My Life in Seattle’s Street Gangs Was a Dead-End Street

GTo row as a black American in a rough neighborhood of Seattle almost doomed my future. In many ways, I was doomed. Even a violent early death.

My mother, a nurse, worked long hours looking after my sister Angela and me after our father left us. Although he lived 10 blocks away, he was never active in our lives, either financially or otherwise.

My mother loved us and disciplined us, but I needed a strong and responsible male figure in my life. Neither of my friends grew up in a traditional two-parent house.

Racial differences appeared early on. In my childhood I learned how different teachers disciplined white and black children. They made us stand out more.

But I’ve never fought racial injustice. It just seemed normal for our church. The police regularly harass us because we are just hanging out at a bus stop or a street corner. Sometimes three or four patrol cars would pull up with police officers screaming and cursing and jumping out to search our pockets for no good reason.

Seduced by the streets

In elementary and middle school, I got good grades and followed my mother’s warnings to behave. She never allowed me to stay on the street for long. I was more or less a loner and rarely got into trouble.

However, things changed when I entered high school in 1981 after taking the bus to the suburbs. I started hanging out with the wrong guys. The gang culture, drugs and parties finally seduced me. I loved hip hop music and street dance. When I was 16, I joined the Emerald Street Boys rap group. We performed all over town and made an album. Then I slowly lost interest in school, skipped classes and stopped altogether, which worried my mother.

California gangs started wandering into our neighborhood where they sold cocaine and bred more violence. I went with the flow and succumbed to hard drugs on occasion, mostly alcohol and potatoes.

Next came the sale of drugs that created pseudo-self-esteem. You’ve earned yourself respect for flashing wads of money. From my late teens to my early 30s, I made up to thousands of dollars a week. I bought gold jewelry, expensive equipment, and flashy cars, and I enjoyed going to clubs and buying drinks. I was always looking for approval and thirsting for something that would never satisfy. The money slipped through my fingers like melting ice in a scorching heat wave.

Random police incidents only added to my grudges against the authorities. When I was driving my Caucasian friend on a dinner date, a patrol car stopped us with flashing emergency lights. Officials ordered us out of the car and forced us on our hands and knees to search us. I was totally embarrassed for my girlfriend who was wearing a nice dress. They found nothing illegal and let us go.

Close calls

I had always known God existed since my grandmother took me to Sunday school. But I saw God through a distorted lens. I believed doing good outweighs bad, which led me to sponsor a poor child in a distant country through World Vision.

God dropped hints that I could be a better person. A policeman who recognized me from the gangs I ran with encouraged me to make something positive of my life. I still remember how he persuaded me to sit up.

Even so, I kept putting myself in danger, and I could have ended up dead many times. Once a friend next to me in my classic Chevy Caprice pulled out his .38 caliber revolver and started shooting guys on the sidewalk. He held the gun parallel to my face as I tried to steer. Bullets rushed past me from the driver’s side window, almost causing my eardrums to collapse.

In another close conversation, while I was driving friends in my pickup truck to hang out in a local park, a rival gang’s car tracked us down and fired multiple shots. Bullets ripped through the rear window, one of which brushed my friend’s ear before penetrating her cheek and splattering blood on the windshield. Another missed wasting my brain by millimeters.

Like other black men in the neighborhood, I had no goals and no sense of what I could achieve. Feeling worthless, I shared the angry pessimism that many black children suffer from. I looked in the mirror and didn’t like who I saw. I scared my mom when I told her I wasn’t expecting to be older than 21.

Still, I earned my GED in 1985. I worked in the roofing trade and traded drugs at the same time. My wild street lifestyle continued, punctuated by detention for misdemeanors and minor assaults.

In 1998, at the age of 33, I was arrested for fighting with my girlfriend plus a heavy gun charge charge. Someone saw her get too friendly with other guys at a party which left me in a jealous anger. A neighbor who heard the noise called the police, who found my semi-automatic uzi and a stash of marijuana I had traded in. All in all, I was facing a mandatory five-year prison term.

A week after my arrest, I was released on bail and returned to the roofer. Before the final judgment date, my sister, a strong Christian, invited me to Lampstand Family Ministries, an independent Pentecostal church in Seattle.

I attended a Sunday service, if only reluctantly. Still, I was blown away by the pastor’s heartbreaking sermon. It was a life changing moment. I hurried to the altar, crying. My decision to accept Christ as Savior and Lord shocked my gang friends. Many of them respected my decision, but others grinned and waited for me to fall back into the old life.

Shortly afterwards, I was arrested again for communicating with my friend in violation of a contactless order. But it turned out to be a blessing. Imprisoned for two months, I devoured the Bible and several Christian books while attending the services. In the meantime, a work permit program enabled me to attend the service at Lampstand.

When I returned for trial, I accepted a plea deal: a one-year prison sentence reduced to eight months for time already served. The judge said my testimony showed signs of remorse. And the court stenographer cried as she recorded the trial.

A new creature in Christ

Before reporting to prison, my pastor encouraged me to take classes at the Bishop AL Hardy Academy of Theology in Seattle. During my imprisonment I studied theology. When I came to Lampstand Family Ministries afterwards, my passion for learning and teaching grew. I taught Sunday school and was promoted to superintendent. Four years later, I joined another church and served as an alternate pastor for educational programs. In 2003 I completed my theology degree in religious education.

As another four years passed, I took a bold but cautious leap of faith. Seeing the hunger for theological education among the downtown minority population, I started the Seattle Urban Bible College. The school was aimed at students who could not afford normal classes, which meant they had to work on lean finances. Local pastors gave evening classes on weekday evenings at facilities volunteered by the Miracle Temple Ministries Church. We trained about 100 students before dwindling resources forced us to suspend school in 2011.

Giving up Bible study led me to a spiritual and professional crossroads.

I prayed and sought advice from wise Christian brothers. I contacted the President of Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington, and shared how God has dramatically changed the path of my dead-end life on the street and created a desire to teach others in the minority community. He awarded me a presidential scholarship and I graduated with a Masters degree in Theology and Culture in 2013.

After graduation, I joined the homeless service of the Seattle-based Union Gospel Mission. As I enjoyed my work there, I felt a new stimulus from God to plant an inner-city church. Aided by fervent prayers and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that excitement culminated in the formation of the Risen Church in 2016. It is in a neighborhood in south Seattle that is steeped in drug use and gang violence that nearly cut my life. We are blessed with a diverse congregation – black, white, Latino – that is shaped by mutual love and respect.

Despite the failures and griefs of my past, I am a new creature in Christ. The old ways are gone. Without his grace, I would probably be dead today, another sad statistic in the litany of inner-city tragedies. Today I have the privilege of encouraging young black men who feel worthless to choose the worth they have in Christ. I once thought I was worthless, but now I serve the living God, and in him I am the man God made me to be.

James D. Croone is a senior pastor at Risen Church in Seattle, an adjunct professor at Northwest University, and a pastoral and recovery supervisor for the Union Gospel Mission in Seattle. Peter K. Johnson is a freelance writer based in Saranac Lake, New York.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/october-web-only/james-croone-seattle-street-gangs-dead-end.html