On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman Page B

Chuck should take matters into his own hands or do
     nothing. Doing nothing had the benefit of not placing him in more legal trouble, but
     as they both noted, doing nothing set them up to be taken advantage of by people who
     understood them to be “sweet.”
    A few days later, Chuck drove over to 8th Street with Mike and another friend and
     shot off a few rounds at the home of the man who he believed was responsible for blowing
     up his car. Although no one was injured, a neighbor reported the incident, and the
     police put out a body warrant for Chuck’s arrest for attempted murder.
    Hesitant to go to the police or to make use of the courts, young men around 6th Street
     are vulnerable to theft or violence by those who know they won’t press charges. With
     the police out of reach, they sometimes resort to more violence as a strategy to settle
     disputes or defend themselves. 6
    THE NET OF ENTRAPMENT
    It isn’t difficult to imagine that a young man worried that the police will take him
     into custody learns to avoid both the cops and the courts. But young men around 6th
     Street learn to fear far more than just the legal authorities. The reach of the police
     extends outward like a net around them—to public places in the city, to the activities
     they usuallyinvolve themselves in, and to the neighborhood spots where they can usually be found.
    Three hospitals serve the mixed-income Black section of the city within which 6th
     Street is located. Police officers crowd into their waiting rooms and hallways, especially
     in the evenings and on the weekends. Squad cars and paddy wagons park outside the
     hospital, officers in uniform or in plain clothes stand near the ambulances, and more
     officers walk around or wait in the ER. Some police come to the hospitals to investigate
     shootings and to question the witnesses who arrive there; others come because the
     men they have beaten while arresting them require medical care before they can be
     taken to the precinct or the county jail. Sitting in the ER waiting room, I often
     watched police officers walk Black young men out the glass double doors in handcuffs.
    According to the officers I interviewed, it is standard practice in the hospitals
     serving the Black community for police to run the names of visitors or patients while
     they are waiting around, and to take into custody those with warrants, or those whose
     injuries or presence there constitutes grounds for a new arrest or a violation of
     probation or parole.
    Alex experienced this firsthand when he was twenty-two years old and his girlfriend,
     Donna, was pregnant with their first child. He accompanied her to the hospital for
     the birth and stayed with her during fourteen long hours of labor. I got there a few
     hours after the baby was born, in time to see two police officers come into Donna’s
     room to place Alex in handcuffs. As he stood with his hands behind him, Donna screamed
     and cried, and as they walked him away, she got out of the bed and grabbed hold of
     him, moaning, “Please don’t take him away. Please, I’ll take him down there myself
     tomorrow, I swear—just let him stay with me tonight.” The officers told me they had
     come to the hospital with a shooting victim who was in custody, and as was their custom,
     they ran the names of the men on the visitors’ list. Alex came up as having a warrant
     out for a parole violation, so they arrested him along with two other men on the delivery
     room floor.
    I asked Alex’s partner about the warrant, and she reminded me that the offense dated
     from Christmas, when the police had stopped Alex as he pulled up to a gas station.
     Since his driver’s license had been revoked, driving constituted a violation of his
     parole.
    After the police took Alex into custody at the maternity ward, it became increasingly
     clear to his friends on 6th Street that the hospital was a place to be avoided at
     all costs. Soon after Chuck turned twenty-one,