Chapter 7 Almost 13 to 15

 PPP treatment programs, the idea was a good idea, but the execution was not well thought out, so here I will provide a brief explanation of how it worked, it was supposed to be based on positive peer behavior, or lead by example. If you have a problem with someone you were supposed to ask for a group meeting to discuss the problem, that meant any where any time, if we were walking to the school building and a disagreement broke out, you needed to control your emotions and ask for a group meeting. The group would stop, sit down in the grass and address the issue. If you could not control your emotions, and got angrier, a group member would say Check yourself, which was meant for you to reflect on your behavior at that point and correct it immediately, if you continued you would get another check yourself, on the 3^rd check yourself, the other 9 kids in the group would circle you, at this point you were told to put your hands in your pockets. The circle up was always supposed to be tight, body to body, this way it was easier for the kids to grab you and restrain you to the floor. Once circled up you got 3 more checks yourself, on the third one it was always to the floor. Which was a fight, kids getting in punches, the goal of going to the floor was to put you in a spread-eagle position, arms out legs spread face down on the floor, if you spit or bite, someone will have your face smashed into whatever surface you were on. After you were on the floor or restrained, kids made it a habit of making you pay for messing up the flow of the daily activity. Pinching, poking, any and all pressure points, smashing anything they could. You stayed in that position until you calmed down and agreed to deal with the problem in a controlled manner. Which was another group meeting, all these group meetings, where no staff or counselor attended, only when we were in areas that had staff present, sometimes the staff would see some of the little jabs and pokes and call them out. But for the most part, most of the revenge or get backs were away from staff and went unchecked.

   Examples of Reasons for Check Yourself and circle ups, cursing, anger, argumentative behavior, threating behavior, disrespectful behavior or actions, not following directions, putting your hands on someone else.

Monday – Friday where always the same, school days, house mom woke up the 3 kids that had kitchen duties that day, if you had kitchen duties, that was for breakfast and dinner, she would set out breakfast stuff with the help of the kids on kitchen duty, as well has set the 12-person table in the dining room. at 6 am House mom would wake up the rest of the kids, we got up got dressed, (I forgot we also got 2 sets of PJs at the quarter master), made our beds and used the restroom and went to the kitchen and get breakfast, after breakfast, it was brush teeth and get ready to walk to school.  At school we had one teacher for these subjects, Math, Reading, Social Studies. Health and Science was another teacher, Gym was another teacher, and we had a visual and performing arts class, and Art taught by 2 different teachers. We were all on the same level so to speak in classes, so it made it a bit easier on Mrs. McDonald, we would get to school at 7:45 for class to start at 8:00 am, Mrs. McDonald would teach the first 3 hours, math reading and social studies, handout home work assignments, We all brought a bagged lunch with us, we sat down and ate our lunch, group Meeting with the Group leader was at 11:15 am, it was usually about one of the aforementioned listed problems (chapter 6) example of the problem and examples of how to deal with the problem. This was always a 45-minute to 1 hour meeting. 12:15 we had health or science class, at 1:15 pm we left the school building and went to the Arts building, for whatever class was being taught that semester, at 2:30 pm we went next door to the gym. At 3:45 pm we were walking back to the cottage. We would get back to the cottage and house mom would be starting dinner, we would go to our assigned chores for the day.

   The chores list looked something like this, Kitchen, hallway carpet (including bedrooms), living room dining room carpet, mud room sweep and mop, bathrooms, Trash, dusting, and the 10^th spot always went to the kid that was top tier or almost ready for release, he checked everyone’s work done and reported back to the house mom.

