Nine Lives of a Black Panther Read online

  Added to the members we had already, these new recruits put the Watts office off the charts. The energy flow was high, and our adrenaline was pumping day and night. Around the time the new crew joined, Al had given me the charge of sprucing up the office. I decided to use the new recruits to help liberate some wood, paintbrushes, and other equipment. I chose Chip and Touré, who were definitely up for the task. We found what we needed at a construction site operating in Watts. We staked the place out for a few days to determine the best way and time to enter and gain access to what we needed.

  One quiet evening, we broke the locks on the fence, walked onto the site, and took the equipment. Touré served as our lookout to make sure the police didn’t catch us. It took about thirty minutes to get what we needed. Back at the office, within just a few days, we fortified the windows and doors with the material we had lifted. We also painted the office and gave it the newer, fresher look it deserved. The office building had been white, and the new paint was also white, so we weren’t concerned that the upgrade would create any unwanted attention from the cops.

  Over time, I realized the sound of my name was ringing though the streets, even though I had no police record and I wasn’t part of the Bunchy-Geronimo goon squads. It was because of my organizing skills and the relationship I had built with the community on behalf of the Panthers. I was sure of that.

  The cops finally decided to vamp on me that August. On the day it came down, I had been assigned to security at a Panther rally for Huey Newton at South Park. After the rally was over, I hopped in the car with Lux, who was playing taxi in Al’s blue Volkswagen, driving people home. Also with us were Touré, Rachel, and Robert Williams. Rachel was a Panther based in Watts with us. She had joined before I did and worked closely with James and Larry Scales. Her involvement was sporadic, but this was one of the times she came through. We called Robert Williams “Caveman,” because he was a really big brother who wore a wild, curly Afro. He also looked like he had a lot of Indian in him. I met Caveman at the Teen Post when we were in high school; we hung out at his house sometimes, smoking weed, drinking, and getting into fights on Main Street. When Caveman became a Panther he worked out of the Broadway office, then later switched to Watts.

  Lux was driving Rachel home first, because she was closest. She asked him to stop by the office on the way because she had left her notebook there. “OK, no problem. That’s a quick stop,” Lux said agreeably. We were all in a pretty good mood after the success of the day’s rally, so nobody minded.

  We pulled up to the big, black iron gate in front of the office that we kept closed by using a big rock. Caveman got out and opened it so we could go in. At the same time, I noticed that an old, overweight street cop who went by the name of Cigar had pulled up. Cigar was the kind of cop who tried to know everybody, and he acted like he was the sheriff of Watts. The word on the street was that he was called Cigar because he used to walk around with an old chewed-up cigar in his mouth. We all saw him but stayed cool and went about our business, although everyone was watching him closely out of the corner of their eye.

  “Hey,” Cigar snarled at us gruffly, stepping out of the shadows. “Let me see your driver’s licenses.”

  Still cool, we all acquiesced to his demands without saying a word, handing over our IDs. While he was pawing our licenses, I noticed that he had a partner with him who’d stayed in the squad car. Then I noticed Metro watching from a distance. Cigar returned our IDs and started to walk away.

  As he walked, he turned around and looked back. “You’re never going to make twenty-one,” he said directly to me.

  I laughed at him, while thinking to myself, That’s what you think, greasy-ass pig. If I die, we’re going down together.

  After Cigar and his partner left, we got back in the car and Lux headed down 103rd Street toward Rachel’s, and then he made a right on Wilmington. “Comrades, don’t look now,” Lux said in a composed tone, “but I think Metro is behind us.”

  “Take it slow,” I said evenly. Suddenly everyone was quiet.

  As if it was some sort of cue, as soon as we crossed 108th Street, sirens were suddenly screaming at us and flashing red lights were assaulting us through the car windows. Calmly, Lux pulled over. Four or five cars had come from out of nowhere and now they surrounded us.

  As we were sitting there, one of the pigs shouted, “All of you, get out of the car!”

  We opened the door; they had their guns drawn. One of them reached in and started yanking us out one at a time as he barked at us: “Put your hands on the fence!”

