Criminal

The Mourners Of Willowbrook

1979
Watts; a suburb of Los Angeles, California

Criminal. I was a criminal and everybody that knew me, knew that about me. I never made no pretense about that. I had a rap sheet as long as my arm. I was always having run-ins with the police. The police knew me and I knew them. I was known to them as Dirty Red. I was in and out of jail all the time. Hell, I was more comfortable in jail than out. I got so many stories I could write a book. But Imma’ tell you this one story. It was some unjustifiable shit that went down. Listen to me when I tell you about some of these phony ass police and how they do just as much crime shit as any other criminals. They just don’t always get caught, cause they got they shit organized and backed up by the politicians. Okay, look here, not a whole lot of police shit bothers me, but there is this one altercation I had with them that stands out. It was August 19, 1976. A day, even if I tried I could never forget.

Alright, so I was in my 1970 convertible lowrider, Fleetwood black cadi, white walls, diamond tucked, am/fm Stereo, 8 track cassette player, boosted speakers with woofers, and a beast of a sound system packed in the trunk. Everything, where it was supposed to be. It’s a lovely sunny day around noon and I’m cruising down Imperial Highway close to 115th street with the sun popping my new black pearl paint job. It was like they say, I was digging the scene with a gangsta’ lean, listening to Parliament / Funcadelic, The Mothership Connection. The sound was so sweet, you would think you was up in da’ club. All was good in the hood.

I had been making runs and handling my street transactions all that day. All was cooler than a fan, but by the late afternoon I was ridin’ dirty as fuck. I was high as a kite, smokin’ in the car, swerving all over the road. You could smell the weed from miles away. My music was so loud it was violating all kinds of city noise ordinances. But it was bumpin. My little cousin Benny was in the car with me. He was visiting from the south, Louisiana. Benny was a preacher’s son, so that meant he was gon’ be a preacher. He was always trying to talk some sense into me about gettin’ right with God, keepin’ on the straight and narrow, gettin’ saved and all that preachy preachy talk, and I kept telling him, “that ain’t my calling.”

When Benny and me was younger he was my road dog. I mean he was down for whatever the cause I was about or whatever the hell of shenanigans I was up to. Then one day, out of nowhere he says to me, “ Hey Dirty Red, I got saved.” I said, “you got the what now?” He said it again, “I got saved, I caught the Holy Ghost.” And from then on, all he ever talked about was saving somebody soul, somebody gettin’ saved and about how he was saved, walking and talkin’ in the footsteps of the Lord God Almighty. Now, every once in a while I would go to church, cause I be liking the choir. Choir music is always cool. Calms me down. But then, I got to get back out there in them streets.

Yeah, that day, everything was flowing pretty cool. And then, I heard the sirens. Benny and I saw the lights flashing in the rear view mirror. When Benny saw that we were getting pulled over, he started getting nervous. He kept looking back at the patrol car, squirming, checking the door handle, trying to open the door. I could see he was bout’ to lose it cause he was in total panic. Benny was a good kid, but he was getting real restless. And then like out of nowhere, he hollered out, “oh man this is the KKK! I looked over to him and said the what? I told him, “no man, calm down they the police. I need you to listen to me man. Here’s whats gone happen, they gone stop us, come over to the car, ask for license and registration and give me a ticket. They gone give me ticket cause I got expired tags and then we gone go through the thing and then we gone be up outta here. It’s a thing. He started looking around like he wanted to get out the car right then and there. I said, take it easy, don’t make any sudden moves and only speak when spoken to. I was 18 at the time and Benny, he was about 14.

Benny was a good kid, but Benny wasn’t hearin’ anything I was sayin’ to him, he kept freakin’ out. The officer started walking towards the car, but right before the officers made it to the car, Benny yelled out. He said “fuck this! They ain’t killin’ me! This dude then, jumps out the car and starts running like a bat outta hell. He was moving fast.

Then the two officers looked at each other like they was in shock and then they quickly snapped out of it and took off running, chasing after Benny. That shit got live, real fast!

While they was running, one of the officers called for backup from his shoulder phone. Immediately like out of nowhere four other officers were on the scene. Before I could even think about running, one of them apprehended me and threw me in the backseat of the patrol car, locked the door and told me “don’t you fuckin’ move” and before I knew it they were all running in the direction of the other officers that was chasing Benny. And now, I’m looking around trying to figure out how I can escape.

Then, the next thing I see, all those police officers was dragging Benny towards the patrol car, like he a caught animal. He was squirming and screaming “let me go, let me go, I didn’t do nothing.” He was crying like a little kid. A real little kid.
They got him near the car and I was looking down at the situation, they started tasering him. A lot. They tasered him about ten times. And he was screaming. Loud.

They was torturing him, doing that shit that they did to the Jews during um the holocaust, black people in South Africa, that apartheid shit. And all for a traffic violation and fourteen year old kid that runt off cause he scared the police gon’ kill em.

Even though I was sitting in the back of that patrol car, not knowing what they gon’ do to me. I couldn’t get it out of my head what I was witnessing. You know what these evil ass fools did? They hog tied him. they tied his legs to his hands, his wrists, you know the way you hog tie a pig that you getting ready to slaughter?
Let me tell you how they had him. The way they did it they turnt him on his stomach while he was already handcuffed, they, they, they tied his legs up and pulled his legs with the rope to his wrists, after they pulled his hands around his back, then they tied them all up together. He was wrapped and roped.
Again, I’m there for Benny but my imagination was fuckin’ running wild and I asked myself the question, where the hell did these motherfuckas’ learn how to that shit, and how did they know to just come together and execute that hog tying shit so fast?

I was looking right at Benny, our eyes caught, he was looking at me directly like help me. And he kept trying to fight em off. Then, he just stopped fighting them. He just stopped. He closed his eyes and his body went limp. He was mouthing the Lord’s prayer. “Our father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven … “ My man was exhausted. You know when they got you like that, nobody can fight for you. My hands were tied literally.

By then my high was blown. I was alert and thinking.I was full clarity of mind, out of the clouds. I couldn’t tell if I was speaking out loud or just saying this in my head. “These motherfuckas right here and that right there” that right there, that that is some inhumane bullshit going down tight now in front of me. I am witnessing human rights violations.” Man these police be acting real low class.
When you think about it, we ain’t really free. Are we? So how can we fight back? How can we fight this kind of unrighteousness. Its like they be writing tickets, doing the law enforcement shit on a legal level and everything keeping law and order, doing they job, then they snap, take a break from that action and then go to fuckin’ a brotha up, fighting you, telling you ain’t shit and kicking your ass and then they go back to that ticket writing shit. What kind of mind, what kind of brain you got to do that shit to another human being?

You know my father, a military man said to me one day. He’s a really wise man. He said, “son, get your mothafuckin’ ass off them streets before one of those cops meat pack yo’ ass!” Yeah, I heard him loud and clear.

That was the old me. Today, I am a preacher. I have my own ministry, my own church with a congregation of twenty-five-hundred parishioners. I have a wife, five kids and the house with the picket fence. I am in church seven days week, thanking, praising, walking and talking in the name of the Lord God Almighty.
And Benny. Man, somehow Benny survived all that shit. He did his time for resisting arrest and after he got out of teenager jail, he never looked back. He is now Top Dog in them streets, making all the money. A bigger baller than I ever was.