Читать книгу What Killed Jane Creba - Anita Arvast - Страница 10

Short, Big Guy, JoJay :

AKA’s, Thugs, and Hoods

I was born and raised in the ghetto.

Until it’s my time to come.

When it goes down and die young.

With the good ones they call us thugs and hoodlums.

… I’m from a park where we don’t play.

— Point Blank, “From a Park Where We Don’t Play”

In 2005, Regent Park was one of the oldest of the social housing projects in Toronto and one of the city’s biggest problem areas. It was essentially divided into a north and south side, with rivalries separated by just one street that cut east–west through the middle of it — Dundas. Short, Boy, and Marz lived on the south side. Marz lived there with his two brothers and mom. One brother was finding his way in the world, and one was finding his way on the streets — that was Short and Boy’s friend, Kareem. Kareem had a record and a propensity for hanging with the wrong boys, but he got lucky on Boxing Day; he would have gone downtown with Short and Boy if he weren’t locked up in the Don Jail, detained on drug and weapon charges. As Marz told it “85 to 90 percent chance [his brother] would’ve been with them.”

Kareem was a member of a rap group called the Silent Souljahs. They were from the south side of Regent. Point Blank was a rap group from the north side. Some guys actually didn’t give a shit what side of the park you lived in because everyone was suffering the same. But some guys did. This is what the media told as the main story in the aftermath of the shooting: north against south.

Two gangs. Too easy. Two rap groups with some rivalries and some members and affiliates who carried guns — Marz’s brother carried a gun, Short carried a gun, and likely Boy carried one. But they weren’t two gangs. These were groups of poets who had affiliations with other poets trying to get out of a ghetto through their music. Being a hip-hop artist required artistry — an ability to play with words and ideas. Almost all of the guys there on Boxing Day had tried to play with poetry at some point. Had tried to rap. Who would ever think that poetry could cause rivalries? But it did.

In 2005, Short was living in Regent Park. But he had grown up in an area northwest of downtown called Jane and Finch. It’s an area of social housing most notorious for being the riskiest place in Toronto for a child to grow up. Innocent people had been killed walking down the street or just hanging out with friends. Jordan Manners, a fifteen-year-old boy who lived and went to school there, was the first person to be shot inside a high school in Toronto. William Appiah was just hanging out on a basketball court when he was shot down. Parents often didn’t know if their kids would make it home, or whether their kids were into the gang and drug scene or not. If their boys had been pulled to the periphery of the thug life by the glitter of gangs and money, chances were a lot higher that they wouldn’t see them turn into men.

Directly south of Jane-Finch, on the other side of the 401, is the Black Creek area. At one point as a young adolescent in junior high (grades 7–9 in those days), Short had also lived in the projects there. It is a pretty big area stretching from Jane and Lawrence down to Keele and Rogers, and as far east as Dufferin. A particularly heavy area for low-income housing was a street called Martha Eaton Way (originally a set of high-profile condominiums for professionals, but now worn down, slummish apartment buildings), but since that area was short on amenities, most of the Black Creek boys gravitated to Dufferin and Eglinton for action, and sometimes crossed into the territory of Jane-Finch or headed south into the downtown core.

Here’s the thing about hoods and gangs. They are more liquid than solid. Mostly, they are make-believe. We might have a map that roughly shows where crime is pronounced. But it’s really only a map showing where socially assisted housing exists.

Most of the people who live in these hoods are hard-working folks just trying to get food on the table and keep the hydro on while working a minimum-wage job — sometimes two. They’ve escaped some hardships, but not all.

These main hoods in Toronto are home to a substantial number of recent immigrants. Of course, that’s an aspect of systemic discrimination and segregation (no longer mandated, but still a reality) that is difficult to address. How do poor people get into housing and out of these “ghettos” that thugs try to reign? That’s a mighty big hole to climb out of.

There have been lots of efforts to “fix” the problems in all of these areas. Sometimes that means community groups working with police. In extreme cases, it means efforts to gentrify.

