Manuel Medrano is a former member of the Arizona Mexican Mafia, also known as the New Mexican Mafia, a US prison gang. He was in and out of the Arizona Department of Corrections for 20 years and served time for armed robbery and drug trafficking.
Medrano speaks with Business Insider about the gang structure and hierarchy, as well as ties to the cartels. He covers gang tattoos, language, and rivalries with the Border Brothers. He also talks about the loose alliance the gang had with the Aryan Brotherhood. Medrano discusses corrupt prison guards and offers his opinion on mass incarceration and US drug policy.
The Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, originated in 1957 in the California prison system. According to law enforcement, the gang is splintered into the New Mexican Mafia, founded in Florence, Arizona, around 1974, and other factions. Many prison gangs in the US take the name Mexican Mafia, including the Mexikanemi, or Texas Mexican Mafia.
Find out more: phasetwooflife.org
https://www.youtube.com/c/CHRONICLES1
Medrano speaks with Business Insider about the gang structure and hierarchy, as well as ties to the cartels. He covers gang tattoos, language, and rivalries with the Border Brothers. He also talks about the loose alliance the gang had with the Aryan Brotherhood. Medrano discusses corrupt prison guards and offers his opinion on mass incarceration and US drug policy.
The Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, originated in 1957 in the California prison system. According to law enforcement, the gang is splintered into the New Mexican Mafia, founded in Florence, Arizona, around 1974, and other factions. Many prison gangs in the US take the name Mexican Mafia, including the Mexikanemi, or Texas Mexican Mafia.
Find out more: phasetwooflife.org
https://www.youtube.com/c/CHRONICLES1
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TechTranscript
00:00 My name is Manuel Medrano, a.k.a. Cricket.
00:02 I was a member of the Arizona Mexican Mafia,
00:05 and this is how crime works.
00:07 For the most part, if you look at the victims
00:11 of the Mexican Mafia,
00:13 they're gonna be other members of the Mexican Mafia.
00:16 Looking back, I mean, it's ridiculous.
00:18 No matter what, you're always gonna find
00:20 some kind of villain amongst yourself.
00:23 You know, it's just a hypocrisy
00:25 of being a part of this organization.
00:28 [whirring]
00:30 When I was 17, I was transferred to adult court.
00:36 I had been in a lot of trouble already as a juvenile.
00:39 So they transferred me to adult court in 1995.
00:42 Going to prison originally, they gave me six and a half years.
00:46 My original crime, I was charged with an armed robbery.
00:49 It was a carjacking.
00:51 You know, I just wanted to be part of the cool crowd,
00:53 and that's what it was.
00:54 The members of the Mexican Mafia
00:56 were somebody that we had all heard of
00:59 throughout our time, you know, as juveniles, as kids.
01:01 We looked up to these guys.
01:03 So when I got there, my crime was dangerous enough
01:08 to where I ended up on a higher-level yard.
01:10 And so I just jumped head on into, you know,
01:14 obligating myself to the organization.
01:16 And like any other youngster,
01:18 they used me to do multiple things.
01:20 I mean, stabbings, moving drugs.
01:23 I was in a gang as a kid.
01:25 I was from a neighborhood in the west side of Phoenix.
01:29 You heard about these Mexican Mafia members that ran stuff.
01:33 You heard about the homicides they committed in prison.
01:36 Everything sounded so glamorous the way they put it.
01:40 And that movie "American Me" had come out,
01:43 and that really had a huge influence on us.
01:46 After the movie came out, everybody was running around
01:49 with their shirts buttoned all the way to the top.
01:51 To become a member, it's not necessarily a myth
01:55 that you have to kill somebody.
01:56 However, there's a lot of favoritism.
01:59 There's a lot of nepotism.
02:01 So there's a lot of people that get accepted
02:04 and get made without the actual homicide having been done.
02:08 But it's a, you know, expectation that they will kill
02:12 for the organization when the time comes.
