David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

said yes. Glassberg put his men on overtime. They found frozen turkeys and refrigerated trucks, and that night went door-to-door in the Brownsville projects. We put them in a bag, and we did a flyer: ‘From our family to your family, Happy Thanksgiving.’”
    Jaffe was sitting in her office at New York police headquarters in downtown Manhattan. She was in full uniform—tall and formidable, with a head of thick black hair and more than a hint of Brooklyn in her voice.
    “We’d knock,” she continued. “Momma or Grandma would open the door and say, ‘Johnnie, the police are here’—just like that. I’d say, ‘Hi, Mrs. Smith, I’m Chief Jaffe. We have something for you for Thanksgiving. We just want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving.’ And they’d be, ‘What is this?’ And they’d say, ‘Come in, come in,’ and they would drag you in, and the apartments were so hot, I mean, and then, ‘Johnnie, come here, the police are here!’ And there’s all these people running around, hugging and crying. Every family—I did five—there was hugging and crying. And I always said the same thing: ‘I know sometimes you can hate the police. I understand all that. But I just want you to know, as much as it seems that we’re harassing you by knocking on your door, we really do care, and we really do want you to have a happy Thanksgiving.’”
    Now, why was Jaffe so obsessed with meeting her J-RIPpers’ families? Because she didn’t think the police in Brownsville were perceived as legitimate. Across the United States, an astonishing number of black men have spent some time in prison. (To give you just one statistic, 69 percent of black male high school dropouts born in the late seventies have done time behind bars.) Brownsville is a neighborhood full of black male high school dropouts, which means that virtually every one of those juvenile delinquents on Jaffe’s list would have had a brother or a father or a cousin who had served time in jail. 2 If that many people in your life have served time behind bars, does the law seem fair anymore? Does it seem predictable? Does it seem like you can speak up and be heard? What Jaffe realized when she came to Brownsville was that the police were seen as the enemy. And if the police were seen as the enemy, how on earth would she be able to get fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds—already embarked on a course of mugging and stealing—to change their ways? She could threaten them and warn them of the dire consequences of committing more crimes. But these were teenagers, stubborn and defiant by nature, who had already drifted into a life of crime. Why should they listen to her? She represented the institution that had put their fathers and brothers and cousins in prison. She needed to win back the respect of the community, and to do that, she needed the support of the families of her J-RIPpers. Her little speech on that first Thanksgiving— I know sometimes you can hate the police. I understand all that. But I just want you to know, as much as it seems that we’re harassing you by knocking on your door, we really do care, and we really do want you to have a happy Thanksgiving— was a plea for legitimacy. She was trying to get families who had been on the wrong side of the law—sometimes for generations—to see that the law could be on their side.
    After the success with the turkeys, Jaffe started Christmas-toy giveaways. The J-RIP task force started playing basketball with their young charges. They took them out for sushi dinners. They tried to get them summer jobs. They drove them to doctor appointments. Then Jaffe started a Christmas dinner, where every J-RIPper was invited along with his entire family. “You know what I do at the Christmas dinner with my J-RIP kids?” Jaffe said. “They act all tough in front of their friends. So I hug each one of them. It’s always ‘Come on. Let’s hug.’” Jaffe is not a small woman. She is strong and imposing. Imagine her approaching some skinny teenager with her arms wide open. A hug from her would swallow him up.
    This sounds like something out of a bad Hollywood movie, doesn’t it? Turkeys on Thanksgiving! Hugging and crying! The reason most police departments around the world haven’t followed Jaffe’s lead is that what she did doesn’t seem right. Johnnie Jones was a bad kid. Buying food and toys for people like him seems like the worst form of liberal indulgence. If the police chief in your town announced, in the