Blood saves a Crip; both confront new gangster code- Portland Tribune Article

Before you start out on a journey most usually map it out. We account for time, food, and rest just to name a few. We also attempt to plan for the unexpected if that's even possible. I planned this journey with a few things set in stone, but I'm constantly watching those stones unsettling and it's worked out for the good.

This story featured in the Portland Tribune is a great example. At its core this situation is the reason for#UNIFYPORTLANDS existence. One man at a time! One community at a time. We will #UNIFY

Blood saves a Crip; both confront new gangster code

Created on Thursday, 26 November 2015 01:00 | Written by Peter Korn |

TRIBUNE PHOTO: JAIME VALDEZ - Ex-Blood Stefan Johnson's race to the hospital saved the life of Tamir Hassan Rushdan Lawrence, a Crip. Johnson, right, revisits the site of the shooting near King School with Nathaniel Williams, who recently started an organization - Unify Portland -aimed at getting older gang members to encourage younger gangsters to rein in their violence.

A strange thing happened two weeks ago on a Friday afternoon.

Stefan Johnson, for many years a Blood, saved the life of Tamir Hassan Rush’dan Lawrence, a longtime member of the Crips. This happened right after Lawrence was shot point blank in the face in a drive-by shooting.

Johnson and Lawrence agree that the shooter was probably a Blood. They also agree that what occurred can be instructive for the rest of us, who sometimes think of the life and death of gangsters in black and white, or red and blue — the colors of Bloods and Crips.

Here’s how Johnson tells the story. He had just picked up food at the Burger King at Delta Park. In his car with him were a 7-month-old daughter who lives with him, another daughter who is 3, and that child’s mother. They were eating in the car and driving to Northeast Sixth Avenue and Alberta Street, a street corner hangout for many years.

Johnson sees Lawrence sitting on a wall and gets out of his car to talk to him. Lawrence is a friend from childhood — and jail. He is also the cousin of Johnson’s best friend. Children and mothers are gathered around talking and playing. School has just let out at nearby King School. Children are starting to enter the safety crosswalk on Alberta. A few minutes later, according to Johnson, he sees Lawrence fall off the wall.

Lawrence’s version is a bit harder to put together since the bullet that entered his chin leaves him unable to speak. But using a notepad and pen, he says he had been talking to a young girl when a car drove up, stopping about 15 feet away from him. He watched the window drop. A young man, whom he says he didn’t recognize, made eye contact, pulled up a handgun and shot him in the neck.

Lawrence says after he was shot he tried to push away the little girl with whom he had been talking — to get her out of the line of fire. He tried three times to stand up and get behind a car. The shooter’s car sped away.

Johnson says everybody scattered — mothers picked up toddlers and ran, older children did the same. But even with his own children in the car, Johnson attended to Lawrence, who at 39 is a well-known and well-connected Crip.

“I asked him if he was OK,” Johnson recalls. “He opened his mouth and blood came out of his mouth.”

Johnson picked Lawrence up and carried him to the back seat of his car, telling the woman with him to take the two children in the car into one of the houses on the block.

Johnson sped toward Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. From the front seat he asked Lawrence to move his fingers and feet, which Lawrence did. Johnson, 42, has a gangster’s scars and experience. He has been shot four times — once in the arm, once in each leg, once in the groin. Lawrence has also been shot, as recently as this past summer, in fact. Both knew the drill — keep Lawrence moving and awake. Humor helped.

“He asked me if I was going to let him die,” Johnson says, noting his excessive speed. “I said, ‘If we crash we’re both going to die.’ “

At Skidmore Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard he spotted a police cruiser at a red light. He began honking his horn and Lawrence was able to wave to the officers. The officers called for an ambulance that took Lawrence in.

Lawrence lived. A bullet shattered his chin and pieces of bone just missed severing an artery. He has already begun regaining his voice.

Respect for each other

Normally, the story would end there — at least for the public. But as unusual as is the incident involving Johnson and Lawrence, just as rare is the fact that both men are willing to publicly talk about it.

Lawrence, from his hospital bed, contacted an old Crips friend, Anthony Washington. Washington called Nathaniel Williams, who recently started an organization called Unify Portland. Williams says he wants to cut off the youth pipeline to gangs. His plan is to start by getting old gang members such as Lawrence and Johnson to help young gangsters see the folly in their no rules, randomly violent ways.

“Things aren’t going to change until the older generation starts dealing with the younger generation,” Williams says.

Johnson says he is willing to talk publicly about the incident because he’s tired of young gangsters endangering children. He says he’s fathered many children but when he was released from jail earlier this year, for the first time one of those children was placed in his care — his 7-month-old daughter. The child’s mother, Johnson says, is not in the parenting picture.

“When we were growing up, people liked to fight. This younger generation, they’ll talk about fighting and then just shoot,” he says.