02:15 At the time, I think the count was 150 members total.
02:19 We like to think about it as, you know,
02:21 we're the elite of the prisoner system.
02:24 Originally, when I was made, I had not killed anybody yet.
02:28 My high-ranking member took a liking to me,
02:30 and so he pushed my -- well, there was a couple of them,
02:33 but they pushed my name through, and I was voted on,
02:35 and I became a member.
02:37 Within a few months, I did kill another member in bad standing,
02:43 and that solidified it.
02:46 I think it took me a while to get to that point.
02:49 And I think there's a way to stop it
02:53 before it goes that far.
02:55 I regret it all.
02:57 The patch itself in Arizona, the tattoo that they wear,
03:07 it's a sun with a double M
03:10 that comes down into double swords at the bottom.
03:13 It has a saber-tooth skull above the two M's in the middle
03:17 and then a black rose in between the double M's.
03:21 Only people that have killed a member in bad standing
03:25 or a member in the old Mexican mafia
03:27 can even put that black rose in the middle of the patch.
03:31 There is no model, per se.
03:33 Everybody speaks about this cause that we have.
03:36 It's a recruitment tool.
03:38 They talk about cultural aspects of it,
03:41 the Aztec, the Mayans, you know,
03:43 try to put that kind of spin on it
03:46 and just make you be prideful in your race.
03:50 I used to tell younger people
03:53 about the cause that we were fighting for,
03:55 and if they were to ask me to define it,
03:57 I wouldn't be able to.
03:58 You know, in the end, it's just about drugs
04:00 and money and, you know, power.
04:02 You know, that's all it is.
04:05 The main rules, I mean, they have the no snitching,
04:07 no homosexuality.
04:09 At one time, no drugs.
04:11 You were not allowed to partake in any kind of drugs.
04:14 That changed later.
04:15 A lot of these rules are broken multiple times.
04:18 I mean, if you see a member in bad standing
04:21 or a member of the old at any time,
04:23 if the doors were to pop, you have to try to kill 'em.
04:28 When you're in this SHU program,
04:31 a lot of the times the guards will make a mistake
04:35 and open the doors on accident,
04:37 and so you always have to be ready for that.
04:40 You know, you're up all day waiting for that, basically.
04:43 You're always supposed to be ready for war,
04:45 and the money situation, everything has to go up.
04:48 As it comes in, the rule is that you spread it
04:54 amongst the brothers, those that are
04:56 within your ranking system.
04:59 As a normal carnal without rank,
05:03 you're just considered a brother.
05:05 Then there'll be the ranking system.
05:07 You have a captain, a lieutenant, a sergeant.
05:09 You know, you have a lieutenant that has three sergeants.
05:12 Then the three sergeants each have five
05:14 or six cardales under them.
05:16 The money will go up through that pyramid.
05:19 That's where a lot of the problems obviously come in
05:22 because people feel that money's always being held back,
05:25 and so that rule will be broken quite often.
05:28 The biggest rule is to always maintain contact.
05:32 One of the reasons a lot of members have been killed
05:35 is because when they get out of prison,
05:37 they kinda just forget about everything.
05:40 They stop contact.
05:42 They just move on with their lives.
05:45 A lot of the times, the problem is
05:47 they don't change their lives,
05:49 so they continue with crime,
05:51 and they'll get locked back up,
05:52 go in there and try to give excuses
05:54 as to why they couldn't ride,
05:55 or whatever their little, whatever the excuses are,
05:59 and for the most part, it never works,
06:01 and so a lot of members have been killed
06:04 behind that rule alone.
06:06 [motor whirring]
06:09 It started in California in the early '50s, '57, I believe,
06:16 but the Arizona faction started in the early '70s
06:20 by three juveniles, actually, that came into the system,
06:24 and they started La Familia,
06:26 and then shortly thereafter,
06:28 took on the name Mexican Mafia.
