Robbed in the Hood
I usually like to use this space for either humor or shameless self-promotion. But I had kind of a frightening incident a few days ago, and I wanted to take a few minutes to let everyone know what happened. About two weeks ago, my wife and I were robbed at gunpoint in the elevator of our Brooklyn apartment building. No one was hurt, and nothing was stolen that can't ultimately be replaced. But it was a very scary experience, and since people keep asking, I wanted to share it.
When we first moved in about two years ago, Rachel and I knew it wasn't what you would traditionally call a "good neighborhood." I had reservations about moving to the neighborhood, but we needed to keep our rent low, which is an increasingly difficult proposition in Brooklyn. As two freelancers with uncertain income and a massive pile of debt beneath us, we wanted to live somewhere where we could afford to pay all our bills, do a bit of saving, and pay down our debts until it was at least small enough that we didn't have to worry about finding any dragons sleeping on top of it.
Even so, I was very uneasy at first, but Rachel assured me that I was worrying over nothing. She'd lived in worse neighborhoods without anything happening. We knew several people who had lived in this building, or very close by, without anything happening to them. Plus, I'm a giant and kind of crazy looking, so I'm probably not someone most people would want to mess with.
I still wasn't totally convinced, and she told me I was just being racist. Our neighborhood is primarily African-American with a heavy Caribbean population, and has only begun the process of gentrification that has overtaken most of Brooklyn. I'll admit that it felt a little weird to be a white guy moving into a primarily black neighborhood for the first time, but that wasn't why I was nervous about living there.
Rather, my concern came from a website a friend had shown me where you could look up any neighborhood in New York and see all the crimes that have been reported there. I pulled up some of my friends' apartments on the crime map, and almost all of them came up as perfectly green seas of tranquility. You'd think that Brooklyn was the nicest, most genteel place on earth.
Then I plugged in the apartment we were looking at, and for blocks around the building and the subway station, it was nothing but red ad orange warning signs. The crimes were mostly robberies, and a couple shootings. The incident that particularly caught my eye was a block up from our prospective home where, according to the website, "a burglar was caught cold-bloodedly trying to steal a blood-pressure machine from a home." While I wasn't sure if they were using the word "cold-bloodedly" for a terrible pun or just to editorialize, it seemed foreboding to me that I was about to move into a neighborhood where someone was willing to not just steal things, but steal things from someone who is doing so badly that they need to have pieces of medical equipment in their home. Maybe someone was just running a sketchy "clinic" out of their living room, and the thoughtful robber was trying to shut down their shady operation, but that didn't seem especially likely. It seemed much more likely that I was moving into an active crime scene. (Also, as some of you may already know, I wrote a joking post a little while back about my pizza delivery guy getting robbed. That should have been another red flag, but somehow the story seemed so absurd that I never quite believed it.)
But despite my reservations, we decided to take the apartment. The price was right, it was the only apartment we found without an astronomical broker's fee, and most importantly, the landlord was willing to give it to us. So we signed the lease and moved in a few days later.
And we stayed in the apartment for the next two years without serious incident. Sure, the boys smoking weed in the hallway could be loud and annoying, the roaches were the size of bullfrogs, the toilet had spells where it wouldn't stop flushing for days, and once our front door even fell off. But even with these petty inconveniences, we never really felt unsafe. Except for maybe the few hours when we had no door. But even then, the Hallway Boys kept an eye on us so our apartment didn't get ransacked, and even if it did, we would have known who it was.
Of course, that all changed the night we got robbed. It's odd how you can go from living in complete safety to living in complete terror in an instant, and always an instant too late. That night, my wife and I were coming back from an open mic in Manhattan. I like to joke that she came because she's naive enough to think an open mic is a real show, but I know that after nearly three years of watching me do comedy, she knows better. And I appreciated her wanting to come out and support. After countless nights of performing for no one but comics, it's always nice to have any real audience members at all in the room, so I was glad to have her there. I wanted to say no when she offered to bring her camera. She takes great pictures, but sometimes I feel a little foolish having a professional photo crew following me at such an early stage in my career, when I know that the people in the audience aren't there to see me, they're there to work on their own stuff. But in the end, my vanity won, and I told her she could bring the camera. (For the sake of this story, I was the most amazing comic at the mic, and every joke I told that night killed harder than any joke you've ever heard.)
