him; he sees them sitting in plain clothes at the
mall food court with their children; he spots them in his rearview mirror coming up
behind him on the highway, from ten cars and three lanes away. Sometimes he finds
that his body anticipates their arrival with sweat and a quickened heartbeat before
his mind consciously registers any sign of their appearance.

When I first met Mike, I thought his awareness of the police was a special gift, unique
to him. Then I realized Chuck also seemed to know when the police were coming. So
did Alex. When they sensed the police were near, they did what other young men in
the neighborhood did: they ran and hid.

Chuck put the strategy concisely to his twelve-year-old brother, Tim:

If you hear the law coming, you merk on [run away from] them niggas. You don’t be
having time to think okay, what do I got on me, what they going to
want from me. No, you hear them coming, that’s it, you gone. Period. ’Cause whoever
they looking for, even if it’s not you, nine times out of ten they’ll probably book
you.

Tim was still learning how to run from the police, and his beginner missteps furnished
a good deal of amusement for his older brothers and their friends.

Late one night, a white friend of mine from school dropped off Reggie and a friend
of his at my apartment. Chuck and Mike phoned me to announce that Tim, who was eleven
at the time, had spotted my friend’s car and taken off down the street, yelling, “It’s
a undercover! It’s a undercover!”

“Nigga, that’s Alice’s girlfriend.” Mike laughed. “She was drinking with us last night.”

If a successful escape means learning how to identify the police, it also requires
learning how to run. Chuck, Mike, and their friends spent many evenings honing this
skill by running after each other and chasing each other in cars. The stated reason
would be that one had taken something from the other: a CD, a five-dollar bill from
a pocket, a small bag of weed. Reggie and his friends also ran away from their girlfriends
on foot or by car.

One night, I was standing outside Ronny’s house with Reggie and Reggie’s friend, an
eighteen-year-old young man who lived across the street. In the middle of the conversation,
Reggie’s friend jumped in his car and took off. Reggie explained that he was on the
run from his girlfriend, who we then saw getting into another car after him. Reggie
explained that she wanted him to be in the house with her, but that he was refusing,
wanting instead to go out to the bar. This pursuit lasted the entire evening, with
the man’s girlfriend enlisting her friends and relatives to provide information about
his whereabouts, and the man doing the same. Around one in the morning, I heard that
she’d caught him going into the beer store and dragged him back home.

It wasn’t always clear to me whether these chases were games or more serious pursuits,
and some appeared more serious than others. Regardless of the meaning that people
ascribed to them at the time or afterward, these chases improved young men’s skill
and speed at get
ting away. In running from each other, from their girlfriends, and in a few cases
their mothers, Reggie and his friends learned how to navigate the alleyways, weave
through traffic, and identify local residents willing to hide them for a little while.
¹

During the first year and a half I spent on 6th Street, I watched young men running
and hiding from the police on 111 occasions, an average of more than once every five
days.
²

Those who interact rarely with the police may assume that running away after a police
stop is futile. Worse, it could lead to increased charges or to violence. While the
second part is true, the first is not. In my first eighteen months on 6th Street,
I observed a young man running after he had been stopped on 41 different occasions.
Of these, 8 involved men fleeing their houses during raids; 23 involved men running
after being stopped while on foot (including running after the police had approached
a group of people of whom the man was a part); 6 involved car chases; and 2 involved
a combination of car and foot chases, where the chase began by car and continued with
the man getting out and running.

In 24 of these cases, the man got away. In 17 of the 24, the police didn’t appear
to know who the man was and couldn’t bring any charges against him after he had fled.
Even in cases where the police subsequently charged him with fleeing or other crimes,
the successful getaway allowed the man to stay out of jail longer than he might have
if he’d simply permitted the police to cuff him and take him in.
³

A successful escape can be a solitary act, but oftentimes it is a collective accomplishment.
A young man relies on his friends, relatives, and neighbors to alert him when they
see the police coming, and to pass along information about where the police have been
or where and when they might appear next. When the police make inquiries, these friends
and neighbors feign ignorance or feed the police misinformation. They may also help
to conceal incriminating objects and provide safe houses where a young man can hide.
From fieldnotes taken in September 2006:

Around 11 a.m., I walked up the alleyway to the back of Chuck’s house. Before I reached
the porch, Chuck came running down the iron stairs, shout
ing something to a neighbor. Reggie followed him, also shouting. Their mother, Miss
Linda, came to the top of the second-floor balcony and told me the law was on the
way, and to make sure that Reggie in particular did not come back until she gave the
green light. I recalled that Reggie had a warrant out for failure to pay court fees,
and would doubtless be taken in if the cops ran his name.

I watched Chuck and Reggie proceed up the alleyway, and then Chuck turned and yelled
at me to come on. We ran for about three blocks, going through two backyards and over
a small divider. Dogs barked as we went by. I was half a block behind and lost sight
of Chuck and Reggie. Panting, I slowed to a walk, looking back to see if the police
were coming. Then I heard “psst” and looked up to see Chuck leaning out the second-floor
window of a two-story house. A woman in her fifties, who I immediately guessed to
be a churchgoer, opened the door for me as I approached, saying only, “Upstairs.”

Chuck and Reggie were in her dressing room. This quite conservative-looking woman
had converted what is usually the spare upstairs bedroom into a giant walk-in closet,
with shoes, purses, and clothing arranged by color on the kind of white metal shelves
that you buy and install yourself.

Our getaway had produced a mild euphoria. Reggie brushed past Chuck to examine the
shoe collection, and Chuck wiped his arm off dramatically, teasing his younger brother
about how sweaty he was.

“Look at yourself, nigga! You don’t run for shit now with that little bit of shell
in your shoulder,” Reggie responded, referring to the partial bullet that had lodged
just below the back of Chuck’s neck when he was shot the month before.