Johnson says if this had happened a few years ago, he and Lawrence might have tried to retaliate for the shooting. The two of them, despite their different gang loyalties, might have together gone after the shooter. Now, he says, he has his daughter to worry about.

Lawrence says if the two of them did seek retribution, it wouldn’t be because a rival gang member shot him. It would be, he says, for the “open disrespect” the shooter displayed by firing with children nearby. For the older generation of gangsters, Lawrence and Williams say, street code meant no shooting when women and children were around.

Lawrence is willing to talk publicly because it is his way to honor Johnson, who says he was told by a police officer that Lawrence would have died on the street if not for Johnson’s action.

TRIBUNE PHOTO: JAIME VALDEZ - Former Blood Stefan Johnson shows where he picked up Crip Tamir Hassan Rushdan Lawrence, before racing Lawrence, who had been shot, to the hospital.

Thinking about the future

But there’s another reason Lawrence is talking. He’s 39 years old, still hanging out on the same street corners and in parks with gang members who are now half his age. He says he engages in little criminal activity anymore, but acknowledges that he’s made himself a target for young gangsters who want to make their reputations. This is the second time he has been shot this year.

Lawrence’s childhood friend and gang mentor thinks the shootings are forcing Lawrence to face a critical life decision. Anthony Washington, who has moved to Forest Grove and sworn off gang life, says he introduced Lawrence to the Crips when both were children. Washington is 41 and one more old gangster fed up with the ways of the new generation. He and Lawrence have been talking in recent months about one subject — Lawrence’s future.

“I feel responsible for him because I was the person who pulled him into all this,” Washington says. But he adds that if Lawrence does not take this opportunity to separate himself from active gang life, he will end their relationship.

“I’ve been trying to work with him and it hasn’t worked,” Washington says. “What I told him was if I have to cut the cord on him, I will.”

“Enough is enough,” Washington says. “I told him, this is your chance to say something positive about all this mess ... Tamir, show some love. Some positivity. And say, ‘I shouldn’t have been there.’ Or say something positive to people. We owe Portland a lot because we’ve been terrorizing Portland for years.”

Williams says Lawrence’s willingness to talk to the Tribune might be a hesitant first step toward joining the handful of older gangsters, Crips and Bloods, who are trying to at least re-establish rules on the street.

“This is Tamir stepping up and doing something positive,” he says.

Left unspoken in this unusual drama is the possibility of helping police catch the people who shot Lawrence. Lawrence was looking straight at his shooter before he was hit. He and Johnson saw the car involved in the drive-by. Yet neither one will talk to police.

“It will be snitching if he describes the shooter. Or the car,” says Williams.

Williams, Lawrence and Johnson aren’t pretending there is one moral to their story. Their circumstances are much too complicated for that. Yes, friendship sometimes trumps gang allegiance. Yes, generational connections might do the same. Maybe a shared code of street ethics also can eclipse street affiliation.

Lawrence and Johnson aren’t asking people to ignore the lives they’ve led and the havoc they’ve caused. Both have substantial arrest records. Johnson has a long list of children he has fathered but cannot support. But Johnson’s decision to save Lawrence can serve as an object lesson, they believe, or at least a whisper to the gangster community about the meaning of allegiance.

It was Williams of Unify Portland who contacted the Tribune. He sees Lawrence as a potential lynchpin in his efforts to stem the indiscriminate gang violence that has flourished in the past few years. Lawrence is one of the few older gangsters who still hangs with young gangsters. Which means he has a voice that young gangsters listen to.

“He knows he’s Tamir,” Williams says. “He knows his reputation. He knows right now it’s open season, it’s a war in the street, and he’s a trophy name.”

Portland police would not talk about Lawrence’s shooting because it is part of an ongoing investigation. Still, Brian Dale, a member of the police bureau’s Gang Enforcement Team, confirms that Lawrence could be the lynchpin type that Williams wants him to be — respected by both Crips and Bloods and willing to speak out.

“Tamir was that (Crips) guy that you could actually see walking in Blood territory. He’s high up and he’s been around long enough that he has standing,” Dale says.

Williams says Lawrence understands the crossroads at which he finds himself.

“Tamir has three choices,” Williams says. “He can just walk away and say ‘I’m done with this.’ He can call on his group of individuals and say, ‘Let’s go get them.’ Or he can leverage it and say ‘I’m done with this. Let’s call a truce.’”

Washington says Lawrence hasn’t told them his thinking. But given his stature, Williams says, if Lawrence decides to stand up against the rising violence just after having been shot himself, his voice will be heard.

“He can do something really big,” Williams says.

For his part, Lawrence is saying only that this most recent shooting has him thinking.

“I’m a work in progress. This,” he says, pointing to his shattered chin and the hole in his neck, “is a lesson.”