  We all walked toward the fence, then put our hands up, facing away from the cops. They grabbed our wallets and checked our IDs, one at a time. Apparently, the pigs had the office staked out, waiting for us. And they had one of the neighborhood dope fiends with them.

  When they got to me, she pointed at me and said, “That’s him. That’s Wayne Pharr right there.”

  I thought to myself, What the fuck?! Why are they looking for me?!

  “So you’re Wayne Pharr?”

  Things were happening too fast, so I didn’t say anything; I just turned and looked at them.

  “Put your goddamn face up on a fence!” one of them yelled.

  As I did, one pig kicked me dead in my ass. Of course, my first reaction was to jerk back around, which I did. I recognized him: this was the pig called Hole, and I had seen him hanging around Panthers before. Hole pushed me off the fence, out into the street, and started waling at my head with his nightstick.

  My immediate reaction when he started beating me for no reason was to try to defuse the situation. With my arms covering my head, I yelled, “Hey man, hold it; wait a minute! Stop! What’s going on?”

  His response was to amplify his efforts, busting me upside my head with even more venom. I had a big natural back in that day, so I think my hair cushioned the blows a little. But when he hit me with his stick again, I knew I had to fight back to stop this fool from killing me. I put my shoulder into his chest and pushed him back up against the fence. This pig was bigger than me, and he had his arms up over my head. For a split second, I thought about grabbing his gun and busting a cap in his ass, but I could hear the other cops behind me, jacking rounds into their shotguns: yack, yack, yack. I decided against that move and just went limp instead.

  A group of them swarmed me and commenced to beat my ass. This was a time I was glad I had been on the gymnastics team in high school and had done the parallel bars. I’d also been the only one with a set of real boxing gloves in the neighborhood, which I’d used for what we called box-offs. My fitness and strength base paid off: the entire time the pigs were beating me, I never passed out.

  After they swarmed me, one cop named Fisher put me in a choke-hold. I had on a pair of army boots, which delivered enough power that I was able to kick one of the cops off me. But Fisher still had me in a chokehold and was really trying to take me out. I felt like I might pass out, but desperate for air, I found the strength to reach back, grab his ears, and yank hard, which made him let go. He let go at the last second, and I sucked in a deep breath. Two cops were still on me, each one holding one of my legs. Fisher went at it again, trying to choke me out; these pigs were working me over pretty good. While all this was going on, I could briefly see Touré turn around, as if he was coming to my aid—but one of the pigs stuck a shotgun in his mouth and shouted at him, “Turn around and get back on the fence!” There wasn’t a thing he could do.

  A crowd of folks from the neighborhood had formed around us and began shouting at the pigs. Someone started to throw rocks, so the pigs put handcuffs on me and threw me in the backseat, as if they were taking me to jail. That was a good move for them, because it got them out of the neighborhood. I had no idea what was happening to Touré, Lux, Rachel, and Caveman.

  I was sitting in the backseat, thinking that they were taking me to jail. But instead, they drove a few blocks down the street and started beating my ass again. Fisher was in the backseat with me,
hitting me in my kidneys with his stick. Hole, who was driving, had one hand on the steering wheel and with the other hand was reaching back to strike me with his heavy flashlight.

  There I was ducking and jumping, trying to protect myself as best I could, when Hole took a swipe at me and broke his flashlight. I thanked God for that, but with the flashlight broken, he pulled out his gun and stuck it straight at my forehead. “I oughta kill your black ass right now!” he exclaimed.

  “You can’t kill me. You already called it in,” I replied.

  “You ignorant bastard!” he laughed. “I’ll kill you, they’ll send me to the Valley for a month, they’ll give your mother a nice write-up in the Sentinel newspaper, and I’ll be back out here shooting the rest of your friends.”

  I couldn’t believe that pig Hole had actually said that to me. I replied, “All right, you’ve got the power.” Asshole.

