I thought I would share this with Siccness.net
Sunday, December 9, 2007 (SF Chronicle)
Many young black men in Oakland are killing and dying for respect
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Along with the Christmas trees and family gatherings, there's another
end-of-the-year ritual in Oakland - a candlelight vigil for the murdered.
The body count is woven into the civic consciousness here - a number
chased by homicide inspectors, studied by criminologists, lamented in
churches, reported by journalists. Every mayor leaves City Hall on broken
promises to quell the violence, and the killings continue. An additional
115 have been killed this year, putting Oakland on pace for another
gruesome record.
In the last five years, 557 people were slain on the city's streets,
making Oakland the state's second-most murderous city, behind Compton.
Most victims are young, black men who are dying in forgotten neighborhoods
of East and West Oakland.
A handful of their killers, speaking from prison, describe an environment
where violence is so woven into the culture that murder has become a
symbol of manhood.
The inmates say the only difference between these neighborhoods and prison
is the absence of walls. The same hierarchies apply - the meanest rise to
the top. It's a survival skill that ensures ownership of drug corners, a
sense of self-worth, female attention and protection from attack.
Experts fear that the neighborhoods are only getting more violent. There
are entire blocks without a single two-parent family, where drug dealers
have become the predominant male role models, and children fend for
themselves in crowded, chaotic homes where they are routinely exposed to
drugs, sex and guns.
Criminal families are on their third and fourth generations. Grandparents
- the ones who have historically stepped in to help raise fatherless boys
and instill a sense of right and wrong - are dying off.
Back in the 1980s, drug dealers who first brought crack cocaine to Oakland
used to hide their activities from their parents because it was shameful,
but now it's a full-blown family business, said Michelle Gandy, a private
investigator who interviews murder defendants for Alameda County
court-appointed criminal defense attorneys.
"The kids today recognize that their parents are in it, too, so there's
this hopelessness," she said.
Increasingly, the young murder suspects coming to the station for
questioning seem to lack basic morality, said Sgt. Tim Nolan, who has been
investigating Oakland homicides for 17 years.
"There are more and more families where there's less and less structure,"
he said. "Talking to these suspects day in and out, there's a higher
percentage today with no sense of right and wrong. It's frightening, but
we are creating super-criminals."
All it takes is a look, a put-down or a lost fight, and bullets fly.
Disrespect has become the No. 1 reason to kill.
Killings have been concentrated in these neighborhoods for so long that
revenge killings continue for decades. There's a six-degrees-of-separation
phenomenon that happens after each death: The killers and their victims
can typically trace a relationship through family, friends, schools or
prison stints.
That's why Oakland murders are rarely random. More often they are the
result of historical battles between crews who hold Mafia-like influence
on blocks and drug corners.
"Many people who live there rarely leave Oakland, let alone their block,
so their disputes take on epic proportions," said Nolan.
Witnesses are cowed into silence because snitches have been known to
disappear. Nearly half of all murders in Oakland go uncharged for lack of
a willing witness, so a shooter knows he has about a 50-50 chance of
getting away with it.
"Murder is hardly ever a whodunit in Oakland," said criminal defense
attorney William Du Bois, who has been representing Oakland homicide
suspects for nearly three decades.
Because witnesses won't testify, certain Oakland neighborhoods have an
abnormally high per capita rate of killers walking the streets. They are
known, feared, and have an incredibly toxic influence on impressionable
young boys aching for structure.
"In these neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, all the doctors, lawyers,
pharmacists, architects and postal workers have left," said Richard Miles,
chief executive officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area.
"The kids have nobody but drug lords to look up to."
For this report, The Chronicle conducted prison and telephone interviews
with five convicted Oakland killers, reviewed the court files of 60 murder
trials, listened to police interrogation tapes and talked with homicide
inspectors, district attorneys, family members, criminal defense lawyers,
forensic therapists and criminologists.
The inmates who spoke to The Chronicle hoped that their stories would
dissuade younger generations from following in their footsteps. Their
stories, and those told in the court files, show that Oakland killers
share many characteristics.
They are young. Most killed before their 25th birthday.