It was exceptionally cold out that night, one of the coldest we've had this winter, so we thought about taking a Lyft ride home. But neither of us are the type to spend money on unnecessary luxuries like taxis, so we decided to take the Subway. Would it have made a difference if we'd taken the Lyft ride? Or would the robbers have been waiting for us outside of the building, further intrigued by our display of extravagance? These are the sorts of questions you can't help but ask after the fact, but can never be answered.
We didn't see the guys behind us until we were unlocking the front door. They could have followed us from the subway, or the deli on the corner, or they could have been lurking unseen by the tree out front. We had no idea, and at the time, thought nothing of it. We let people into the building every single day, and never think anything of it. It's a big building with lots of apartments, and lots of turnover, so we don't recognize all the neighbors, or all of their friends. Point is, there's enough foot traffic that the odds are very good that someone else will be getting home at the same time as us, and we always just let them in with smile. Sometimes they're people we recognize, sometimes they're not, but we've never had a problem. And neither of us really wants to be the asshole who slams the door in an old woman's face because you don't recognize it. So we let the two guys in with a casual smile, and thought nothing of it.
We went straight to the elevator and hit the down button. Out of habit I might have stopped to check the mail, though it was Sunday, so there wouldn't have been any. The elevator was on the top floor as usual, so we had a minute or two before it came down. One of the guys lined up behind us, the other sprinted straight up the stairs.
"You takin' the stairs?" the first guy said.
"Yeah, man," said the second. I only ever saw him out of the corner of my eye, and couldn't identify him if I tried. I seem to remember his jacket being more colorful than his friend's, who was wearing a loose, black windbreaker with a hood. But I can't even be sure of that. At that point, I thought so little about them that I wasn't really paying attention. Nothing seemed unusual about the two men splitting up. Plenty of people who live on the second or third floors will take the stairs, while others will be lazy and wait for the elevator. And some people are friends with their neighbors, they'll talk to each other but not go home together. Some people are just fucking weirdos, and we don't ask a lot of questions. Point is, still nothing in particular seemed weird.
The man behind us kept saying, "It's cold out." Eventually he broke it up with, "I'm tired, man." But as we waited for the elevator, he kept talking to us, trying to be casual. On the one hand, it worked. He seemed normal, and he was right, it was cold out. That's why we thought nothing of him burying his face in his collar, and keeping his hands in his pocket. But it's also the only reason I ever saw his face. Once we were in the elevator, my attention was fixated elsewhere. But when he insisted on making small talk, I kept turning to nod and smile in agreement. It's part of the social contract. His mindless chitchat is the only reason I ever noticed that he was was tall, thin, and black, with dark skin, hollow cheeks, and slightly puffy eyelids. There was nothing unusual about him, I would have forgotten his face in an instant if not for what happened next.
We got on the elevator, and my wife pushed the button for our floor. As we moved to the back of the elevator to make room, I heard the words, "Alright, nobody move." Before I had a chance to turn around, I already knew what was happening. I'd been on jury duty recently, and heard the exact same story from a young woman. I'd kept it in the back of my mind, never thinking it could have applied to me. That's the sort of thing that happens to careless hipster chicks, I thought. I turned around in disbelief to find the man had finally pulled his hands from his pockets, revealing thin blue gloves and a black handgun.
My first thought upon seeing it was, That gun isn't real. My second thought was, When the fuck was the last time you saw a gun?! How do you know what they look like? It wasn't as shiny as I expected, kind of matted, and I couldn't tell if it was metal or plastic. Later, a fellow comic would tell me that a lot of guns these days are made of largely plastic, so it easily could have been real. At the time, I knew it wasn't worth the risk of trying to finding out. While it would be embarrassing to find out the gun you were robbed with was a toy, it would be much worse to find out that it was real by being shot with it.