  They kept driving me around, kept beating my ass. At one point, we reached Will Rogers Park. One of the cops pulled me out of the car. “Run, you black motherfucker!” he yelled.

  I stood there, frozen, with my head down.

  He yelled again. “Run if you want to live!”

  I wouldn’t run because I knew that if I did, they would shoot me in the back. That wasn’t going to happen.

  Fisher pushed me back in the car, and Hole started hitting me with his stick again. I looked at him and realized that he was holding himself while he was hitting me. This is a crazy, sick bastard, I thought. He’s getting off on this shit.

  We began riding around again. They took me to different places: to the back of the Goodyear plant on Florence and Central and then on the freeway, where they acted like they were going to push me out of the car. After that, they started hitting me again.

  I was getting tired, and they must’ve been tired too, because they finally drove me toward the hospital on Manchester and Denker. I wasn’t sure if we were really going to the hospital, so I pointed out a homosexual club on Manchester. Since Hole was holding himself and got off on beating people, I wanted to give him somewhere else to go to possibly find somebody else to beat. That fool asked me, “Where? Where’s the club of freaks?”

  I said, “Right there!” with a nod in the direction of the club.

  “All right,” he said, and they took me to the hospital.

  Back when I was low-riding, one of my friends had a neighbor who was a nurse at that hospital. When we pulled up, she came out, took one look at me, and immediately placed herself between the pigs and me to keep them off of me. Then she got word to my friend Lewis, who let my family know what had happened and where I was. I never knew that nurse’s name, but she saved my life that night.

  I let the doctor know that I was in a lot of pain. He examined me and found no broken bones or teeth knocked out. He gave me some pain medication and ice for the bruising and released me back to the cops.

  The pigs put me back into their squad car and then took me to the jail over at the Seventy-Seventh Street police station. They shoved me into the interrogation room, behind one of those two-way mirrors, so that all the pigs could come and check me out. While I was waiting, I found the strength to do a few push-ups and sit-ups to show them I was still ready. Several of the undercover officers came to get a look at me. Pointing their guns, they tried to scare me. “We’re gonna kill you, Wayne. Then we’re gonna bury you with Geronimo, Blue, and Ronald.”

  That sadistic pig Hole came into the interrogation room. “How are you feeling, baby boy?” he sneered.

  I gave him my middle finger. “Your ass-whipping days are over, you disgusting pig.”

  “What did you say?” he growled.

  “If I see you on the street and I’m packing, I’m going to put one in you!” I replied coolly.

  “Repeat that!” he challenged.

  I repeated myself, and it was on between us.

  They put me into a one-man cell with thick glass windows, away from the general population, so that they could see me at all times. They came into the room and told me with a laugh that they had a bounty on all of us. The bounty for G was $2,000, they said, and they might get $500 for me.

  This was my first time going to jail, but I felt that I would be OK. I knew folks in jail from the neighborhood, like Floyd Bell, who would look out for me.

  I was moved around to different places in the jail for the next couple of days. Eventually, my mother was able to bail me out. As we were walking outside, my mother could barely recognize me. She wanted to hug me, but she was afraid to touch me. “Wayne, have you seen your face?” she sobbed.

  My head was lopsided, my ears were like cauliflowers, and my lips were puffed up and busted open. I had two black eyes, and breathing was still difficult. I had wounds around my neck from when they tried to strangle me.

  “Yeah, Mom,” I mumbled, not knowing how to console her. “But there ain’t nothing I can do about it now.”

  If you weren’t already an angry black man, an experience like that would make you one. I was charged and convicted of assaulting a police officer. I was given one year’s probation. During the sentencing, the judge couldn’t look me in the eye, seeing how brutally the police had fucked me up.

  After I was released from jail, I stayed home with my mother, who had just purchased a home in Inglewood. Nanny came by the house, too, to make sure I was healing properly. They openly voiced their desire for me to get out of the Party. Sharon came by and brought Tammy. I was so happy to see my baby girl. And as much as Sharon wanted to support my work, she echoed my mom and Nanny. I pretended I didn’t hear them.

