I’m not trying to say it’s a curse, but it
feels weird knowing that five of your friends got killed within the
same year. So it’s kind of hard, even though most of them were
gangbanging. I’m not saying they deserved it, but most of them
don’t want no help. I kind of like separated myself from them,
because I didn’t want to be a part of that crowd. I’m not trying to
live like that, ‘cause I’m not that type of person.
I grew up with my mother and my father, and
both of them were on drugs. When I was growing up, my mother was
beaten. Like beaten, you know? When it started, I think I was like
3 or 4. My father used to beat her in front of my face.
The biggest incident happened when I was
about 5 or 6 years old. I was just not doing what I was supposed to
be doing when I was in first grade. I mean, I wasn’t a bad student.
I just didn’t do the work. So the teacher had called the house, and
my mother had come up there, and the teacher was like, “Well,
Hyinth is a good student, and I know he can try harder. I just know
he can do better.” My mother was like, “Okay.” But my father, you
know, I guess my mother told my father. He took it overboard.
He brought out the belt and he just started
hitting me. So my mom, she tried to stop him. She was like, “No,
no, don’t hit him. You have to talk to him.” But he got mad. My
mother, she was blocking my way, so he hit her. And then it got to
the point where he broke her leg and her arm. She was on crutches.
She was on crutches. She had a cast on her leg and a cast on her
arm, and she couldn’t walk. She was on crutches.
It was kind of sad living in the house, but I
really couldn’t do nothing about it because I was young. I remember
me running to the store at 57th and Sangamon, getting on the pay
phone and calling 911. And I didn’t know my home address. I didn’t
know the street or anything. I couldn’t tell the police that my
mother was getting beaten. I was panicking, crying. I was scared. I
used to have nightmares every night.
My mother, dead. I thought in half my
nightmares that he killed her. It was all bloody, and I used to see
her just lying there in a casket. All I could do was cry. My
mother, she’s a loving person and everyone likes her. I don’t think
that she deserves what he’s done to her. My family’s been much
better since she left him. My mom seems like she’s happy, and she
claims she’s not taking drugs no more. She’s really trying to get
herself together, but it’s kind of hard ‘cause she’s still living
in that environment where people are slowly bringing her down. It’s
hard for her to just walk away, you know.
I could forgive my dad, but I won’t forget. I
don’t have a relationship with him anymore, even though he’s still
around. He just recently got out of jail. That’s always been an
off-and-on thing for him—going back and forth to jail. When I was
born, he was locked up. I don’t know how long he was locked up, but
he wasn’t at the hospital to sign the birth certificate.
Me and my two sisters, 13 and 26 years old,
we’re close. My two little brothers, ages 8 and 10, they’re in
foster care. When my mother had them at the hospital, I guess, the
foster people took them away. They got custody of them. It’s kind
of hard, because I don’t speak to my two little brothers at all. I
only saw them one time. They don’t know who I am, and I don’t know
who they are. I would love to be in their lives, to guide them, do
things that brothers should do. It gets to me. It really hurts.
The happiest moment that I had with my
family, we took a vacation. We went to Florida. We went away for,
like, a week. That was the happiest
moment because there wasn’t no type of negativity drama surrounding
us. You know, we actually enjoyed ourselves and didn’t have to
worry about what’s going to happen today, what’s going to happen
the next day. Happiest memory from my neighborhood? There’s not
much I can say, you know, about Roseland, because there was a lot
of shooting. There’s still a lot of killing. I think someone just
got killed on 111th. I think it was yesterday. I’m not sure.
I got robbed three times. One time I was
coming home from school—this was my sophomore year. I had these
red-and-white shoes on. I was the only one in school that had them.
So my friend and me was just walking and my friend had my phone,
listening to my music. The next thing you know, the boys who robbed
me, they was like, “That’s my song. Play it again.”
I’m like, “Don’t play it again.”
So they put a gun up to my head and was like,
“You have ten seconds to take off your shoes.” I had to hurry up
and take them off. They was actually counting. Then they took my
driver’s license. They was like, “Just in case you trick, we know
where you live.”
