Lawfayette Boyz

david holland English 457 Prof. Haake April 22, 2009 March 22nd, 2009 Dear Grandmama, Thanks ever so much for the cookies and the birthday card. It was extremely encouraging and uplifting in these last few weeks of school. Enclosed is a snippet from the Metro Section of the Post Dispatch that I clipped from Sunday’s paper. I figured it would be apropos as a follow up to our discussion (the one last Friday before I left, the one in which you said that youth today were not trained to have moral fiber and where I said that decency hasn’t left American culture, it has just changed). I hope you enjoy it. Tell Grandaddy I love him and that I will send over those photos asap. Love, trey

“’Lawfayette Boyz’ Deaths Forge Peace” By Sylvester Brown Jr. South City—The members of the “Lawfayette Boyz” street gang came together like any other band of angst-filled inner city young men would congregate: around a need for acceptance and a search for meaning in the “Mean Streets.” I came across their story after reading in this very paper the tale of the violent murders of the three founding

2 members.

Speaking with Det. Robert Cooley and Sgt. Tim

McAllen, the investigating officer and reporting officer respectively, I was able to discern a unique and touching narrative interwoven within the shocking but woefully commonplace stories of the young men who were gunned down on October 15th.

How they died endows the reader with no

major news story, but why they were gunned down is another matter entirely. Det. Cooley was kind enough to lend me his personal mimeograph and a few videotapes that the Boyz had made. Mauricio Smith, the ring leader of the Lawfayette Boyz, insisted upon making recordings of their exploits. Although they used pseudonyms (Mr. Linux for Smith) and masks, Det. Cooley found that the identities of the Boyz in question were confirmed in the journals of the other two founding members.

The journals and tapes chronicle the

initial meeting of the three Boyz, the evolution of their mission and, surprisingly, the exact reasoning behind their deaths. Smith and the second founding member, Antoine Johnson, both grew up in the Lafayette Square projects.

Many of

their neighbors had already turned to a life of crime and the pressure mounted for them to join one of the many local gangs.

“[Antoine] said that they would come up at school

3 and say they’d do things to the house, to me, and to Sara [sister] if he didn’t join their crew,” recalls Antoine’s mother, Laticia.

Laticia Johnson stated later, “They

tagged the front door with gang signs and even shot our windows out a couple times.”

Antoine’s natural talent in

art made him an obvious choice for the local gangs who wanted him to tag murals on the turf of rival gangs. “Mauricio was always a big kid, so they wanted him too,” Laticia Johnson explained. On July 5th, Smith saw Johnson being accosted outside a local gas station, he ran to his aid.

Jerome Qualley, a

station attendant was eyewitness to Smith’s incredible display of fortitude, saying, “It was awesome, I’ve never seen anything like it.

There were, like, five guys against

one, and he whupped them all!”

This hadn’t been the first

time that the boys were attacked and Johnson particularly had found himself between a rock and a hard place.

Both

Smith and Johnson had received violent threats from two rival gangs against resisting assimilation.

The two

decided to pool their efforts to try to avoid being involved with either one.

The Lawfayette Boyz were born,

concentrating on violent retribution for the threats against their persons and families.

4 Enter David McBride, a junior physics major at St. Louis University, and the only white male to live within ten blocks of Lafayette Square.

Around 10:30pm on August

11th, he saw the two Lawfayette Boyz tagging a mural on the corner of 21st St. and Washington Ave, he hung back in the According to his journal, dated the 12th of

shadows.

August, McBride watched for some time. dextrous, efficient, fearless.

“They were amazing,

I knew that if the Bloods

rolled up, they would be gunned down.

Neither one looked

strapped [carrying a weapon] because it was 90 degrees and sticky and they wore no shirts to conceal.

I watched as

they put together a message of the utmost clarity.

A man

gripping the throat of a man who was accosting a beautiful woman.

That mural was beautifully painted, and horrible to

conceive.

Humans violently reacting to violent humans.

I

couldn’t remain silent in the face of this incredible display of courage.” McBride did not remain silent.

Instead, he made his

presence known, miraculously befriending the two despite the racial and socio-economic barriers dividing them.

It

was McBride’s idea to journal and video tape the group’s exploits, and thanks to him, I was able to see clearly how the group evolved.

5 Det. Cooley’s pile of confiscated tapes began with McBride’s shaky recording of Smith’s and Johnson’s next mural painting.

Although they were painting in broad

daylight, the police were not the first on the scene. Three men from a rival gang approached with weapons drawn, only to be repulsed by the ferocity of Smith and Johnson. As I watched the surreal violence, the same kind that can be seen in any Hollywood movie, it occurred to me that had the attackers been successful in killing Smith and Johnson, the Lawfayette Boyz would simply be another statistic for St. Louis’ finest, another street gang terminated by rivals. Instead, the Lawfayette Boyz gained street cred in the community.

Their numbers grew steadily, and McBride even

dropped out of school to devote his time to the documentation of their tagging and the violent street fights that ensued throughout the early fall.

The group

gained notoriety and many new members, known for their hard-nosed fighting and mercenary vigilantism.

