(NNPA)–While being accused of plotting to kill law enforcement officers by the Baltimore Police Department, members of the Bloods, Crips, and Black Guerrilla Family, all notorious street gangs, organized to protect businesses, journalists, and residents during a period of unrest and rioting in Baltimore City.
“It was a total lie, misconception,” said a young member of the Bloods who gave the name Bonez about the allegation by police. “That was never the case. We never actually said, or had a meeting about, ‘we are joining to actually hurt the police,’ or different things.”
“We were just trying to help the community,” said a man who gave the name Mugga (pronounced like ‘moogah’) and is a member of the Crips. “For them to sit there and put it on us, and say we were [targeting police officers], it wasn’t fair. But that’s the outlook they always have on us for years. So all we’re trying to do is help, but for all the help that we do we just keep on getting blamed over and over. But that won’t stop us from helping, we’re just going to keep on going.”
In conversations that have taken place in media and around the city, much has been made of a supposedly new unity emerging among Baltimore street gangs in the aftermath of the death of Freddie Gray, the Sandtown Winchester man who died on April 19, one week after sustaining fatal injuries while in the custody of Baltimore police. But the three gang members who spoke to the AFRO before a major demonstration at the War Memorial Plaza on May 2, said there was nothing new about this unity in the first place.
“We’re setting the differences aside, even though, there really were no differences,” said Goldie, a member of the Crips. “I’ve known Bonez for a while now . . . I’ve known Bonez since we were working together, as far as employment. He’s a good brother. Very educated. You don’t meet too many representatives of the Crips or the Bloods that are doing anything in reference to try to help the community, or writing books, or trying to help the kids out.”
Bonez concurred, saying, “There’s already been a unity.”
“The unity didn’t come together just for one situation, or just because Freddie Gray died – rest in peace Freddie Gray – but this unity has already been built. And it’s been built over the years. It wasn’t anything that just came out,” continued Bonez.
Mugga expressed frustration at the inability of media accounts to capture the complexity of the life of inner city gang members, young men whose options were often limited to choosing between bad and worse. “When everybody looks at, ‘Oh, he’s a Blood,’ or, ‘He’s a Crip, he’s doing this, he’s doing that,’ all this is not around just gang banging, or hustling, and all that. There’s more to it, [but] people just don’t see that. Like out here, all these days that we’ve been helping, they don’t put that out, they don’t show us [helping], they just throw it all down and play what they want to show,” said Mugga.
“Me, I actually wrote a book,” said Bonez, who will soon release a self-published book titled, ‘Gangster Statistics: The Untold Story.’
“We have a lot of others that have been doing projects. I’ve been doing projects that have been helping the community, been uplifting the community, been strengthening the community. [And] not just one nationality, [all] nationalit[ies] as a whole. Now we are the ones to actually stop the problems, so we can be judged correctly, and properly,” added Bonez.
Mugga lamented the fact that the Baltimore police have not sought to play a more productive role in poor Black communities, adopting an adversarial posture instead. The problem, the three young men concurred, is that many police officers have never known what it is to grow up in the streets, driving an attitude towards the behavior of those who have to had to navigate those challenges that is not informed by understanding.
That limitation, which undermines the authority of police in difficult neighborhoods, extends to much of the City’s power structure, said Bonez, explaining why street gangs were able to have more success at policing their own communities during the April 27 riots than the police themselves.
“They have to put people in leadership that are actually in those communities. [Take] the mayor. The mayor, she doesn’t come out in these communities. She doesn’t build relationships with these actual people. So how do you expect somebody to actually respect another individual who says they’re supposed to be in leadership, who is actually not for us,” said Bonez.
ralejandro@afro.com
https://www.afro.com/gang-members-role-in-baltimores-uprising/
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