A majority grew up without a father - he was either murdered, incarcerated
or abandoned his children.
Mom is typically absent, too, either because she's working several jobs
for minimum wage or because she's also lost to the streets through drugs,
prostitution or prison.
Many of the convicted killers were quasi-homeless in grade school, moving
every 90 days on eviction cycles, or bouncing between friends' and
relatives' homes, where they slept on recliners and couches and floors.
Inside the home is pure chaos. Typically, they live with a
third-generation relative, an elderly grandmother or aunt, who also opens
her home to several other wayward relatives. They all pile into one home,
bringing their boyfriends and girlfriends and their children. There's no
particular person in charge, no house rules, and people come and go.
Often it's in these houses where young boys first learn how to hold a gun,
how to break a rock of cocaine into dime and nickel bags for sale.
Without parents to help them mature, the mental world of these young
killers stays stuck in an infantile, egotistic state, said forensic
psychologist Shawn Johnston, who has conducted more than 15,000 court
evaluations of adult and juvenile criminals in 15 Northern California
counties.
"What keeps us from killing each other is empathy, and we learn it from
bonding with parents who pick us back up when we get hurt or teased as
children," Johnston said. "Without it, you get guys who live in a constant
state of protecting the fantasy that they are the most important thing
this side of the Milky Way. And because they don't have empathy, they will
shoot or stab to protect their illusion."
Teachers who work with these boys in the Alameda County Juvenile Justice
Center say the first thing they do is stock their classrooms with food, to
help their students concentrate. Young boys fend for themselves in the
absence of structured mealtimes - grabbing what they can from a fast-food
restaurant or a corner liquor store when they can scrape together or steal
some money.
There is an equivalent of a mafia in Oakland's ghettos. Some kids are born
into families that "claim" streets. Children in these families are
expected to put the family's gang wars above anything else - they skip
school when the turf wars heat up and the gang members are expected to
stand out on the streets in a show of force.
"Everyone in my family was in the game - my mother, stepfather, brother,
cousins," said Donte Osborne, 28, who is serving a 15-year sentence in
Corcoran State Prison for second-degree murder.
"I caught a dope case when I was 10 years old and sold to a decoy," he
said. "I adapted to my surroundings. It's not like I wanted to do it, but
if I didn't, I would have been left out of my family."
Without anyone in charge of their moral development, young boys come up
with their own rules. When they get in disputes, they don't have the
ability to resolve them because no one has ever taught them how to manage
anger and stress other than with fists or a gun.
In this world, challenges cannot be left unanswered. A boy who is jumped,
robbed or insulted and doesn't respond is labeled "soft," or a "punk" or a
"bitch." He becomes prey. Once he is perceived as weak, the attacks keep
coming. He loses not only his honor, but his friends and his personal
safety, until he fights back and wins - sometimes via homicide.
"It doesn't matter how bad your circumstances are, at a cellular genetic
level you know it's not supposed to be this way and you're pissed off with
no way to ameliorate it," Miles of Big Brothers Big Sisters said.
A majority of the men studied by The Chronicle had criminals in their
families. Most had juvenile records, the majority for selling or carrying
drugs. Many developed their own chemical habits and a little more than
half dropped out of school.
Their role models are the drug dealers on the corner who have the cars,
clothes, girls, money and most of all - respect.
"In a dysfunctional environment, it's prestigious to be a gangster, and it
inspires you to act the same," said convicted killer Ivan Kilgore, 32, who
is serving a life sentence in California State Prison, Sacramento.
"It fulfills that ego, gives you a sense of identity. Big dudes respect
you. It's like being a star athlete - kids in constructive environments,
their peers give them accolades and support to continue their good
behavior by bolstering their ego. It's identical in the streets, only the
behavior that is rewarded is different. It's like, 'Hey! I saw you in a
stolen car!' and you get a high five."
Respect is money, money is power and power is masculinity. Violence
defines you as a man.
"These kids have one thing in this world, and when you have nothing else,
no money, no access, no privileges, no resources, no means, the only thing
you have, from a little boy on, is your respect," investigator Gandy said.