I remembered the girl from jury duty, and instinctively pulled out my phone, knowing it would be the first thing he asked for.
"Don't move," he said, and I froze.
"Sorry," I said instinctively.
"Shut the fuck up," he replied.
"Sorry," said again. We went back and forth like this a few times, it's a nervous habit I have. When I'm stressed, I talk mindlessly, saying the same things over and over again, mostly apologies.
Our witty repartee was cut short when the elevator door closed, and the mugger panicked. He turned to try to catch the door before it closed, but was too late. He frantically mashed all the buttons, trying to get the door to open before the elevator went up. I was scared. As awful as the situation was, it would be much worse to be stuck with him for several flights. What would he do if we got to our floor and someone opened the door? Would he panic? Would he run? Would he shoot? I didn't want to find out, and from the looks of it, neither did he.
Fortunately, the door opened, and his friend (or should I say, accomplice) came back down to hold it. I still couldn't see the friend, I just saw that the door was open. "Alright, empty your pockets," the mugger said as he took my phone. My wife and I pulled out our wallets. He said something about cards, I think that he wanted them, so I pulled them from my wallet, hoping he'd at least leave the wallets and the non-financial contents within. After being robbed is a terrible thing, but so is going to the DMV. After such a stressful experience, the last thing you want is to have to deal with any more soulless government drones than absolutely necessary. So I held out my cards, and held my wallet open. He ignored the cards, and pulled out the cash. He probably thought he was getting away with more than he did, as I had a pretty hefty wad of bills. But it was mostly ones, so he didn't get much, probably forty or fifty bucks.
My wife said he put the gun to my head at one point, but I don't remember that at all. Maybe she's exaggerating, or maybe I repressed it. Most likely, I just didn't notice because I was so focused on not looking him in the eyes. I was afraid that if I looked at him too closely, he'd think I was trying to memorize his face so I could identify him later, and he'd do something rash. Even though I was trying to keep an eye on the gun at all times, it's possible that my supervision was overruled by the prime directive to avoid getting shot.
I do remember when he put the gun in my wife's face, though. She never carries cash with her because she doesn't have a lot of it, and she thinks that if she has it on her, she'll spend it. So when she opened her wallet for the mugger, all she had in there was two dollars. When he saw how little cash she had, the mugger started to flip out.
"Two dollars, bitch?!" he shouted? "Where's the rest?" He got close and shoved the gun in her face menacingly. My wife tried to explain that she didn't have anything, but she was scared, nearly crying, and he didn't believe her.
"What's in the bag?" he asked. My wife said nothing, and opened it a bit, trying (perhaps foolishly) to hide the camera inside.
"Don't fucking play around," he said, waving the gun in her face again, "what's in the bag?" The parts I remember most vividly are the ones where he had the gun in my wife's face, because for me, those were the scariest parts. I was watching someone threaten my wife as she apologized and cried, and in that moment, I was genuinely terrified that he was going to shoot her. I wanted to do something to help, but I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't make the situation worse. Ever since I was a little kid, I've always had this fantasy that if I was faced with a crime, whether I was being robbed or saw a rape in progress or whatever, I'd just instinctively turn into Chuck Norris. I'd grab the guy's hand, give him a few swift kicks, maybe shoot the second guy with the gun that's still in the first guy's hand. But what I hadn't accounted for in this scenario is that you don't learn karate by just seeing a gun. From what I hear, becoming a black belt is a much more complicated process. So instead, I just stood there powerlessly, afraid for my wife, afraid for myself, and feeling like a failure for not being able to protect either of us.
I don't remember if he pulled the camera out of her bag or if she did. Either way, he got it, and started backing out the door.
"What's that, what's that?" the mugger shouted, pointing the gun at my wife's bag. The wrap the camera had been in was sticking out, and thought it might have something else of value.
"It's nothing," my wife cried, showing it to him. The robber accepted this and finally turned and ran out the door. After a moment of relief, I realized that there was a voice coming from the intercom. I think it had been there for a while, but we were too caught up in the moment to notice. But in his haste to stop the closing elevator door, the mugger had hit the emergency call button.