   After dinner, it was homework time. After homework, it was another group meeting with one of the Group Leaders, this meeting was a focus meeting, with a member of the group to discuss a specific problem, much like the halfway house, life stories were also done at this placement. This placement the overall program wasn’t bad, what made it bad and cruel was the peer relationship factor, because any other kid could affect the length of time you were there. If they didn’t like the fact that you were moving up in the program, they could just start a fight with you, and if you swing back, your back at the bottom of the program. I took a lot of interest in the arts programs, I loved to draw, and I would spend any spare time doing that, I also involved myself with the performing arts class, one class for 2 semesters was clown school, the teacher was a member of the Keepers clowns of Michigan. She did an amazing job, she also had a movie makeup class with was really cool, and an acting class, more for plays, most of these extra activities were done on the weekends.

   One of the cool things about the program was that after a certain point you were allowed family weekend visits, and then as you got closer to release you got weekend home visits, but once again this all depended on behavior, which lead back to the relationships you fostered with the other kids, or didn’t foster. I lost a lot of weekend visits because of other kids poking the Bear so to speak. They would call my mom or dad whoever I had set up for my turn, and let them know that I was not allowed to have a visitor that weekend. The property had a motel set up on the property so that you could stay with your family for the weekend, on property.

   I turned 13 in October, in December I saw a kid I knew from the Juvenile detention center, he was in the cottage next to me, Kendell cottage, the 15 and 16 age group, and it was none other than the food bully from a few years ago. He remembered me as well, there was only one place where the two cottages ever co-mingled, the gym. It was late February when we finally clashed, In the gym, I was in the picking up mats in the gym with one other group member, when he came running at me, he hit me and took me to the gym floor, we got separated I was still on the floor trying to catch my breath, when he broke free from his group and stomped on my leg, above the ankle below the knee, he broke both bones in my leg. The gym teacher heard it, he picked me up and carried me to the health care building where they ended up taking me to the local hospital. I ended up with a cast on my leg, they put a walking cast on me, but I wasn’t allowed to walk on it for 3 weeks. Then when I was allowed to, I kept kicking my other foot with the cast, so I adjusted the angle of the front of my foot to point out to keep from kicking myself. Now after my bones healed up, I got the cast off and I continued to walk sort of reverse pigeon toed, toes out, later in my teenage year’s footprint evidence would be used to identify me for a more serious crime. To this day I still walk with my toes pointed outward.

   For the most part, I don’t remember specific incidents that would have caused a check yourself circle up situation with myself, there were so many of them. I do remember that I changed the process, after a few times getting taken to the ground, and getting the ground torture treatment, by the kid I had the beef with in the first place, I decided to escalate the situation after the Second Check yourself. If I had a problem with a kid and it was getting out of hand, and I had no back up from the other members of the group, after the second check yourself I would target my problem and just swing, it gave me more time to get my shots in before he got his sneaky shots in, while trying to gain control of me or on the floor. Whoever else got in the way also got hit, kicked, head butted, it didn’t make a difference at that point, I even bite a few people, it was like trying to contain a rabid animal.

   Back up in this situation would consist of a group member also issuing a Check yourself to the other kid in the situation. It was not a common thing for me, but it did happen from time to time. Things were always different when adults were present, the circle ups or to the floor process went less violently, also less retribution. This placement had Group trips, almost like a summertime vacation. My first summer at Starr we had a group trip, to Pine Mountain Kentucky, the Cumberland gap area. We spent 8 days there, our host was named Grizzly, and his wife was Raccoon, they were very nice down to earth people, they hosted all us kids and the 4 Staff members that brought us down there, we learned a lot of stuff on that trip and had a lot of fun. During the trip we didn’t have any issues with group members, if problems arose, they were squashed quickly, as that meant we had to go back to Starr early. I’m not sure how a trip like this was paid for, but I remember some type of fundraising with our parents and sales of artwork.

