Southside (9781608090563) (6 page)

To be merely wounded during a crime and get mentioned in the
Los Angeles Times
is rare. On many an occasion, Lyons had told an editor about a wounding he had heard on the police scanner or learned from making a cop call. The editor's reaction was usually, “Let me know if he dies.”

There were basically four ways to get in the paper with just a wound.

If the victim was some type of celebrity, such as a rapper or athlete of middle to major note, he or she would get in. Hollywood movie or television stars do not get shot. They are never around real violence.

If a student is wounded on a high school campus, even just grazed in the finger, most likely that will make the paper unless it happens at Manual Arts, Jordan, Fremont, Jefferson, Locke, Washington, Crenshaw, Dorsey, Gardena, Compton, Carson, Roosevelt, Garfield, Centennial, Morningside, Inglewood, or Banning high schools. At those schools, the wound would have to be more than a nick.

If the wounding occurs at a major venue—say the Grove, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Rodeo Drive, Disneyland, Santa Monica Pier, Beverly Center, places like that—it gets major play for sure.

About the only way for a commoner to make it in the paper with just a wound is when that victim is a real hard-luck, against-all-odds success story.

•  •  •

Debra Sady Griffen was a classic example of the “I'm gonna make it, come hell or high water” story. Two years ago, in three weeks' time, her parents were killed on Crenshaw near Imperial Highway by a drunk driver; her older sister, Denise, drank herself to a Smirnoff death; and her older brother, Darnell, was shot to death by a seventeen-year-old Nutty Blocc Compton Crip because he had on a maroon t-shirt.

Rather than melt into the city's sidewalks, Debra Sady, then twenty-two, was fervently determined to make something of her life. She worked hard. Before her night shift as a stock clerk at the Food4Less on Slauson and Western, she attended bus-driving school. Her goal was, after two months on the bus gig, to move out of her apartment on Brynhurst Avenue, a mid-size city's worth of urban nightmares squished into six narrow blocks.

The day before she was to start driving kids to school for Laidlaw Bus Company, Debra went to her cousin's house in Lynwood, a suburb on the relatively right side of the Alameda tracks. To her tearful surprise, a dozen family members and friends had gathered to celebrate her graduation and her new job. It was one of the great times of her life. Never had Debra Sady felt prouder, never had she felt more in love with life.

About the time Debra was singing along to Junior Walker and the All Stars's “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love),” there was a shooting several miles to the west near the Harbor Freeway.

The Hotel Mary on Vermont near 75th had recently undergone a $680 renovation that included a new mop and bucket, a rug cleaning, a Bissell vacuum cleaner, and painting of the front awnings green, and the front and side walls hot pink, a popular color in these parts. It was called a hotel, but it was just a flophouse where the rooms rent for eighty-five dollars a week, the air never moved, and the hallways reeked like a Figueroa Street whore who hasn't paid her hot water bill since summer began.

In a second-floor room, a drug deal had gone wrong. A Seven-Four Hoover Criminal had been shot in the shoulder and robbed of
his stash, about three hundred dollars in rocks. The wounded twenty-year-old recognized his assailant, a rival from the Rollin Sixties Crips, their decades-long mortal enemies. As his homies drove him to the hospital, he told them who the shooter was. No one waited for the paramedics on the Southside of L.A. In the emergency room of Harbor/UCLA Medical Center on Carson Street in Torrance, police questioned the victim, who told them he had no idea who had shot him and that it wasn't much of a shooting anyway.

As police interviewed the wounded man, three of his boys from Hoover, a gang admired for their quick payback shootings, were already searching for the shooter. They knew him to be staying with a cousin on Brynhurst Avenue in Hyde Park. Hoovers also had good intel. About fifteen minutes earlier, Debra Sady had gotten her hugs and well-wishes and said her goodbyes and was headed back to her apartment complex on Brynhurst.

In Southwest Los Angeles, in the area west of Crenshaw and both south and north of Slauson Avenue, amidst the fragrant cloud of Woody's BBQ, is the neighborhood of Hyde Park.

If you took a corner boy from, say, 25th and Diamond in North Philly, he'd drool over the neat two- and three-bedroom Spanish tile-roofed homes with their sweet-smelling red Mister Lincoln rosebushes and Purple Queen bougainvillea that line the streets.

