After a little break in the writing for the Thanksgiving Day weekend, I'm having a bit of a struggle getting back into writing shape.  My cure?  Writing on a non-opinion topic.  In this case, how about a little story about a street legend of the Bronx and old skool New York?

I haven't seen American Gangster yet.  I avoid 2 1/2 hour long movies at the theatre, whenever possible.  Frank Lucas is a solid subject for a movie, but have you heard about Larry Davis?

Back in the early 80's, Larry Davis was a tough street kid from the projects in the Bronx.  He already had a few run-ins with the law by the time he was 13 or 14, so (supposedly) some dirty cops in the Bronx put him to work, selling drugs and guns.  By the time he was 18 years old, he was the most feared man in the Bronx.  Everyone had heard of Larry Davis, and was scared of him.  If you wanted props, you would claim you were his cousin, or you knew his family, or something.  Having "Davis" as a last name earned you street cred, since you could claim to be his kin.

Here's a couple of stories that illustrate how feared he was, from rapper D-Nice's (of "My Name Is D-Nice" fame) blog entry on the subject!? Tip of the cap to The Greek Professor for this one, as I had no idea D-Nice had a blog... that cracks me up for some reason.  My Blog is D-Nice:

I grew up in a tenement apartment building in the Bronx, on the corner of 163rd Street and Woodycrest Avenue. Exactly four streets away from me lived the infamous Larry Davis.

On the streets, Larry was known as someone with a nasty temper that you never wanted to cross. I always felt that Larry was cool and that the rumors of his ferocious ways were untrue. At least, that was until I got on his bad side.

One day I ran into Larry's younger cousin while hanging out in the neighborhood park. He approached me and asked if I would be interested in purchasing a gold rope chain and an anchor pendant from him that he found…I gave him his asking price in exchange for the jewelry.

He then goes on to explain how a few days later, he hears a loud knock at his door.  As he peers out through the peephole, he sees Larry Davis at his door.  D-Nice is scared as heck.  "What's up Larry Davis?" he asks. 

"Open this f*cking door and give me my motherf*cking chain!"

Still looking through the peephole, D-Nice is like "I'm not opening this door, Larry Davis!"  He's told by Larry that he has 15 minutes to return the chain or Larry Davis was going to kill him.  He of course returned the chain, and

In the comments there was another interesting firsthand Larry Davis story:

Larry Davis held me and my office manager up at gunpoint. It was a bogus assed realty company. I was the secretary. My job was to give the prospective clients an application and collect the finders fee which back in '86 was $90 bucks.

That fucker came in with his sister and paid their fee. Because my manager didn't find an apartment within a week-they demanded their money back. I directed them to my manager. He reminded them that the application clearly stated that he was obligated to look for apartments for them for one year.

I was half paying attention, this was a summer job, my sisters godmother was screwing the owner and I was BORED. Next thing I saw out of my peripheal vision was this silver gun. I was like blink.gif and DON'T ASK ME WHYYYYYYYYYYYY I did this but I did. I picked up the phone and instead of calling the police-I called my MOMMY.

Me: Chums?
My Mother: Yes baby?
Me: This guy has a gun in Mr. Keyes belly, can I come home?
My Mother: Uhhhhhhhh YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Right Now!
Me: Ok

Now I swear on Gods Throne-I hung up the phone. Opened my drawer, got my purse , stood up and announced:

Me to Larry Davis: I am going home now
Me to Mr. Keyes: I quit.
Larry Davis: Sit the fuck down Bitch.

I proceed to cry. Yes, I did. I kept telling him I didn't want to be here ANYMORE and that I wanted to go home to my mother.

I guess I looked sooooooooooo pityful or God touched his heart-because he let me go. My ass booked it. Flo Jo had shit on me. I had NEVER been so scared shitless(until 9/11) in my life.

He robbed my manager not only for the fee but the days take. Fucker.

So, at age 20, already the most feared man in The Bronx, Larry Davis decided to either quit dealing drugs or screw the dirty cops.  Not entirely sure... he was still living in the projects, and was not getting a good cut, in his opinion, of the dirty money he was making.  So he may have tried to get more from the cops, or he may have decided he's had enough and wanted out of the game.  Whatever the case, the cops got a wind of this, and decided to execute him (again, this is allegedly, as the story goes).

The put up charges of killing four rival drug dealers on him, in order to get a warrant.  Then they marched to the projects, almost 30 deep.  In fact, according to the NY Times recount, 27 cops went to the apartment.  All were armed to the teeth.  Welcome to New York, circa 1986.

