Desperate to shore up its flagging ranks, the military is quietly enlisting thousands of active gang members and shipping them to Iraq. Will a brutal murder finally wake up the Pentagon?
STRAIGHT OUTTA BAGHDAD
He was groggy, thirsty, and in terrible pain. His bowels and kidneys felt like they were about to explode. Faint bruises, some the size of a soldier's fist, others the size of a military-issue combat boot, were already forming on Sergeant Juwan Johnson's skin. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his mouth.
It was almost a miracle he was able to stand, some of the soldiers who were with him that night would later recall. They were amazed he still had the blue bandanna clutched tightly in his fist. Things had gotten out of hand.
A ghost army of gangbangers presents a terrifying challenge for the military. It is "setting the stage for a disaster," says one longtime military advisorOnly a few guys were supposed to be beating him—maybe three or four, definitely no more than six. They were men Johnson knew and trusted, soldiers he had fought with in Iraq. The beating was only supposed to go on for a minute or so. After all, they weren't trying to kill him. They were trying to make him one of their own.
All he had to do was hold onto the blue rag and silently suffer through the slaps and kicks and punches. When it was over, he would become an official member of the Gangster Disciples, a man with connections all over the United States. Hell, all over the world.
But something had gone awry on that summer night at the Kaiserslautern Army Base in Germany. It seemed like everybody in that secluded pavilion, a grill house not far from the barracks, had taken turns pummeling the small young sergeant from Baltimore. In the frenzy, no one even knew for sure how long the assault had lasted.
When it was over, Johnson still held the gang's "colors" in his hand. He had made it through, bloodied but still breathing. Back in Baltimore, when he played for the Carver Vocational-Technical High School football team, the five foot, three inch running back used to deflect hits from guys twice his size. He'd certainly survived worse torture during his 15 months in Iraq. He had a Purple Heart to prove it, earned after a Humvee he was riding in took a hit from a mortar, tossing him onto an Iraqi street and injuring his back.
Lax enlistment standards have inadvertently allowed known members of the Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, and various white supremacist groups to join the militaryCompared to that, this was nothing. Besides, Johnson had been looking forward to his "jumping in," the initiation rite of the Chicago-based gang. He hadn't mentioned it to his wife, of course. Pregnant with their first child, she was obsessively fixing up the house; in just two weeks, he was due for a discharge. All he told her was that he was thinking about joining the Masons.
He hadn't mentioned the gang to his mother either. He could only imagine how she would react. After all, she had pressed him to join the Army as a way of escaping the drugs and gangs of his famously tough neighborhood. He never would have been able to convince her that the Gangster Disciples were anything but street thugs. But he knew them as a much more sophisticated operation, one that offered him the kinds of rewards the Army had promised but failed to deliver.
Johnson figured he'd be fine with a little bit of sleep. He began swaying woozily as he shuffled to his barracks, and a couple of his buddies ran over and held him up. He told them he was all right, but they insisted. After tossing him in the shower, they stretched his battered body out on his bunk. Then they went out to a local club.
The next morning, on July 4, 2005, Sergeant Juwan Johnson, a decorated Iraq War vet and full-fledged member of the Gangster Disciples, was found dead from internal injuries. He was 25.
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