Jamal Cooper

Concept: Set leader

AKA: J-Money,  Bones.

Desc: Wiry and full of energy. Refuses ink, although he tells people it’s due to religious conviction, it’s because he’s got a weird phobia about it. Hot light of potential madness spilling out of his eyes. (Already a bit paranoid) Talks too much for his own good. Never wears anything he couldn’t break into a dead run in. Wears a black suit on occasion when attending his local mosque.

History: Jamal and Tyronne came up together. They used to be tight. Then Jamal got popped and went away. There wasn’t much Tyronne could do.

Jamal had never been inside before, and well. He got approached by some guys who felt he ought to be part of the community. Jamal wasn’t keen on it, but he went along because it’s rare for anyone to be able to get along inside without crewing up. 

  Slowly, over time, and with a lot of time to think about it, Jamal became a true believer. Hey, it happens that way sometimes. Now, granted, the flavor of Islam that Jamal embraced was a fairly radical (and skewed) strain of it.  And sure, while he idolizes Malcolm “X”, Malcolm, were he alive today, would probably find a follower like Jamal to be horrifying and incomprehensible.

   Like for instance, Jamal has a set of his own now and is seemingly keen on controlling drug trade on his patch. While he is draconically strict about anybody in his set using drugs, He doesn’t seem to have a problem with selling poison to anyone outside of his crew.  He’ll fuck any woman who floats into his field of vision, but any woman who wants anything more than that will have to abide by his increasingly conservative standards about how “His” woman should act. (which, if we’re being truthful, is how he drives off any woman who wants to get serious.)  He talks a lot of shit about religion and politics without seeming to recognize that it’s guys like him that are part of the problem.

Jamal's set is known as the “Wild Eyes” and they have a rep for being able to hit hard, and fast, and fade into the woodwork. Sadly, they also have a rep for having a lot of fucking soap opera shit going on behind the scenes. Jamal’s set tends to attract a certain type of dude, and usually, that sort of dude is the kind with an amount of bad wiring that wouldn’t make him useful to any other set.  Over the years, Jamal and Tyronne have gone at it some.  Jamal tends to win little battles, his hit and fade strategy tending to win the day in the short term. But Tyronne thinks things through and when he DOES move he usually reaches out and crushes some element of Jamal’s operations completely.  Jamal goes off and licks his wounds, rebuilds and when he feels like he can come back on Tyronne, the cycle starts all over again.  Likely, someday Tyronne will completely eradicate the Wild Eyes. But that day hasn’t come yet.

Attitude:  “Allah has shown me that my way will be to control these streets. Organized crime is the natural enemy to disorganized crime. Someone. Nah...fuck that. I...I will need to be the one who does that. This is my work. These are my streets and when I am unchallenged here...I won’t need the drugs. I won’t even need the guns anymore. You’ll see.”

Skills: Say what you will about Jamal’s mental acuity, his ability to think fast is not in question. He’s can think on his feet. He's good enough with guns to have Gunslinger, and fast enough on his feet to outrun most trouble. He’s manipulative enough to stay on top of his Set (usually by pitting his boys against outside enemies or one another.) He has average resolve and a paltry amount of composure. (He tends to flip out when stressed).  He’s got dots of whatever passes for a dirty street fighting style in your chronicle. He’s decent with a shiv.

Gear: Jamal is weird about his guns. He never uses an automatic if he can help it. He had a stretch there where he had a couple of jams and swore never again. He carries his sidearms (twin nickel-plated 45’s) under his armpits and two smaller pistols in a jackass rig on each arm. He also has a kevlar vest that he took off of a policeman, who had no further use for it. For close up work he favors sap gloves and a straight razor with silver filigree. Likes his weapons flashy, Jamal does.  He carries a dumb phone and a little notebook. The little notebook is likely to get him sent away for a LONG time if it’s ever recovered in a bust. Jamal naturally congratulates himself on the idea that his operation can’t be hacked.

Home: You can’t be white, a cop, or be wearing colors from any other set and be walking around Danforth Duplexes (and most of the surrounding subdivision) without Jamal getting a call. Jamal moves around within the neighborhood from time to time in order to make it harder for anyone to draw a bead on him. The guy who owns the complex is scared shitless of him. (And the fact that Jamal keeps a professional eye on the guy’s son is just icing on the cake.) Most of the Wild Eyes also bunk down here so any rush against the complex is going to draw them out.  You can usually tell who the bangers are in the neighborhood parking lot by the rims. Nobody else living in the Danforth can afford that shit.

Circle: Most of the people that know Jamal, who AREN’T in his crew, don’t really want to know him. His rep is that he’s crazy/volatile. This includes the people at his Mosque and the members of the Zimbabwe Elks Lodges that he’s been trying to cozy up to. Jamal isn’t trying to kid himself about going legit, he just wants some hooks into people with real money. The only people who are looking maybe to connect up with Jamal are a small group of Ascended Ones who might be willing to use him as a distribution network for their product. Who knows, Jamal might be useful as a hunter too.

Story Uses:

“Yo man. The war is already here. Yo dumb ass ain’t chose a side yet, that’s all.”

The constant back and forth between him and Tyronne is going to be a backdrop in any story that takes place in the streets or the neighborhood. Nobody wants to get caught in that crossfire, and they don’t don’t want anybody they love to get caught there either. But that shit happens. All the time. Also, if you’re part of a faction that’s simply trying to do your own business, the question is not IF you’ll be dragged into the mess. It’s WHEN.

“Well you know. I had a vision for how it was all gonna be. and then someone came along who saw it my way...”

Jamal, unlike Tyronne, is ripe for some kind of supernatural recruitment. Although truth be told, he’s something of a loose cannon. This is not to say that that can’t be fixed or rehabbed. But still, he’s a bit of a fixer upper.

"I am here because Allah sent me to you tonight. Your words will determine what will happen next."

Jamal has a twisted relationship with mainline Islam. and it comes out in odd ways. He's secretly contributing to his local Mosque and that's a fairly positive thing. But occasionally things happen in the community that make him want to get involved as some kind of avenging angel. This is rarely good for anyone involved.

Connections:

* Immanuel Washington and Jamal went to school together. Neither seems to know about the other being in town. Manny is likely to be one of the few people that Jamal could run into that has exactly no fear of him. it would likely go badly for Jamal and whomever was with him.

*Jamal swears that a few years ago he saw Grace Cook out walking around. It happens that he's not bullshitting.

* Cullen Gillis of the law firm Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North, and Dean is a distant relation (Neither is sure exactly how. Jamal just calls him an uncle.) Cullen is also a member of the Zimbabwe Elks, (although he hasn't been terribly active in years.) Cullen is trying to determine whether Jamal would be a useful asset or more trouble than he's worth.

*Some years ago, Detective Bela Janofski was involved in a buy-bust that went very south and he took 4 bullets.  Guess who was the asshole who started shooting first?

* Charlie seems to have a sixth sense about when shit is going down between the gangs. He'll often look up and mumble, "Wild Eyes on the wind." and then make himself scarce.