In the mid-1990s, the bikers, the Greencoats, and the tough soccer hooligans on social welfare still ran Hundige. So, when my teenage gang wanted to resell their stolen merchandise, we had to go through them. This transaction happened at the Mall Pub, the neighborhood’s main trade hub for stolen goods. My boys were small, and they were immigrants, so sometimes, we just got mugged and beaten.
The people who hung out at the pub were bikers and wannabe bikers, plus your standard drunks and local bodega boys. There were hardcore supporters of the soccer team Brøndby, too, and kids from a local gang called Red and White. Strong guys who liked to fight. They had an apartment where they sold weed, and back then, the cops used to call one of the streets in Askerød Pusher Street. It was a rough environment, and if you wanted to be left alone, you had to be strong. I didn’t care about getting beat up, so I decided to be the one who talked back. That became my role: the guy who walked in front and the guy who took revenge.
When I was only fourteen, my worst enemy was a man named Tonny. He was in his early twenties, and everybody was afraid of him. Tonny was a member of Red and White. He was a big, ripped, strong guy who always walked around bare-chested and in shorts to show off his muscles. He knew karate and constantly kicked things to exhibit his strength. He kicked lampposts, signs, anything he could put a visible dent or a hole in. A lot of the time, he walked around with a hunting rifle in his hands. He was this white, wannabe Rambo. Tonny didn’t care about anything. He just wandered around with his hunting rifle, threatening everyone who looked even remotely foreign. He was a very scary person.
Tonny would routinely kick my friends too and kicking me became a sort of sick ritual he performed every time he saw me. He would call me “Little perker,” kick me in the back, then spit at me. He hated me because I talked back. At that time, I hated my life so much I didn’t care. I wanted to die, and he was welcome to kill me. He didn’t understand why this little shit didn’t just shut up. He beat me up several times. A punch in the gut, a kick in the back, and a gob of spit in my face. Then I would run away, yelling, “Fuck you!”
One time, Tonny brought his hunting rifle. He said, “Tell all your perker friends that if I see so much as one perker in the street, he’s getting a bullet.” Then he fired a shot right above my head.
I got the point then: This wasn’t a game. These people were dangerous. I ran and ran, and when I stopped and looked back after a while, he was still standing there, looking at me. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” he shouted.
But I shouted back, “Fuck you, you Danish bastard! You White motherfucker! Fuck you!”
A group of guys who were sitting at a laundromat heard me talking back to a grown man with a gun, and after that, I had earned my stripes in the immigrant community.
Tonny was the leader of the biker community in Askerød, and he had soldiers. Three of them were called Karate Karl, Jimmy, and Tiny. They were all in their twenties, and now they were after me. I took detours to avoid them, and one day, I walked above the train station to get around the pub where they hung out. But they had my route figured out and caught up with me at the parking lot.
They had been beating me regularly for years, but that day, they jumped and stomped on me. They didn’t care that I was only fourteen. I was a punk who needed to be taught a lesson: no more talking back. They gave me a serious beating, and that episode turned me into a real thug.
I decided to get back at them, so I was going to wait for them to come out of the pub, good and wasted. Then I was going to beat them so hard they would never touch me again. I decided to go after Tiny in a way that everybody would hear about, and no one would ever forget.
A couple of nights later, one of my friends and I were ready. We had arranged for two younger boys to be on the lookout, and I was armed with a couple of thin but sturdy crowbars. My friend (whose name is being withheld) and I hid behind a couple of shopping trolleys and waited for Tiny. He was around twenty-five, a supporter of the local Nazi branch, and looked up to Red and White in Askerød. He was also a regular bar fighter and a soccer hooligan. I hated his guts.
I knew that at some point during the night, Tiny would leave the pub to buy weed from a big local dealer named Holger. Tiny would walk past the gas station, cross a lawn, and end up where I planned to attack.
Things went according to plan. I jumped Tiny and started beating him with the crowbars. The two younger boys and my friend were initially not supposed to take part in the assault, but in the end, they were all stomping on Tiny while I repeatedly hit him in an absolute rage. I kept hitting him in his head, and I didn’t stop to think whether he would die or not. I didn’t give a fuck. I wanted him to die. That would have served me better. I welcomed the idea because then it would all stop, once and for all. But I also kept hitting him because I wanted to be a hero. The neighborhood protector. The guy who was against everyone who attacked us in Askerød. The guy who beat down those who walked around shooting and calling us “fucking perkere” and “black scum.” The guy who wasn’t afraid to stand up to the bikers, the Greencoats, and the racists. I wanted to be that guy, and when I beat up Tiny, I was. They deserved it.
It added to my reputation as the fearless boy, the one who took revenge with a ferocity that bordered on outright insanity. Tiny survived without permanent injuries, and the police never knew about the incident. The rules of the street were obeyed. I had achieved my goal. My enemies saw me as a monster, and Tonny, Jimmy, Tiny, and Karate Karl never touched me again. I also learned a lesson: Violence works. Might is right. What is wrong to others seems right for me.
After beating up Tiny, I made a decision to be on the giving instead of the receiving end of the beatings. I only knew violence from my father, but in Askerød, beatings were everyday events. People would punch you, and if you didn’t fight back, that made you an easy target for everyday ass whoopings. I didn’t want to be that guy because nobody liked that guy. So, in order to be accepted, to gain recognition, I allowed myself to become evil.
In a world swarming with social outcasts, drunks, and junkies, there was enough easy prey to go around. The last Thursday of every month, the welfare recipients got their unemployment checks, and a lot of them went straight from the social security office to the Mall Pub. Here, I bided my time until they were adequately wasted, and then I struck.
None of those welfare recipients let their money stay in the bank. They took out every dime—1,000 or 1,200 kroner. So, when they staggered home, we mugged them. When they got drunk out of their minds, it was also easy to enter the pub and pick their pockets. We even stole from them when they were in the public toilets taking a dump. We waited till we knew they were sitting down, then we kicked down the door and took their clothes. They couldn’t get up because they were afraid, they would shit on the floor.
But we didn’t just go after the weak. We also mugged the strong biker types. When they were drunk and we had the numbers, they didn’t stand a chance. We were assholes.
We made good money committing burglaries too. My friends and I would steal a car and prowl about Zealand, the island where Copenhagen sits. The Opel Kadett was the easiest to steal. I had a friend who could open and jump-start an Opel Kadett using only a teaspoon. Fords were easy too, but car makes like BMW and Saab were more difficult. On a regular night, we would roam around the residential neighborhoods until we found a car. It had to be well outside of Askerød so that the police would not automatically assume it was us. Normally, it took about two to three minutes to break in and jump-start a car. Then it was on to some provincial town.
For a while, we mainly went after specific jackets from clothing stores. They cost around 750 USD, and my friends and I could strip a store of all its jackets in only four minutes. Finding a buyer was easy. We knew where we could sell them. At the bars, you could always find buyers, and our friends and cousins wanted to buy too. We normally charged one-third of the original price. Eventually, everyone knew that we always had stolen goods.
The first night I stole some jackets, I filled my black trash bag with so many that I couldn’t carry it all the way back to Hundige. Instead, I had to hide the bag in a bush and call up a Turkish guy who had a cousin who was willing to buy the whole lot. There were five jackets. The guy paid the equivalent of $600 total in kroner, which for a teenage boy was a lot of money.