    Shortly after we got back, grudges came to the surface, and kids started going after each, and getting revenge for wrongs they felt. At one point after the trip, around my 1st year in the program, I felt that I wasn’t ever getting to get out of the placement, and I was back in the bottom tier of the group, because of my anger issues, I decided to run away, One night I slipped out my window after everyone was asleep, I made it to the small town nearby after a few hours of walking, and I was walking down a street, and next thing I knew I had a police car behind me, I ran and the police found me hiding behind a dumpster. They knew who I was and where I belonged, it was the middle of the night, The group leader showed up at the police station and picked me up and took me back to Starr, for the next few months if I had to go anywhere at the placement that didn’t require the whole group, I had to have 3 others walking with me to keep me from running away again. I also lost my room with one other kid and got put back in the 4 bunk room. It was 1984, and I turned 14 there,  During the trip back to Starr me and the group leader had a talk, and he told me that I needed to stop fighting the system, and work the program, which, I took to heart, and over the course of the next 9 months I worked the program and made my way up to top tier. During this time others left the program to go home, I developed a closer relationship to my mother, and that’s where I wanted to be released to. A release was conditioned on group participation, your group members had to basically vote to support a release, which was made official by the group leader, and approved by the case worker.

   Almost 2 years to the date that I got placed at Starr Commonwealth, my release was approved, I was going home, not to my dad’s but to my mom’s, I was still a ward of the State, that was never going to change till I was 18, but I had home placement with monthly visits with my case worker. I was enrolled in Ecorse High School, 9^th grade, I tested out of the lower grade, so I got to start high school, for the first time in my life things seemed to be going good, classes were very easy, I always did my homework before the day ended, usually in home room. I didn’t have many guy friends, I mostly hung out with the girls, on a friendly basis. There was one girl, her name was Tammy, we really hit it off, and we had some type of relationship, I guess you could call it a boyfriend girlfriend thing, we kissed and explored, kind of did things kids do. But I don’t think it was ever defined as dating.

   During the first few months at my mom’s house, I was out riding my bike all over Ecorse, I made some friends, and some that were not really friends, I guess you can say I was recruited into a chop shop ring, these so called friends pressured me into coming out after my mom and Step dad went to sleep, at first it was just keeping a look out for them, as they broke into cars and stole them, then I seen how much money they were making stealing the cars and I wanted to make money to. And I guess be a part of the cool kids club, after a few weeks as the look out, I asked if I could learn how to do it, one of the older kids took me under his wing so to speak. He taught me how to, hot wire cars, break the plastics in the steering column to access the tilt mechanism, and ignition switch. As well as break into locked cars, bypass alarm systems, and drive a car. This so called training didn’t happen fast, it took months to learn, not because I was a slow learner, but because they had about 7 teams of 2 kids each running cars, we also stole auto parts off the fright trains that ran through the center of Ecorse, it didn’t matter if the train was sitting still or moving, we would run next to the train and break the door seal, open the door and climb into the train car, and start pulling boxes and tossing them out, we had someone with a van and more kids driving along the tracks and picking up the boxes and putting then inside. We worked in teams of two, all of us underaged, and all of us knew that if we were caught, we kept our mouths shut. We were not out every night, but we did hit a lot of trains.

   About 3 or 4 months after I started running with this crew of kids, I got my chance to steal my first car, I had never felt an adrenaline rush like this, I wasn’t the best or the fastest, but I got it and picked up my look out, and got back to the shop, and got paid for the car. It was $250 I was ready to go for more, but I had to work my way up for more cars, more expensive cars. The guy that ran the chop shop had a list of cars he needed to get, not sure where the list came from, but it was a list, and a location of where to find the cars we needed to get. Over the course of 5 months, I took about 20 cars, I almost got caught a few times, one of the times I almost got caught I also got shot, it was a flesh wound on my calf, I was breaking into a 1984 Buick Grand National, a new car at the time, and the owner came out of the garage yelling, hey, hey get away from my car, I was almost into it, he didn’t wait for me to respond, I felt pain in my calf, then heard the shot, I took off running, I heard another shot go past me, I kept running, I didn’t see my look out until we met back up near the chop shop. I looked at my leg, the bullet passed through my pants leg and brushed my calf, I got lucky that night. About a week later I saw the same car in the shop, someone else got it.