But, that corner boy would be surprised to learn that this neighborhood was the domain of one of the deadliest black street gangs in the United States—The Rollin Sixties Crips, often both affectionately and dreadfully referred to as “Six-Oh.” As in “'Dem niggas from Six-Oh just shot your grandma.”

The guts of Six-Oh turf is Brynhurst Avenue, a place to be caught dead. The blocks along Brynhurst are lined with cramped two-story apartment buildings and courtyard bungalows. Many of the twelve-hundred-strong Rollin Sixties lived on Brynhurst, thugs with names like Tiny Creepy, Hammerhands, Felony Fred, Scatterbrain, Papa Loc, Peedee Wac, and Wild Cat.

As Debra Sady drove her blue-green 2001 Nissan Sentra toward
her Brynhurst rental, she was singing still, now to Marvin and Tammy's “Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing.”

The real thing would start tomorrow for Debra Sady: a bus driving job with real benefits and a 401K savings plan. Seconds after she turned off 63rd Street and onto Brynhurst, so did a carload of Hoover Criminals looking to avenge. As she exited her Sentra, carrying a plate of smothered pork chops from her cousin's house, down rolled the window of a brown Ford Bronco driven by one Lyles Davis aka “Tiny Trouble.” Another Hoover screamed “Hoo-va” and speed triggered a Glock 19 at the suspected shooter of their homie. Near him were two other men, two women, and two boys, one of them doing circles in a blue on red Big Wheel. Before the “va” came out of his mouth, targets were running for cover. None of them, including the target, were hit. Not unusual. If gang members were good shots, L.A. would have one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

But, as Debra Sady stepped from her Nissan, she heard the shots and a bullet struck her back, just piercing a kidney. The plate of pork chops went flying as she reeled for two spastic steps before tumbling to the concrete driveway of her apartment complex. The plate of food shattered near her head. Debra Sady lay oozing blood and dreams.

The most mundane element of being a crime reporter is making the dreaded “cop calls.” Cop calls are when a reporter calls every police and sheriff's station in the city and county to check if there is any fast-breaking news. Fire departments, too.

It's almost always an exercise in futility. Having made thousands of cop calls over the years, Michael had found that they generated a story—mostly briefs—at a ratio of maybe one in five hundred calls at best.

Still, cop calls are required. Especially on night cops. Sometimes reporters get lazy—Michael was no exception—and they just call the main public-information numbers of the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's. The problem with that is that sometimes even the headquarters isn't up on the latest breaking crimes. The sheriff's are okay, but it is hit-and-miss with LAPD press relations. One of the LAPD public information officers, Sergeant Chris Feld-meier, always had the same report: “All quiet in the city tonight.” Always. No matter what. A dirty bomb could have been unleashed on the stadium during a Dodgers/Giants game, and Feldmeier would give his “All quiet” reply.

Some of the LAPD PIOs, Public Information Officers, are engaging. Mike would often flirt with one of them, Lucy Sanchez, whose voice was sweet as butterscotch budino. About ten years ago, he even took Lucy out for drinks and oysters one lovely night.

The proper way to do cop calls is to call every police station, every fire station in L.A. County. You might call the Redondo Beach watch command 755 times and get nothing. But, one of the cop
reporter's nightmares is that the night you don't call, there'll be a double homicide at the Redondo Pier.

On that Sunday when Debra Sady was shot, Hector Salazar was the night cops reporter. When he called the 77th Street Station and asked what was going on, he was told there'd been a nonfatal shooting on Brynhurst near 64th Street. Salazar, raised in Boyle Heights, a graduate of Roosevelt High and Cal State-L.A., was not stunned by this, knowing the address was Rollin Sixties turf and shootings there are as rare as sunsets. He thanked the cops and told the night editor nothing was going on.

About an hour later, the night editor, Marcy Duval, e-mailed him that they could use a brief or two to fill out the section. Hector e-mailed back quickly in the style of many reporters and even editors, not bothering to check the spelling. “got a shhooting on 64 street womanwounded”

Marcy e-replied: “64 and what?”

Hector: “Brynhurst”

Marcy: “Thats not news”

Monday morning, a week after he was shot, Michael was released from the hospital. His sister, Jeanine, all smiles and tears, picked him up. They drove by the Los Angeles County Coroner Building and Michael pointed it out to her.

“I just thank God you didn't end up there. I love you, Michael.”

“I love you, too.”

