Free Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh Page B

Some of them have pimps, some of them work for the gang, but they’re all in it for the drugs. Clarisse don’t mess with drugs. And that’s why a lot of people accept us—even if they say things behind our back. They know we’re only trying to take care of our families, just like them.”
    “Are you working now?” I said.
    “Baby, I’m always working if the price is right!” She laughed. “But J.T. probably don’t want me working tonight, so I won’t be hustling.”
    This confused me, since J.T. had specifically told me that his gang didn’t run a prostitution racket. Most gangs didn’t, he explained, since there wasn’t much money to be made. Prostitutes were hard to manage and required a great deal of attention: They were constantly getting beat up and arrested, which meant long periods without income. They needed to be fed and clothed, and the ones who used drugs were notoriously unpredictable. They were also prone to stealing money.
    “What do you mean?” I asked. “You mean J.T. controls you?”
    “No, but he told me once that if I wanted to hang out with his family, I had to play by his rules: no hustling when there’s a family thing going on. Like tonight. And he runs things around here, so I have to play by the rules.”
    Even though J.T.’s gang didn’t actually control the prostitutes in his buildings, Clarisse explained that he did extract a monthly fee from both the hypes and the regulars. The regulars usually paid a flat fee (anywhere from fifteen to seventy-five dollars a month), and in return the gang would beat up any johns who abused the women. The hypes, meanwhile, turned over a cut of their income (ranging from 10 to 25 percent) to J.T.’s foot soldiers, who tried to keep track of how many tricks each woman turned. Clarisse said that J.T. was actually one of the nicer gang leaders on the South Side. He regularly lent money to women, helped them get medical care, even kept a few vacant apartments for them to use as brothels. So although J.T. didn’t technically run a prostitution ring, he certainly controlled the flow of prostitution on his turf and profited from it.
    The conversation with Clarisse that night made me realize that I was hardly the only person in the projects whose movements were dictated by J.T.
    Whenever he took me on a survey of his buildings, I’d watch him deal with the various people who hung out in lobbies, stairwells, galleries, parking lots, and playgrounds. He warned a prostitute not to hustle out in the open. He told a man selling sneakers—they looked like counterfeit Nikes—to move away from the lobby where J.T.’s gang members were selling drugs. J.T. often forbade homeless men from hanging out in the playground, especially if they were drinking. And if he spotted a stranger on the premises, he’d have one of his senior officers interrogate that person to learn his business. J.T. hardly knew every single person out of the roughly five thousand in his domain, but he usually managed to figure out whether someone was a local, and if he couldn’t figure it out, he had plenty of people to ask.
    All of this was accomplished with little drama. “You folks need to move this activity somewhere else,” he’d say matter-of-factly. Or, “What did I tell you about hustling in the park when kids are playing?” Or, “You can’t stay in this apartment unless you deal with Creepy first.” I saw a few people resist, but none for any great length of time. Most of them seemed to respect his authority, or at least fear it.
    In most of the sociological literature I’d read about gangs—they had been part of the urban fabric in the United States since at least the late nineteenth century—the gang almost always had heated relationships with parents, shopkeepers, social workers, and the police. It was portrayed as a nuisance at best, and more typically a major menace.
    J.T.’s gang seemed different. It acted as the de facto administration of Robert Taylor: J.T.