Inmates told The Chronicle that it was the drug dealers who gave them
their first sense of belonging. The gang on the block is the first group
that wants them, that pays attention to their whereabouts, that asks what
they are doing and what they think about things. Sometimes there's a girl
out there who thinks they're cute. All of a sudden the neglected boy has a
posse - the first place that feels like home.
Prisoner Hamisi Spears, serving a 39-year sentence in High Desert State
Prison in Susanville, described the criminal evolution as an organic
process - like a seed that's planted and watered and grows into a shoot.
"You see these guys who are three or four years older than you, who are
not doing kid stuff anymore, not playing tag football in the street. We
watch him and all of a sudden he's got a car, he's dressing differently,
and we want that too so we approach and say, 'Wassup, man?' "
At first, the older guy will likely shoo the youngster away, telling the
boy he's not ready to get in the game.
Then one day he'll ask the boy to ride in his car. It's the moment that
the boy has been aching for.
"You're there, it's nice, the music is playing, and he'll run an errand.
He'll say 'Here, hold this.' It's a gun or some dope. He'll jump out and
then jump right back and then he knows he can trust you. He'll turn to you
and say, 'Hey, you hungry?' and go get you something to eat. You are part
of him now."
Now the boy is loyal, even if caught selling drugs for the older dealer.
The code of the street dictates never telling on the man who is providing
for you.
"When you get out of jail, you've got street cred," Spears said. "He sees
you, knows you stopped him from going to jail, and he'll respect you, take
you and buy you a couple of outfits."
Boys go from nobody to somebody overnight.
Navigating this world is delicate. Shootings can occur simply because
someone made a movement that could have been interpreted as a reach for a
gun in a waistband.
While this is a common strategy in court to claim self-defense, there is
an element of truth to it. Many of the killers studied by The Chronicle
killed enemies who put word out on the street that they were going to kill
first.
In this warped environment, killing someone can actually protect you. It's
a way to keep others in fear.
Gun laws can't reach places like East and West Oakland. Rarely do boys go
get a gun and kill - the gun is already there. Guns are as common as cell
phones. Friends give their friends guns for protection after losing a
fistfight. Every day, drug addicts trade guns for a fix. Groups of boys
share guns, keeping them hidden in abandoned homes, in empty lots, in the
rain gutters and under their beds.
Boys don't think they will live past 25, so they don't live their life as
if they will. None of the convicted killers told The Chronicle that they
were worried about their futures or the consequences of their criminal
lifestyle before going to prison. To be a square, to go to school, work
for minimum wage and shun the "game," takes an enormous amount of patience
and personal risk in the middle of what is, in effect, a war zone. The
payoff is too far off for someone who doesn't plan for middle age or a
career. At the time, the quick buck didn't seem like a bad choice, inmates
said.
Only a handful of the killers had legitimate jobs. Criminal records and
lack of a high school diploma, no car to get to work, and no support from
immediate family ensure that they simply don't fit in to what society sees
as employee material.
It was only after they were taken out of their environment and given years
to reflect behind bars that they had time to grasp the concept of another
way of life.
The experts - and the killers - say a mentor might have saved them, anyone
from the outside who could have shown them another way to be a man.
After so many years in prison, the convicted killers who spoke to The
Chronicle have had time to think about why their lives turned out the way
that they did. They are remorseful, they are angry at themselves and the
circumstances that they were born into, and they are trying to do
something useful with what's left of their tragic lives.
It's a second chance that their victims will never get.
"I don't care how bad your situation is, as we grow up in this world we
know right from wrong," said Gerlen Anderson, who held her son William as
he lay dying from Ivan Kilgore's shotgun blast near a pay phone at 30th
and San Pablo avenues in 2000.
When Anderson saw that her 21-year-old son wasn't going to make it, she
whispered in his ear, "Go to the angels."
Kilgore claimed that Anderson had repeatedly attacked him and robbed him
of $100.
Oakland: A Plague of Killing logo
Coming Monday: Experts say mentoring can help stem the wave of violence on
Oakland's streets, one boy at a time.