As soon as they came in, their guns were blazing.  Seven cops burst into the apartment all at once.  One shot supposedly hit Larry Davis in the head, but did not penetrate (sounds like mythology).  Regardless, this much is clear: Larry Davis was well aware that the cops were coming to kill him, and had the apartment loaded with guns.  He ducked behind the couch, and into his sister's bedroom.  He pulled out a pistol and a shotgun, and unload on the firing cops.  He shot six cops, and forced them to retreat back into the hallway.  Once they had retreated, he ducked out a window, climbed along the ledge, dropped down a floor to a family member's window, and ducked out and somehow escaped despite the police presence around the building. 

17 days went by, with one of the largest manhunts in NYC history on the way.  Every subway train in the Bronx had cops on it. 

Eventually, with the press and possibly the FBI (using him as an informant) ensuring he would be taken alive, he was taken into custody.

A lot of people in The Bronx doubted the cops' version of the story, which is that they were just simply looking to bring him in, and not trying to execute him.

''If Larry Davis was such a dangerous criminal how come all those police came through the front door all at once?'' the man, who refused to give his name, asked. ''Something was funny about that.''

Larry Davis was cleared in the charges of killing those four drug dealers.  It took the longest deliberations in Bronx history, but the jury believed his lawyers, William Kunstler (former director of the ACLU and "radical" lawyer whose clients included Lenny Bruce, the American Indian Movement, Jack Ruby, Abbie Hoffman, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King, and many others) and Lynne Stewart (another "radical" lawyer, most recently in the news for being sentenced to 28 months, and disbarred, for allegedly providing material support to her client, the convicted terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahmen).

Larry Davis then went on trial for the shootings of the six officers (facing 9 counts of attempted murder).  He was again found not guilty; the jury ruled that he was acting in self-defense when the shootout with the cops accorded.  He was convicted on lesser counts of weapons possession, and was sentenced to 5-15 years for those charges.

Mr. Kunstler said he opposed a maximum sentence on the weapons convictions. The judge, he said, ''can't give more than Goetz got,'' a reference to the six months that Bernhard H. Goetz received for illegal weapon possession when he was acquitted of attempted murder in a celebrated case in 1987. That conviction is being appealed. Mr. Goetz, who is white, claimed self-defense in the 1984 shooting of four black youths on a Manhattan subway train. That case, like the Davis case, had undertones of racism.

Important testimony in favor of the self-defense claim came from the mother, Mary Davis, who said a police officer in her presence had threatened to kill Mr. Davis two weeks before the shootout and that she had warned her son.

One juror, Luther E. Corbett, said yesterday: ''Larry Davis was advised by his mother that he was threatened, and he got the message. We came to the conclusion that Larry Davis did not fire the first shot.''

Larry Davis was eventually convicted of one murder, related to another drug dealer he supposedly killed.  He got another 25 years tacked on to his sentence. 

In jail, Larry Davis' neck was supposedly broken, and he is now paralyzed from the neck down.  He claims that corrections officers broke his neck.  This, too, is disputed.

A movie on the Larry Davis story is supposedly in the works for Roc-A-Fella, but there is, duh, a dispute about whether Larry Davis sold the rights to his story to Damon Dash or not.  So it might be a while before we see a big screen version of one of the more controversial, and interesting, street stories you'll ever read about.
****************
Unrelated note, but... I saw No Country For Old Men over the weekend.  Good flick.  I understand a few people didn't get the last 25 minutes.  I'll try to do this without spoilers, but you might want to avoid this all the same if you haven't seen the movie yet:

First off, remember who the protagonist in this story is.  That's Tommy Lee Jones, if you aren't sure.  He might seem a supporting character for most of the movie, but he's actually the protagonist.  He gets top billing, and he's what the story is about.  Or more specifically, his growing disenchantment with his job.  It's worn him down.

It's also not about, in my opinion, how horrific the crimes he's seeing now are.  In fact, it's more like how mundane these crime scenes, these incidents, have become to him.  He sees it all, gets it all pretty quickly, and seems rather desensitized to it.  No need to meet with the DEA agents... they don't have anything to say he hasn't heard already.  More to the point, he no longer cares much, either.

There's also an undercurrent theme of how things happen when you don't expect them to... the movie beats you over the head with that.  The coin flipping, the speech by the wife and by the old man.  And by the drunk lady with the beer at the motel... all of them say different variations of "things happen, you can't wait for them, they just occur".

Overall, it's a good flick, and worth checking out. 

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