FOLLOW THE WILDCATS: Surveillance

The following blog post was taken from its original location, found here.

Welcome to “Follow the Wildcats.” This recent basketball season I did my best to keep an accurate journal of the center-city high school basketball team for which I was the first-year head coach. “Follow the Wildcats” is a compilation of many stories, told through the lens of the Wildcats’ lives. Names and identities of people and places have been changed in deference to the people involved. But everything happened. Boy, did it ever.

I was at CVS looking for an inahler for ‘Nique, a 6-foot-3-inch freshman whose attendance at practice had been too spotty for me to play him very much, when my cell phone beeped.

A text from Charternet’s principal, Mr. Sampson.

“I have half of your team on video robbing a store.” 

Mere words, at first, and they had no meaning. Numb, I drove back to Charternet, my mind racing at red lights.  At the school I went straight to the principal’s office, where I found the Family Advocate, a woman in her early thirties, and Mr. Sampson. They were watching the tape on a computer.

“I think this is Tito, and that’s Primo,” Mr. Sampson said, poking a finger at the screen. “This is definitely Debo, and you can see ‘Nique here, wearing a Charternet uniform.”

I sat down slowly and leaned forward. Mr. Sampson looked at me and then restarted a video. It would play in my mind over and over for days to come.

Raleigh came into the store first, wearing a dark red sweatshirt, the hood up over his head. He greeted the clerk, whom you couldn’t see in the video, with a handshake, made some small talk and then walked out. Casing the joint.

One minute later, eight boys came into the store. All of them wearing hats or hoods. All of them Wildcats.

Raleigh was in the middle. The group spread out through the store. Debo and ‘Nique, the tallest of the group by far, were the easiest to spot. For about two minutes, the wandering continued, until Tyrone, a 16-year-old sophomore who lives with his aunt in Shortbridge, walked briskly to the front of the store from the refrigerator in the back.

All I could do was watch.

Tyrone grabbed two bags of potato chips from a rack across from the counter, then a handful of granola bars from a shelf. He walked to the counter, and, right in front of the clerk, grabbed some lighters and candy. The other boys occasionally looked at him, snickered, and then turned away. He had stolen 50 dollars worth of goods in a matter of seconds, and with such nonchalance it looked like he was on a supervised shopping spree.

Mr. Sampson paused the video and pointed to a boy who had just turned his face, shadowed by his hoodie, toward the camera.

“Tony,” I whispered.

“Yup.”

Tyrone turned and bolted swaggered from the store. The rest of the boys trickled out. Reggie, 14, was the last to leave. He looked at the clerk and held up his hands — trying to convey his innocence, it seemed to me — and then he too was gone, no more Wildcats in the store.

The video stopped. It had all happened the day we were supposed to have our second practice, the one that was canceled because we didn’t have the boys’ physical examinations complete. One day off was all it took, one opportunity to keep them occupied lost. I was in brand new territory here. 

“Now what happens?” I asked, surprised I could get the words out. My mouth was completely dry.

Mr. Sampson sat back in his chair. This was not his first rodeo. “You never know,” he said. “I mean, they are pursuing this, the cops, but you never know how fast they’ll act. Could be today. Could be next month.”

This uncertainty made sense. And the lack of a weapon — or at least the apparent lack of a weapon — would make this a relatively minor offense.

What made my blood pump, though, was the issue of prior convictions. Nearly all of the Wildcats had them. The one with the highest profile? Tony.

Farthest from my grasp was the most vital and pivotal element of all of this. The act I had just witnessed had been carried out so casually and routinely. This wasn’t about basketball; this was about the next fifty years of these kids’ lives. That they were so unaffected by the event to not even mention it, let word of it slip out to me or anyone else on our staff was harrowing. Reversing that, or making them realize the gravity of what they had done was the battle I wondered if I would ever win.

The Landon Police Department would lie in the wait. And right when I thought the Wildcats’ season would be only a slightly bumpy ride, we’d hit a pothole the size of the half-court circle and right at the wrong time.

COME BACK SOON FOR MORE FROM “FOLLOW THE WILDCATS!”

NEXT UP: Passionate Play

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