Sociology

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becoming a stickup kid by randol contreras

The South Bronx summer night

was warm and moist, with that

mild glow we always felt after

it rained. The neighborhood

residents slowly resumed

their places on the streets,

first standing next to

building entrances,

then next to wet cars,

and then sitting on

the cars after they’d

dried. The neigh-

borhood bodega,

or grocery store,

revitalized the block,

blasting the 1980s salsa classics

that brought bolero lyrics to the dance floor:

Y me duele a pensar, que nunca mia seras, De mi

enamorate-e-e-e . . .

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21FA L L 2 0 1 5 c o n t e x t s

Dressed in large T-shirts, Nikes, and baggy shorts, some

young Dominican men listened to the cool music alongside me.

“Yo, that used to be the jam!”—we nodded our heads; “I used

to dance to this shit!”—we tapped our feet; “A si mi’mo!”—one

of us did a fancy salsa step; Mira que e, e, e, e, e, e, e—el-l-l-l!—

some of us sang along, straining our voices

with each rising octave. We were all in a

good mood. Just chillin’. Chilliando, baby.

Then Jonah arrived. He pulled Gus

aside for a furtive chat. Despite their low

voices, we could hear them planning a

drug robbery. After about ten minutes,

they returned to the group, energized, and

recounted stories of their past tumbes (drug robbery hits). Most

of the young Dominican men joined in with their own tales of

brutality and adventure.

Jonah and Gus recounted a drug robbery when they’d

targeted a Dominican drug courier who always delivered five

kilos of cocaine to a certain dealer on a certain day. For a share

of the take, the dealer told Jonah and Gus where to intercept

the courier as he walked out of an apartment building. At

gunpoint, they led him to the building’s rooftop, beat him, and

stole $100,000 worth of drugs.

Tukee and Pablo told the group about a drug robbery

where they had pretended to be undercover officers. With fake

badges and real guns, they stopped a pair of drug dealers on

the street: “Freeze! Don’t move, motherfucker!” they yelled out.

They faced the dealers against a wall and grabbed their suitcase,

stuffed with $40,000 in cash. “Keep facing the wall!” they com-

manded before trotting around the corner to their getaway car.

Neno and Gus told a third story, of a drug robbery that went

wrong. They had tortured a drug dealer—punched and kicked

him, choked and gagged him, mutilated and burned him—until

he passed out. The victim, however, remained unconscious.

Contexts, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 20-25. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-60521. © 2015 American Sociological Association. http://contexts.sagepub.com. DOI 10.1177/1536504215609299

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The South Bronx neigbhorhood.

Just chillin’. Chilliando, baby. The young Dominican men recounted tales of drug robberies, of adventure and brutality.

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Afraid, se fueron volando—they hurried out so if the victim died,

they wouldn’t be there.

Throughout my field research, I heard many of these rob-

bery tales. In fact, I grew up with these stories and these men.

As a young man, I had tried my hand at drug dealing. So I was

used to seeing and hearing about drug market violence. Yet

there were times when I questioned the humanity of the men

next to me on front stoops and car hoods.

How could Pablo almost beat someone to death? How

could Gus repeatedly burn someone with an iron? How could

Tukee chop off someone’s finger? How could Neno sodomize

a dealer with an object? How could all of these men torture, a

cruel and deplorable human act?

In trying to understand drug robbery violence, I realized how

easy it was to fall into an individualistic, sociopathic-reasoning

trap. Could one not argue that these men were sociopaths who

enjoyed inflicting pain on others? Maybe they were evil and

solely pursued the emotional thrills of crime?

As a sociologist, though, I took a step back to frame what

seemed solely evil and sociopathic within larger historical and

social forces, forces that sweep people in one direction or

another, that shape “why” some people do violence or crime.

Everyone respects Tukee for his tremendous violence during drug

robberies. It seems like he could chop off fingers and pistol-whip

someone to the brink of death with no hesitation or thought.

Sometimes, he even seemed to enjoy torture:

“I remember one time, we put a[n] iron on this dude’s

back,” Tukee recounts, laughing. “I had told him, ‘Just tell me

where the shit is [the drugs and cash]. If you don’t tell us, I’ma

do some things to you, B[ro]. Things you won’t like.’ He ain’t

tell us so, boom, [we] took off his shirt and made the iron real

hot. I put that shit on his back and the dude started screaming,

B, ha-ha-ha! Then he was like, ‘Alright, take it! It’s inside the

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A favorite hangout for the study participants.