The gang’s

infamy proved an attractive diversion for their peers. Robbing the local drug dealers and pimps, the Lawfayette Boyz mercilessly tormented the local gangs, but uncharacteristically ignored the innocents in their neighborhood.

6 Then, around Labor Day, something changed.

Johnson’s

journal entry (addressed to his alter-ego/street-handle, “Jankins”) on September 2nd sheds light on the transformation: “Yo, Jankins.

I don’t know man, these

bitch niggas be rollin’ hard against us but we always bust like we do.

Almost like we shouldn’t be playn by they

rules, feel me?”

The Lawfayette Boyz were about to break

those rules in an unusual way. The following week a meeting was held, recorded by McBride, that outlined the group’s new intentions.

It was

decided that every once in a while, they would do something for the community in the way of public service. Incredibly, the young hooligans decided that since the neighborhood had been torn by street gangs, it was their job to give something back.

Amazingly, the Lawfayette Boyz

planned to plant flowers and trees, fix broken fences, and attend to many other needs of their neighbors while still prowling violently for any rival misdeeds enacted by their competitors.

Since their numbers had grown substantially,

the Lawfayette Boyz could perform these tasks in matters of minutes and always under the cover of darkness. One of McBride’s recordings shows the group mowing an elderly lady’s lawn in about three minutes.

Another shows

a four minute blitz on a local park, flowers and paint

7 being added to a formerly run-down den of junkies and whores.

One incredible excerpt shows some Lawfayette Boyz

dropping yard implements and brandishing knives, brutally mutilating a man whom they recognized as an alleged rapist. All these scenarios were narrated by McBride in a play by play fashion. The reaction from the community was mixed.

“Dat boy

Jankins [Johnson] been doin’ some good t’ings,” states neighbor Latonda Okebe.

Okebe, an immigrant from the

Sudan, had been spared a brutal home invasion when Johnson and a group of Lawfayette Boyz stopped a group of local Crips from breaking into her home on September the 23rd. Not all their neighbors are such enthusiastic supporters, however, as many see the Lawfayette Boyz as personifying the perpetuation of street violence. Roosevelt High School Principal, Richard Wright, explains, “Most of the boys that join this gang were decent students. Now that violence and willful destruction of property has significant justification, it makes it that much easier to drop out and feel warranted in what is essentially hooligan behavior.”

Similarly, neighbor Yolanda Cummings sees the

dark side of the Lawfayette Boyz vigilantism, “I just hope they don’t decide that I do wrong, because then it’ll be hell to pay, and no way out.”

Herbert Washington, uncle of

8 Antoine Johnson simply said on the week before their murders, “This will catch up with them.

Those brothers

can’t keep on like they do.” Washington’s words proved to be prophetic.

The three

founding members of the Lawfayette Boyz were gunned down outside the courthouse Thursday while serving bottled water to a group of homeless men.

The three were shot in broad

daylight by as many as twenty armed assassins. Interestingly, eyewitness accounts corroborate the evidence that as many as three gangs sporting rival colors banded together to form this deadly coalition, perhaps the first ever incidence of an inter-gang alliance. Statistically speaking, the murder of the Lawfayette Boyz is not out of the ordinary.

Three gang members living

in one of the country’s most violent cities gunned down by rivals is routine for police and journalistic investigation alike.

As Sgt. Tim McAllen points out, “If I’d been called

to respond to gang violence perpetrated by any other affiliation, it would have been routine, but with these boys it was different.” But how was it different?

How could men so wantonly

and aggressively bent on violent revenge be justified?

As

many as sixteen different individuals can be identified in the videotapes documenting their vigilantism and violent

9 encounters with other men.

In any court of law they would

be seen as criminals, and stupid ones at that.

Why would

young men purposefully keep documents that could potentially send them all to prison?

What was it about

these tapes that they deemed necessary? In the mind of this author, their deeds necessitated acknowledgment, plain and simple.

Fed up with the system,

these boys took a stand against the street violence that remains rampant throughout our city in the only way that they could.

They may not be heroes, or perhaps they are.

That is for the public to decide. Metro Section: Artists’ Corner Artists’ corner seeks to publish the very best of St. Louis’ unpublished writers and poets who respond artistically to news items in this paper.

Verna Phillips

is a second year art student at Washington University. Phillips writes in response to the Michael Vick trial occurring on April 19th.

A Ninepins Poem for the Pit Bulls Verna Phillips Men’s cheering (that shouldn’t be) rings out. Growling and scratching, biting the neck. Dogs fight in a pit not fit for them, A pit not fit for the darkest ones. Harsh light, enraging the senses,

10 They were told to, made to fight this way. Born to kill and not to ask the why, Surrounded by violence they work, Plying the only craft they know how. Caged by day, the night brings only death. They awake to the sounds of shouting. Awake to the mob’s will and disdain, Urging, pleading and thirsting for blood. Dog’s blood on concrete, brains and guts too, The best kind of fight leaves stains like this. They know naught else but fear and anger, They fight at the behest of others, And only know friendship if they win. So I ask, who is to blame for this?