Locked In with Ian Bick - I Rose From Guard to Warden at Rikers Island — Here's the Truth About America's Most Violent Jail | Howard Robertson

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

Howard Robertson had every reason to go down the wrong path. His parents died. His siblings were in the streets. But instead of following them he chose corrections — and over a 22 year career from the late 1970s to the early 2000s he rose from correctional officer to captain to deputy warden to warden of Rikers Island — the largest and most violent jail in America. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, Howard pulls back the curtain on everything — from his brutal upbringing to what made him choose corrections to what Rikers Island looked like from the inside during its most violent era to the notorious inmates he encountered to how programs reduced violence to how politicians destroyed what it could have been to the problems with closing it and what the future of Rikers Island really looks like. _____________________________________________ #rikersisland #jail #truecrimestories _____________________________________________ Thank you to FACTOR & GLD for sponsoring this episode: Factor: Head to http://factormeals.com/lockedin50off and use code lockedin50off to get 50 percent off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only, while supplies last until 09/27/2026. (See website for more details). _____________________________________________ GLD: New customers get 40% Off with code LOCKEDIN at https://www.gld.com/ _____________________________________________ Connect with Howard Robertson: https://www.amazon.com/Student-Game-Become-Unstoppable-Smarts/dp/1977283896 _____________________________________________ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 Howard Robertson's Unlikely Journey 01:12 Overcoming Tragedy and Choices 02:29 Early Mindset: Learning from Role Models 03:53 Shooting for the Moon: Mentorship & Goals 05:02 Rising Above Average Through Hard Work 07:01 Is Drive Innate or Learned? 07:42 Family, Bad Paths, and Purpose 08:03 Helping Inmates and Preventing Recidivism 09:36 From Speaking to Writing: Reaching Youth 10:16 Authenticity in Storytelling: Why the Book Matters 11:01 Personal Stories: Bullying, Friendship, and Impact 13:02 How the Past Shapes Leadership Style 14:47 Navigating Street Ties Inside Rikers 18:00 Inmate Politics and Safe Resolutions 21:22 Respect, Boundaries & Saying No 23:40 Life Lessons and Staying Clean 24:43 Sponsor Segment: Factor Meals 27:40 Entering Corrections: Career Choice 29:34 Knowing the Community: Double-Edged Sword 30:14 Respect, Fairness, and Avoiding Violence 32:00 Overcrowding, Programs, and Jail Services 34:49 Correctional Culture: Then and Now 36:32 Political Changes & Rikers' Decline 41:13 Burough Jails, Funding, and Flawed Solutions 44:43 Sponsor Segment: GLD Chains 45:56 Corrections Leadership & Barriers to Progression 47:13 Mass Incarceration, Bad Policy, and Population Issues 51:01 Physical Conditions & Racial Makeup 54:35 Bail, Releases, and Systemic Injustice 56:39 Promotions, Process & Rules of the System 01:00:31 Programs: Entertainment and Violence Reduction 01:03:35 The Winner's Dorm: Transforming Inmates 01:04:41 Solitary Confinement: Problems & Alternatives 01:08:06 Expanding Special Housing and Culture Change 01:10:44 Medical, Mental Health, and Malingering 01:13:36 Mental Health, Career Impact and Life After 01:14:50 Defining Real Success for Youth 01:15:55 Numbers that Shock: Mass Incarceration 01:17:00 Notorious and Celebrity Inmates 01:18:36 Retirement, New Mission, and Legacy 01:18:56 Biggest Takeaways: Excuse-Free Success 01:19:56 Book Recommendation & Final Thoughts _____________________________________________ To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/LockedInWithIanBicka Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies.

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Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. My guest today is Howard Robertson, a man who had every reason to go down the wrong path. His parents died, his siblings were in the streets, the odds were completely stacked against him,

but instead of following that path, he chose something completely different. He got into corrections and eventually made his way to Rikers Island, the largest and most violent jail in America. Over a 22-year career from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, he rose from correctional officer to captain, to deputy warden, and ultimately to warden of Rikers Island itself. Today, he is finally sharing everything, the stories, the notorious inmates, the politics, the decay, and the truth about what it really takes to run the most dangerous jail in the country. I grew up in a drug-infested neighborhood on the south side of Jamaica, Queens, New York. When I was nine years old, my father was found dead in the street.