"We've been robbed!" my wife and I both shouted.
"Are you stuck in the elevator?" the woman on the other end of the speaker asked calmly.
"No, we were robbed," I said.
"This is the mechanical assistance line," the woman said. "If it's an emergency, you should call the police.
"They took our phones, can you call for us?" my wife asked.
"I'm not authorized to do that," the woman said. "This the line for mechanical problems. Are you stuck in the elevator?" At that point, I left my wife to deal with the situation and ran across the lobby to the second elevator. My friend Brad lived on the other side of the building, and I wanted to borrow his phone. But when I got to his apartment, no one was home, and I returned to my wife as quickly as I could. I went back to my wife. We hugged, and took the elevator up to our floor.
I wouldn't know this until I got an old phone activated the next day, but after the elevator repair woman finished refusing to help, my wife gave her my phone number, and she left me a voicemail.
"Hi, I'm calling from the elevator repair company," she said. "Your wife says she was just robbed in the elevator of your building, but I'm not authorized to call the police, but maybe you should do that." Click.
As usual, The Hallway Boys were hanging around outside our door. One of them casually asked how it was going.
"We just got robbed, can we borrow your phone?" I said, which was not the response he was expecting to friendly small talk.
"You got robbed?! Where?" the lead Hallway Boy asked?"Just now, in the elevator," I said. "A guy with a gun.
"A gun?!" With that, the lead Hallway Boy and a few of his friends ran down the stairs. Since I hadn't gotten a phone out of them, I went inside to message a friend and ask him to call the police, which he did. I removed my coat, took a deep breath, and tried to think. What do we do? Is there anything we CAN do?A minute later there was a knock on the door. It was The Hallway Boys. They told me to come with them to the superintendent's apartment. He had the key to all the security cameras, and they wanted to make sure we got to it before it was erased. We went to his door, but he wasn't home, and he didn't pick up his phone when they called (as usual). When I saw the police lights out front, I ran to the front door to buzz the first wave of cops in.
Shattering stereotypes of the NYPD, the first officers to arrive on the scene were massive dicks. (For the record, I feel obligated to point out that other officers we met later were both nicer and more helpful, but they didn't come into play until later). They asked what happened, but wouldn't let me talk. Every word out of my mouth was followed up by another question, each one delivered as though I was the criminal. "Oh, so now there was a gun? How come you didn't mention that?" one of the officers said condescendingly when I had finally managed to get out some of the more pertinent details.
"Was it those two guys?" the other officer asked, pointing at the two Hallway Boys behind me.
"No, they live here," I said, feeling that it wouldn't help my cause to add, "do you think they'd be standing around waiting for you if they'd just robbed me, you fucking moron?"I had an iPhone, so they plugged my info into their Find My iPhone app and told me to follow them to the car. I still didn't have a coat, but didn't want to lose the time it would take to go fetch one. One of The Hallway Boys lent me his phone and said they would go upstairs, check on my wife, and have her call me. We were on friendly terms with the Hallway Boys, but not exactly friends, so the kind gesture meant a lot to me.
"Why'd he give you his phone?" the officer asked me suspiciously.
I shrugged, dumbfounded by the question. "Because they're being nice," I said in a voice that was much more angry than you typically use for the word 'nice.'
We went outside and I hopped in the back of their car. They drove around the block, as one of them tried to pinpoint exactly where the phone was, and the other just kept saying, "It's not exact, you know. Like remember that time I lost my phone in the station?" The fact that I was being led around by people who couldn't even find their own phones inside a single building didn't fill me with much confidence that they were going to catch the mugger.
The officer in the passenger seat turned to me. "Call your phone," he said. "Tell him you want to make a deal.
"This sounded like the dumbest idea I'd ever heard. Won't that just remind him to turn my phone off, especially if he's seen the cop car driving around? But I wasn't in much of a position to argue, so I called my number. No one picked up, and when I called again, it went straight to voicemail. The guy had turned my phone off. Shock.