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23FA L L 2 0 1 5 c o n t e x t s

mattress!’ That shit was funny, B! Ha-ha-ha!”

Taken out of the proper socio-historical context, the laugh-

ter and joy in Tukee’s account make it seem like he’s pure evil.

Tukee, though, was born neither a drug robber nor torturer.

His biography emerged within a particular social context: the

rise and fall of crack cocaine in the abandoned and burned-out

South Bronx.

tukee’s story Tukee was born to a Dominican father and a Puerto Rican

mother in the South Bronx during the early 1970s. For reasons

he never disclosed, his father abandoned the family, never to be

seen or heard from again. His mother worked several informal

jobs, mostly as a seamstress in a local sweatshop. Tukee went to

underfunded public schools—when he went. A disengaged and

unprepared student, he eventually dropped out of high school.

He worked part-time, here and there, moving from one fast-food

chain job to the next. But he wanted to make money, get rich.

Tukee’s chances for upward mobility, though, were fading.

Between 1947 and 1976, New York City lost about 500,000

factory jobs. That’s half a million unionized jobs that, for about

three-quarters of the twentieth century, had provided security

and upward mobility for European immigrants and their chil-

dren. By the time Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and, later, Dominicans,

settled in the Bronx, the burgeoning service

economy had taken hold. There were lower

wages and less job security available to

workers with little education, like Tukee.

Crack showed up right on time.

Crack had its origins in the powder

cocaine craze of the 1970s. This was a

time when professionals like doctors, Wall

Street executives, and lawyers likened a

line of cocaine to a sip of champagne. The federal government’s

hysteria over marijuana and its reduction of drug treatment funds

further widened the demand for and use of cocaine. Later, in

the early 1980s, when cocaine users reduced their intake, des-

perate cocaine dealers then turned to crack, a smokable form

of the drug, to maintain profits. Instead, their profits soared:

crack yielded more quantity than cocaine after preparation.

More importantly, crack invited binging. Soon many users were

consuming the drug around-the-clock.

Crack quickly proliferated in inner cities across the United

States. For marginal urban residents, who suffered because of

both a declining manufacturing sector and Reaganomics but

still hoped to take part in the grandest version of the American

Dream—crack was a Godsend. The start-up money for a crack

business was low. And unlike the tightly knit heroin market,

there was no need for pre-existing family or ethnic ties to edge

your way in. Almost anyone could enter this market.

Tukee walked right in.

He and a friend started selling crack in his Highbridge

neighborhood. He began earning between $300 and $500 per

day, all profit. He purchased a salvaged luxury car and restored

it to its former glory with stolen car parts. Along with his new

expensive jewelry and clothes, the car made him a neighborhood

celebrity. Yo, here comes Tukee! The sidewalk crowd flocked

around. What up Tuke’, where you going? The guys and gals

wanted to cruise around in his ride.

Tukee also spent his riquezas, or riches, living the high

life. He arrived at nightclubs con estilo, or in style, with an

entourage-packed white limousine. Inside, he treated his broke

neighborhood friends to over-priced bottles of liquor and bought

attractive women expensive drinks. Afterward, if he was still

around, the weed was on him, too. Everyone loved Tukee. He

was a drug market star.

Of course, Tukee was also feared. As crack use rose, more

dealers tried to squeeze into the now-saturated market. Tukee

pulled his gun on several newcomers, warning them to stay

away from his “spot.” He became a legend after he shot a

dealer for dealing drugs without his permission. After coming

out of hiding (the police investigation lasted a few weeks),

everyone deferred to him, greeting him with open arms and a

smile. Tukee—he’s crazy!

Then, after about a year, it was over. Tukee’s lucrative crack

business slowed down. His nightclubbing and largesse took

a hit, and he limited his outings to the affordable Dallas BBQ

restaurant. “That was the only place I could take girls to,” he

remembers. “They served these big-ass glasses of margaritas for

real cheap. Those shits looked like they came in Cheerio [cereal]

bowls, so I could get bitches drunk for real cheap. I’m telling

you, B[ro], times were real hard.”

