Portrait of a Mugger and His "Turkeys'

TALL, black and built like a wrestler, Ronnie grew up in a Harlem tenement with 15 brothers and sisters, sometimes sleeping two and three to a bed. Now 21, he has been mugging for a living since the age of 15. "It just boiled down to the fact that I didn't have the things I needed--shoes, clothes, food," he explains. "So I either had to go to work or get out in the streets. Work was impossible--I was too young. Besides, mugging was like a game at first. The object was to be faster than the Man."

In teams of three or more, Ronnie and fellow members of a teenage gang called the Young Mafia worked the west side of Harlem, with occasional forays into The Bronx or even midtown Manhattan. On an average night, they attacked eight victims or "turkeys," taking a total of about $300. Only when the victim resisted was he beaten. "If you hassle me, I get scared," Ronnie explains. One night a record-store owner tried to stop the gang from stealing albums. Ronnie and his friends beat him so badly that he was on the hospital critical list three weeks.

As New Yorkers grow ever more fearful of muggers, Ronnie and his friends find them increasingly willing to fight back. "Before, brute strength was enough," he says. "Now people are running around with hatpins, knives, even guns. You gotta be alert. You gotta know who to take off." Once Ronnie and other gang members followed a man into an apartment elevator, pushed him up against a wall and demanded his wallet. The man pulled out a .45-cal. pistol so they fled.

Only two types of people are exempt from attack by Ronnie: elderly women ("You throw an old lady up against the wall," he says, "and she might have a heart attack") and people with dogs--of any kind. One night Ronnie and his friends started following a woman walking her Chihuahua. When the tiny dog began barking, apartment lights went on and windows opened up and down the block. The gang ran.

Of the 130-odd muggers Ronnie has known during his own six-year career, about 20 are dead, ten are in jail and the rest have "retired." Ronnie too talks of quitting. He has been attending college and is now working with a storefront social agency in the East Village. Even so, it has been less than a month since Ronnie's last mugging.

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