The Detective (2nd draft).

Interview #2 – Fear

Tuesday, May 18, 2010; 6:12PM EST

I was relieved that Fear wrote to me and expressed interest in speaking with me about being a Real-Life SuperHero and I was even more relieved when I learned his story was so different from Ecliptico’s.

Fear is 25 years old and has a fairly athletic build. He ran track when he was younger, regularly utilizes a cardio workout and practices several different forms of martial arts – in one of which he has a black belt – and he learned street fighting from the life he lived before becoming an RLSH.

“I was basically a low-level criminal in Philadelphia,” Fear told me. “There were some drugs and crimes…I lived kind of a shadowy past. The experiences I had and things I learned and knew from that led up to the development of myself as the so-called personality of Fear.

“I got into some trouble; I was caught doing something illegal which opened a door and shed some light that that type of lifestyle was not the right way to live, and that it wasn’t going to get me anywhere and was only hurting others and myself.”

Fear kept himself out of trouble for “a while” before realizing that wasn’t enough. He decided he wanted to bring others around to seeing that living an unlawful life is wrong and to stop it if he saw it. Following his run-in with the law, Fear was homeless and lived in a three-wheeled van on cinders in someone’s backyard. He told me that seeing homelessness and desperation from that situation is “very eye-opening.”

“I’d rather people become functioning members of society than learn to be better criminals, and beating them up and arresting them isn’t necessarily going to do that,” he said. “We need to impede that flow of crime in a real way, not in a short-term process.”

Over the last two years Fear has been directly involved with the RLSH community. After seeing a news report about an RLSH and realizing people were out in the streets trying to make a difference, Fear came to believe that what he was doing could be adapted and done better.

“In all reality I started out very green,” he said. “I thought of it in a typical superhero way and that’s wrong – that type of mentality will get you nowhere. Walking the streets of Philly in a mask is not a smart thing. You can’t just go out and assume you can fight, or you’ll end up like in the beginning of Kick-Ass and get the shit beaten out of you.”

An avid comic fan, Fear’s admiration for Batman as the “World’s Greatest Detective” helped shape his undercover persona but doesn’t rule his personal life. Fear is a cook by trade and enjoys reading, studying and psychology.

When he started, Fear patrolled his streets, as most of the RLSH do, but one of his first unique traits is that Fear is in the small minority of RLSH who don’t wear a mask. “I started out wearing a mask all the time, but now I feel like if I’m really being an RLSH, the mask meant nothing. The mask is the form of anonymity you desire when you’re out, but then I started questioning whether I was drawing more attention to myself when I’m wearing it than when I’m not.

“One of the RLSV – the Real-Life SuperVillains – said ‘removing the mask doesn’t remove the purpose’ and that’s 100% true. Not having a mask doesn’t mean you’re off-duty and it doesn’t define what you do; your mask is just part of your whole gimmick.”

Despite doing most of his RLSH work with his face showing, he never displayed any real disdain for mask-wearers while we spoke. “I like the more creepy, darker version of a mask that a superhero would wear. Despite the fact that I don’t go out wearing a mask, I enjoy making them. It’s more of a hobby than anything; I just don’t wear them on patrol. I do bring one in case I need it. It’s necessary at times, like when I’m interfering with a situation like a scuffle between other people, a mugging, a rape, burglary or whatever when my identity would come into question, but walking the streets in the town I live in in Arizona I do not see the need to wear a mask, especially since the mentality of the law here is very conservative. I’d get stopped more times than would be worth it in a mask.”

Fear works deep undercover for his focus as an RLSH doing investigative work. While he still patrols four to six hours straight on three or four nights a week in the high-crime areas of town, the focus of his work is sting operations. “I still believe in patrolling, but I believe I do more good [for the world] in investigations.”

Fear’s investigative work is mainly directed towards drugs and fighting drugs and dealers. “I have a very avid belief against the drug problem,” he told me, “and I will do what I can, how I can, to get rid of that problem.” As he found it, drugs are transported up to Arizona via mules from Mexican cartels, and Fear said he’ll do whatever’s necessary to stop them.

I could feel our interview picking up steam – using its own inertia to proceed. Fear continued explaining his methodology in setting up stings in his community to eradicate the drug problem.

“Homeless people offer the best info in finding drugs. Just talk to them and give them a couple dollars and ask where you can score some coke and they’ll pass you in the right direction. They’ll tell you what types of people to look for, or you just take that extra step yourself to notice people’s habits. If you see six or seven people in different areas all doing the same thing, that’s probably something to look into.”