Online: To see The Chronicle's interactive map of Oakland homicides
between 2002 and 2006, go to
sfgate.com/oaklandhomicides/interactives/map/
Sunday, December 9, 2007 (SF Chronicle)
Many young black men in Oakland are killing and dying for respect
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Along with the Christmas trees and family gatherings, there's another
end-of-the-year ritual in Oakland - a candlelight vigil for the murdered.
The body count is woven into the civic consciousness here - a number
chased by homicide inspectors, studied by criminologists, lamented in
churches, reported by journalists. Every mayor leaves City Hall on broken
promises to quell the violence, and the killings continue. An additional
115 have been killed this year, putting Oakland on pace for another
gruesome record.
In the last five years, 557 people were slain on the city's streets,
making Oakland the state's second-most murderous city, behind Compton.
Most victims are young, black men who are dying in forgotten neighborhoods
of East and West Oakland.
A handful of their killers, speaking from prison, describe an environment
where violence is so woven into the culture that murder has become a
symbol of manhood.
The inmates say the only difference between these neighborhoods and prison
is the absence of walls. The same hierarchies apply - the meanest rise to
the top. It's a survival skill that ensures ownership of drug corners, a
sense of self-worth, female attention and protection from attack.
Experts fear that the neighborhoods are only getting more violent. There
are entire blocks without a single two-parent family, where drug dealers
have become the predominant male role models, and children fend for
themselves in crowded, chaotic homes where they are routinely exposed to
drugs, sex and guns.
Criminal families are on their third and fourth generations. Grandparents
- the ones who have historically stepped in to help raise fatherless boys
and instill a sense of right and wrong - are dying off.
Back in the 1980s, drug dealers who first brought crack cocaine to Oakland
used to hide their activities from their parents because it was shameful,
but now it's a full-blown family business, said Michelle Gandy, a private
investigator who interviews murder defendants for Alameda County
court-appointed criminal defense attorneys.
"The kids today recognize that their parents are in it, too, so there's
this hopelessness," she said.
Increasingly, the young murder suspects coming to the station for
questioning seem to lack basic morality, said Sgt. Tim Nolan, who has been
investigating Oakland homicides for 17 years.
"There are more and more families where there's less and less structure,"
he said. "Talking to these suspects day in and out, there's a higher
percentage today with no sense of right and wrong. It's frightening, but
we are creating super-criminals."
All it takes is a look, a put-down or a lost fight, and bullets fly.
Disrespect has become the No. 1 reason to kill.
Killings have been concentrated in these neighborhoods for so long that
revenge killings continue for decades. There's a six-degrees-of-separation
phenomenon that happens after each death: The killers and their victims
can typically trace a relationship through family, friends, schools or
prison stints.
That's why Oakland murders are rarely random. More often they are the
result of historical battles between crews who hold Mafia-like influence
on blocks and drug corners.
"Many people who live there rarely leave Oakland, let alone their block,
so their disputes take on epic proportions," said Nolan.
Witnesses are cowed into silence because snitches have been known to
disappear. Nearly half of all murders in Oakland go uncharged for lack of
a willing witness, so a shooter knows he has about a 50-50 chance of
getting away with it.
"Murder is hardly ever a whodunit in Oakland," said criminal defense
attorney William Du Bois, who has been representing Oakland homicide
suspects for nearly three decades.
Because witnesses won't testify, certain Oakland neighborhoods have an
abnormally high per capita rate of killers walking the streets. They are
known, feared, and have an incredibly toxic influence on impressionable
young boys aching for structure.
"In these neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, all the doctors, lawyers,
pharmacists, architects and postal workers have left," said Richard Miles,
chief executive officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area.
"The kids have nobody but drug lords to look up to."
For this report, The Chronicle conducted prison and telephone interviews
with five convicted Oakland killers, reviewed the court files of 60 murder
trials, listened to police interrogation tapes and talked with homicide
inspectors, district attorneys, family members, criminal defense lawyers,
forensic therapists and criminologists.
The inmates who spoke to The Chronicle hoped that their stories would
dissuade younger generations from following in their footsteps. Their
stories, and those told in the court files, show that Oakland killers
share many characteristics.
They are young. Most killed before their 25th birthday.
A majority grew up without a father - he was either murdered, incarcerated
or abandoned his children.
