In this Dec. 27, 2018, photo, video blogger Shawn Cotton, left, poses for a portrait with rapper Wayne Walker, who performs under the stage name 30 Rich, after Cotton interviewed Walker for his YouTube channel “Say Cheese TV,” in Fort Worth, Texas. The killing of Zack Stoner, a pioneer in a new genre of news in which videographers interview street gangs and rappers in high-crime areas, has unnerved other gangland reporters nationwide, including Cotton. (AP Photo/John L. Mone)
CHICAGO – Shawn Cotton no longer drives his $55,000, bright pink Corvette to work because he's afraid it could get him killed like his friend. But there are two things he won't leave home without: his bulletproof vest and the 9 mm pistol he slips into his pocket.
Cotton, 28, quit his $7-an-hour job cleaning refrigerators at a big-box store six years ago to enter a new and uniquely dangerous field of newsgathering in which video journalists interview street gangs and rappers in high-crime areas, then post the videos on YouTube channels.
Dozens of gangland videographers like him nationwide risk their lives to provide a voice for communities routinely ignored by mainstream media, creating an alternative news genre that Cotton's friend Zack Stoner liked to call "hood CNN" before he was killed in a drive-by shooting last year in Chicago.
Stoner, known by his nickname ZackTV, was a trailblazer in the genre and considered a mentor by gangland reporters around the country. His still-unsolved slaying exposed an ominous side to their line of reporting, where gun violence is a recurring theme, and showed how vulnerable these newsgatherers are.
Says Cotton about the impact of Stoner's death: "Now, I think every day about getting shot,"
Only after Stoner was killed did he begin arming himself and seeking to keep a lower profile when gathering content for his Say Cheese channel. That means not driving the car in the conspicuous color into gang territories, lest he make it easier for gangs angered by his reporting to track him.
Other top channels in the genre include Chicago World News, HoodVlogs in Los Angeles and Detroit's CharlieBo313. When it comes to his channel, Cotton said, his subscribers often dictate where he travels, encouraging him to cover specific gangs or rappers locked in escalating disputes. Reports often show members waving guns and cash, or flashing rival gang signs upside down — a recognized indication of disdain.
Critics say the channels glorify gang life and provide a platform — alongside other social media — for gangs to taunt each other, thus stoking violence.
"If you are making gangs look cool, you're recruiting more people to join gangs," says Mike Knox, a former Houston gang-unit police officer.
Defenders say the channels fill a neglected news niche, telling important human-interest stories that aren't a priority for traditional media and telling them from places where those outlets are often afraid to go.
"What Zack provided was a platform where (those on the streets thought), 'I can be myself, I can cuss, I can tell you how I feel ... and it ain't gonna be censored,'" says Rodney Phillips, an ex-gang member who works for Chicago anti-violence groups. "He was showing the unadulterated truth."
Stoner had just left a rap concert around 1:30 a.m. May 30 at Chicago's Refuge club when a car pulled alongside his. A dozen shots rang out. Stoner's bullet-riddled SUV veered into a lamppost. He had been shot in the head and neck and was pronounced dead three hours later.
Stoner once described how he would always conduct interviews with a camera in one hand and a gun within reach of the other.
"I've been taking this chance with my life," he said on video, pulling a handgun from his coat pocket. "You just gotta be prepared."
Cotton, who travels around the country but considers Texas home, spoke with Stoner about the risks of their work: You could invite the wrath of gangs that believe a report favored hated rivals, or draw the attention of young gang members who might shoot merely out of hopes of gaining higher status in the gang by killing a notable member of the community.
Cotton said he receives multiple death threats a week via social media. One threat came after he reported that a gang member ran from a fight. One message read: "We're going to do you like we did Zack."
Why take such risks? Providing a voice for the community is one motivator. Money is also a big incentive.
YouTube pays a fraction of a penny per video view for ads on YouTube-based sites. Channels like Cotton's, which has over 400,000 subscribers and a million monthly views, can generate over $15,000 a month. Stoner had over 200,000 subscribers.
Stoner rarely ventured outside Chicago, which tallied over 560 mostly gang-related killings last year. The day of Stoner's funeral, his friend, Davis "T Streetz" Thomas, was killed, one of many fatal shootings of aspiring rappers in 2018.
Stoner understood, as does Cotton, that some degree of danger makes more compelling videos, boosting viewership. With its homicide numbers and depth of hip-hop talent, Chicago is fertile ground for stories.
Far from lauding gangs, Stoner would berate them for perpetuating violence.
"We kill one another for some stupid (things). We gotta be smarter than that, y'all," he said in one video.
But Stoner was also empathetic.
He told the Chicago Defender newspaper in early 2018 that the young black men he interviewed were "stuck in this box" they wanted desperately to escape, despite tough exteriors that are obligatory in their worlds.
"A lot of people may look at these individuals like they're thugs ... nobodies," he said. "Never judge a book by its cover."
Stoner wasn't in a gang, but was raised in gang territory and knew the culture well.
"He dressed like them. He looked like them," Phillips said. "They saw a lot of Zack in themselves."
Stoner was adept at negotiating the patchwork of 60 Chicago gangs. But while gangs would welcome him, his friends feared his growing influence and wealth were fueling grudges against him. Some urged him to leave Illinois.
"But he would never leave Chicago. He loved Chicago," his cousin, Albert Curtis, said.