06:30 Arizona had some influence from California,
06:36 but was also autonomous,
06:37 and now they are basically,
06:41 it's not together, necessarily,
06:44 but friendly and on working terms.
06:47 The administration was originally
06:50 the ones that named them old and new,
06:52 but they were all the same thing at one point.
06:55 These are members that just split into two factions.
06:58 It was just the internal struggle, if you will.
07:01 The organizations themselves kinda used it
07:04 as a way, I guess, just to keep it straight as well.
07:07 They would say, in Spanish,
07:09 we're from the nueva, the new.
07:12 They're from the vieja, the old.
07:14 [motor whirring]
07:16 I never got rank.
07:21 I wasn't a sergeant, lieutenant, none of that stuff.
07:24 I was just a member.
07:25 The five captains were the main ones that everyone knew,
07:29 and those five captains sat at the,
07:31 call it the mesa, the table.
07:33 We have the mesa system or table system
07:37 where everything is voted on through them,
07:39 so you had to be a captain with a black rose
07:43 to sit at the table.
07:44 The five captains set all the rules, the regulations.
07:47 They changed the rules.
07:48 All the politicking would go through them.
07:50 We're still all supposed to be brothers,
07:53 and we're all supposed to be equal.
07:57 It's a name only.
08:00 That is the way it's supposed to be.
08:02 Obviously, the captains have a lot more power,
08:05 but again, it's more of a popularity contest.
08:10 If you're a brother, you basically are expected to know
08:15 what it is you're supposed to be doing,
08:17 whether that's establishing stores on the yards,
08:21 getting rid of people that shouldn't be on the yard,
08:24 bringing in dope or collecting dope on the yards.
08:28 [motor whirring]
08:32 In Arizona, our main rival,
08:35 as I was coming in as a youngster,
08:37 was with the old Mexican mafia.
08:39 The administration tried their best to keep them protected.
08:43 They have a thing where it was called
08:45 protective segregation.
08:47 In the later years of the '90s,
08:49 we started having problems with a group
08:53 that started to call themselves the Border Brothers.
08:55 That became a real big thing,
08:57 and California, at this point,
09:00 was behind the Border Brothers as well.
09:03 So we were actually in a war for quite a few years
09:07 against Mexican nationals or Border Brothers
09:11 and people that were born in California.
09:14 The Mexican mafia wanted to be the only organization
09:16 that had a patch, as far as on the Hispanic side,
09:21 the Mexican side.
09:22 The Border Brothers started wearing a patch.
09:26 They started being hit throughout the system,
09:30 and there started being riots.
09:31 It was probably about a three or four year timeframe
09:36 where it was going on.
09:38 In Arizona, they also have an Aryan Brotherhood
09:40 that was factioned off of the California Aryan Brotherhood.
09:45 It was actually a California member
09:46 that came into our system.
09:48 The Arizona guys kind of home grew it after that.
09:51 We did align with them, only in the '90s.
09:55 We didn't align with them only because of, obviously,
09:58 the offense to the black gangs.
10:03 It was just a loose allegiance.
10:05 I mean, our alignment more of just friends.
10:08 If there was something that the whites did wrong,
10:11 we could go to them,
10:12 and they would take care of it themselves and vice versa.
10:15 You know, obviously, if they bring in drugs,
10:17 they don't have to give a portion to the Mexican mafia,
10:20 and vice versa.
10:21 Everything stays within your own race
10:24 when it comes to that.
10:26 The blacks had multiple gangs.
10:28 They had the Mau Mau's, Crip gang.
10:30 They had the Muslims.
10:33 All of them were kind of against each other,
10:36 and the Aryan Brotherhood was against all of them.
10:38 I was part of a riot on the Santa Rita yard in Tucson,
10:42 and I got stabbed in my neck.
10:44 And I spoke to my mom, and my mom was born in Mexico.
10:49 And when I told her what was happening,
10:51 she was like, "What are you?
10:52 "You're just ridiculous.
10:54 "Like, what are you talking about?