Tukee wasn’t alone. During the mid-1990s, crack dealing

across New York City took a mighty hit. Unbeknownst to dealers,

many crack users had reduced their intake because of the drug’s

For marginal urban residents who still hoped to take part in the grandest version of the American Dream, crack cocaine was a Godsend.

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stigma and frenetic, binging lifestyle. Also, the new generation

of youth shunned crack because they had seen what it did to

their family members, neighbors, and friends. Malt liquor beer

and marijuana would become their recreational drugs of choice.

The crack market shrank, bringing once-successful crack dealers

to the lowest of the lows.

Riches and highlife—gone.

To maintain his dealing income, Tukee started transporting

crack to Philadelphia, where he established a selling spot with

a local. The money was decent, but it wasn’t “Donald Trump”

money. When he got word that the police were watching him,

he returned to the South Bronx dejected and broke.

“I was sellin’ all my guns, all my jewelry, everything B[ro],

just to stay in the game,” Tukee recounts. “I used that money

to buy some dope [heroin] and sell that shit.”

However, Tukee struggled to find an open dealing spot.

The heroin dealers—who funded quasi-armies for protection—

demanded a daily “rent” of $1,200 to $2,000 for the right to sell

on their block. Tukee could not afford the rent. So he returned

to Philadelphia to sell his heroin. No luck. Philly heroin users

remained loyal to local brands. Defeated, Tukee again returned

to the South Bronx.

Eventually, Tukee joined an auto theft crew that catered to

the Crack Era’s big-time drug dealers (the same crew that had

sold him the stolen car parts for his own ride). But the stolen car

business was no longer lucrative—the shrinking crack market

lessened its need, too. Tukee hardly earned any money. He was

at a loss: “I was like, ‘This is it,’” Tukee recalls. “Nothing’s workin’

out. This is the end of me.”

Like Tukee, other displaced drug dealers felt a financial

strain because of the crack market’s decline. Several of them

responded by creating a lucrative new niche in drug robberies.

Now they beat, burned, choked, and mutilated their drug-

dealing victims. Now they committed horrific acts that they had

never done before. Now they were Stickup Kids, the perpetrators

of the worst violence in the drug world. Tukee joined their ranks.

A former drug dealing connection contacted Tukee for a

drug robbery. They planned to rob a drug dealer for about eight

kilos of cocaine and $30,000 in cash. Tukee had never done

a drug robbery before, not even a street robbery. But he was

handy with a gun. “I didn’t even think twice about it,” Tukee

recalls. “I was like, ‘Fuck it. Show me where the money’s at.’”

It was an inside job, where a drug dealer wanted to get

himself and his partner robbed. The dealer, of course, would be

absent. But he gave the Stickup crew the best time to storm the

stash apartment, where his partner sometimes stayed alone. If all

went well, the treacherous dealer would get half the proceeds

just for providing the information. The crew would split the other

half: $95,000 in drugs and cash.

For the robbery, they brought along “The Girl,” a young,

attractive female accomplice. “We needed her ‘cause we can’t

just knock on the door and the dude just gonna open.” Tukee

explained. “He don’t know us and he’s

fuckin’ holding drugs. He’s gonna be like,

‘These motherfuckers are cops or trying to

rob my ass.’ So we got her to knock on the

door and get the door open.”

It worked. She knocked. The dealer

peeped through the peephole. She smiled

and flirted and asked for help. When he

opened the door to get a better sense of

her needs, the drug robbers, crouched on either side of the

door, guns in hand, exploded into action. Tukee’s crew rushed

the dealer, rammed him back into the apartment, slammed him

onto the floor, kicked him, punched him, pistol-whipped him,

threatened him to stay down, not to move, or they would stab

him, shoot him, would do everything imaginable that would

cause his death.

“The shit was crazy, son,” Tukee recalls. “I was like watch-

ing at first. But then I had to make sure that niggas saw me do

shit. Let niggas know that I ain’t no slouch. [So] I started kickin’

the dude—Bah! Bah! Then we tied him up with duct tape and

I put my gun in his head [sic], I was like, ‘Where’s the shit at!

You wanna die, nigga?”

As Tukee and a partner terrified the dealer, the other two

robbers frantically searched the apartment for the drugs and

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Now these former dealers became Stickup Kids, the perpetrators of the worst violence in the drug world. They created a lucrative new niche: drug robberies.