In 2014, the University of Toronto released a report on the demolition and resurrection of Regent Park, citing it as an ideal opportunity for “Social Cohesion in a Contested Space,” which is the title of the report. It states:

Regent Park is Canada’s oldest and largest social housing project and is currently undergoing a fifteen to twenty year revitalization process. Since the 1940s and 1950s, when Regent Park was first redeveloped from “slum” to social housing project, the neighbourhood garnered a stigmatized reputation for high rates of crime, poor social conditions, and physically isolating infrastructure. In 2005, Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCH) initiated a process of redevelopment in partnership with private developer Daniels Corporation to transform the neighbourhood into a mixed-tenure, mixed-income community. Regent Park will no longer consist entirely of social housing units, instead, the residential make-up will be roughly 70% market rate units and 30% social housing units once the redevelopment is finished. The physical transformation of the neighbourhood is happening alongside coordinated efforts to facilitate the social integration of new and old residents to ensure a cohesive environment for all Regent Park residents.[1]

It’s all well and good for planners and academics to discuss the future of the area, but in 2005, Regent Park was 100 percent socially assisted housing with a considerable reputation. It wasn’t all bad, and there were a lot of efforts to promote a positive sense of community. But none of the efforts were on the scale of the plan that eventually would come into place and yet solve only some of the problems while simultaneously displacing many people who relied on socially assisted housing to keep a roof over their heads. And people who actually called this home, and called their neighbours their friends.

In north Regent Park, Point Blank rapped that they came “from a park where we don’t play.”

In south Regent Park, the Silent Souljahs were rapping about “working it out.”

Most of the OG’s (original gangsters) knew rap was about the systems they were fighting rather than the individual rivalries or people in various neighbourhoods. The older guys also had respect for authority, parents, and family. And they respected what police called the G-code. It was a code that Short wasn’t following. It was a code that Marz and Boy would eventually be expected to break.

What’s the G-code? Unwritten rules about taking care of your people, especially if you lived in one of these hoods. The G-code isn’t really “gang code,” as the police and media describe it; it’s an understanding amidst a group of minoritized people who fear authority because of their own bad experiences — particularly with racial profiling — but still respect police authority as a necessity in dangerous areas and times. And the G-code is like any code of brotherhood — whether it’s police brotherhood, army brotherhood, or biker brotherhood.

One of the unwritten rules revolves around snitching; it’s a big no-no. That works fine when the G-code is taking care of you, but if you’re suddenly facing trouble, it might be easier to talk to the cops than end up serving time. But snitching leads to a lot of heat in the hoods. Something Short knew about as a target for his own snitching. And he wasn’t the only one breaking the G-code.

One of the guys being snitched on was Christoff “Creedy” Lewis from Regent Park. Seems some of the thugs didn’t have a problem pointing the finger at him for whatever reason. Less heat? A sense of justice? Not sure.

Creedy was the fellow who led another man named Kerlon Charles to a vacant apartment in a building quite a ways from Regent Park. Kerlon thought he was going there to buy a gun; Creedy knew otherwise. Kerlon was beaten with pool cues, then one of the six or so attackers took a TEC-9 semi-automatic and shot Kerlon eleven times in the head and torso as he lay face down on the floor. It was one of the first homicides in Toronto in 2005. A cold, calculated kill.

It was a while before Creedy got tied to that case and convicted of second-degree murder. Before the police made that connection some five years after Kerlon’s death, Creedy had shot a guy named J9 seven times in the back. He eventually got charged for that as well. J9 was Jermaine Osbourne, allegedly present at the Boxing Day shooting of Jane and shot just a couple of weeks before the big raids would come down in relation to the Creba case. His family celebrated his twentieth birthday in the hospital with J9’s brand new baby girl. But J9 wasn’t celebrating. He was in a coma and died just six days later. He never made it to trial for the Boxing Day events.

Before that all happened, Creedy was doing some introducing of guys in Regent Park. Guys who could sell drugs. It seems Marz’s brother met Short through Creedy. Creedy was a kingpin in the Regent Park area. He was the reason there were shootouts in the many years leading up to the Year of the Gun. Marz called Creedy “the original victim” up in the upper echelons of the Silent Souljahs rap group because he would “big them up” by playing their music when he DJed in the clubs (as opposed to playing the music of Point Blank). He was likely the key reason any rivalries had started, simply because he didn’t play the music of another rap group from Regent. Creedy called himself a “Blood.” Whatever that meant.