Stoner had close calls. He dove for cover during a 2016 interview when someone leaned out a car window and opened fire, injuring half a dozen people.
He inadvertently landed some gang members in legal straits. Suburban Chicago police arrested purported gang members in 2017 after observing them waving guns on ZackTV1. They hadn't heeded Stoner's advice: If you're a felon and insist on waving guns on camera, make sure they're not real.
Who killed Stoner and why are still discussed regularly on social media. Cellphone video taken from a nearby apartment after the gunfire shows several young men running to Stoner's vehicle. They speed away after someone screams. It's unclear if they were gunmen, or friends of Stoner who feared they could also get shot.
After what happened to Stoner, Cotton mulled leaving the field of gangland news. But he still likes the work and the money.
"I'm not going to switch careers," Cotton says, "just because I'm scared."
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'We're easy victims:' Inside the country so dangerous to police that officers are fleeing
4 Mar, 2019 2:20pm
5 minutes to read
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They were given one of the most dangerous orders in policing: Take down MS-13.
They were bankrolled by the United States and trained by FBI agents.
But members of the Salvadoran police have been killed by the dozens in each of the past three years, most in attacks that investigators and experts blame on MS-13, an international street gang. At least nine officers were killed in the first month of this year.
Now, a number of El Salvador's police officers are fleeing the gang they were tasked with eliminating.
There is no list in either El Salvador or the United States of Salvadoran police officers who have fled the country. But the Washington Post has identified 15 officers in the process of being resettled as refugees by the United Nations and six officers who have either recently received asylum or have scheduled asylum hearings in US immigration courts.
In WhatsApp groups, police officers have begun discussing the possibility of a migrant caravan composed entirely of Salvadoran police - a caravana policial, the officers call it.
The exodus of Salvadoran police points to how the country's security forces have failed to break the stranglehold of organised crime. It also shows that among those seeking refuge in the United States during the Trump Administration are some of America's closest security partners.
"These are among the most vulnerable people in El Salvador," said Julio Buendia, the director of migration at Caritas El Salvador, a nonprofit organisation that works with the US and United Nations on refugee resettlement.
The US has been bolstering the Salvadoran police, part of a regional strategy intended to stabilise Central America's most violent countries and reduce migration. The State Department spent at least US$48 million to train police in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras from 2014 through 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The department opened a law enforcement training academy in San Salvador, where 855 Salvadoran officers were trained by the FBI and other American law enforcement agencies in those four years.
"The Salvadoran Government, with US Government support, has made significant gains in the area of security, including reductions in homicides and every other category of violent crime measured," the State Department said.
Citing "privacy reasons," the department would not comment on whether it was receiving asylum or refugee applications from Salvadoran police officers.
By some measures, the US-backed security efforts appeared to be showing results. In 2018, El Salvador's homicide rate was 50.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. That was still among the highest in the world, but it was down from 60.8 per 100,000 in 2017 and 81 per 100,000 in 2016.
MS-13 was born in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, expanding as more Salvadorans arrived in the United States after fleeing the country's civil war. The group splintered, with Barrio 18 becoming a chief rival, and both groups grew in American prisons before reaching El Salvador through mass deportations. Between 2001 and 2010, the US deported 40,429 ex-convicts to El Salvador, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
El Salvador's Government adopted an "iron fist" response to the gangs, including more police operations. When that approach failed, it tried to broach a truce with the gangs in 2014. The pact quickly disintegrated and was followed by another surge in violence. It was then that the gangs began to explicitly broadcast their threats against police officers.
"If you kill a 'pig,' or a police officer, you're more respected in these gangs. That's the policy - using death as exchange currency," said Hector Silva Avalos, a journalist and researcher who has written a book on the Salvadoran police and has served as an expert witness at several asylum hearings for former police officers in the US.
With salaries of US$300 to US$400 per month, the low-level police officers who make up the majority of the force often have no choice but to live in neighbourhoods vulnerable to gangs. And so, in the majority of the cases, police officers are killed when they are home from work or are on leave.
In August, Manuel de Jesus Mira Diaz was killed while buying construction materials. In July, Juan de Jesus Morales Alvarado was killed while walking with his 7-year-old son on the way to school. In November, Barrera Mayen was killed after taking leave to spend time at home with his family.
The police investigated a number of the killings since 2014 and found members of the major gangs responsible.
"They have more control than we do. When we go home, we're in neighbourhoods where there's one police to 100 gang members. We're easy victims," said one officer in the country's anti-gang unit, who, after being threatened by MS-13 in his home, is awaiting refugee status from the United Nations.
Complicating their response to the threats, Salvadoran police are also not legally allowed to take their weapons home with them.
"I bring it home anyway. I sleep with it on my waist," said a female officer, who is awaiting refugee status from the United Nations. "My husband and I take turns sleeping. We know they are going to come for us."
Many units in the Salvadoran police are forbidden to wear balaclavas to conceal their identities. In anti-gang units, officers are allowed to wear such masks during operations, but they are frequently asked to testify in court, where they must show their faces and identify themselves by name while gang members look on.
In 2017, El Salvador's attorney general, Douglas Melendez, urged the government to do more to protect off-duty police, asking the Parliament to pass a "protection law" for police and soldiers that would also provide funding to protect their families. The law was never passed.
Many officers, feeling unprotected by their own force, have said their only option is to leave the country.
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