What happens if you rob a drug dealer

Sign In. Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation. Volume Drug Dealers, Robbery and Retaliation.

Vulnerability, Deterrence and the Contagion of Violence. Volkan Topalli , Volkan Topalli. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Richard Wright. Robert Fornango. Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. Abstract Because of their illicit status, drug dealers robbed in the course of doing business cannot go to the police.

I mean, for me it was; not for everyone. One of my boys was driving a high-end Turbo in South Beach in broad daylight when he got lit up by four dudes with AKs.

The thing is, there is so much poverty down there you can pay people to do anything. One is working on an oil rig. One is doing roofing in Arkansas. Another one is in South Carolina doing fishing charters.

These kids stayed in the life, and they were in Florida where it was so hot I left the state. What I worried about is certain people finding my family. So I warned my family a lot. My dad had a gun, legally, in the house, just in case. At the end of it I was sick and tired of everything, so I came flat out and told them. I was so fucked up on drugs. I needed to go to rehab, so I called my parents.

A lot of people think about that life, but not too many people get to live it, to experience it. Do you feel a sense of validation for having lived a life that is so celebrated by our society?

No, no. There are people still in jail, there are people who are dead or are drinking through straws for the rest of their lives because of shit that we did to them. Why did we have to rob them? I should have gone out and gotten a job like everyone else. I still worry about that. The boss-kid got busted about a year ago.

He posted bail by putting one of his houses up and ran. Like, these kids have so much money. They had houses, they had stash houses, they had grow houses.

If anything I would be worried about somebody I robbed still holding a grudge. I mean, there are plenty of people who want my head right now. I ran into someone like that recently but thank god I was with like 10 people and he was alone. If I ever did anything again I would just set up deals. I still know people, I know the suppliers. So I would just middleman it and take a cut. Weed, coke, heroin, molly, promethazine, crack, PCP, LCD, opium, hashish, mushrooms and countless other illicit substances flood the streets of New York City, where they are consumed as quickly as they can be delivered.

For Dealers , street reporter Peter Madsen set out across New York City — from staid Gramercy residences to bleak homeless hangouts, grimy Bushwick bike messenger bars and tony Park Avenue penthouses — to interview this particular criminal class. Through anonymous one-on-one interviews with an alarmingly wide host of subjects including a transient heroin-addict supporting his habit, cute art-school girls running a weed lounge, a connection-ready concierge, fixed-gear weed couriers, stick-up kids and a lawyer who deals on the side , Madsen extracts un-glamorized, sometimes hilarious and always nuanced accounts of the navigators of New York City's expansive drug underworld.

Demand never ceases to grow, and where there is demand, there will always be plenty of outlaw capitalists willing to step up and supply. Among the strip malls and swamps of South Florida, a teenager struggles with the violence of everyday life. On the road home, two cousins share an experience that pierces through the routine to reveal what's truly important. Manda recalls her childhood escapades at a Bulgarian seaside monastery, replete with severe nuns, theological debate and mouthwatering tomato soup.

Recipe included! Read an exclusive excerpt from Dealers , out now from PowerHouse Books. Share on Facebook. Brian 24, Lower East Side. Peter Madsen: So where does this start? Some nice what? What did you do? How would you guys know whom to target? At the time I was willing to do whatever I had to. Tell me about this first robbery.

Nonetheless, when the Drug Enforcement Administration busted the Goonz, the unforgiving feds charged Taylor with violating the Hobbs Act , which makes it a federal crime to obstruct, delay, or affect commerce by robbery or extortion. Hint: Yes. Hint one: Duh. Hint two: In , Gonzalez v. Now, for sure the United States has jurisdiction over interstate commerce, but under Raich , it also has jurisdiction over intrastate drug trafficking.

And so, if you just sort of put the pieces of the statutes together, it seems to make it completely irrelevant whether the drug trafficking was intrastate or interstate, because, in either case, it was commerce over which the United States has jurisdiction.

Four justices, for reasons I cannot fathom, voted to take this case.