10:55 "It's the same people."
10:56 And I would tell her, "No, you know, it's different, Ma.
10:59 "You don't know, you know, you don't understand."
11:01 And she would just be, you know,
11:03 she would cuss me out in Spanish,
11:05 just, you know, "You guys are stupid," kind of.
11:07 And, you know, now that I can look back and I can see
11:11 there's no big bad wolf out there
11:13 that we were fighting against.
11:14 For the most part, our victims were ourselves.
11:18 [machinery whirring]
11:21 There's not a lot of members on the street.
11:26 We don't usually make it that long,
11:31 because there's a whole task force
11:33 that's established for the prison gang.
11:36 It was called the Violent Street Gang Task Force.
11:39 It was, I believe, two detectives from the Phoenix PD.
11:44 They had members from the FBI,
11:46 from every organization you could think of.
11:48 And so those were the ones that were
11:51 basically on us all the time.
11:55 It was tough.
11:56 They would follow me everywhere.
11:57 I'd walk in restaurants
11:58 and they'd be sitting and they're eating.
12:00 They would go to houses of, you know,
12:02 family of loved ones and they would tell 'em,
12:04 you know, "Hey, your son is hanging out
12:06 "with a real bad guy.
12:08 "He's suspected in multiple homicides."
12:11 And they would just, you know,
12:12 try to make it as tough as possible for me out there.
12:15 So when there's a member that's gonna get out or something,
12:18 usually they're getting out with
12:19 some established things that need to be done.
12:22 The problem is some of these guys will get out
12:26 and even though they left the organization,
12:28 they're still into drugs or into money or whatever.
12:32 So they'll go back to their neighborhoods
12:33 and they'll say who they were
12:35 to try to get their neighborhood
12:36 to give them drugs and money.
12:37 And that'll always get back to a member in good standing.
12:42 And so that's how we usually find them
12:44 to be able to kill them.
12:45 And me getting out, I did have a few names
12:49 that I needed to, that were on the list to be killed.
12:53 Upon being released, I right away tried to make connections
12:57 with drug dealers that were already established
12:59 on the streets.
13:00 At first, I tried to use being a Mexican mafia member
13:05 to influence them,
13:09 but that actually scared a lot of them away.
13:11 People, there's a history of bullying
13:14 amongst the Mexican mafia
13:16 where they would approach these drug dealers with,
13:20 hey, we're the Mexican mafia and we want this and that.
13:24 And they just take instead of, there's no give back.
13:28 So what I started doing really was
13:30 I had conversations with the guys
13:33 and I was like, listen, I understand our history.
13:37 That's not what I'm about.
13:38 The only thing I'm asking you to do
13:39 is give me a better number than you give most people.
13:43 At the time, methamphetamine was a big thing.
13:46 And that's what I was mostly involved in,
13:51 pounds of methamphetamine.
13:52 I was sending to Kentucky
13:55 where it was double the price from Arizona.
13:57 It wasn't like I had to send 80% of my proceeds to anybody.
14:08 The established amount for non-members
14:12 is they do have to give up a third
14:13 of anything they bring into the system.
14:16 So if you bring in three grams of heroin,
14:18 one of those is going to the Mexican mafia.
14:21 But us within ourselves,
14:24 we're pretty free to make money
14:26 and do whatever we need to do for that.
14:29 It just comes down to that rule of staying in contact.
14:33 So if you get a letter saying,
14:35 hey, my sister needs a TV,
14:39 then you get the sister a TV
14:40 and you're basically keeping people happy.
14:44 Everything that came into prison
14:47 was what was controlled by the Mexican mafia.
14:50 You couldn't bring dope in and make money
14:53 without giving them their third.
14:55 Now with the connections to California
14:59 and the cartels and stuff,
15:02 things are a little bit more organized
15:04 and established with the drug trade.
15:06 And they started legitimate businesses
15:10 and putting up car shops and different things like that.
15:13 It depends on the members that are on the street.
