Why Jumping Someone Doesn’t Earn Respect: Reflections from Growing Up in the Bronx

So everyone is covering this story, but no one has any actual details as to what went down. The same applies here, but that doesn’t matter, it’s not why I’m writing today.

I wanted to ask why do we think it’s okay to jump people? Ever since I was a kid growing up in the Bronx, fights were rarely one-on-one.

I remember one time I was holding my own against an older kid in a fair fight. He was bigger, stronger, older, but he was losing. Then his friends came over—one with a box cutter and another with a gun.

I stopped fighting at that point. They roughed me up, the original opponent hit me a few times, and one of them put the blade to my face. One of the leaders stopped them from going further because he knew it would cross a line and attract police attention. I knew where he lived, and no one was about to let that go. Taking a beating was one thing—I didn’t say anything to anyone, just took it.

Threatening serious injury was different. Then I would have been forced to speak to the police. My parents wouldn’t have let that slide either. My dad was very streetwise; he might have gotten into serious trouble over that. He pulled guns for less, so yeah.

Did that guy think this made him tough? Didn’t his crew realize, “This guy was losing to a smaller kid, so we had to jump in with weapons”? They weren’t tough. They were the ones who needed weapons and numbers to step in. It took five of them with weapons to handle it.

Experiences like that have shaped how I see people who jump others. If someone fought one-on-one and won, I might respect that. But jumping someone—that just doesn’t sit right. We’ll leave it at that.