Mom is typically absent, too, either because she's working several jobs
for minimum wage or because she's also lost to the streets through drugs,
prostitution or prison.
Many of the convicted killers were quasi-homeless in grade school, moving
every 90 days on eviction cycles, or bouncing between friends' and
relatives' homes, where they slept on recliners and couches and floors.
Inside the home is pure chaos. Typically, they live with a
third-generation relative, an elderly grandmother or aunt, who also opens
her home to several other wayward relatives. They all pile into one home,
bringing their boyfriends and girlfriends and their children. There's no
particular person in charge, no house rules, and people come and go.
Often it's in these houses where young boys first learn how to hold a gun,
how to break a rock of cocaine into dime and nickel bags for sale.
Without parents to help them mature, the mental world of these young
killers stays stuck in an infantile, egotistic state, said forensic
psychologist Shawn Johnston, who has conducted more than 15,000 court
evaluations of adult and juvenile criminals in 15 Northern California
counties.
"What keeps us from killing each other is empathy, and we learn it from
bonding with parents who pick us back up when we get hurt or teased as
children," Johnston said. "Without it, you get guys who live in a constant
state of protecting the fantasy that they are the most important thing
this side of the Milky Way. And because they don't have empathy, they will
shoot or stab to protect their illusion."
Teachers who work with these boys in the Alameda County Juvenile Justice
Center say the first thing they do is stock their classrooms with food, to
help their students concentrate. Young boys fend for themselves in the
absence of structured mealtimes - grabbing what they can from a fast-food
restaurant or a corner liquor store when they can scrape together or steal
some money.
There is an equivalent of a mafia in Oakland's ghettos. Some kids are born
into families that "claim" streets. Children in these families are
expected to put the family's gang wars above anything else - they skip
school when the turf wars heat up and the gang members are expected to
stand out on the streets in a show of force.
"Everyone in my family was in the game - my mother, stepfather, brother,
cousins," said Donte Osborne, 28, who is serving a 15-year sentence in
Corcoran State Prison for second-degree murder.
"I caught a dope case when I was 10 years old and sold to a decoy," he
said. "I adapted to my surroundings. It's not like I wanted to do it, but
if I didn't, I would have been left out of my family."
Without anyone in charge of their moral development, young boys come up
with their own rules. When they get in disputes, they don't have the
ability to resolve them because no one has ever taught them how to manage
anger and stress other than with fists or a gun.
In this world, challenges cannot be left unanswered. A boy who is jumped,
robbed or insulted and doesn't respond is labeled "soft," or a "punk" or a
"bitch." He becomes prey. Once he is perceived as weak, the attacks keep
coming. He loses not only his honor, but his friends and his personal
safety, until he fights back and wins - sometimes via homicide.
"It doesn't matter how bad your circumstances are, at a cellular genetic
level you know it's not supposed to be this way and you're pissed off with
no way to ameliorate it," Miles of Big Brothers Big Sisters said.
A majority of the men studied by The Chronicle had criminals in their
families. Most had juvenile records, the majority for selling or carrying
drugs. Many developed their own chemical habits and a little more than
half dropped out of school.
Their role models are the drug dealers on the corner who have the cars,
clothes, girls, money and most of all - respect.
"In a dysfunctional environment, it's prestigious to be a gangster, and it
inspires you to act the same," said convicted killer Ivan Kilgore, 32, who
is serving a life sentence in California State Prison, Sacramento.
"It fulfills that ego, gives you a sense of identity. Big dudes respect
you. It's like being a star athlete - kids in constructive environments,
their peers give them accolades and support to continue their good
behavior by bolstering their ego. It's identical in the streets, only the
behavior that is rewarded is different. It's like, 'Hey! I saw you in a
stolen car!' and you get a high five."
Respect is money, money is power and power is masculinity. Violence
defines you as a man.
"These kids have one thing in this world, and when you have nothing else,
no money, no access, no privileges, no resources, no means, the only thing
you have, from a little boy on, is your respect," investigator Gandy said.