15:18 There was a few members in Tucson
15:21 that were bringing tons and tons of dope from Mexico.
15:25 They had that connection out there.
15:27 I know California had a little bit
15:29 more established connections
15:31 with the Arellano Felix cartel at one point.
15:35 It's not like saying the Mexican mafia
15:37 is working with the cartel.
15:39 It's just, this member has a connection with the cartel.
15:44 And if you need dope, we can get it, obviously.
15:47 I mean, if you need a thousand pounds, it'll be here.
15:50 One of the big things that was happening in my day
15:54 was coyoteing the Mexican nationals,
15:56 bringing them over the border was a big thing.
15:59 That was one of the things
16:00 that was a little more organized.
16:02 You know, usually we wouldn't do it ourselves.
16:04 We're not gonna take that type of risk,
16:07 but you could send your soldiers that are looking up to you
16:12 to go bring 10, 20 of the, what they call chickens,
16:17 boyos, across the border and bring the money back.
16:22 And that was, I mean, that was huge.
16:25 And I believe still is.
16:27 Just watching the news, you can see the stash houses
16:29 that they catch were full of Mexican nationals being held.
16:34 And that was the other side of it.
16:36 A lot of them were sent to a stash house
16:38 and they would be held there until their family paid
16:41 whatever was agreed upon.
16:43 And yeah, absolutely, that's still happening.
16:45 People usually come into the system already with a name.
16:55 A lot of us did time together in juvenile hall.
16:59 And so there's always some kind of connection.
17:04 His dad may be in prison, his uncle.
17:07 As people are coming into the system,
17:10 you kind of know from their neighborhood
17:12 or their family who they are.
17:15 There is no obligation to the organization.
17:18 You don't have to be a part of it.
17:20 The only obligation you have is if there's a riot,
17:24 you have to take part in it.
17:25 As a Chicano or a Mexican,
17:29 I really only took part in sponsoring one member.
17:34 I recruited, I talked to younger kids about the cause
17:37 and I did all of that stuff as well.
17:40 Everybody's paperwork is read
17:42 when they're coming in the system.
17:44 You would read people's case.
17:46 The pre-sentence report was the biggest thing
17:48 that would have a lot of clues.
17:51 Anybody with a sex offense,
17:53 there's no way that you're going to become a member.
17:57 Other than that, there are really no guidelines.
18:01 You don't even have to be Mexican
18:02 to be in the Mexican Mafia.
18:03 It's just a matter of, you know,
18:06 we say, you know, what's in their heart.
18:08 You know what I mean?
18:09 If they're willing to put in the work
18:11 and be a part of it,
18:13 then they can work their way into being that.
18:23 In Arizona, we have no color system.
18:25 In California, obviously, that's their thing.
18:27 They have the surreños with the blue and stuff.
18:29 Arizona doesn't have that.
18:31 In Spanish, la M is just the M.
18:34 It's just a shortening of the Mexican Mafia
18:36 calling it la M.
18:37 In Arizona, we don't use the black hand as a signifier.
18:42 Some of the old Mexican Mafia did,
18:45 but we have our own.
18:47 I had the tattoo, the Mexican Mafia tattooed on my back.
18:51 In Old English, you have four-inch letters, huge.
18:54 The government actually paid to cover it.
18:56 I mean, it was crazy.
18:58 I couldn't walk around the rest of my life
18:59 with Mexican Mafia tattooed on my back like that.
19:01 So yeah, they paid to have a tattoo artist
19:05 actually come in and cover it up for me.
19:09 The Arizona Mexican Mafia uses a lot of Nahuatl,
19:12 which is the Aztec language.
19:14 A lot of members learned that
19:16 throughout their time in prison.
19:19 We would use it a lot to write each other.
19:23 For the purposes of administration,
19:26 couldn't read our letters kind of as code.
19:29 There's been other codes that we've made
19:32 and come up with in there,
19:35 just kind of bingo type codes
19:37 where you put letters in different spots
19:40 and only the other person would know it.
