Please stop by PAFA and check out our new installation as part of the current show entitled Here. Our installation features collage and video work, and you’ll also be able to grab a copy of the latest issue of Megawords.
See more photos on our project page. Find out more about the show at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art’s website.
Megawords spoke with a local Philadelphia Police officer [under the condition of anonymity] working in one of the most crime ridden and dangerous districts in the city. In his own words, he gives us his thoughts about the perils of the job, crime, the prison and judicial systems, and the stop snitchin’ epidemic. Some locations have been changed, and we’ve kept the officer’s identity a secret for his protection.
ON THE STREETS
My district is about 2 miles by 3 miles, its one of the highest crime districts in the city. It’s bad. People are getting killed left and right, because no one cares and no one helps.
Drug dealing is so bad, and gone on for so long, that you can contain it, but you can’t stop it. When operation Safe Streets started there were tons of cops walking foot beats. A cop is standing on the corner that the drugs were sold on, so course it looks a lot safer; but all you’re really doing is moving it. That’s why Camden jumped off, because they just moved the operation. You’ll never stop it, and you just have to hope to god that someone who isn’t a piece of shit doesn’t get killed. Drugboy killing drugboy – I couldn’t care less. Airbrush a t-shirt and I’ll send a teddy bear. But when it’s the little kid who’s playing basketball at the Rec Center and someone ends up killing him, that’s the sad part.
We do a lot of roll-ups. Where we’ll just roll up on a corner and jump out. That’s where people are at their most vulnerable, but it’s also the most dangerous for us. And when we do it in plainclothes its even worse, because they think they are getting robbed, and they are a lot quicker to pull a gun out. You’ve gotta’ watch their hands. The only thing that can hurt you on a person is their hands; if you can see them you’re fine. Then you get the asshole that won’t show them, so you’ve got to get physical on people. Even a gun in the face doesn’t matter, because they know you won’t shoot them. You have to get in their mindset. They think they are in a rap video or movie – that’s really the mindset. For a bundle of drugs sold, they get paid $20; and some corners will go through 500 bundles in an afternoon. So they are making money. And it’s the young kids that sell it on the corners; they are the ones that want to fight. They are trying to make a name.
By MATT SCHWARTZ, DAN MURPHY and ANTHONY SMYRSKI
Photography by DAN MURPHY and CHRIS CRISMAN
Megawords: How did you decide to get married and have children?
Jacques: We never actually had a ceremony. But how decided to stick together has been working itself out. While we were in the early stages of the relationship, we went through things like everybody, breakups and makeups. We stared having children kind of early. I was 21 and you were 20, right?
Zendra: Right, when Yismael was born. The turning point, when we knew we could make it work, was when we went to St. Croix.
Jacques: We were three children deep but we were still kind of back and forth. When you have family in the area it’s easy to get away to other peoples’ houses when you’re having difficulties. But after 9-11, we decided we needed some balance. We needed to get away.
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