Dealer wants out, but knows price
The 21-year-old Latin Kings gang member likes to chill for a few hours in his mother's Lake View home, fiddling with a Play Station game or watching TV. Selling dope as schoolchildren are walking home can bring a lot of heat from the cops.
By 4 p.m., it's OK to stroll outside.
K-Swiss is an all-weather guy. When it's cold, he'll pull on three pairs of socks, two shirts, two sweaters, a down ski jacket, gloves and a scarf.
No stocking cap, though. He doesn't want to mess up his hair.
"We love the snow and rain, man," said K-Swiss, whose nickname refers to the stylish gym shoes gang members in the neighborhood like to wear. "We love making money. The cops stay in their cars because they don't like getting wet and cold."
On a good day, K-Swiss pockets more than $400, tax-free. These days, there's a bustling market for the club-drug Ecstasy, but he always maintains a ready stock of marijuana, cocaine and psychedelics, too.
"From the time you wake up until the time you sleep, you're serving, 24/7. You never stop," he says with a smile that hides his dark history as a gang enforcer. "I'm in street pharmaceuticals."
Like the thousands of other members of his gang--one of the largest and oldest in Chicago--K-Swiss, back in 1995, endured a two-minute beating from Latin Kings "brothers" as part of his gang initiation.
"I was hurting bad the next day," said K-Swiss, who asked the Chicago Sun-Times not to print his name. "They told me to take a hot bath."
In seven years, K-Swiss has moved up the ranks in his 20-member "set," one of hundreds of Latin Kings neighborhood crews across the city.
In comparison to the way things are done in some blighted neighborhoods on the South and West sides, drug dealing in K-Swiss' Lake View neighborhood is not as open because residents in their $300,000 condominiums don't tolerate the same level of mayhem and disorder, K-Swiss said.
"The cops get the heat from the neighbors, then the cops start coming at us," he said. "As long as no one is complaining, [the police] could care less."
A recent afternoon drive through the neighborhood found most of the Latin Kings graffiti had been painted over and few gang members were hanging out on street corners.
"We're taking most of our orders on the cell phone now. Things are more low-key than in 'the day,'" K-Swiss said, referring to the mid-1990s.
He is chief of security, which means he controls the handgun used by the gang in the neighborhood, and he doles out physical punishment to gang brothers who break the rules.
But as he grows older, the legitimate world is tugging at K-Swiss.
He holds down a part-time job at a shopping center and aspires to join the military once he clears it with Latin Kings honchos. Heavy on his mind is the five-minute beating he might have to suffer to "lower his flag" and leave the gang.
Still, his older mentor in the Latin Kings was able to leave the gang life for the military. "I want to leave with respect like him," he said. "I'm not there yet."
K-Swiss, who dropped out of high school in his freshman year, knows that getting out of the gang could save his life. Close to two dozen friends have been killed since he joined.
Amazingly, he has never been shot or stabbed, although he has been in fight after fight. He said he barely escaped with his life last summer when a Maniac Latin Disciple fired five bullets at him during a North Side parade. And last fall, he said, another rival pressed a gun to his head near Navy Pier but decided not to pull the trigger.
"My mother prays to God every night," he said. "She tells me I am covered with the blood of Jesus Christ and he protects me. When s--- like that happens, I think about that."
K-Swiss said he also wants to get away from the daily cat-and-mouse game with police.
Some corrupt officers steal cash from drug dealers like K-Swiss, he said.
"What can you do? You don't have no receipt," he said.
Other cops resort to brutal tactics to extract confessions, he said. Once, he said, he was jailed on a gun possession charge and a detective cocked the weapon, put it to his head and said, "Where did this come from?" He said he refused to answer, and the charge was eventually dropped.
K-Swiss has dozens of disorderly conduct charges on his rap sheet, but few convictions. Police use the charge of disorderly conduct to take gang-bangers off the street, knowing the charge usually doesn't stick, he said.
He admits to shooting a rival, although he said he isn't sure whether he killed him.
The most serious trouble K-Swiss has faced involved a stash of counterfeit currency that police found in his room along with an assortment of drugs. He said his lawyer beat that case because the police did not have a search warrant.
"I got lucky," he said.
Many days, though, K-Swiss' gang job is, well, boring.
The guys hang out near a hot dog stand where they order dinner to go. He rarely eats at home with his mother.
"When things get slow, we get high or drunk," he said. "These guys want things to stay exactly the same. I like change."
K-Swiss said he is looking for more meaning in life--and fewer occupational hazards.
"It's not worth it," he said of being in the gang. "You get no f------ trophy at the end."