Inmates told The Chronicle that it was the drug dealers who gave them
their first sense of belonging. The gang on the block is the first group
that wants them, that pays attention to their whereabouts, that asks what
they are doing and what they think about things. Sometimes there's a girl
out there who thinks they're cute. All of a sudden the neglected boy has a
posse - the first place that feels like home.
Prisoner Hamisi Spears, serving a 39-year sentence in High Desert State
Prison in Susanville, described the criminal evolution as an organic
process - like a seed that's planted and watered and grows into a shoot.
"You see these guys who are three or four years older than you, who are
not doing kid stuff anymore, not playing tag football in the street. We
watch him and all of a sudden he's got a car, he's dressing differently,
and we want that too so we approach and say, 'Wassup, man?' "
At first, the older guy will likely shoo the youngster away, telling the
boy he's not ready to get in the game.
Then one day he'll ask the boy to ride in his car. It's the moment that
the boy has been aching for.
"You're there, it's nice, the music is playing, and he'll run an errand.
He'll say 'Here, hold this.' It's a gun or some dope. He'll jump out and
then jump right back and then he knows he can trust you. He'll turn to you
and say, 'Hey, you hungry?' and go get you something to eat. You are part
of him now."
Now the boy is loyal, even if caught selling drugs for the older dealer.
The code of the street dictates never telling on the man who is providing
for you.
"When you get out of jail, you've got street cred," Spears said. "He sees
you, knows you stopped him from going to jail, and he'll respect you, take
you and buy you a couple of outfits."
Boys go from nobody to somebody overnight.
Navigating this world is delicate. Shootings can occur simply because
someone made a movement that could have been interpreted as a reach for a
gun in a waistband.
While this is a common strategy in court to claim self-defense, there is
an element of truth to it. Many of the killers studied by The Chronicle
killed enemies who put word out on the street that they were going to kill
first.
In this warped environment, killing someone can actually protect you. It's
a way to keep others in fear.
Gun laws can't reach places like East and West Oakland. Rarely do boys go
get a gun and kill - the gun is already there. Guns are as common as cell
phones. Friends give their friends guns for protection after losing a
fistfight. Every day, drug addicts trade guns for a fix. Groups of boys
share guns, keeping them hidden in abandoned homes, in empty lots, in the
rain gutters and under their beds.
Boys don't think they will live past 25, so they don't live their life as
if they will. None of the convicted killers told The Chronicle that they
were worried about their futures or the consequences of their criminal
lifestyle before going to prison. To be a square, to go to school, work
for minimum wage and shun the "game," takes an enormous amount of patience
and personal risk in the middle of what is, in effect, a war zone. The
payoff is too far off for someone who doesn't plan for middle age or a
career. At the time, the quick buck didn't seem like a bad choice, inmates
said.
Only a handful of the killers had legitimate jobs. Criminal records and
lack of a high school diploma, no car to get to work, and no support from
immediate family ensure that they simply don't fit in to what society sees
as employee material.
It was only after they were taken out of their environment and given years
to reflect behind bars that they had time to grasp the concept of another
way of life.
The experts - and the killers - say a mentor might have saved them, anyone
from the outside who could have shown them another way to be a man.
After so many years in prison, the convicted killers who spoke to The
Chronicle have had time to think about why their lives turned out the way
that they did. They are remorseful, they are angry at themselves and the
circumstances that they were born into, and they are trying to do
something useful with what's left of their tragic lives.
It's a second chance that their victims will never get.
"I don't care how bad your situation is, as we grow up in this world we
know right from wrong," said Gerlen Anderson, who held her son William as
he lay dying from Ivan Kilgore's shotgun blast near a pay phone at 30th
and San Pablo avenues in 2000.
When Anderson saw that her 21-year-old son wasn't going to make it, she
whispered in his ear, "Go to the angels."
Kilgore claimed that Anderson had repeatedly attacked him and robbed him
of $100.
Oakland: A Plague of Killing logo
Coming Monday: Experts say mentoring can help stem the wave of violence on
Oakland's streets, one boy at a time.
Online: To see The Chronicle's interactive map of Oakland homicides
between 2002 and 2006, go to
sfgate.com/oaklandhomicides/interactives/map/
