Wednesday, April 03, 2019

"Hello, Officer!" - Crime and Conversation in Wood Green


Credit: http://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/wood-green/
Last Friday night when Uliana was in the women's Bible study at Grace Baptist Church Wood Green, I found myself in one of Wood Green's two McDonald's, drinking coffee at around 10pm. The McDonald's where I got my coffee was clean and quiet. For some reason, I found myself walking up the High Road to drink it in the other McDonald's, next to a bookies, pub, cinema, Nando's, and Wood Green tube station. At 10 pm on a Friday night, the inside of this McDonald's looks like material for a Hogarth etching, and if Hogarth etchings came in scratch and sniff versions, I imagine the aroma of Wood Green McDonald's would be proximate.

I sat at a stool bar looking out the glass panes of the entrance, my back to the madness behind me looking out at a scene not entirely different. Spending time observationally soaking in the painful realities of my context is often more helpful preparation for evangelism and preaching than being cloistered away in study.

As I listened to the din of voices around me, and watched the people passing in front of me, a smiling face appeared in the darkness, the lights inside faintly illuminating his nodding head. He kept smiling and nodding, like a creepy bobble-head doll – not to be friendly but to taunt me. I didn’t acknowledge it. I knew this guy. Not his name, but his face. He was active in the local drug dealing scene, part of a gang comprised almost exclusively of young Somalian men who usually operated at the other end of the High Road, around Turnpike Lane Underground Station. Seeing his face for the first time in a long time took me back a few eventful years…

I believe that the biblical mandate to "do justice" is not just about standing up for those who have been done wrong, but standing up to those who do wrong. Because of this, on behalf of and out of love for my increasingly disturbed neighbours, I raised awareness of local drug gang activity as much as I could, supported police with reports and intelligence, and assisted in shaping the quarterly priorities of the increasingly diminished local police force to combat the problem. I spoke to and heard the concerns of my community and represented them to the police. I attended meetings, took pictures, gave testimonies, and signed statements. I went to court and openly faced and testified against a large group of young Albanian men (http://ryanburtonking.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-truth-shall-set-you-free-gbc.html). The result was small, but a victory nonetheless: they were banned from the area, and the ban seems to have for the most part worked. But they were swiftly replaced. The man smiling at me under the neon light of the golden arches was in the new group. So I kept doing what I had been doing.  

The police were increasingly stretched and fewer in number. Response time to calls became longer if they ever came. Most of the time I watched and waited from the shadows or in a fried chicken shop with a good view. I helped block the paths of the dealers as they fled, or ran after them. Sometimes I didn’t call the police but interrupted the deal. In one case, I pushed the teenage dealer against the wall while the women he was selling to ran off – we actually had an edifying conversation (https://www.facebook.com/ryanburton.king/posts/1106317059426962) and in the years since, when I have met “Bern” we have continued to enjoy friendly interactions. This despite the trouble he got into for talking to someone his crew increasingly referred to as “Officer.” Of course, I wasn’t one. But they had seen enough of me to believe I was working undercover, so they took great delight in loudly greeting me when I walked by, day or night, with a cheery “Hello, Officer!”

“Hello, Officer.”

 I snapped out of my unresponsive gaze. The man had popped his head into the door.

“Hey”, I wearily replied.

He walked away but for some reason doubled back.

“Do you not remember me?” He asked.

I had a choice. Play “Officer”, or be “Pastor”.

“Sure, I remember you. What’s up?” It wasn’t even a choice. I extended my fist and he bumped it back.

“Sit here, I want to talk with you”, I continued.

He sat down and we formally introduced ourselves.

“You still a police?” he asked.

“No, I never was ‘a police’”.

He held an exaggerated look of disbelief.

“Seriously. I’m a pastor.”

“Ahhhhh.”

“Do you know what a pastor is?”

“Oh yes. Oh yes. Man of God. Man of God.”

“That’s right. A man of God. Do you believe in God?”

“Do you want me to be honest with you?”

“Well, I am a man of God.”

“No. I don’t”.

This led to an interesting explanation of why he does not believe – life is rough, he’s been to prison, and so forth.

“Why did you go to prison?”

“Violence. Drugs. Gangs. Stuff.”

“But, explain to me, how is that God’s fault?”

He then expressed in layman’s terms the fatalism of his native religion, whereby as he understood it, his life’s course was irreversibly set and there was no hope of change or redemption in this life, and by consequence he could only suppose no hope of mercy in the next.

I began to tell him about a completely Sovereign God who loved completely responsible but quite sinful people and so made a way by which they could be saved: Jesus.

Unfortunately, at this point he kept getting calls on his phone. I gave him my card, and said “Maybe now that you know I’m not a cop, you’ll be more willing to talk to me.”

“Definitely.”

Pray for Ahmed, and pray for me as I try to minister to him. Maybe one day, he and his mates won’t call me “Officer”, but “Pastor.” Most importantly to me, I want him to call Christ,  "Saviour".

2 comments:

  1. Lord have mercy on Ahmed and thousands of young men just like him...

    ReplyDelete