Let's Talk About Gangs, Part III: A Day in the Life of a Gangster

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By John Thompson

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third and final installment in a multi-part series written by a former gang prosecutor. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. We apologize for the delay in publishing this final installment.)

So what does a gangster actually do from day to day? The answer is a combination of the routine things that most people like to do – go to a party, try to make friends with a pretty girl, and watch a football game. But also, there are things that greatly differentiate the gangster, not the least of which is selling and doing drugs, and hunting and killing rival gangsters. The following is a true story about the latter activity, killing rivals.

We are in the barrio. We’ll call it Gang A’s territory. A number of Gang A’s members are helping a 10-year-old we’ll call Pedro fix his bike at the end of a driveway, where it meets the street. Our hero is a Gang B member; let’s call him Basher. Basher is in the back of a pickup truck that pulls up to the driveway where Gang A is helping Pedro with his bike. It's important to note that Basher is a highly active, violent member of Gang B, blood rivals of Gang A, and he just got out of custody for a shooting. As the truck pulls up, Basher asks the question he already knows the answer to, "Where are you from?" Basher empties his gun, shooting four Gang A guys and the 10-year-old, Pedro. The four gangsters don’t make it, but Pedro, shot through, survives.

One other fact about our 10-year-old Pedro: Though he lives in Gang A neighborhood and is friends with the Gang A guys, he wants nothing more in life than to be a Gang B gangster, just like his uncle. On the night in question, Pedro refuses to identify the shooter. We figure he knows who shot him, though, so weeks later, Pedro is out of the hospital, and I have one of our investigators pick Pedro up after school, buy him some ice cream, and bring him to the gang unit to look at photo albums, which are basically catalogues of each separate gang.

Pedro flips through the photo book of Gang B, the kind of book people scrapbook with. You can hear that kind of sticky noise the clear page covers make as they are turned. Pedro gets to one of the pages and says, "That’s Basher. He’s the guy that shot me,"… and then Pedro just keeps turning pages like he was reading a comic book or had pointed out Barney the Dinosaur. That is our "I.D.," our identifying witness: all of a 2-second, off-the-cuff comment. That’s all we have.

Eventually, we get to trial. The courtroom is packed with gangsters and other onlookers, armed Marshals are all around, and a jury is in the box. We have Basher on trial for shooting five people, and we get to Pedro’s testimony, and particularly the part about who shot him. We have Pedro’s mother seated next to him on the witness stand. Pedro won’t say who shot him, even when I press him for an answer. Finally, 10-year-old Pedro looks up at the judge, a former colonel, and says, "F*&k this." Pedro looks at me and says, "F*&k you," and then gets up from the witness stand, leaving his mother behind, and walks past the jury, past me at the podium, and out of the Courtroom. This 10-year-old is about to get on an elevator in a giant Southern California courthouse on the 10th or 12th floor and flee.

I ask the court to take note that Pedro is leaving. The Judge excuses the jury to the jury room and then sends one of the Marshals to find Pedro. Long story short, we get Pedro back in court, the judge reads him the riot act about his obligation as a witness, and court reconvenes. Pedro still won’t identify the shooter because he doesn’t want to be a rat. The jury is educated by my investigator about the part of the gang culture regarding "throwing a rat," and then the jury gets to hear the recording of Pedro saying, "That’s Basher. That’s the guy who shot me." The jury understands that a gangster would rather be on the surface of the sun than "rat" out another gangster.

The defense called alibi witnesses, a girlfriend and a homeboy. They said that Basher was with them on the night in question. And while the Gang A members who did survive the shooting wouldn’t ID the shooter, they did at least let us know what type of pickup truck was used. I asked the homeboy-alibi witness, "By any chance, do you own a pickup?" Answer: "Yes." I give the make: "Is that what you drive?" Answer: "Yep." "The model?" "Yep." "And by any chance is your pickup this color?" "Yes," again. What are the chances of that, huh? In the “Life is stranger than anything you can make up” file we sometimes keep in our head, I told the jury that not only do we know who the shooter was, but don’t you think we pretty much know who the driver was?

Basher got convicted. Five life sentences were stacked on one another, along with gun and gang enhancements. He is never getting out of custody. Welcome to the crazy gang life. Basher gave real meaning to the phrase "Laugh now….cry later."

John Thompson is a former prosecutor from Southern California who spent years assigned to a specialized Gang Enforcement unit.

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