“But how do you judge those characteristics?”

“In Philly, dealers that work on the streets wear the same attire – white t-shirt and blue jeans – so if anyone calls the cops they can disappear and blend in because that description is really general. They just turn a corner and disappear. So you study and learn on a planned, plotted patrol. You learn how to track them without being noticed, how to blend in – you can’t track someone if you’re wearing a mask and brightly-colored suit.”

“What do you do, as Fear, once you’ve successfully ID’ed someone who might be a low-level dealer?”

“Right now I’m working on a case of a local drug dealer and trying to find the person that’s above him. For me to be willingly, knowingly welcomed into a dealer’s house is not illegal. In a lot of ways I regret and take pride in the fact that I’m capable to gain access. I could walk into a room full of dealers and feel no fear; I could sit down with them rolling blunts and sniffing coke off a table and not feel threatened. Using infiltration, I go undercover without their knowledge of what I do – obviously they have no idea I have any involvement with the RLSH. You get in their circle, in a sense, but you have to be careful because you can implicate yourself in a crime. I work alongside them to build evidence and get audio and video without them knowing. I took a picture of a dealer sitting at a table holding a giant bud in front of his face with a smile and a thumbs-up – he willingly let me take that picture.

“[Legally] the idea behind that is that, at this moment, I’m building evidence. I’m getting license plates, descriptions of cars, names, visual descriptions of people, all the info on that dealer I can. I work my way through stages and build a rapport with them as well as building evidence files. I should be able to act on it, but that would be in conjunction with the police – to act on my own, unless 100% certain about it, can cause unnecessary problems.”

This methodology has succeeded in Fear playing a part in the arrest of five mid-level drug dealers in Philadelphia. He gathered evidence, gave anonymous tips to the police, handed them his information and gave them descriptions of people, addresses and several cars’ makes, models and plate numbers. When he got to Arizona he hit the ground running as well.

“The moment I got down here I started to try and find my first case and I found it. I went out with a few people, somebody asked to stop at a house and I knew what was going down. I gathered the evidence and turned it into the police. I’m waiting to see if the guy gets busted or not.”

Fear not only patrols and investigates in plainclothes, but also wears headphones without any music on them. He says this often awards him leads he wouldn’t have otherwise, as people assume he’s not eavesdropping.

“I can’t count how many times I’ve overheard people on the phone talking about deals. Hell, I was sitting in a Mickey D’s in South Philly, corner of Broad and Snyder, and the guy on the phone behind me was talking about where he was going to pick up a few ounces of weed after he finished his burger. As soon as he left I made an anonymous tip to the cops to be there in the next 15 or 20 minutes to make a drug bust. I’m not sure what happened, but I know I still did the right thing. You’re always on duty. And you never stop learning. If you think you’re doing enough or doing everything to the best of your ability, you’re lying. You can always adapt to become better.”

Earlier I spoke about the genesis of Fear’s alter ego and image being a parody of society’s fear for its own members. “People know and care what’s going on but don’t want to take that extra step because of their own fear, apathy and natural sense of self-preservation,” he had said. He and I had e-mailed each other before our interview and he was very eager to discuss his philosophy of crime-fighting with me. Before I interviewed him, I was cautious about letting one hero or another soapbox about his or her personal mission, but I knew I had to get to the bottom of the superhero mentality come Hell or high water so at this point in our interview I put down my questions and told him to hit me with it, as it seemed to be involved in every aspect of his efforts as a detective.

“A lot of the mentality that should be given to what we do is to stand up for what’s right. To sit by and watch something happen is purely unacceptable; we were all raised better than that. It’s an anonymous act of citizenry – not costumed or masked, just remaining anonymous in a lot of ways. There are those who do this to boast their names and deeds, and that’s not me at all. I’m interested in getting the word out about citizenry.

“The name Fear is not in the respect that a lot of people think. It’s not always that people are apathetic; sometimes they’re afraid of their common man and fear for their own life. In Philadelphia there’s a mentality of ‘stop snitching’ and it’s one of the biggest problems in Philly – and a lot of it has nothing to do with people condoning crime; they’re afraid to say anything because they fear the fact that they’ll be the next one shot, attacked, stabbed because they stepped up to help their common man.

“If I were walking down a street with a group of my friends and saw someone getting mugged…first off, it’s strength in numbers – fear should not be there. Second, it should be the desire to want to help despite your own personal safety. It’s sad and deplorable that people do not find the means and way to co-exist with one another. I’m not a pacifist by nature, but I guess I am an idealist.