I had two older brothers, and over a period of time, drugs took both with them out. I had an older sister, and over time, drugs took out as well. When I was 18, my mother was killed, a boyfriend shot her. Now, my story gets deeper, but I always cut it off at that point because the point that I want to make to young people is we all have stories to tell. And if you don't have one, you know somebody else who does. You know, stories like, my father was. My mother was on drugs.

I grew up in force to care. I was molested as a child. My parents got divorced. We were homeless. You know, the stories go on and on. But I stress that you can't use your story as an excuse to do the wrong thing. I stress that you can't use your story as an excuse to mess with drugs in any way, shape, form, and fashion,

join a gang, be a bully, stop going to school, pick up an illegal gun, or to do anything that you're going to do anything that's not correct. And I point out that most successful people, they'll tell you that they use their story as fuel and energy and motivation to become successful in life. So using myself as an example, in spite of my story, as you know, I'm a retired warden from Rockers Island. How did you know at that age not to go down that path despite your circumstances? Well, we all know right from wrong. And we make decisions and looking at the path that my brothers took, looking at the path that a lot of my

friends took, looking at the path that some successful people took, it's an easy decision. I considered myself to be a student of the game growing up. Me and my crew, everybody, you know, went to college, got their degrees, became, you know, family men. And, but we were out there the street doing what we had to do. We knew that education was paramount. We knew that drugs was a no-no. We knew when to walk away from trouble. We knew when to run away from trouble. And, you know, we were respectful to everybody, but at the same time we were assertive, so nobody took us for chumps, as they say. And yeah, so again, I was a student of the game. And that's the name of my book, by the way, student of the game, because you got to

have both. You can be a killer in the classroom, straight-A student. But if you don't know how to maneuver through your neighborhood, you're going to end up getting bullied, maybe press into joining a gang, start using drugs because you want to fit in, you know, that type of thing. So you've got to be a student of the game. Did the people you surrounded yourself with your friends have that same mentality or were you kind of an odd duck? No, we all had the same mentality. And that's what, you know, brought us together and we had the same mentor, a guy named Philip Kelly. They called him Abadab because he had a silver tongue, as they say. And, you know, he taught us the ropes and taught me personally to shoot for the moon.

And I attribute that to a lot of my success. One day I'm hanging out in a place called the 40 projects. You know, we're playing basketball. He pulls me to the side. And he says, what are your goals? and I'm a sophomore going into my junior year in high school. And I really didn't have any. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

And he says, people shooting at nothing will usually hit nothing dead on the head. And he said, you got to get a goal and get a high goal. And that's when he broke down the signs of shooting for the moon because even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. And that sounded real slick to me being a student of the game. And so I said, that's like walking around, with a stacked deck. Basketball. I was on my high school team, but I was just average.

You know, I was average in the classroom. I was average dresser. I was average with the girls. Average on the basketball court. If I had died back then, they would have put a C on my headstone because I was just average. So I said, now, I love the game of basketball. I'm going to try this philosophy. If it works with basketball, I'm going to take this and I'm going to apply it to everything else I'm doing in my life. So my goal was the score. 50 points every time I stepped on the court. So I'm getting 50. But I couldn't just say that I wanted to score 50 points.

It was a process they had to go through. He had to make 200 jumpshots every day. You know, not shoot 200, make 200. Worked on my ball handing skills, kept my body in tip-top shape. I scored, of course, stayed away from drugs and alcohol. And guess what? One game, I did score 50. One scrimmage game, I scored 63.

But as a result of me trying to score, 50 points every time I stepped on the court and ended up leading New York City and scoring two years in a row averaging over 35 points a game my junior year. And of course there was something missing. I never got one scholarship

offer from anybody because I was averaging the classroom. But fortunately for me, I was now shooting for the moon at everything that I did. So every time I went to school, every time I took a test, my goal was to get 100 on the test. There was a process. Go to school every day, sitting in front of the

class, turn my homework assignment in on time, do the extra credit reports, studied before the night of the tests, went home, you know, got a good night's sleep, go to school that next morning, take the test. If I didn't get 100, I got a 97, 96, 98, and that's been the story of my life shooting for the moon. Now, this mindset you had earlier. as a kid, do you think you were born with that, or do you think that's something you have to learn on your own? I believe it's something that, it's tough to say. You know, all I know was that, you know, shooting for the more, I came on on top. And you make decisions, you know, because you have a lot of people in my own family.