19:41 And every member usually has a code name in Nahuatl as well.
19:46 That way we could speak of other members
19:49 without the facility knowing who we're talking about.
19:53 It never works.
19:54 They usually already know,
19:55 but it's what we think at the time.
19:57 The biggest way is through legal mail.
20:00 You would get a case and print it out
20:03 as thick as you can get it.
20:04 In the back of one of the papers,
20:07 you could write whatever needs to be sent.
20:09 Now you have 300 pages of something
20:12 where one page in the middle somewhere may have a note in it.
20:17 It's gonna be real difficult to detect that.
20:19 Especially since they're not allowed
20:20 to actually go through your legal mail
20:23 the way they can regular mail.
20:25 There's another way where it's kind of,
20:27 you write with urine and when they get it in prison,
20:31 you could put fire to it and it'll come out kind of brown.
20:35 The best way to send messages is just word of mouth.
20:39 There's a lot of so-called secretaries,
20:41 usually members, wives or girlfriends.
20:44 Back then we would have a girlfriend
20:48 have two or three phones in her house.
20:52 Different members would call from different facilities
20:55 and she would put the phones on speakerphone
20:58 and then we could just talk to each other that way directly.
21:01 The biggest thing in prison was commissaries
21:12 as good as money, stamps was the big thing.
21:15 That is the currency of prison.
21:17 The NFL bets and all of that, everything was done in stamps.
21:21 Dope, you can buy with stamps.
21:24 There was two ways that people could pay or three actually.
21:27 If you brought in cash, if you snuck cash in,
21:31 cash was worth double.
21:32 So if you had $100, it was worth $200.
21:35 Commissary was one for one.
21:36 So I would give you a list the day before commissary
21:40 of everything I wanted you to order for me.
21:44 And that's how you would pay me.
21:46 Or you could do street to street where your loved one
21:49 would send the money to my loved one on the street.
21:53 And in that case, you had 10 days for the money
21:56 to be received by my per, whoever I was receiving it.
22:01 If it wasn't there within 10 days, it could double.
22:04 When you're talking about the economy in prison,
22:07 something that costs $20 on the street
22:10 is worth a couple hundred in prison.
22:12 And so when these guards, you offer them that type of money,
22:17 it's hard for them to say no.
22:21 The integrity only takes them so far.
22:24 Corruption is not difficult because of, I mean,
22:29 they're human, especially when you're young
22:32 and you're being offered big money
22:34 and you're getting paid $40,000 a year.
22:38 And these guys are waiving that amount of money to you
22:43 for doing something that seems almost too easy.
22:47 Some of them will be relationships.
22:52 The guys will get into a relationship with a woman guard
22:56 and then the woman just feels this obligation or love
23:00 or need to please.
23:02 And so they'll bring in anything.
23:04 Sometimes they're lied to.
23:06 "Hey, I just need you to bring me this pair of shoes."
23:09 But the pair of shoes is full of dope.
23:10 They just don't know it.
23:12 And sometimes they're told straight up what it is
23:14 and they're good with it.
23:15 It just depends.
23:17 I've seen guards open doors
23:18 and let people go in and stab somebody.
23:21 As far as training is concerned, that may be part of it.
23:25 I've seen them as young as 20 years old, 21.
23:27 They're just kids.
23:29 And you're dealing with career criminals,
23:32 people that have been in prison for the last 30 years.
23:35 I mean, the incarceration rate in the United States
23:38 were high up there in the world.
23:42 Just putting someone in a cell for five years
23:46 and then releasing them and expecting them to be different
23:50 than they were five years ago, that's not a plan.
23:53 That's not, it's not gonna happen.
23:56 If anything, I think it makes you worse.
23:59 In my day, there were no programs.
24:02 You can get your GED and that was basically it.
24:05 Just giving people the tools to do something
24:10 with their lives may even change them on the inside.
