THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506230223
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
When you were brought up in the South Bronx section of New York City like Tony Torres was, you lived by the rules of the street. At least you did if you had any sense of self-preservation.
For instance, you walked with your head up. You never stared at anyone. You never went alone into the other guys' turf at night.
They were some of the rules that helped shape Tony Torres' boyhood, but he's come a long way since then. Now he's Officer Torres, a 27-year-old public information specialist for the Chesapeake Police Department. Though the South Bronx is a sociological world away from the family life he loves in Great Bridge, he's never lost the images of the childhood semi-war zone he left behind.
Most of us have seen those images on the TV news or read about the South Bronx in the newspaper. Aging tenements, burned-out buildings, empty lots where buildings have been demolished. There's something of a rebirth going on, but Tony's home territory hasn't changed that much.
And it was tough territory. Like those rules of the street. You walked with your head up because if you kept your head down, you looked like you were chicken. Easy pickin' for a beating or a robbery. Head up, but don't stare. Someone might think you were ``dissing'' - dis-respecting - them. The reaction might be sudden, violent or maybe fatal.
Death could be fast and bloody. When Tony was 12, he saw a drug dealer shot and killed in front of his apartment. And he was around the block one day when he saw a man knifed to death. Robbery was an everyday fact of life.
``You could be sitting on a bus by an open window and someone would reach in and snatch a gold chain from around your neck.''
Each city block was an ethnic island, Tony says.
``Puerto Ricans in my block, Italians one block over.'' Each block was sort of self-contained with a little neighborhood store or two. The one where Tony went to get candy was a bookie joint. Before off-track betting became legal in New York, neighborhoods had bookmakers who would take your bets on the horses. You could ``play the numbers'' at the store, too. It was sort of an unofficial, illegal lottery and maybe the proprietor had to be ready to swallow the betting slips if the cops came.
When Tony got to be 13, he joined a crew, not a gang. The difference was that a gang did crimes and a crew was social.
``You had to have a real talent to join a crew, like being a good dancer or singer or being a disc jockey,'' Tony says. ``I was a disc jockey. Spinnin' turntables, they called it.''
He had the records, the sound equipment and a line of patter. That made him part of a group named Home Boys Only. And being part of a group in the South Bronx was important.
``If worse came to worse, you could always count on the members,'' he says. But alone or in a group, violence was always close to the surface. ``You'd be with some guys and some others would come along. It didn't take anything to start a fight. A look, a word or someone just accidentally bump.''
It was a place and a time when a kid like Tony had a desperate need for a good role model. He had one, he says. It was his mother, divorced from Tony's father when he was 8. She was a hard-working woman raising two children by herself.
``She taught my sister to be a young lady,'' Tony says. ``She told me that if I didn't want to take the wrong road in life to take the right road and make a difference.
``I saw the wrong road, and I knew I had to get out of the old neighborhood. There was no money for me to go to college, so I joined the Navy. It was outstanding, and I would recommend it to any young kid.''
Three years in the Navy started him on his college education and brought him to Tidewater. He joined the Chesapeake police force in 1989, ``I've always had a fascination and respect for police officers,'' he says.
His sister is a nurse, like their mom, and mom will be moving down here next year. But Tony knows some of his Bronx buddies didn't make it. ``Joey was shot. Alfredo was shot. I get so frustrated today when I speak to kids and they don't listen.''
Then he laughs and says ``You know, I can see that my life now is good when I look in the rear-view mirror when I drive. If I was still in the old neighborhood, I'd have wrinkles in my forehead from worrying what bad was going to happen next. Here, I got no wrinkles.
``I was a good kid but a confused kid when I lived in the old neighborhood. I wondered is this a normal way of life or is there something better. Obviously, I've found something better.'' by CNB