Jumper Cable Jerry

If you are enjoying this newsletter, please pass it on to a friend (or three) and tell them to sign up here.

I have a love/hate relationship with Nextdoor.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Nextdoor, its basically a social media website that only allows you to interact with your neighbors. You validate your address and it puts you into a group chatroom of sorts with other people in your area. From here, you can advertise your business, ask for help with yard work, borrow some sugar, and other things that you would traditionally ask from a neighbor. There’s also a messaging portion on the site, and that’s where the real fireworks come from.

I’ve found that the message board on the site is mostly used by gentrifying white people alerting their neighbors of nearby suspicious activity. More often than not, black people are always doing the suspicious activity. Consider it the Neighborhood Watch for keyboard warriors. I’ve always heard that bad news spreads faster than good news, and I’m aware that there are shady people of all races, religions and creeds, but it seems that only black people are doing dastardly deeds around here. Since moving to Decatur, I’m more worried about the white kids I saw rollerblading past my house with hockey sticks than anything else. The Atlanta Thrashers don’t exist anymore, but I digress.

One name that’s constantly been popping up on my Nextdoor feed is Jumper Cable Jerry. JCJ, who’s real name is Edward Jackson, has a long con going on for years now in the metro Atlanta area. JCJ pretends to be a neighbor, starts small talk with people and asks them for a ride to a nearby Autozone in order to get jumper cables for his car. Once you arrive at Autozone, he hits you with a sob story about how he doesn’t have enough money to pay for the jumper cables and a new battery so he asks you to give him a neighborly loan so he can make his purchases. You obviously never get this money back, but I grew up being told that you should only loan money that you don’t expect to get back. But again, I digress.

If you don’t go along with Jerry’s plans, he has been known to get increasingly hostile, as evidenced by his recent release from jail on assault charges. There’s a bit of confusion as to whether his recent attempts at jump starting the scam again are grounds for violation of his terms of parole, but obviously this isn’t the case as he’s still free to walk around Decatur asking for rides to Autozone. I don’t think we’re really digging into the root cause of the situation though.

I can’t help but think that Jerry is simply a victim of circumstances and lack of opportunity. The salesmanship to run this type of long con can’t be that profitable, and depends on constantly having an influx of new “customers”. It also requires relationship building to get info about neighbors to potentially scam other neighbors. In another life, Jumper Cable Jerry would be working for a company in midtown Atlanta doing inside sales or business development. And all of those skills that lead to him catching assault charges would be lauded as tenacity, strong work ethic, being able to think on his feet, and being a self-starter. For one reason or another, JCJ wasn’t afforded the adequate degrees, schooling or networking to legally profit off of his gifts, but I digress.

What if gentrification is causing black people to leave their neighborhoods because they’re tired of being accused of being petty criminals? For every Jumper Cable Jerry, there are so many other black people simply trying to go through the day and provide for their families. Unfortunately, the white contingent on Decatur’s Nextdoor is unable to discern the difference between the two groups, and any black people they encounter must be up to no good. It’s one thing to report a robbery or gunshots. It’s another thing to report teenagers checking car doors to see if they’re locked, along with grainy footage from a Ring or Nest camera.

I want everyone to treat everyone else with respect, and understand that we’re only human and trying to get through these unprecedented times as best as we know how. This takes many forms because of how people were raised, their socioeconomic conditions, and opportunity or lack thereof. We shouldn’t judge every book by its cover. We should be showing compassion and understanding without crying wolf at every “suspicious” person that approaches.

To me, that’s what a real neighborhood should be.