24:13 If you give them a little sense of worth,
24:16 you know what I mean?
24:17 When you're just sitting in there day to day,
24:21 feeling like you're warehoused,
24:24 I think it takes some of the humanity away from you as well.
24:27 You just fall in line with what's going on.
24:31 And so the killing, the drugs,
24:35 all this stuff just becomes normal.
24:38 It's not hard to become a murderer.
24:40 It's not hard to kill.
24:41 And so I think the Department of Corrections
24:46 would do everybody a favor if they did this,
24:50 if they separated everybody in that way,
24:52 younger from older, dangerous from non-dangerous,
24:56 but they don't.
24:58 Everybody just kind of gets mixed in.
25:00 And again, I know it's difficult.
25:02 How many facilities can you have?
25:04 And how many guards do you have to man these facilities?
25:08 But in a perfect world,
25:09 I think separation would be the best way.
25:13 I was released in 2001 on parole
25:21 and I was out for seven months.
25:23 I went back in on just a possession of marijuana charge.
25:27 I was out for four and a half months.
25:30 And I got locked back up.
25:32 I was pulled over with a gun
25:35 and in the car under the passenger seat.
25:38 Even though I got found not guilty,
25:40 the prosecution put in for the judge
25:43 to violate my probation or my parole
25:46 and sentenced me to 15 months in prison.
25:49 I was released April of 2003.
25:51 And then in May, we had the federal sting
25:55 where they called the meeting at the embassy suites
25:59 for all members.
26:01 There was like, I think 13 or 14 of us
26:04 on the street at the time.
26:06 And we all went to this meeting
26:09 where we talked about past stuff.
26:11 I talked, you know, homicides that we had done
26:14 and future stuff, homicides that we were gonna do,
26:18 drug deals that were on the horizon.
26:20 And it was all a setup.
26:22 One of the members, he was actually working for the feds.
26:27 They had video cameras, audio, everything set up.
26:31 And so 11 days after being released, I was rearrested.
26:36 And I went back to prison
26:39 and I thought I was gonna get out from there.
26:41 I didn't know, obviously, yet about the sting.
26:43 I thought I was just arrested on my violation of parole.
26:46 My son's mom, based on the fact
26:48 that she had been arrested in our case,
26:50 she had been indicted.
26:52 Few members felt that she would be the weak link.
26:55 So they had greenlighted her
26:57 and they were gonna kill her.
26:58 But no one spoke to me about it.
27:00 And everybody, we were all there together.
27:02 The people that made this decision,
27:04 one of them lived right next door to me at the time.
27:07 And so when the feds came and talked to me about it
27:12 and showed me the proof of what, you know,
27:15 this conspiracy to kill her was about,
27:19 and it wasn't necessarily that I didn't believe them
27:21 'cause I saw the proof.
27:23 So when I got back to the pod,
27:24 I brought it to their attention.
27:26 You know, I was first told that, you know,
27:28 you know, the organization comes first.
27:30 It's how, you know, all this type of stuff.
27:33 And I agreed, I knew that.
27:35 However, I felt that I should have been
27:40 at least included in the vote, you know,
27:43 that, you know, this is my son's mom.
27:45 She just had my son, little baby.
27:48 They agreed and apologized
27:50 and said it wasn't gonna happen,
27:52 but that I needed to talk to her
27:54 and ensure that she wasn't gonna speak out.
27:58 But that was the issue.
27:59 I had told her that she could tell on me,
28:04 go ahead and tell them whatever you need to tell them
28:07 to get your case dismissed, you know,
28:09 plea bargain, whatever you gotta do.
28:11 A couple of weeks later,
28:12 the feds came back with more info
28:15 than a taped phone conversation
28:18 where it was being sent out.
28:21 And so immediately,
28:23 the day the feds came with the information
28:28 about the phone call is when I told them,
28:32 you know, hey, go pick her up,
28:35 put her somewhere safe and we'll start talking.
