How Long Will I Cry? by Miles Harvey Read Free Book Online

If they wanted to give out a job
on our beat, we would answer up on the radio and say, “We’re here
on the beat; we’ll take that,” because we were there. We got to
know the kids on the beat. We got to know the parents on the beat.
We went to the beat meetings. By being in and out of the alleys, up
and down different streets at any given time, it makes it harder
for perpetrators to do something, because you never know when we
were going to pop up. But if you have an approach that you take
your job assignment and then you go someplace else where you meet
up for coffee, or meet up with your buddies or you do whatever else
is on your agenda, and you’re not on your beat, then people get
used to the fact that, “I never see the police.”
    Unfortunately, the only time I see the police
in my own South Side neighborhood is if something happens. But by
then, it’s too late. Prior police administrations, under Jody
Weis10 and some of the other superintendents, what they wanted to
do was they wanted to have the gang unit. They wanted to have the
mobile strike force. They wanted to have a gun task force and any
of these other units swoop into an area, let’s say like Englewood,
after a shooting occurs. That’s a reaction. That’s not
pro-action.
    And, unfortunately, you have a lot of police
officers that come on this job just so they can have the
opportunity to go into minority communities and assert themselves
as supposedly superior. I’ve seen Caucasian officers fight black
males only when they have handcuffs on them. I had one Caucasian
officer that got dispatched to the 7th District11 with me, and the
first thing out of his mouth was: “I can’t wait till I get into a
shootout.” We hadn’t been in the district for two or three days,
and he couldn’t wait to get into a fight. Unfortunately, less than
a year later, he got shot.
    Most of the gun violence now is done by kids
under the age of 25. They get involved at a much younger age. The
gangs seek them out—and, in a lot of respects, they seek the gangs
out as a means of belonging to something. Sometimes it’s
environmental: “I’m hanging out with Jim over here. And if Jim is a
member of a gang, and a rival gang member comes by and shoots at
Jim, he is going to shoot at me, too. It’s guilt by association.
So, I might as well join this gang so I have some type of way of
being protected.”
    Another reason could be the fact that the
work ethic is a whole lot different now than it used to be. If we
look back at history, black people came up here from the South, and
they were some of the most impoverished immigrants of all. But they
still survived. They still made it, and they tried to do everything
they could to make sure that their families made it—get an
education, work hard. Even when I was little, the thing I wanted
most to do was to get a job and be able to make my own money—honest
money. Nowadays, these kids see the gangbangers and the dope
dealers riding around in these nice cars, and they don’t think
about the fact that this guy’s retirement plan doesn’t go past a
certain age. They see the glamour in it, and that’s what they want.
So what do they do? They go out and they start slinging drugs. They
start gangbanging.
    But a lot of people consider the Chicago
Police to be a gang. And the truth is that you’re going to always
have some gang members or former gang members that are on the
police department. Some join because they quit the gang and they
want to try and stop other people from joining the gang. But some
gangs actually encourage their members to join the police
department. They want you to go to school. They want you to get
into a high-ranking position on the force. Even if they don’t
exploit you, now they have an “in,” so that other gang members can
join.
    I do know some police officers that were gang
members, and some of them actually became very good cops because
they knew the ins and outs of the particular gangs they