T. J. is one of the many alcoholic handicapped people who walk Northeast Baltimore on canes. I don’t like T. J. He is probably on disability because of a drunken fall, sucking the blood out of the body economic like a massive bearded tic. Like many such parasites T. J. is in his late fifties to late sixties. This is the bottom half of our Worst Generation, the scumbag chronological race known as the Baby Boomers. This age group, of which I am on the lower cusp of, is the parasite generation of America. The lowlifes live on the government teat like T. J. while the ones who made it continue to worship The Beatles and JFK, and all of the plastic icons that represent the decade that brought down a nation and extinguished a culture...
T.J., like dozens of others in my neighborhood, hobbles around from errand to errand on his cane. On May 1st, he had just gone to the ATM machine at the local drug store to get his rent money which comes out of his SSI check. As he was hobbling across the parking lot just after noon he was blindsided, and punched by more than two hands, as he staggered about trying to keep his feet. He heard young voices but saw almost nothing, as the first punch damaged the sight in his right eye. There were no witnesses who came forward. T. J. did not see enough of his attackers to determine their numbers, although there were at least two, or their race. In this neighborhood white and black youths sound the same, so that they cannot be distinguished by sound.
T.J. continued to stagger, using his cane to keep his balance and putting up his other hand to shield his face. The punches rained down all the harder. His knees buckled and he began taking kicks to the face and head where he sat. He was then rolled and kicked and punched as he was robbed, and left to lay on the lot. T. J. woke up in the hospital and spent a few days there. As a result of the attack he is completely blind in the left eye and ‘half’ blind in the right eye, which was the first one to get hit.
This structures as a walk up punch from behind to stun, followed by a convergence attack on the face and head to prevent yelling for help and visual identification. My roommate Eric was attacked in precisely this manner by a group of thugs, who, noticing the punch of their leadoff hitter harmlessly bouncing off of his massive brow ridge made off without his backpack.
The young lady that was present when I was listening to T. J’s. story asked me, “Why would they beat him up and blind him, when they could have just taken his money?”
I answered back, “Two reasons: one to develop a group bond. This could have been a gang initiation. There are a lot of gang tags around here, many of them new. The more practical consideration is so that he will not make a reliable witness if he is KO’d. I consider the knockout game to be robber practice. This is how you want to rob someone, with a blind-side attack, so that you cannot be identified. An added bonus is that he is now blind and they can rob him on a regular basis at their leisure.”
It is hunting season in Harm City. I went out for my pre-midnight walk last night and saw two prowling cops, a police chopper in the sky, a paddy wagon, and three youth hunting parties, still looking for prey even as the cops cruise by them. The hunters use cell phones to triangulate their attacks and keep cop locations current. I kept to the alleys, back lots and darker spots, making sure not to get caught between two parties. All three of the hunting parties were trios with one cell phone operator a piece. They might, all nine of them, have been with the same gang set.
The old white trash gimps were clustering together and walking in fours for protection. Across the street from the two uniformed cops in the van I walked by one black biker completing a drug deal with a young white stoner. This was a target rich environment. I could feel the electricity; the tension of so many animals calculating and recalculating the demise of their prey.
As I edit this piece, at 11:14 on Monday morning, I hear police sirens wail and the police chopper pull in over Hamilton. There are only a handful of businesses that have not been robbed in broad daylight over the course of the last 10 days. The cops are trying hard to prevent a clean sweep by the enemy. Welfare accounts don't get loaded until Friday, when the welfare mothers will call a ceasefire between their hoodlum sons and the people who work for a living.
