Stages of the life: Streets, courtroom, prison

Gang members are sometimes older, living in the suburbs

Walking in the night, in the streets, he wears his pain: an oversized T-shirt with &quot;R.I.P.&quot; in big black letters. He could be almost any gangbanger in Memphis, because just about everyone has lost someone.

His red headband is no accident. He's a Blood.

Sgt. Kevin Helms of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department's street crimes unit stands next to him. The sergeant is wearing blue jeans and a bulletproof vest. He has a gun strapped to his leg. A washed-out Yankees baseball cap sits backward over his long, dirty-blond hair.

The law and the outlaw, face to face.

&quot;Hey, man,&quot; Helms says, gesturing toward the T-shirt, &quot;What's all this about?&quot;

&quot;My brother. He got shot over 15 times. They said he got shot by some Crip.&quot;

Later, Helms will say, &quot;That was a true gang shooting.&quot;

But who did the shooting is still open to speculation.

Meantime, the brother left behind, and others, continue to operate on what &quot;they&quot; said.

&quot;He's probably gonna kill (the killer) and go to jail, or get killed,&quot; Helms says. &quot;There is no justice system for them out here. There's just hearsay.&quot;

Another day

&quot;When you enlist in the Army, you expect to get shot,&quot; says Joe Hunter, 47, a preacher and self-described former Detroit gangster. &quot;When you sign up for high school, you shouldn't expect to get shot.&quot;

Uncle Joe, as he is known, runs a not-for-profit after-school program in Frayser called G.A.N.G. -- Gospel at New Generation. The program receives funding from the Urban Youth Initiative.

&quot;(Hunter) is not afraid of the gospel of Christ, and not afraid of going into areas of the city most people won't go,&quot; says Cheryl Beard, UYI's executive director.

For several years, Uncle Joe also has volunteered in Memphis city schools. Last fall, Hunter confronted a Trezevant High School student who had told other students he was going to &quot;shoot Uncle Joe.&quot; When Hunter slapped the student's chin, police cited him for misdemeanor assault. Hunter has not been allowed back into the schools since.

One cop believes that's a crime. &quot;I know he had a bad past, but his genuine interest in children can help,&quot; says Memphis police Sgt. James Valentine, who used to be assigned to Northside High School and called on Hunter to help with gang flare-ups. &quot;And (gang members) have a lot of respect for him.&quot;

Often, Hunter has to walk a delicate line. Today, he is escorting a reluctant witness to Juvenile Court to testify about the near-fatal shooting of Little Loc, a 16-year-old Crip and one of Uncle Joe's &quot;adopted&quot; sons.

The alleged shooter: a 17-year-old Blood, another guy Uncle Joe has tried to help.

In the courtroom, Uncle Joe sits on the opposite side from the defendant and his family. The family looks angry. The young man looks desperate. His eyes meet Uncle Joe's. He folds his hands together, as if to say, &quot;Pray for me.&quot;

Uncle Joe nods, folds his hands together, as if to say, &quot;You pray for you, too.&quot;

Another court

An 18-year-old Vice Lord named Christopher Wallace is walking down the street when he happens across 17-year-old Vice Lord Louis Mayes and two other gang members.

Mayes, a.k.a. Knockout, has rank and he accuses Wallace of trying to pass himself off as more than he is -- of &quot;false flagging.&quot; Wallace gets mad and rips off his shirt, threatening Knockout to a fight.

This is on Aug. 7, 2005. On the morning of Aug. 8, Wallace's body is found face down in the grass in front of a house on Alice Avenue. He has been hit in the back by a single bullet from a handgun. The blood trail indicates he ran several house lengths before collapsing.

In August 2007, in Division 8 of Shelby County Criminal Court, Vice Lord Louis Blade testifies he drove the car on the night of the killing, he and two other men were with Knockout, and it was Knockout who fired the fatal shot.

Asked in court why he didn't refuse to drive, or go to the police soon after the shooting, Blade testified: &quot;I'd have been violated. I could have been killed. It's the code of silence.&quot;

Sitting in court, Knockout does not look like a cold-blooded killer. He wears a white-collared shirt with tan pants and small-frame, wire-rim glasses. Absent is the set of gold pop-outs that a deputy jailer testifies were in his mouth when she interviewed him at 201 Poplar.

&quot;He's making himself look like a Sunday school teacher,&quot; deputy chief gang unit prosecutor Ray Lepone fumes after the first day of testimony.

It is a frustrating day, with one of the men in the car refusing to testify. A separate conspiracy-to-commit-murder charge has been filed against Knockout for allegedly trying to hire out a hit on one of the witnesses to the murder.

Knockout never takes the stand in the presence of the jury. The prosecution calls three witnesses who confirm Knockout is a ranking Vice Lord. Two of those witnesses testify Knockout was going to &quot;violate&quot; Wallace on Aug. 7 -- gang terminology for handing down a punishment for failing to abide by the gang's rules.

Wallace's crime: the Big D -- Disrespect.

&quot;Christopher got the death penalty for his violation!&quot; Lepone shouts at the jury during closing arguments. &quot;Because in their criminal justice system, that's what you get when you break their laws.

&quot;But we're in a courtroom now. We're not on Alice Avenue abiding by his rules. Knockout has no rank in here. It's first-degree murder.&quot;

The jury agrees, taking less than two hours to return a guilty verdict. Knockout receives a life sentence. The story of Memphis homicide detectives solving the case makes A&E;'s &quot;The First 48.&quot;

Several weeks after the trial, in an interview room at West Tennessee State Penitentiary in Henning, Ronald Terry, a five-star universal elite Vice Lord, is shaking his head when talking about Knockout.

