The creeps on Chicago streets face a prospect that could alter the tenor of American law enforcement.
Once captured, they may not get merely their rights read to them. They may also get the lyrics of a rap song, sung by the cops pinching them. Like these:
So you turn a direction
`Cause you`re trying to find some affection.
Five years have passed and you`re out there kickin` some ass.
Oops. I shouldn`t have said it.
But check this out. Look where you`re headed.
Shame, shame, shame
You`re caught up in the gang game.
One might assume that the sort of song favored by the typical Chicago police officer was ”Danny Boy.”
But the department`s makeup has changed, as a visitor to the Cabrini-Green public housing project was reminded Thursday night in tracking a trio known to their employer as Officers James Martin, Eric Davis and Randy Holcomb.
To a possibly growing group of others, including gangbangers and drug dealers, they`re E Murph, 21 and Faheem, making up The Slick Boys rap group, whose ”Ain`t It a Shame” is excerpted above (what would Kojak say?).
The roles of plainclothes officer and rapper are not distinct for these members of the Chicago Police Department`s public housing unit-north, at 365 W. Oak St. That`s inside Cabrini-Green, which, given spasms of municipal concern and reallocation of police prompted by the killing of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, may be one of the safer places in North America, at least for the moment.
”This has helped with our policing,” said Davis, 32, raised near Cabrini and both a basketball and football standout at the University of Houston, playing with future NBA stars Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon and, briefly, as a safety with the Houston Oilers.
”We try to bring to the surface social issues and be a voice for communities like Cabrini-Green,” said Davis, as fit as when he played against Michael Jordan in a 1982 NCAA semifinal game that Houston lost 68-63 to the University of North Carolina.
The three officers didn`t know one another growing up. Martin, 31, was raised at the Ida B. Wells project, while Holcomb, 34, came from the area around Rockwell Gardens.
Martin met Davis through a basketball league before they were assigned to Cabrini eight years ago (Martin arrived shortly after locking up a son of Jesse Jackson`s for driving without a license, sticker and license plates). Two years later, Holcomb also was assigned to Cabrini.
Knowing the role of music in the community, Martin and Davis turned to rap, with Holcomb serving as manager. They started rapping as a way to break down barriers between residents and police. In some cases, gangbangers and drug dealers offered artistic suggestions, even wrote songs for them. (Hey, it`s cheaper than hiring Elton John and Bernie Taupin.)
Three years ago, Davis and Martin started performing at schools as part of a ”We Care” program of the African American Police League. League President Patricia Hill, a Pullman District officer, believed that ”their message, of not promoting or endorsing violence, but speaking of the liberation of African-Americans, caught on.”
”We were nervous,” Martin recalled. ”We knew that once people heard we were police, that would turn them off. So we`d perform first as The Slick Boys, then tell them we were police.
”People were shocked and said, `Hey, you`re pretty cool,` ” Martin said. Rapping proved more productive than giving what he refers to, with mild derision, as the traditional ”Officer Friendly” speech.
Holcomb, who went from manager to third member last year, speaks of needless stereotyping of police, rappers, the projects and how to address some of the projects` problems.
One gets a notion of the officers` perspective from the liner notes of their two-song audiocassette, available at Barney`s One Stop, 3400 W. Ogden Ave. and 3145 W. Roosevelt Rd.; and Mac Records, 5412 W. Madison St. (they`re producing a first album and perform Sunday night at Ka-Boom!, 747 N. Green St).
”We would like to thank the present and past leaders (especially George Bush and Ronald Reagan) of the American government,” the notes declare, ”for upholding racial discrimination, bigotry, poverty and all the other ills of society. These so-called leaders make a record like ours absolutely necessary.”
It`s not a sentiment likely shared throughout the department, though the officers underscore their appreciation for backing they`ve received from their bosses.
The Slick Boys don`t demonize the drug dealer ”trying to put food on his family`s table,” as Davis puts it. They`ll make an arrest when the law is broken, but don`t see the dealers as pure evil.
”We may lock somebody up, but we also try to help them with knowledge,” Holcomb said. ”Our job is to serve and protect, not to incarcerate. We`re not a miniature army. We see ourselves as black leaders of this community.”
They also suspect that what has played out at Cabrini in the aftermath of the Davis killing is likely transitory; short-term public relations rather than real commitment.
”The solution for Cabrini is not a lockdown, but bringing up people`s self-esteem through jobs,” Martin said. ”What the police are doing now may just increase hostility.”
The Slick Boys seem, on first encounter, to reflect a mix of compassion and pragmatism that skirts a cop`s frequently unavoidable cynical
insensitivity. Then again, they are young and both a part of, and set apart from, this world.
And they are caring but not necessarily selfless. If The Slick Boys ever take off commercially, Officers Martin, Davis and Holcomb are likely to turn to music full time, using that added cachet (and added cash) to return something to the community.
Davis has already had a whiff of the big time, in sports. But it`s interesting to learn that while he could surely beckon old chums Drexler or Olajuwon, maybe even onetime rival Jordan, to these environs, he thinks it would be a mistake.
”Why should you have kids try to attain something they can`t be?” he asked. ”I`d rather bring in teachers and carpenters and physicians who grew up in similar situations.”
Or The Slick Boys. As Davis put it firmly, ”We want to be leaders.”
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Did something tell you that we were forced to watch a prodigious number of political ads during this campaign year?
According to the Arbitron ratings service, total political advertising during the 1992 election year, including local and national ads, was $310 million. Four years ago it was $228 million.
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Now that reputed hit man Joseph ”Joey the Clown” Lombardo has exited prison after a 10-year stay, can we declare an early moratorium on all the mobology about whether he will be decreed new Major Domo of the Chicago mob?
Better yet, can we declare it a felony to contact, and elicit the purported wisdom of, all those babbling ex-FBI agents, like well-tanned mobologist and former Chicago G-man William Roemer in Arizona?
Leave them to their poolside deck chairs.
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”In the United States, last year, almost a hundred million more books were taken out of the public libraries than were taken out five years ago. As appropriation money for the purchase of new books fell further, the army of library users gained enormous numbers of new recruits.
”As the libraries began running out of books, the reading went on with increased intensity, even with impatience. Bindings worked looser, and more and more pages were lost from much-thumbed volumes.”
That comes from a Depression-era, 1934 issue of Vanity Fair. When I read it to folks at the Chicago-based American Library Association last week, and then gave them the citation, they laughed. It sounds so germane to these days. Once again, in the midst of a rotten economy and cuts in library appropriations, circulation is zooming. Mary Jo Lynch, American Library Association director for research and statistics, agrees that one can`t say conclusively that there`s a link between bad times and more reading. But it`s sure intriguing.
By one index, compiled by the University of Illinois, circulation jumped 15 percent last year, a higher percentage than in any year since it started compiling figures in 1980.
Meanwhile, national figures on total items circulated (books, records, etc.) showed an increase to 1.46 billion in 1991, from 1.32 billion just two years earlier.
Maybe, just maybe, the Dumbing of America is slowing a bit.