She drove him to her St. Andrews Place home in Gardena, aka G-Town, where they grew up and where she now lived with her two kids. Her husband, Ralph, having died unexpectedly four years ago from a stroke.

Dr. Wang had told Michael he should not be alone the first few days and since Francesca was in San Francisco for a charity food event, he decided to stay with his sister for a night. He headed to his nephew's room that used to be his and took to the bed. It felt good to be in this bed and he slept for seven hours.

On his cell phone he had nine messages, eight from well-wishers and one of much interest. It was from a street source about a shooting on Brynhurst. Some saint got strayed. Sounded like a good story. He couldn't do the story, so that evening he called Hector Salazar.

After hearing from Michael Lyons, Salazar felt the rush, knowing he had a powerful story on his hands. All he had to do now was convince his editors the bus driver-to-be was indeed a great story. It would seem on the surface to be a natural. But, assistant city editors at the
Times
were, for the most part, a cautious group, the type whose main concern was to not make waves and to continue to get their $2,000-$2,500 a week.

Salazar approached night editor, Marcy Duval, and pitched her the story of Debra Sady Griffen. The night before she had dismissed the story as just another nonfatal shooting in Rollin Sixties ‘hood. But, now Salazar was armed with a hard-luck, against-all-odds tragedy. Salazar's worrying was for naught as Marcy said, “That's a good story. Let's get the background, interview folks, the cops, bus people. Get me a sked. Say twenty to twenty-two inches. We need art of her. Let's shoot for Wednesday, even Thursday.”

Hector nodded and headed back to his desk. Marcy sent Hector an e-mail: “Maybe we can tie it into the Mike shooting—another big shooting and they get away with it. Where's the LAPD?”

Hector, energized by visions of the front page, fired off a “sonds goood ill get onit.”

Two days later, Michael got out of Francesca Golden's bed. Francesca was already on her daily morning exercise walk, three miles, always the same route in her tree-lined neighborhood—Van Ness to Clinton to Wilcox to Rosewood, back to Van Ness. That course never varied.

On the LATEXTRA front page he read Hector Salazar's article entitled “SAINT OF OUR GUTTERS GUNNED DOWN.” Lyons muttered to himself, “Gunned down?” To him that meant dead.

And on it went, extolling Debra Sady's virtues and decrying the
random gunfire. The local media had another field day. The LAPD looked bad again. So did the headline writer. Lyons thought Debra sounded like a good woman, but Mother Teresa?

On most gang shootings, the chances that the cops will get any cooperation from residents are criminally slim. Witnesses fear for their lives. It's that simple. But, Wednesday, one witness came forward for Debra Sady.

As the gunfire that laid out Debra Sady briefly drowned out her television, seventeen-year-old Cardella Jackson calmly laid low in her bedroom.

As the squeal of the tires was heard, she peeked out her bedroom window, got a good look at the Bronco and its rather easy-to-remember license plate, 069TDY. She laughed. The first—and last—time she ever tried 69ing was with a high school point guard named Teddy Jones who twisted and sprained his neck during the act and had to miss his Crenshaw High School basketball game vs. arch rival Dorsey. Dorsey won by four points. Anyway, she wrote it down, just in case.

When Cardella heard that Debra Sady was the victim, she was torn. She liked Debra Sady a lot. Debra had on more than a few occasions brought over some “Sock It To Me” cake that was her specialty. She was quick with a sincere, kind word of encouragement. Debra had always treated Cardella with respect and when you don't have anything and someone gives you respect, well, that's one of the most precious gifts you can give in the ghetto, ranked not far behind giving up some of that cash.

Consequently, Cardella was numbed by the shooting but scared to her core to go to the police, even with their promise of anonymity. Yeah, they say no names, but what about if and when the trial comes? They'll pressure the shit out of you to testify in open court. She remembered her second cousin, Jermaine, who was set to testify against a gang leader a few years ago. From prison, the leader, Big Evil, ordered him dead, and dead he was in a week.

Cardella prayed on it, then drove three miles to Gardena and punched 911 at a phone booth that had one window shot out and G-13 graffiti scrawled inside and out. Shit, she thought, you can't go anywhere in this fucked-up city without some gang screwing things up. She asked to speak with a detective and she was trembling. She put her hand over her mouth and mumbled into the mouthpiece. The detective couldn't understand her. She moved her hand away. “That shooting on Brynhurst. The one where Debra Sady got shot.”