The Interrupters Page #10

For my mama, nigga,

I come in your crib

and kill every

motherfucking body.

Two of your brothers gone.

If you be gone, that ain't gonna

do nothing but hurt your mama.

She'll be all right.

How many kids you got?

I'm claiming four, that's it.

All right,

I'm just saying,

so if you go to jail, who gonna

take care of your kids?

That's the thing.

God taking care of us now.

He gonna take care of them.

Just like when I do

what I'm gonna do.

He gonna take care of me too.

But you was locked up before

for the same sh*t though.

Man, I been...

I'm 32 years old.

I been locked up

What that mean?

What the f*** that mean?

That's where I grew up at.

God damnit.

Ain't no shame,

ain't no secret.

Sh*t.

I'm tired of being out here

any motherfucking ways.

It's boring as hell,

soft-ass n*ggers out here

ain't doing sh*t but tricking.

That ain't the police, is it?

What's that on the corner?

I know these punk ass police

still want me.

Motherfuckers gonna have

to kill me.

Now that sh*t crazy, man.

How can you help me?

Right now.

How can you help me?

I mean, the only thing,

like I say,

the only thing I can do is try

to get to know you more,

spend a little time with you,

and try to work with you, man.

So that mean you would

take me out to dinner, then?

We can go to lunch right now.

And we can sit down,

we can talk about this

motherfucking problem.

That's what you telling me?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna hold you to that

goddamn sh*t.

Yeah, we could go out

if that's what you wanna do.

When? When?

We could go out now.

Right now? Yeah.

Let me go put my pistol up.

Sh*t, I don't know.

We'll just see.

Hot Rod, make sure though, man,

he ain't got sh*t on him.

I'm... I'm good.

I ain't got nothing.

It's a rough one.

I think that's one of

the worst ones I had.

He kept coming

and going with us.

One minute I think I'm reaching

him, he calmed down.

And then he blow right back up.

Anytime you got a person who

stay there and talk with you,

you got a chance of working

it out with them.

Melvin, these... this is

the time of the month

we go over the conflicts

that we turn in once a month.

Before the meeting started,

Tio talked to him

for a nice little minute.

Tio was telling him,

"Just come listen.

"Just check it out.

If you don't like it,

you can walk out right away. "

I'm gonna shift the agenda

to just bring up

a hypothetical problem

that's taking place

somewhere in our town.

Let's say somebody tricked

on your brother.

And somebody called the police

and said that he has

some guns in the house.

And the police came

and locked your brother up.

They found two guns,

and they put your mother

in handcuffs.

And you know who the guy is

that told on your brothers.

Now, how would we resolve

a conflict like that?

If we gonna keep

it 100, that's real real hard.

When you put mama into

somebody else's business,

that's... that's

super duper hard.

We're not

gonna be able to be effective

in all interventions.

Okay.

There's gonna be some that gonna

slip through the cracks.

I let him know that,

"Hey, you get messed up,

you add to the burden. "

So what you gotta do is

you gotta put your little

personal pride aside

and start dealing

with this thing

on a realistic,

responsible way

to start trying to figure out

a way to get your brother

from up out of that drama

and ease your mother.

You wanna be tough to be a hero,

going to be like the rest

of our guys who's locked up.

I think that's good for now.

Got some solid feedback.

Leave it alone at that.

All right, so this is what's

happening right now.

We got a situation over at

Michelle Clark High School.

I think when you

first started meeting with him,

he was on ten.

Right.

And now I think he's at,

like, a level five.

Okay.

The only problem now, Cobe, if

he was to see this guy tonight,

there's gonna be a problem.

What's gonna happen now,

you gotta babysit him.

You and Hot Rod

gonna have to take turns.

Okay.

I know you tired of waiting.

Let's get out of here, man.

CeaseFire for life.

Man, about time.

Cobe is one of the

best Violence Interrupters,

but he knows how to walk away.

That's very important,

because if you don't know

how to walk away,

you can end up getting hurt.

We've had some close calls.

Several Violence Interrupters

have been shot at.

Brother Joel.

Still in a lot of pain?

This is the first time

one of our Violence Interrupters

ever got shot.

I came up here to tell you

we appreciate you.

And, uh, everything you did

to try to mediate

that particular conflict.

I'm just glad

you, uh, survived.

You know?

Yeah.

You stumbled across this coming

out of your father's house.

There was a couple guys

down the block

arguing over some money.

As I was approaching them, I had

like, something telling me,

like, it wasn't even the right

moment to even interrupt them.

Right.

I'm just trying to,

you know, do my job.

One of them said,

"Who are you?

You ain't from around here. "

So I go talk

to his other friend.

And then, um, and that's when

he shot me up.

When you turned

your back?

Yeah, when I turned my back.

So you got shot in the ankle

and in the back, right?

They opened my whole stomach

open.

Yeah, that's tough

little brother.

Um, because the day

you got shot

there were like 16 shootings

in six hours.

Because I need you to know, all

the guys came up here Friday.

All the brothers

were here.

Yeah, Zale was telling me.

Yeah, we were here,

you know.

And, uh, hmm...

It's... it's just kinda tough,

that's all.

I understand.

Right.

When I thought about you,

uh, getting shot

and your father

was there...

because I have sons, you know,

got a son who's, like, 24,

got another son that's, like,

believe it or not...

So when I thought about it...

I gotta collect myself,

that's all.

Yep.

And I'm only human,

you know.

Yep, we be good,

we be all right though.

You know, we just gotta

keep on pushing.

Okay?

Appreciate you,

little brother.

All right.

Okay, I'm gonna

get on up out of here.

And I'll be back Wednesday.

All right.

Yep.

Oh man.

Yeah.

I'm begging you, my

brothers, I'm begging you, my sisters,

let God do what God needs to do

for Duke.

Once we lay this brother down in

the ground, we got work to do.

Jesse Smith

got shot in a retaliation

for another student

that got shot.

But it wasn't Jesse

that did the shooting.

The family has to heal,

and we have work to do.

I'm just seeing

in the last ten, 15 years,

random violence like I've never

seen it before.

Last year, of the 125 homicides

where we serviced

those families,

about 90% were young people.

These children don't expect

to live past 30.

They come to these funerals, and

I watch them and they represent,

and they put themselves

in the place of the person

in the casket.

These young people are,

in reality, saying,

"This is what I want to happen

when I'm killed. "

Affectionately known as Duke...

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