&quot;I know of him,&quot; says Terry, 37, locked up since pleading guilty in August 2006 to attempted murder in the shooting of Marcus &quot;Pancho&quot; Danner, a lower-ranking Vice Lord leader.

&quot;He was a little bitty boy,&quot; Terry says of Knockout. &quot;And they gave him that kind of power? How can you do that? That was a baby.&quot;

The man who recruited that baby into the Vice Lords?

Ronald Terry.

Another rap

Single mother, low income, riding a bus

Big momma making a fuss, saying in God she trusts

My Uncle's 20, I'm 10, taking gulps of gin

He don't realize that we all engulfed in sin

Gang-bangers on the corner got me wanting to be down

Take a bullet for some city-owned, government ground

By 25, everybody locked or dead

Too busy playing around, never looking ahead

Every funeral cats get upset and cry

Turn their heads to the sky, trying to ask God why . . .

-- &quot;I Did It For You,&quot; Lecrae Moore, Reach Records

Moore is a Christian rapper living in Binghamton. He writes what he knows. Never met his father. Grew up in a Bloods neighborhood in San Diego under the influence of his gang-banging Uncle Chris.

&quot;They used to pair us up, at six years old, and bet on us like we were pit bulls,&quot; Moore says.

Back in the day, Moore listened to Tupac Shakur, a West Coast rapper killed in 1996 in a drive-by in Las Vegas. Moore appreciates the passion Tupac brought to his music, but &quot;He gave false hope for life after death, said there has to be a heaven for gangsters. So if you want to live the gangster life, go ahead. He talked about his gun as his girlfriend.&quot;

On the streets of Memphis, there's plenty of gangsta rap blaring through open car windows as shiny 22-inch rims roll by. Sgt. Kevin Helms is in Binghamton one night when he sees a purple car with spinners, the car stopping, starting, bouncing.

&quot;You were gangstering it through the intersection,&quot; Helms tells the driver after pulling the car over.

The driver is wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a ball cap. He's got an O.M.B. tattoo, for Orange Mound Bound. He's 25 years old and says he's in barber school; Helms peeks in the back window, sees textbooks.

The man is polite, personable, and proud. He speaks of his own little boy and how &quot;my mama stayed on my ass&quot; growing up.

&quot;Man, be careful over here,&quot; Helms says as he sends him on his way. &quot;They'll jack you for that car.&quot;

After the guy drives away, Helms speaks to another risk in fighting gang crime: assuming everyone who looks the part plays the part, and that everyone who doesn't look the part is innocent when, in fact, some local gangs have been known to recruit at public libraries.

&quot;He's hip-hoppie, he's got the dreds, he's got the car,&quot; Helms says. &quot;But man, he ain't no gang member.&quot;


This is the gang member that you don't see:

The 30-something or 40-something guy who used to be out running in the streets but still has gang ties, a legit job -- maybe even owns a business -- but is profiting more from gang crime now than he ever did. To co-workers and neighbors, he's living the &quot;citizen's&quot; life, with a nice family, a nice house, maybe even attending church.

&quot;It's all walks of life,&quot; says Detective Mike Pierce of the Memphis Police Department's organized crime unit. &quot;You'd be surprised at the guys that are not on the streets wearing a bandana, and not in the hood, but still have that affiliation.

&quot;It's everywhere.&quot;

Says Uncle Joe: &quot;That guy is part of the problem. He's made it out, but kids know he's made his money selling drugs and he's living in a nice house out east.&quot;

In 2006, former Memphis police officer Terrance Harris pleaded guilty to aiding a drug cartel, and is suspected of belonging to one of the major street gangs. In 2005, high-profile Memphis attorney Scott Crawford pleaded guilty to 21 felony counts, including bribing a police officer in an attempt to fix cases for two gang leaders. So, everywhere really means everywhere.

&quot;There's not a (public) high school in Memphis or the county that doesn't have gang members in it,&quot; says Reginald Henderson, chief prosecuting attorney for the gang unit in the District Attorney's office. &quot;None.&quot;

And in some sense, there's no such thing as a young &quot;wanna-be&quot; gang member -- whether that kid is scraping to survive in the roughest part of South Memphis, in the middle of the growing gang problem in Hickory Hill, or living in a big house in Collierville or Germantown.

Says Helms: &quot;If you're 14, throwing signs, and claiming the Crips, you're just as dangerous.&quot;

End of innocence

Little Loc, 16, was never a wannabe Crip. There were simply the crimes he committed before he took his oath, and the crimes he committed afterward.

&quot;I was doing all the things the Crips were doing, so it got to the point I might as well be Crip,&quot; he says.

&quot;It's not illegal to be in a gang,&quot; says Lepone. &quot;We couldn't give a rat's ass so long as they don't rob and kill people.&quot;

Or shoot each other for petty displays of disrespect, something Little Loc found out about when a member of the Bloods allegedly shot him in the chest.

&quot;You had to learn the hard way,&quot; Uncle Joe says to Little Loc, who answers with a nod.

&quot;Heard any noise on the street?&quot; Uncle Joe asks.

&quot;The streets ain't talking no more,&quot; Little Loc says.

So the streets are quiet.

For the moment.