Prometheus 6

A Steep Fall Into Gang Life
A standout youth full of promise gives in to the lure of the street. Getting shot, testifying despite peril, growing 'tired of running' all play a part.
By Jill Leovy
Times Staff Writer

August 5, 2004

At 16, he was a top student, star athlete and police Explorer.

At 21, he was a Crip bent on avenging a murder.

How one black teenager, nicknamed Gizmo, went from promise to catastrophe in a few years reveals the complicated relationship between African Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department in the city's most violent neighborhoods.

… Gizmo couldn't walk out his front door without seeing one of the gang, Beecher said.

"You live in that neighborhood, you are going to be associated with them," he said. "You've got to say, 'Hi,' to them or they're going to kick your ass."

Being an Explorer took courage. The toughs called him blue boy, police flunky.

But he seemed impervious. He was a college-bound baseball infielder at Manual Arts High School and took weekend Advanced Placement courses at USC. He was named the Southwest Division's outstanding Explorer recruit.

His grandmother treasured that trophy above the others, giving it a special place in front of the piano.

As Gizmo lay in his hospital bed, Beecher told him he was confronted with a choice: Testify, and demonstrate that he was not a gang member, or decline, as gang members nearly always do. The teenager understood.

He was a not a gang member, he told the officer. He would help the police.

Gizmo identified his attacker and was ordered to appear in court. In the hallway, he found himself facing his assailants' angry friends and relatives. He felt keenly aware of the difference between himself and the officers standing with him, he said. Police had the protection of their uniforms. He was just another black teenager.

His attacker was convicted. But Gizmo said he walked out feeling scared and alone. It dawned on him that cooperating with police involved far more danger than he realized. He had considered the police his friends. Now, members of his family said, he felt betrayed by police and endangered by a legal system that seemed indifferent to his safety.

Already he had been shot, and threats had always been part of life in his neighborhood. But after testifying, he said, "I felt I was targeted." Gang members would confront him and say, "We heard about you."

Gizmo became "like a different person," his grandmother said. He seemed withdrawn, gave up his dreams of college ball and was angry at the police.

Beecher had hired Gizmo as a youth football official the fall after the shooting, but lost touch when the season was over. He thought the youth had moved on, the way Explorers do when they graduate — as Gizmo did — from high school.What Beecher didn't know was that Gizmo was becoming involved with a different arm of the LAPD: The 77th Street Division's gang detail.

Gizmo had finally joined the local gang.

… A central question remains: Why did Gizmo slip?

A number of officers said they were sure that his gang involvement began before he testified in court and that he had lived a double life.

But Beecher, the officer who recruited Gizmo into the Explorers, said he believed that the truth was more complex. He recalled Gizmo often telling him that he had a plan to escape the neighborhood: a full-time job, college and an apartment far away. But as Gizmo got older, he confided to the officer that he didn't think he had the means.

Beecher said he couldn't know for sure but thought Gizmo put up a valiant fight. "In that environment," he said, "it's like he had no other choices."

Gizmo said no one had it quite right. Not the police. Not his grandparents.

He did join the gang after he testified, he said — partly for protection, partly to make money from selling drugs. But he was wavering long before. The gang members were his childhood friends. Whenever you want to come home, they told him often, you can come home.

Rival gang members, meanwhile, didn't seem to care whether or not he was in a gang. They shot at him anyway.

So, although he concentrated on school and Explorers, inwardly he toyed with joining. He would have done it long before, he said, but for Beecher.

"He cared," Gizmo said. "He was the one reason I even considered police work."

After testifying, he said, "it was all over."

He joined the gang at 17. He sold drugs, found the job boring, moved up, grew more ruthless. Beecher was no longer around.

"I thought, 'I'm tired of running,' " Gizmo said. "I might as well be a part of it."

After a while, he no longer felt fear when shot at.

Looking back, "gangbanging is a bad decision … the mistake of a lifetime," he said as he used a screwdriver to pry bullets from a door frame inside his grandparents' house.

"But I can't get out of it now. And I couldn't tell you if I want to anymore."