“I think that leads to the general philosophy about what I and the others in the RLSH community are involved in. What we do is something that everybody should be doing. Everyone should have the desire to help, from checking on their neighbor, going down and looking around their block, taking an assertive nature with the intention of always wanting to help someone else in every respect – the charity RLSH, the crime fighters, etc – this is not something that makes us superheroes, which is why I don’t use that term. This is not heroic; so much has been lost over the years of ‘being there for someone.’ At the very least, if you see someone being attacked, call the police – don’t just stand back.

“It’s a disease that needs to be cured. I’m not a symbol – I am but a man, but I’m a man who wants to help. I’m not proud of my past, and what I do now is not a redemption; it’s just a realization that what I was doing was wrong and that I have to help people however I can.”

Fear also attests that he rarely comes across crimes to intervene on at all. “It’s not as often as people think,” he said, “or as often as some RLSH claim it happens to them. People assume it’s like in the comics where you go kick a door in and kick the crap out of someone; I learned very fast it’s [often] quite the opposite. There are RLSH who have never come across any crime, which is not a bad thing. It’s not fun or exciting to be in a fight, and those who think it is are doing this for the wrong reasons. If you walk around looking for a fight, eventually you’re going to find one.”

In the course of his life changing from criminal to crime-fighter, Fear’s relationship with his local law enforcement turned a 180. “I began looking at things through an investigator’s eye, like a cop – I learned how to gain information and build evidence to submit to police that they can use.

“I’m strictly anonymous and dropping off tips that way. It’s very hard to prove what we’ve done – I’d have to go into court and testify. I’m perfectly content being completely anonymous; it saves me the trouble of having to talk to and deal with them. Once I’ve found a dealer worthy of stepping forward and saying who I am and what I’m doing, I will, but I’d like to stay anonymous because it’s not about me. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it as long as they’re getting dealers off the streets.”

Both heroes I’d interviewed at this point lived, breathed, ate and slept crime-fighting, but distinctions were starting to arise. Ecliptico mentioned case-building against drug dealers and pedophiles at a handful of opportunities in our interview, but Fear spent nearly his entire time with me outlining his long-standing casework and undercover efforts. Fear’s “bigger picture” mentality started to show by this point and so I steered our discussion towards morality and crime-fighting.

“Morality enters a lot of it, since we don’t have guidelines, so it comes down to personal conscience when you’re getting done what you need to accomplish,” he said. He informed me that a lot of RLSH are very “red white and blue Captain America types” and others live outside the law to get the job done. “As long as they’re ok with it and it doesn’t cross the line of breaking the law itself, I understand that. I’ve had to cross my moral line myself – I don’t want to be around drug dealers anymore but in order to accomplish what I need to, I have to be. The average corner dealer will sell to anyone, and they’re a problem but getting rid of them is temporary. You need to get rid of the suppliers […] who are putting the drugs out on the street in the first place. Even if it’s not morally right, since I’m not befriending them to gain access to drugs it’s sort of an ‘ends justify the means.’ In order to get rid of them, I have to do it.”

Fear’s analysis of morality was related very closely with his feelings on corrupt cops. Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph “Joe” Arpaio may tout himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” but many controversies surrounding him, including allegations of profiling and abuse of power, earned him the title “America’s Worst Sheriff” by the editorial staff of the New York Times. Fear pointed me to some of the news articles surrounding Arpaio’s alleged law-bending (or breaking) and discussed him at length. “It’s hard [for other people] because he’s so corrupt but gets the job done,” Fear said. “It’s like Frank Rizzo in Philly, who had connections to the mob but became a symbol for stopping crimes in the city. I really don’t condone them – I believe just as much good can be accomplished without throwing the bad in. There are certain lines in morality that can be crossed but there are others that can’t. The law here has crossed quite a number of those lines on a lot of occasions. I mean, why do you think there are whole websites dedicated to ousting Arpaio on his corruption?”

Finally, with our conversation working its way around to personal judgment of public figures, curiosity got the best of me and I felt I had to ask about the critics. I was a bit concerned about pissing him off, but it seemed to be a question worth asking. “How do you feel about people who criticize or heckle the RLSH lifestyle?”

“If you’re not actively out there helping others genuinely for the sake of doing it, then shut the hell up,” Fear said. “If you’re gonna sit there and criticize someone for trying to help others and make a positive difference - regardless of whether you agree with them wearing a costume or not – then you’re an asshole.

“This is a mindset – a complete way of life. Helping never stops.”