It was snowing, and next thing you know, I
was barefoot walking home. Then I had to go and get the locks
changed on the house.
The most recent time I got robbed was my
senior year. It was around prom time. I remember that I had $100 in
my pocket, and I ended up getting jumped on by my friends—guys who
I thought were my friends.
I’m mainly by myself now. I feel as though
groups cause problems, so I’d rather be by myself because I don’t
want a target on me or anything. Always be by myself. Can’t trust
anyone. You know, people always tell me how you got to trust some
people, but it’s easy for them to say because they haven’t been
through what I’ve been through.
My biggest fear is getting shot or ending up
dead. ‘Cause I always think that the people that have something
going for themselves, they end up being the one that’s gone first.
Like my friend Cordero, he was just walking, and then mistaken
identity, and he ended up getting shot in the head. I think it was
a drive-by. They stopped and they was shooting and then he ended up
getting shot. On 111th, down the hill, by the park.
Red, which is what we called David Rodgers.63
We graduated with honors from eighth grade, and he was real smart
then. In our freshman year, we had honors classes and we was both
getting A’s and B’s and, you know, he was doing something positive.
And then hell broke loose. He started shooting people and robbing
people. It just went from there. But I remember, like a week before
he died, he knew he was going to get killed. He was like, “I know
it’s too late, because I messed up.” And then, next thing you know,
he died. He got killed. Right there on 115th and Michigan.
My one good friend, Gregory, he got killed
just by walking. He was just walking. They was shooting, and then I
remember we was in front of my grandma’s house. We all run in the
house and my friend, he was walking, he was trying to run in the
house and, next thing you know, he got shot in the face and just
laid straight down. In front of my grandma’s house, on 65th and
Washtenaw.
My other friend, Derrion Albert—you probably
know about Derrion. We was all at a party the night before, and so,
the next thing you know, Derrion got into a stupid argument. Um, I
didn’t know it was going to wind up being that serious—you know,
where they could just beat you to death.
Me and Derrion, we was close in his freshman
year. I was a junior and he was a freshman. And we just clicked
from then on. We was so cool. So cool and close. His killing
affected me real bad. I mean, I couldn’t even sleep, ‘cause I’m
like, “I just spoke to Derrion that day before.”
For a person to have that much hatred in
their heart, where they have to hit you and beat you with a
stick—it’s just sad. But I’m trying to not let what happened to him
bother me. I could never forget it, but I could just erase it out,
you know—just keep living life, just doing something positive. I
mean, I’m trying to live a productive life. I’m still young. Life
is too short, and life is passing by. So I’m not trying to waste
time.
I live with my auntie now. She’s supportive;
she’s real supportive, but
she lives off the first-of-the-month check. She’s never had a job.
I don’t want to live life like that. I don’t want to live life
half-the-way and get $674 a month just to pay the bills and then
you don’t have no money left over. It’s like, your life is not
going anywhere, ‘cause you settling for less than you could be.
I want to buy my own home someday. I don’t
want to just live in someone else’s apartment. I’m going to move to
a better place, like hopefully the suburbs somewhere. I’m just
looking out for the better and the self in my life. When I look in
the mirror, I see a positive person. I see me striving for the best
in the future. Hopefully, I mean I was in college at Olive-Harvey,
but I took a semester off because I needed to get a job. So I’m
planning on going back in the fall. But right now, I’m just looking
for a job. It’s kind of hard because I’m like, I don’t have no one
to take care of me. I want to take care of myself but it’s like, a
lot of jobs say they’re not hiring or, you know, call back next
month. It’s, like, very hard.
I see a lot of teens my age, you know, they
out here robbing, smoking, gangbanging, drinking. I’m just trying
to live life and just stay away from all of that, but it’s kind of
hard because it’s like we trapped in the environment. You can’t
just play basketball, hang out with friends, go shopping. You can’t
do that without getting robbed. Without getting shot at. So it’s
basically like we living in a prison. We have to watch ourselves.
Sit in the house and look out the window before we step out the
door.
—
Interviewed by Olivia Karim
Endnotes
63 This is the same “Red” whose killing Diane
Latiker describes in her narrative.