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Hanging out at the local club

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25FA L L 2 0 1 5 c o n t e x t s

cash. After flipping mattresses, pulling out dresser drawers,

and yanking out clothes from a closet, they found it. Everyone

scrambled out of the apartment, leaving the dealer bloody,

bruised, and bound on the living room floor.

There was no need for torture in this robbery. But the thrill

energized Tukee. “I was amped up after that, like for awhile, B.

I remember we was counting the money, weighing the drugs,

splitting everything, giving this dude this much, me this much,

him that much… I was like, ‘I’m ready to

do this again.’ Let’s go, B!”

According to Tukee, the robbery net-

ted him about $30,000 worth of drugs and

cash. This was more than he had earned in

a year of stealing cars and selling heroin.

So, for him, the violence was worth the

money. He wanted to be rich again. Soon,

he became a violence expert. He knew how to overcome resis-

tant victims.

“I started doing all types of shit,” Tukee explains. “Like I

would tie them [the dealers] up and ask them, ‘Where the fuck

the kilos at?’ If they don’t tell me, or be like, ‘I don’t sell drugs.

I don’t know why you doing this,’ then I pistol-whipped them.

If they still don’t say nothin’, I choked them. If they still don’t

say nothin’, then you bring the iron out and burn them. Or you

could go to the kitchen and get a kitchen knife, some butcher-

type shit, and chop-off one of their fingers. Then those dudes

be like, ‘Alright, alright, take it! It’s over there!’”

Tukee, then, learned how to do one-on-one violence —fist-

to-face, knife-to-neck, hands-to-throat violence—to someone

vulnerable, tied up, who pled for mercy, to please, please leave

them alone. Tukee felt he had to. You gotta do what you gotta

do, he always said. Violence for money would become his way

of life. Tukee—he’s no joke.

social context and violence Throughout his life, Tukee pursued meaning through the

illegal drug market. And his words seem to support an evil and

sociopathic understanding of his behavior. Did Tukee enjoy the

emotional rush of a drug robbery—yes. Did Tukee enjoy doing

violence—yes. But we must also ask: Why did he seek thrills

as a drug robber rather than as a courtroom lawyer or a Wall

Street executive? Why did he enjoy physically hurting people as

a drug robber rather than as a hockey player, football player, or

mixed-martial artist?

The answer lies in the social context, the South Bronx setting

in which Tukee’s life unfolded. He came of age during the Crack

Era, which resulted from misguided drug policies, the decline

of manufacturing, and the collapse of inner cities. If we add

the daily cultural messages that try to make Americans pursue

the ultimate, most gluttonous version of the American Dream,

then we see marginal residents who not only used crack to exit

poverty, but also to strike it rich. They wanted the material status

symbols that Madison Avenue advertising agencies taught them

to want and need.

Tukee was born into this world, a world not of his own

creation, but one that influenced him first into crack dealing,

then into drug robberies. If the Crack Era had not appeared,

there is a great chance—though not absolute—that Tukee

would have become neither a drug dealer nor drug robber. These

lucrative criminal opportunities would have been unlikely, less

abundant options. So to understand Tukee, we must understand

how history and social structure intersects with his biography.

Otherwise, the study of poverty-related brutality becomes a

distorted enterprise in which Tukee and other marginal criminals

are improperly portrayed.

recommended resources Timothy Black. 2009. When a Heart Turns Rock Solid: The Lives of Three Puerto Rican Brothers on and off the Streets. New York: Pantheon Books. A long-term ethnography that economically and politically contextualizes the criminal and legal life course of three Puerto Rican brothers in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Philippe Bourgois. 2003 [1995]. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York: Cambridge University Press. A theo- retically informed ethnography linking the declining manufactur- ing sector to the everyday lives of Puerto Rican crack dealers in New York City.

Randall Collins. 2008. Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. A theoretical exami- nation of the emotional dynamics that produce violence during micro-interactions.

Jack Katz. 1988. Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attrac- tions of Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. An examination of how emotional thrills and other foreground factors are linked to the commission of crimes.

Randol Contreras is in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto.

This article draws on research from his award-winning book The Stickup Kids: Race,

Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream.

Tukee was born neither a drug robber nor torturer. His biography emerged within a particular social context.

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