We ended up coming around the block and parking out front of our building. The police were still picking up a signal from something, which turned out to be my wife's phone. We went back into the building, and another four officers showed up. The signal started to move down the block, and we all ran back outside, the police moving in a pack, me in my t-shirt. I tried to stay behind, hoping the adrenaline would keep me warm in the sub-zero temperature.
At the end of the block were two men, and the police approached them. There was a pinging as the tracker got close to my wife's phone.
"Where'd you get the phone," an officer asked.
"I found it on the ground back there," the man said. "I was waiting for someone to call so I could give it back.
"It was dark, I was shivering uncontrollably, and my eyesight is terrible, so I couldn't see the man from that distance. When the police pointed in my direction, the suspect lunged angrily at me.
"Did you tell them that I took your phone?" he said. I dove behind a tree, afraid of seeing a gun again. One of the officers brought me the phone, which I identified as my wife's. When the police brought the suspect closer, I could clearly see that it wasn't the guy with the gun. In my mind's eye, the second mugger was taller and thinner, but I couldn't say that for certain. It definitely wasn't the man whose face I saw. I said as much to the officers as they led me away from him, back to the car to warm up. They went ahead and arrested him anyway, which I still feel incredibly shitty about. I guess they had to, since I couldn't positively state that he wasn't the second mugger, and he was the only person found holding any of our stolen stuff. But not only was he not the guy I had seen in the elevator, but the bottom half of the case was on the ground where he said he found it, and the phone was banged up from someone dropping it on concrete, so I was totally convinced that he was telling the truth. Maybe not about his plans to give the phone back, but at least the part about not stealing it.
From there I was taken to the station to file a report, look at some mugshots, and generally try to feel like I wasn't at the beginning of a long exercise in futility. A couple hours later, the police drove me home, and my wife and I shared another big hug. It was a scary night, but at least we were home safe, and together again.
I decided to post something on Facebook about the event before we went to bed. My wife said I shouldn't, because it would just worry people, and they'd start calling and making a fuss. Which she was completely right about, by the way. But I wanted to post something anyway, partly to make sure people knew what had happened if they were trying to contact me, but mostly because I was still very badly shaken, and I needed to feel connected. As silly as it may sound, I just needed to hear some kind words and know that my friends were still in my corner. I needed to feel like we weren't alone in a big, uncaring world that did nothing but victimize us.
The next day, I couldn't focus, and had trouble doing anything more involved than sitting alone in a quiet room listening to my heartbeat. Panic attacks came and went, especially when I had to pass through the lobby. I think a little PTSD is normal after an encounter like this, but I felt weak and foolish for being so shaken up by something that could have been so much worse. After all, there are people in the world who have been through real trauma. People have been shot, they've watched their partners die. They've been raped and abused, watched their homes and everything they own in the world burn to the ground. And here I was, acting like I'd just come back from Vietnam, all from just seeing a gun. I couldn't escape the fear and panic that the robbery had left me with. But at the same time, I didn't feel like I'd earned it. I was more persistently afraid than I'd ever been in my life, but I also felt like a child, fussing over nothing.
"It could have been worse," became my mantra, a phrase I'd repeat every three minutes or so, to whoever would listen to my story, or just to myself when I was alone. And it was true, it definitely could have been worse. But the phrase wasn't just a statement of fact. It was a security blanket. It was the only thought that calmed me down when I got scared or angry. It was the reminder that I desperately needed to help me focus on the fact that I wasn't only a victim, I was lucky. I shouldn't be overcome with fear, or wallowing in self-pity for the things I lost. It could have been worse. It has been worse for so many people. For us, no one was hurt, and nothing was lost that couldn't be replaced. It could have been worse. I needed to keep telling myself that until I believed it, until my gratitude was greater than my fear and anger and sadness.
And I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting there. I still get the occasional panic attack. I'm still afraid coming home after dark every night. I still look at everyone in the street with suspicion. I still have no faith that the police will get this guy off the street before he does hurt someone. But at the same time, I'm so glad that my wife is still here, that I'm still here. It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse. At least we didn't have to go to the DMV.
-TC