While beginning The Boned Zone on this past Monday, six days ago, I determined to ask my coworkers if interracial aggression, in its new heightened form, had continued since the official end of hostilities. Tony immediately told me that Robert had been attacked by two ‘young black guys’ while on his porch, and had been hospitalized. Finally, this Friday, Robert returned to work and I was to find out that this account was inaccurate, coming as it did from Robert’s wife, who only saw a small portion of the action and was busy calling the police through most of it.
Robert
Robert is a 46 year old baker, who lives in Southeast Baltimore County on the city line and works in Northeast Baltimore County on the overnight shift, 40-48 hours per week. He and his wife barely manage to make their rent payment and have not been able to scrape together the money to move since a crack dealer set up shop in the rental property next door.
Robert’s home is on the very street where I was hunted by a black and Latino pair of muggers 15 years ago, as told in When You’re Food. Robert stands only 5’ 5” and weighs about 190 pounds. He has a strong build and has some hustle too, making short work of the pallets of frozen bread dough we sort together [as our orders come in comingled by some genius New England twerp’s retail food distribution sorting program.] He has a dark complexion and straight black hair, looking like what my dear Grandma Kern would have called a Goddamned Italian.
Four nights after the attack, the right side of Robert’s face is only mildly swollen, where it had puffed out beyond his nose. This looks like a come from behind injury. His eye lid was cut and has been glued instead of stitched. His eye is filled with blood—which takes a while to go away. The size 11 sneaker imprint on his face is still visible as patchy road rash. The yellowing of his fast healing bruise is not discernable due to his dark tan, though his ribs on his left side are still a deep purple.
Robert knows me as a boxing coach, not a writer, and can’t wait to speak to me of what happened since he figures I’ve experienced beatings this bad and will understand. He is a man of average intelligence who speaks clearly and openly but cannot manage a running monologue due to his brain injury.
“I’m still loopy. Can’t lift anyting without passing out. Get dizzy when I turn too quick—no balance. The brain injury clinic—I have to visit—that and court, all month on the bus with that stuff I suppose. It was nice of the bosses to let me work on light duty [he says as kneading pumpernickel dough]. The wife and I are barely making it.”
Robert would not be permitted light duty in a union store, or any corporate grocery store, and finds himself lucky to be employed in this low end niche, working for Christians who actually believe in and practice their faith. He relates the following account across a few coffee breaks that I dice my free time into, in mostly two sentence bullets, in answer to my questions, while he works. He is not up to reeling off anymore than the paragraph above and needed help sequencing the events of Monday night, summarized below. Robert wrestled somewhat as a youth—apparently nothing extensive—and according to his brother Tony, he was a loud mouthed brawler when younger. I do not quiz Robert on his past, but can tell by his mechanical recall that he’s been in at least a few fights.
Next Door to Hell
The crack house—a mere 15 feet from Roberts’ front door, shares a common wall between the back yards. In the back yard Robert has his fire pit, which is a knee high brick grill. The neighbor is a 27 year old crack dealer who has seven kids by various women. The children, but only some of the women, reside at the house. “They range from one to eight and run the streets. The one-year-old literally plays in the street. They’re like feral pigs. There are always people in and out.”
Young guys from the city visit this crack house, which is a black stronghold in a white working class neighborhood.
“There have been crimes reported there on FaceBook. They pulled a stabbing victim out of there this past winter.”
Robert holds up his creasing knife. “I got lucky, I could have gotten this.”
“You worry about the kids getting run over—don’t wanna see that. The kids haven’t hurt nobody.”
Good Neighbors
Robert was sitting on his back porch when he noticed the kids next door jumping off the wall into his yard. One fell on the fire pit, and Robert managed to grab him before he got burned. He had the fire going to drive off the mosquitoes that were collecting as darkness fell.
Not feeling comfortable addressing the wild children of the drug dealer he walked to the front door of the crack house, knocked, and waited for the man. When the man came to the door in a belligerent attitude Robert said, “Excuse me, Sir. But your kids, they’re playing on the wall and I have the fire going. I wouldn’t want any of them to get burned.”
