About Demaria Perry
(from L.A. City Beat, http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1859&IssueNum=95)
by Annette Stark
Holler if you hear me
If you didn't know better, you might call Demaria Perry an "at-risk youth."
Raised around Nickerson Gardens, 17-year-old Perry, an honor student who graduated CalTech
High School early, has two older brothers in the Bounty Hunter Bloods. But the only thing
Watts's most outstanding young citizen is "at-risk" for is that, even though he
has a job, he might not be able to scratch together enough money to get to college.
Described in the media as one of the most violent street gangs in history, the Bounty
Hunter Bloods of Nickerson Gardens control the largest black gang territory in Watts. For
decades they considered themselves the rivals of the Grape Street Crips, until the Gang
Truce was negotiated in 1992. On the wall of the Nickerson Gardens gym on Compton and
114th there's the much-photographed symbol of that truce - a mural of the Bloods and Crips
united.
The truce is real, but not everyone abides. "I think families are burying their
children out of the neighborhood to avoid retaliation," says Ms. Maudine Clark at the
Morningstar Baptist Church. "I heard of one last week at a mortuary in Inglewood, and
to keep it quiet they didn't announce it till a couple of hours before."
How did Perry manage to keep his head straight in an environment such as this? He shrugs.
"I always had a positive head. I kept with my dreams."
Perry dreams about politics. He belongs to numerous youth organizations and is a strong
young voice on the Watts Neighborhood Council. In a couple of years he'd like to run for
City Council in the 15th District - Janice Hahn's district. He believes that Hahn needs to
show up more. "Our residents would do better if they saw their local politicians
around," he says, noting he sees more of councilmembers Ludlow and Antonio
Villaraigosa than his local representative. "And when I'm elected, whenever I'm not
at City Hall, I'll be here."
So far, I haven't caught any sniper fire in Nickerson Gardens. Unlike Rice's "mailman
and meter reader," I've never had to duck any flying bullets, either. This is not to
trivialize the very serious problem with violence in this community, but why exaggerate
about it?
Driving around, however, I do catch stares. Homies are always checking for who doesn't
belong in their neighborhoods. When our photographer arrives, the group scatters.
"They're afraid of being in a photo with me because of the gang injunctions,"
Perry informs us. "Because my brothers are Bloods."
For the last decade, Los Angeles has used gang injunctions to keep known members of gangs
like the Bloods and Crips from congregating or creating a community nuisance. Delgadillo
won an injunction against Nickerson Gardens in 2003. Here's where it gets weird: In a
community where everyone knows or is related to a gang member, a father and son can be
arrested for walking together.
And then there are questions about whether injunctions even work. A former gang member,
and ex-con himself, Stop the Violence gang interventionist Kenneth "KB" Bell
doubts they have much effect. "Even when the injunctions are enforced, you're out of
jail in five days. "Some homies are like, 'Man I needed that rest.'"
About Demaria's brother De'Andre Perry
Dr. Dre, "Lil' Ghetto Boy"
We return to Nickerson Gardens to interview Demaria's brother, De'Andre Perry. A sign on
the door declares "Peace on Earth." Inside, the living room is nice, with gold
and black brocade sofas and a mirror painted with two black panthers facing each other.
Perry wears a white T-shirt, black pants, and fire-engine red fuzzy slippers. He's 18,
born and raised in Nickerson Gardens and has been a Bounty Hunter all his life. He
recently returned home from County, where he served a sentence for possession of a stolen
car and firearm. He has no plans to go back. "I did a lot of wrong stuff, but I'm
glad I did it when I was a juvenile, because my record is clean." Now, he's working
on becoming a deputy probation officer. In 10 years, Perry sees himself having kids, and
living in a nice house, maybe (he says) in Rialto.
Last week, he was put on gang injunctions, like mostly everybody down here. But he wants
to talk because he feels that if the public doesn't start thinking about Watts in a new
way, nothing will ever improve. "Gangbanging started as a neighborhood watch and it
got blown all out of proportion by knuckleheads," Perry says. "We became Bounty
Hunters so nobody could come over here and mess with us. But I've never been jumped or
shot at and I never shot anyone. Nowadays, people are getting killed over females, drugs,
and stealing. It's not gang violence. It's regular problems."
I ask him about all the government-funded gang intelligence work, supposedly going on in
prisons nationwide.
He shakes his head, impatiently. "In prison the colors are black, white, brown …
anybody walking around prison going 'I'm a Crip, I'm a Blood,' that's a fool." Both
the media and the cops, he says, don't even differentiate between a gangster and a drug
addict.
"People only want to hear what's bad, because they see it on TV - selling drugs,
shooting at the police, and killing people," he says. "Nobody wants to give
Watts a chance. They've been putting us down for the longest."