Marz’s brother was a rapper with the Silent Souljahs. But Marz didn’t see himself as belonging to any “side.”

Hard to play it neutral as it turned out, and 2005 was definitely a year when you couldn’t just sit on the fence. Seems Marz picked his side the day he was seen outside wearing a Silent Souljahs T-shirt in the fall. A couple of the Point Blanks didn’t like that.

“What the fuck you wearing that for?”

“It’s just my brother’s group. I support everyone.”

As he would tell the court during the preliminary hearing, “In 2005, you (couldn’t) be in between. There is no neutral ground.” Rivalries were clearly heating up between the two groups of music makers.

On October 28, 2005, Marz was going to go to a movie with his girlfriend. As they crossed the street to get in a cab, two guys in masks on bikes fired shots on Marz as he scrambled to safety. He was pretty sure it was members of another rap group affiliated with Point Blank, who at the time went by the name TnT (based on their names Turk and Tyke).[2] TnT — who later became TnT Sick Thugz — were later attached to another shooting at the Toronto Eaton Centre in 2012. They sang about violence and Marz reported that they actually perpetrated it targeting individuals in the south part of Regent Park. When Point Blank stopped rapping in about 2013, TnT/Sick Thugz had replaced them in the media and on police radar as the “Sic Thugs Gang.”[3]

As for Marz, no gang affiliation. He just wanted out of the neighbourhood. His girlfriend wanted him out. But sometimes you just don’t have a choice about where you live.

Just three days after the shooting by Marz’s cab, on Hallowe’en night, a gunfight erupted behind Marz’s building with at least thirty guys involved. It’s a miracle nobody died. Another shootout happened in Regent Park in mid-November. Marz reported that this was the work of the rival TnT and Silent Souljahs.

Creedy was apparently one of their main targets. They didn’t get him in the mid-November shootout in Regent Park, or on the day when a car he was sitting in got riveted with bullets. After those incidents, he went into what Marz called “hyper-paranoid mode” — changing his cellphone every few days, never staying in the same location for more than a few days, and certainly keeping on the down low in public.

No way Creedy would be out on Boxing Day. Marz was right. Too much popping off in the “park where we don’t play.”

But it wasn’t as easy as just those rivalries between Silent Souljahs, Point Blank, and TnT. It was more about personal rivalries and allegiance to friends; issues less threatening to the public than gangs and far too nuanced to explain.

There are bad boys in every neighbourhood, it’s just that some neighbourhoods have conditions that tend to produce more. Short was one on the bad boys. He had a lengthy criminal record for drugs, assaults, break-and-enters, and drug trafficking. He wasn’t a gang member. He was an entrepreneur, who ran up against some other entrepreneurs in the drug trade.

He had a lot of enemies, especially from Black Creek, and at one point even told police that word on the street was that there was fifty thousand dollars up for grabs for his head. It’s nice to feel important.

Boy had enemies from both Black Creek and Jane-Finch. Same place Short had enemies.

A lot of dealers in the suburbs don’t have enough customers in their own area, so they sometimes migrate downtown to deal. And that was crossing territories. Whether you’re a record store owner, a mom-and-pop restaurant, or a drug dealer, nobody wants competition coming into their turf.

Boy and Short also had enemies called the Po Boys (or Project Originals), who named themselves this because the Atkinson Housing Co-op where they resided (with boundaries Dundas West to the north, Queen to the south, and Bathurst and Spadina on either side) was the first (i.e., ori­ginal) public housing conversion in Canada. They started off just promoting community pride, but eventually those ideals fell to the wayside and the Po Boys, like many of the young men, turned to the drug trade. The Po Boys claimed strong allegiance to the Bloods. Their rivals included people from Regent Park and the Jane-Finch corridor, even though the Regent boys also referred to themselves as “Bloods through and through.” Go figure.

It seems that the L.A. gang culture didn’t really transplant so well to Toronto. Too many boys confused about what it meant and where the intersections spelled a territory. Some of them still wore the colours — red for Bloods, blue for Crips. But honestly, very few were actually associated with either L.A. gang.