The black man shouted, “Don’t’ you tell me how ta raise my muvafuckin chillen!”
Robert put up his hands and backed off the porch. “Okay, whatever—just trying to help.”
Robert shook his head as he took the ten and five paces to cross the lawn and get up onto his porch, resigning himself to have to deal with some burnt up kid in his yard. Putting out the fire was out of the question, as that would be a sure sign of weakness, and he had to appear strong with his wife having to stay next door to these animals while he was at work.
As he walked through his front door it did not shut behind him.
A fist and forearm ripped past his ear over his right shoulder, a right hand punch thrown from behind which missed. The puncher fell into Robert’s back, so he slid a side headlock over the slightly taller but lighter man’s head, and braced himself in a high squat. This was a black man in his mid twenties who Robert had seen at the house in the past.
A punch hit Robert in the left side of his jaw, staggering him slightly as he struggled with the guy in the head lock. This was a second black man in his mid twenties, who he had also seen at the crack house before.
While this man was trying to get an angle for another punch as Robert cranked the head lock on the other one, Robert kicked him in the pelvis with the ball of his left foot. This caused the man to buckle forward, so Robert wrapped his legs around him. He put his right leg over the attacker’s left shoulder, and his left leg under the attacker’s right shoulder, and hooked his feet together, causing all three of them to roll onto the floor.
The man in the headlock was on his side, struggling feebly, his head in the crook of Robert’s right arm.
Robert was on his left side.
The second puncher was on his back being choked with Robert’s thick legs.
Robert yelled, “Hon, call the cops!”
Then came the other two thugs, the big ones. The drug dealer, about six foot tall, laid a punch into Robert’s right eye, showering sparks. Another man, in size between the initial twerps and the lead goon, also began laying in punches to Robert’s right face in syncopation with the other man.
Robert held the leg choke and the head lock for what seemed like forever, but was only perhaps 10-30 seconds, as the two standing men punched him in the face.
Their punches not having the effect they apparently wished, the two men stepped back and began stomping Robert’s face from jaw line and ear to forehead, with their shoed foot. After a couple of stomps to the face Robert let go of the headlock and covered, maintaining the leg hold around the other twerp’s shoulders, who was struggling.
Kicks then began to come into his kidney and rib area, which caused him to loosen the leg lock and curl up into a covered fetal position and start rocking and shrimping on the living room floor while the kicks and punches rained down. Robert did not black out but kept rolling.
Eventually, a fifth person called in a police sighting and the attackers disappeared. Moments later police showed up. Things get hazy for Robert here. He was hospitalized, evaluated and found to have a brain injury, recommended for therapy, and given a police report, so that he could file charges against the next door neighbor, who had been arrested and jailed. The other attackers seemingly did not exist. Robert had this to say about the aftermath:
“I thought, ‘the pigs sure got their time getting there.’ Then again—it was probably only three minutes—pretty damned quick. In the city I would have been dead by the time they got there. It was like being attacked by a roach motel—and they disappeared, obviously had lookouts. The cops did not run their sirens and they still had plenty of warning to clear out. I have to bus it to the brain injury clinic and courthouse to get these charges filed.”
Three hours later Robert was saying good night to me, looking like he was ready to puke, as he limped out the door with his backpack toward the bus stop.
Analysis
Look, unless these crack heads were U.S. Navy SEALs, 30 seconds to put four men on target and post at least one sentry, seems a bit much for an off the cuff attack. These guys had to have already been going after Robert before he got to his front door, which means they were stacked up behind the crack dealer while Robert was on the crack house porch.
Robert showed excess civility, poor tactical judgment, and poor awareness, as he continued to treat his neighbors—despite what they are—like neighbors, up until the point he was attacked.
Socially, this is highly typical black on white violence, which is often instigated by a black drawing a white into an argument in order to build justification for a group beat down.
Mechanically, this represents the new paradigm in black on white street violence that has been dominant in Baltimore, in that no weapon was used, and that smaller faster attackers are sent in first to compromise the target’s position, with the large attackers following on to finish off the subject.