  I rested for about a week, and then I went right back to work at the Watts office. I walked in and immediately saw Lux. He came up to me with a bewildered look on his face. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and we embraced.

  “What happened to everyone else?” I asked.

  “They roughed us up and let us go. We thought they’d killed you.”

  13

  BLOOD AND GUTS

  “Strap me up. I’ll do it,” I said fiercely as I stood up out of my chair. I got up quickly, and as I did, I sent it clanking against the wall before it collapsed on the floor. It was about two weeks after the beating; a few of us were at Central Headquarters talking, assessing, and strategizing. Of course, the topic of the beating came up—my face was still pretty busted up from the Metro ambush, still disfigured from the swelling and badly bruised. I’d had plenty of time to think about what those jackasses had done to me. I told G that morning if he wanted to blow up the Seventy-Seventh Precinct, I was the man.

  G looked at me and laughed, shaking his head at my outburst. “This nigga’s gone crazy,” he said, giving me a quizzical look.

  Maybe I was crazy. But I was also dead serious. As serious as Robert Charles had been, decades before me: Charles, an articulate, law-abiding activist from around the turn of the century, gunned down five New Orleans police officers in 1900 when they tried to arrest him while he was quietly sitting on a front porch with a friend. His crime? A black man standing up against racism.

  I was even more serious than Mark Essex, a young black navy man who turned sniper in the early 1970s. Essex went on a killing spree in New Orleans after being subjugated, demeaned, and humiliated by his white commanders, and even his white peers, in the military. Although he was originally from Kansas, he received his military training in San Diego, California. He was surprised at how racist things were in California. It was around that time that he became a Black Nationalist. He took the racist abuse until he finally couldn’t take it anymore. First, Essex killed five cops. A week later, he went to a Howard Johnson’s hotel and starting shooting people—he said he was only after white people. He finally went to the roof of the building, where he went out in a hail of fire, exchanging shots with police helicopters from the rooftop. Afterward, they found more than two hundred gunshot wounds in his body.

  I was, in fact, deadly serious, just like Tommy Harper, who also came after me. Tommy, a local
student, got so fed up with the racist system that he tried to use explosives to blow up the Compton police station in July 1970. Unfortunately for Tommy, he made some novice mistakes and blew himself up instead. But I understood his sentiments. After his death, the pigs made up a nursery rhyme about him as a joke. They sang it to the tune of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Sick bastards. Drive somebody crazy and then laugh when he dies. I thought they were sworn to serve the communities where they worked.

  In my anger, I decided to ambush either Fisher or Hole or both; it didn’t matter much to me which one. Just thinking about them made my blood boil. They both continued to brutalize Black Panthers, having now made a regular habit of picking brothers up for no reason and driving around for an hour or two beating them, then making a stop at the hospital to get them a little patched up before hauling them off to jail—often on bogus charges or sometimes not even charging them with anything at all.

  So I decided it was time to do something about it. I didn’t really have a plan—just to get them. That was the plan. The morning I resolved to take action, my day at the office dragged. I couldn’t focus on anything; I just wanted to get outside and move on it. Some of my comrades noticed I was distracted and, throughout the day, kept asking me if I was OK. “Yeah,” I kept answering abruptly. “Over and out.” Leave me alone. After what seemed like forever, it was finally time for me to leave. As I gathered my stuff, a couple of comrades invited me to hang with them and listen to some ’Trane.

  “Naw, can’t tonight. I got a meeting,” I said, not really wanting to elucidate. “Can you dig it?” I finished curtly.

  “We got you, brother, we got you,” somebody said.

  I already had the door open and wasn’t even paying attention to who was talking. “I’ll catch y’all another time,” I replied over my shoulder as the door slammed shut behind me.

  I went to the hospital, since I knew Fisher or Hole would eventually show up there with another comrade. It was a warm, starless Tuesday evening on what had been an otherwise quiet day. It was the day after my outburst at Central that had caused G so much concern. No matter. G would be glad when I reported back the news, I was sure of it.