28:38 They put her on the phone with me
28:40 and they had her checked into a hotel with my son.
28:44 I still remember, she was like, so you're gonna flip?
28:47 You know, she goes, what the (beep) is wrong with you?
28:50 And I was like, what do you want me to do?
28:51 You know, they're gonna kill you.
28:53 What do you want me to do?
28:54 I can't just leave you at the house.
28:57 And that was the end.
28:59 That was the beginning of the end, I guess.
29:03 They sent me to the CCA
29:06 and then I was there in the hole or segregation
29:11 for about, I think, four or five more years.
29:14 Was the end of my criminal career,
29:17 I guess you would call it.
29:19 I think that was the hardest time.
29:20 You know, I was, at the same time,
29:24 I was on lockdown 23 hours a day.
29:29 And in fact, there was,
29:30 they had enhanced security measures on me
29:34 because I had went to that CCA.
29:36 And so the marshals had put all these extra
29:41 security measures on me where I had to be housed alone,
29:45 rec alone, shower alone,
29:47 a lieutenant or above had to be there
29:49 to take me out of my cell.
29:51 But I still thought that I was gonna be,
29:53 I was gonna get life.
29:55 I never in my wildest dreams
29:58 thought that I was ever gonna get out.
30:00 I was in until 2015.
30:03 And now I've been out about nine years.
30:06 This other side that I'm doing now
30:14 with speaking out against it,
30:16 I think I owe it.
30:17 You know, there's a lot of kids
30:18 that look up to this [beep]
30:21 you know, that think that this is something
30:24 that is honorable, and it's just not.
30:28 Me and my son's mom started the non-profit
30:31 Phase 2 of Life.
30:33 Our target is the at-risk youth
30:35 and trying to keep these kids,
30:37 at the very least, away from these prison gangs,
30:39 but if we can, away from prison in general.
30:42 This is just about going into juvenile facilities,
30:45 schools, talking to these kids.
30:48 We've done fundraisers where we,
30:50 you know, we do back-to-school backpacks.
30:53 We've given PE equipment to schools.
30:56 We're just trying to do little things
30:57 in the community.
30:59 But in the long run, our hope is to,
31:03 you know, for this non-profit to have its own facility
31:06 where we can offer these kids some kind of trade,
31:09 you know, some sense of self-worth,
31:12 and have us there as adult guidance
31:15 for these guys.
31:16 A lot of these kids don't have that.
31:18 You know, I've talked to lots of people.
31:19 Now I've made contacts through, you know,
31:22 the YouTube channel, crazy as it sounds.
31:25 I have a couple members reaching out to me
31:29 that are still active and telling me things
31:32 that are going on within the organization now.
31:36 And I think it's just, it's a good way to know,
31:41 you know, the happenings of today.
31:44 They're no different than before.
31:46 It's the same drama, the same stuff.
31:50 Obviously, if I wouldn't have done
31:51 what I've been doing, this type of stuff,
31:54 nobody would know what I look like.
31:57 I've burnt myself by doing what I do,
32:00 but all of the older members that I did time with
32:04 are either doing life or they're out of the game altogether.
32:14 I think that the glamor behind it has been overblown.
32:19 Those movies, "American Me" and "Blood In, Blood Out"
32:22 were significant in making younger individuals,
32:27 kids, you know, with easily influenced minds,
32:31 see this as a glamorous thing to be a part of.
32:36 Although these are smart individuals,
32:43 they're convicts and for the most part,
32:45 they're drug addicts.
32:47 They're not the elite that people would like to,
32:50 you know, that we would like to portray ourselves as.
32:54 That's what I want to put out there more than anything,
32:58 is these kids to know that that hype is just that,
33:02 you know, that there's no cause, there's no family,
33:06 these aren't your brothers.
33:08 You know, you're gonna end up hurting your real family,
33:10 your own, you know, everything that you love
33:14 and that loves you for a bunch of fools
33:16 that are just playing pretend.
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