Same mother, same father, same genes. They went left, I went right. So is it a learned behavior? or is it something that you born with? Did you ever look at the people around you and wonder why they went down a bad path? Well, that's not hard to figure out, messing with drugs, that tragic magic we used to call it.

Not going to school, joining the gang, doing all the things that young folks are doing now that's taking them down that wrong path. So one of the things that I'm doing, When I was working, let me just take you back. My goal was to reduce violence and lower the high-rated recidivism by hoping the inmates adjust the institutional living and developing socially desirable habits and behavior patterns

so that when they were discharged, they stand a better chance on not coming back. And with the hope of dedicated officers, civilian personnel, and volunteers, we were actually able to accomplish that goal at C-74. And it was done during the time when that jail was considered to be, be one of the most violent institutions in America.

Now that I'm retired and no longer working on Rockers Island, my goal is to keep young people out of the criminal justice system altogether. So my wife, who's a retired New York State court officer, the two of us, we designed a student enrichment slash anti-violence program that's geared towards keeping young people in school and on the right path. We cover multiple topics, bullying, gangs, drugs,

life behind bars, the domino effect of gun violence. And it's a slideshow. And each session takes approximately 35 to 40 minutes. And we've been blessed to be given speaking engagements in other parts of the country. A lot of the high schools and middle schools throughout New York City, Nassau and Suffolk County.

But I reached a point where I realized that I can't get in front of all the young people that I need to get in front of because I have life-changing information that I need to share with them and all that information is in this book, Student of the Game, and this is going to give me a means to reach all those people. And thus far, the book has only been out of a few months,

getting some great feedback from middle school students, high school students, teachers, basketball coaches, police officers, correctional officers, former inmates, mentors, community leaders. And they're telling me that the book is off the chart, that it's the real deal. And a lot of folks, I'm asking them, well, why do you say that? And they're saying because it's authentic. And then once they begin to break it down,

here's what they're saying. Most books that are written regarding gangs, regarding drugs, regarding gun violence, regarding bullying, they're written based on second and third-hand information. The authors, they don't know. never experienced the issues that they're writing about themselves. Gum violence, as I told you in my story, personally affected my life.

Drugs personally affected my life. Bullying, personally affected my life. I'll share a quick story with you, and then I'm sure you have some more questions. I'm on my way home from school. I'm a sophomore in high school. I look out ahead of me and I see this little white kid with all these books on his arms

and I'm thinking to myself that's somebody who I need to hang out with a Friday. He's going home and study like that and I'm saying it's a freaking weekend. I got a party to go to. I got a basketball game to play in. All the girls from the school are going to

be there. Hey, I'm going to have some big fun. And as I completed thinking that thought another group of kids from the same school started walking towards the little white kid with all the books on his arms. As they approached, they bumped them to him, knocked them down, glasses went one way, books went the other way, and it wasn't pretty.

So as I approached, I said, leave Shirley alone, that's my man, put my hand out, bullets gave me a pound, and they kept it moving. So I'm hoping this guy pick his books up. We introduced ourselves, name was Manning. I said, hey, I've never seen you around here before, man.

You knew to the school, knew to the neighborhood, And it turns out that he was new to the school, and he didn't live too far from me. So I said, listen, why don't you come hang up with me and my crew this weekend? I got a party to go to. I got a basketball game to play in. All the fine girls from the school were going to be there. Hey, we can have some big fun. Long story short, he took me up on my offer, and we became the best of friends all through high school.

During our senior year, we had an assembly program. They were honoring students who had. exhibited academic excellence. He got called up to the stage to receive an award. He walks up, clears his throat, and he starts off by saying, this is normally a time when the recipient of this type of award thinks his parents,

his older brothers and sisters, his teachers, his coaches, his counselors for helping him get to this point and his life where he's going to go off to college to pursue his dreams. He said, but I want to take this time to tell you, important is to be a great friend. Not a good friend, but a great friend. Then he proceeds to tell a story about how one Friday, he was going home from school to do the unthinkable. He was going home to commit suicide because he was tired of being picked on. He was tired of being disrespected.