Some reports claimed the reason for the Boxing Day shootout was because of a rivalry between a kid named JoJay (a Point Blank affiliate because his uncle was a member of the group) and Boy (a Silent Souljahs affiliate). Not so easy. Not so true. Another of the reported rivalries was between Short and a guy in Black Creek named Big Guy. That wasn’t quite true either.

Big Guy wasn’t a part of any gang. The police and media used these guys’ nicknames to imply they were all gang members, but the truth was much more simple than that. Fact is, all of them got their handles when they were children. It’s a standard part of Jamaican culture. Big Guy wasn’t called Big Guy because he was a significant menace; he got that name for his stocky physique as a boy.

Did Big Guy have friends? Yes, he did. But they weren’t gang members either. The usual concept of a gang is a group of individuals who commit crimes together. The truth is that most “gangs” have much more considerably fluid membership. So-and-so is friends with this other guy, so they hang out. Sometimes friendships go awry and those bonds break. Street gangs don’t have initiation rights or oaths or even anything remotely resembling a commitment. They’re often just groups of teenagers who come together — usually to protect each other from bullying or threats of violence. Bullying and threats are all too common in difficult neighbourhoods. Why wouldn’t a person want to ensure they had the protection of friends?

Still, Big Guy had a reputation with the police as a previous associate of the Weston Road and Lawrence Avenue 5 Point Generalz (or 5PGz), who were based out of an area just west of Black Creek. He had an extensive rap sheet for guns, drugs, resisting arrest, and assaults (including on officers). The truth is that he spent most of his time in the Black Creek area working part-time at a community centre, helping young children. His police files don’t mention the community work, or his coaching of baseball teams in his neighbourhood, or his regular church attendance.

Despite what was in his police file, he wasn’t actually associated with the 5PGz. Yes, he knew them. But it wasn’t friendly. There was apparently another Black Creek gang called the Gatorz who weren’t too friendly with the Five Point Generalz. Big Guy wasn’t a part of that gang either.

It seems the police files had a lot of wrong information about Big Guy.

While Big Guy lived with his parents, he also paid a bit of rent to another guy in the Black Creek area — a guy named Kory Benoit Jones. Kory’s crib was a basement apartment in a house. His mom didn’t care for his lifestyle and kicked Kory out at a young age. When he had money for the bus, he sometimes made it to school. But mostly he just sat around his apartment smoking dope. School is hard when you’re virtually illiterate. Welfare carried him some of the time, but to keep up with his pot habit he would do break-and-enters and deal in crack and pot.

It was tough to make his rent, so he tried getting a couple of roommates. That’s how Big Guy ended up there in the fall of 2005. Kory would smoke pot every day all day, and Big Guy just used the place once in a while to bang a girl or hang. Kory didn’t have much use for Big Guy. And at the end of the day, Big Guy had zero use for Kory. Kory was just a little guy in his mind.

Big Guy saw Kory as something of a wimp. Kory didn’t much care because he was stoned most of the time and had become completely complacent about anything going on in his apartment.

Those tensions aside, Kory’s apartment was pretty useful for anyone who was trying to stash arms or anything else remotely illegal. He had a “smoking room” — really just a dingy room not much bigger than a closet — where he and anyone hanging at his crib could go smoke. The ceiling in the room wasn’t finished, just beams and fibreglass insulation. It was a perfect spot for guys to hide any guns they were carrying or trying to sell, and Kory would always play the stupid, stoned guy who knew nothing about this.

Big Guy stashed his 9-millimetre there.

Big Guy was also friends with a young offender named Jorell Simpson Rowe, whom he met at school. He went by the nickname of JoJay because it just rolled off the tongue a lot easier. JoJay had a difficult past. When JoJay was young, his father was deported, leaving the boy to be raised by an often violently abusive, alcoholic mother. He struggled in school because he had a number of learning disabilities that would not be discovered until well after the Boxing Day shooting. Ironically, his brother would be quite successful, even going to York University on a football scholarship. Such would never be the case for JoJay.

Big Guy, JoJay, Short, Boy, J9.

All these guys were just guys who hung out with their friends. They hailed from all over the city, many with their friendships dating back to childhood. Some of these guys had crossed paths before, but most had not. They were just all there on Boxing Day.