The bottom of the barrel is that area between Quebec Street and Irving. The newspapers lump it all in with a section of town called Petworth, but I’m talking about Park View. Poverty, drug activity, crime. They got that Section 8 housing back in there, the Park Morton complex. What we used to call the projects back when you could say it. Government-assisted hellholes. Gangs like the Park Street and Morton Street Crews. Open-air drug markets; I’m talking about blatant transactions right out there on Georgia Avenue. Drugs are Park View’s industry; the dealers are the biggest employers in this part of town.
The dealers get the whole neighborhood involved. They recruit kids to be lookouts for ’em. Give these kids beepers and cells to warn them off when the Five-O comes around. Entry-level positions. Some of the parents, when there are parents, participate, too. Let these drug dealers duck into their apartments when there’s heat. Teach their kids not to talk to the Man. So you got kids being raised in a culture that says the drug dealers are the good guys and the cops are bad. I’m not lying. It’s exactly how it is.
The trend now is to sell marijuana. Coke, crack and heroin, you can still get it, but the new thing is to deal pot. Here’s why: In the District, possession or distribution of marijuana up to ten pounds-ten pounds-is a misdemeanor. Kid gets popped for selling grass, he knows he’s gonna do no time. Even on a distribution beef, black juries won’t send a black kid into the prison system for a marijuana charge, that’s a proven fact. Prosecutors know this, so they usually no-paper the case. That means most of the time they don’t even go to court with it. I’m not bullshitting. Makes you wonder why they even bother having drug laws to begin with. They legalize the stuff, they’re gonna take the bottom right out the market, and the violent crimes in this city would go down to, like, nothing. Don’t get me started. I know it sounds strange, a cop saying this. But you’d be surprised how many of us feel that way.
Okay, I got off the subject. I was talking about my night.
Early on I got a domestic call, over on Otis Place. When I got there, two cruisers were on the scene, four young guys, two of them with flashlights. A rookie named Buzzy talked to a woman at the front door of her row house, then came back and told me that the object of the complaint was behind the place, in the alley. I walked around back alone and into the alley and right off I recognized the man standing inside the fence of his tiny, brown-grass yard. Harry Lang, sixty-some years old. I’d been to this address a few times in the past ten years.
I said, “Hello, Harry,” Harry said, “Officer,” and I said, “Wait right here, okay?” Then I went through the open gate. Harry’s wife was on her back porch, flanked by her two sons, big strapping guys, all of them standing under a triangle of harsh white light coming from a naked bulb. Mrs. Lang’s face and body language told me that the situation had resolved itself. Generally, once we arrive, domestic conflicts tend to calm down on their own.
Mrs. Lang said that Harry had been verbally abusive that night, demanding money from her, even though he’d just got paid. I asked her if Harry had struck her, and her response was negative. But she had a job, too, she worked just as hard as him, why should she support his lifestyle and let him speak to her like that… I was listening and not listening, if you know what I mean. I made my sincere face and nodded every few seconds or so.
I asked her if she wanted me to lock Harry up, and of course she said no. I asked what she did want, and she said she didn’t want to see him “for the rest of the night.” I told her I thought I could arrange that, and started back to have a talk with Harry. I felt the porch light go off behind me as I hit the bottom of the wooden stairs. Dogs had begun to bark in the neighboring yards.
Harry was short and low-slung, a black black man, nearly featureless in the dark. He wore a porkpie hat and his clothes were pressed and clean. He kept his eyes down as I spoke to him over the barks of the dogs. His reaction time was very slow when I asked for a response. I could see right away that he was on a nod.
Harry had been a controlled heroin junkie for the last thirty years. During that time, he’d always held a job, lived in this same house and been there, in one condition or another, for his kids. I’d wager he went to church on Sundays, too. But a junkie was what he was. Heroin was a slow ride down. Some folks could control it to some degree and never hit the bottom.
I asked Harry if he could find a place to sleep that night other than his house, and he told me that he “supposed” he could. I told him I didn’t want to see him again any time soon, and he said, “It’s mutual.” I chuckled at that, giving him some of his pride back, which didn’t cost me a thing. He walked down the alley, stopping once to cup his hands around a match as he put fire to a cigarette.
I drove back over to Georgia. A guy flagged me down just to talk. They see my car number and they know it’s me. Sergeant Peters, the old white cop. You get a history with these people. Some of these kids, I know their parents. I’ve busted ’em from time to time. Busted their grandparents, too. Shows you how long I’ve been doing this.
Down around Morton I saw Tonio Harris, a neighborhood kid, walking alone towards the Black Hole. Tonio was wearing those work boots and the baggy pants low, like all the other kids, although he’s not like most of them. I took his mother in for drugs a long time ago, back when that Love Boat stuff was popular and making everyone crazy; his father-the one who impregnated his mother, I mean-he’s doing a stretch for manslaughter, his third fall. Tonio’s mother’s clean now, at least I think she is; anyway, she’s done a fairly good job with him. By that I mean he’s got no juvenile priors, from what I know. A minor miracle down here, you ask me.
I rolled down my window. “Hey, Tonio, how’s it going?” I slowed down to a crawl, took in the sweetish smell of reefer in the air. Tonio was still walking, not looking at me, but he mumbled something about “I’m maintainin’,” or some shit like that. “You take care of yourself in there,” I said, meaning in the Hole, “and get yourself home right after.” He didn’t respond verbally, just made a half-assed kind of acknowledgment with his chin.
I cruised around for the next couple of hours. Turned my spot on kids hanging in the shadows, told them to break it up and move along. Asked a guy in Columbia Heights why his little boy was out on the stoop, dribbling a basketball, at one in the morning. Raised my voice at a boy, a lookout for a dealer, who was sitting on top of a trash can, told him to get his ass on home. Most of the time, this is my night. We’re just letting the critters know we’re out here.
At around two I called in a few cruisers to handle the closing of the Black Hole. You never know what’s going to happen at the end of the night there, what kind of beefs got born inside the club, who looked at who a little too hard for one second too long. Hard to believe that an ex-cop from Prince Georges County runs the place. That a cop would put all this trouble on us, bring it into our district. He’s got D.C. cops moonlighting as bouncers in there, too, working the metal detectors at the door. I talked with one, a young white cop, earlier in the night. I noticed the brightness in his eyes and the sweat beaded across his forehead. He was scared, like I gave a shit. Asked us as a favor to show some kind of presence at closing time. Called me Sarge. Okay. I didn’t answer him. I got no sympathy for the cops who work those go-go joints, especially not since Officer Brian Gibson was shot dead outside the Ibex Club a few years back. But if something goes down around the place, it’s on me. So I do my job.