I ONLY WORK HERE
THOMAS McMaHON
Retired Chicago Police Capt. Thomas McMahon
was with the force for 37 years. From 1980 to 1996, he worked on
gang homicides, a job he describes as tough but rewarding. During
his career as a detective, McMahon worked on some of Chicago’s most
high-profile cases, including the 1984 killing of Simeon Vocational
High School basketball star Ben Wilson, the federal conspiracy case
that led to the 1987 conviction of El Rukn gang leader Jeff Fort,64
and the 1998 rape and murder of Ryan Harris, an 11-year-old
Englewood girl. He operated under fierce pressure. Just a few days
before his retirement in 2010, in fact, he was running errands in
his family minivan, when he heard gunshots and spotted two
assailants who, he would later learn, had just killed a 20-year-old
man. Unarmed, he chased the suspects in his car, drawing their
gunfire as he called 911.
Now in his 60s, the white-haired and
bespectacled McMahon drives through that same neighborhood in his
brown Toyota, offering a tour of the streets he used to patrol on
Chicago’s Far South Side.
I’m taking you to 111th and Vernon. A kid was
killed here back in the middle of November. At 10 minutes to 12,
not too far from our time frame right now, in broad daylight, two
kids came out of the alley with .40-caliber guns and fired 25
rounds at this kid who was just standing there by the pole and
killed him instantly.
The street corner here has a police camera on
top. The assailants completed the job right under it. There’s a
tape of them fleeing. They were 15 or 18, probably. They weren’t
that old. They weren’t men. They didn’t wear hats or cover their
faces, either. They could not have cared less if their faces were
seen. They just came out and blasted. That case is still not
cleared. We don’t know who did it.
You can see the flowers and flags and the
signs over there on the pole. That is a memorial for the victim. It
used to contain bottles, teddy bears, other flowers, with R.I.P.
written on everything. We’ll see R.I.P. LeBron, R.I.P. Chico, or
R.I.P. whoever it was that got killed, spray-painted on the side of
a wall.
Let me tell you how police work works. For me
to have a successful day, someone has to die. When you think about
it, it’s a paradox: Someone has to suffer something major to them
for me to have a successful day. Point blank, it’s a paradox.
So now I will present the problem to you. I
can’t present the solution. (Should I have ever come up with a
solution that would work, I would have written a book, made a
million dollars and been long gone out of this city.) In order to
understand gang violence, you need to understand the school
situation. It will all happen in the school and carry over into the
streets; something that happened in the streets the night before
will be brought back into the schools. It gets to a point that no
matter what the discipline level is in the school, the gangbangers
do not care. They will walk into a classroom and attack a kid right
in front of the teacher. Will they take a 10-day suspension for
fighting? Absolutely. They do not care. It’s just that way. The
gang becomes more important than the school. Besides, many of these
kids who come to school don’t come for an education. School is
where their friends, their girlfriends are; it’s about the
socialization. When it all mixes into the school, and you have
three or four different gangs all operating in the same school, the
potential for gang violence is very high.
Michigan Avenue and 103rd—this unassuming,
very idle street corner at 3 o’clock is the epicenter for gang
violence. When school lets out, we have police officers literally
at every corner. We have a new security program with guards
patrolling Michigan Avenue for any gang activity. We have a police
helicopter that flies overhead focusing right on this corner. CTA
brings a number of buses, so we can get these kids on buses and out
of these neighborhoods right away. At dismissal time, there’s an
enormous amount of police resources that are used to create safe
passage for the students to go back and forth. It’s unfortunate:
You would think that even with all of these resources that it would
create a safer environment.
There’s no one on the street right now
because of the time. Normally, they would be out all over the
place, but the kids are in school, and those who are gang members
who aren’t in school are laying up in their crib. Their break time
is from school to 3 o’clock. But there will easily be 100 kids
around at 3 o’clock. The most critical time is between 3 o’clock
and 8 o’clock. If you can find something for a kid during that
time, I can tell you it would keep kids away from gangs. If you
even had an after-school center that kids could go to, and what you
do is have them work on homework, work on a computer, socialize,
play some games, whatever it is they do, they won’t have that fear
of being threatened by a gang.