He was tired of being bullied. He said, but it took six words to save my life, leave Shirley alone. That's my man. And he went on to say that the reason why he had all of his books on his arms and his other property, but because he wanted to spare his mother, you know, the pain and the hurt of being called up to the school to retrieve all of his stuff. And it was at that moment that I realized that you can never underestimate your actions in terms of what you do and what you don't do in terms of what you say and what you don't say when you see somebody being disrespected or bully.

And so I always challenge young people to always step up to the plate. And I cover that extensively in the student of the game. And that's why, you know, again, I believe this book is going to reshape and change. If you're someone who uses nicotine pouches, I've got a recommendation for you. You guys know I'm not switching products just because someone sends me a sponsorship. If I'm telling you to check something out, it's because I've actually made the switch myself. For the last year and a half, that's been Lucy Breakers. I've tried just about every nicotine pouch out there over the years,

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You know, I was one of those guys, again, grew up in the so-called hood. So I walked and talked like a guy who came from the inner city. You know, I walked with a little bit of swag, a lot of confidence. My conversation was always pep with a little bit of swing, street slang.

I was comfortable within my own skin, as they say. And so I never changed, you know, my style and my makeup. And I believe that, again, and going back to the authenticity, that the inmates recognized that I was a guy who was keeping it real, as they say, and treated everybody like human beings, not necessarily because of the way I grew up,

but I knew that you had a lot of good folks who were on account that made bad decisions, good people making bad decisions all the time. So, yeah, I believe it had a little something to do with it. But again, my style was just to treat everybody right. And I never had any problems whatsoever. Knew a lot of guys from the neighborhood. Supreme, Cawley, Pappy Mason, Fat Cat.

Didn't hang out with the guys, but they knew who I was. I knew who they were. Corley and I, we had a slightly different relationship because I went to school with his kids. older brother. And I hung out in the 40 projects because that's where the best ballplayers were at. And that's where he lived at. Share a quick story with you. I'm a young guy. I'm an assistant deputy. I was, I was an assistant deputy ward. And I'm running CPSU, the department's central punitive segregation unit. So wherever you was at in the system, whether you was in Brooklyn,

House, Queens House, C-95, C-74, didn't matter. If you got an infraction and was found guilty and you got Bing time or punitive segregation time, you got sent to the Central Bank. So I was in charge of that unit. Sitting in my office, one of my secretaries tapped on the door, excuse me, boss, Corley said he would like to speak to you. I was a little taking aback because Corley, he's a smooth guy,

knows how to stay under the radar and I don't picture him doing something that would get him put into the bang because he just he knows how to operate, he knows how to move and so I said, where's he at? He's in one, one egg. So I go to the cell

and as soon as he sees me, he jumps up, he runs to the cell gate and he says, called me by my nickname, which is, bruddy, he says, bruddy, you got to get me out of here. I said, well, what's going on, call it? He said, Hound Dog. Now, Hound Dog was an inmate.

I knew him as a kid when he was at Spofford. I worked at a place called Spofford, Juvenile, detention center in the Bronx before I became a correction officer. I knew Hound Dog from Spofford. He said, Hound Dog and his crew, they're trying to extort me. They said, they want me to put $1,000 in their account every week or else they're going to cut my face. They said in the street is one thing, but in here, you're just another N-word.

And I said, all right, man, well, where you want to go? I'm thinking, you want to go to. What jail you want to go to? He said, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to do my bank time. You know, that's the kind of guy he was. He said, just put me in three block. I said, call him.

I don't want no problems in my house, man. He says, everything is good. He was good. Personally escorted him to Three Block. Turns out a lot of guys from the 40 projects was in Three Block, and there was a guy who was a professional boxer. I believe his name was Bell. Holyfield's sparring partner called his people.

Put him in Three Block. He did his Bingtime, Left, never no problems. Supreme. And this story is in the book, was Supreme. I'm a young captain working out of a place called C-95. I was in charge of security. I'm literally walking out the front gate. Got one foot outside, one foot is inside.

The alarm goes off. I stepped back inside, I told the front gate officer, do me a favor. Call the control room. We either get on your radio and find out where the alarm is at. He said the alarm is in M. Now, M from the front gate, It's like a quarter of a mile.

Had a long day, but something told me, go down there and see what's happening. I missed already dressed, I'm a civilian clothes, walked down to Martin M, kick on the door, officer buzzed me in. I go into the A station where you can see out on the floor.

We got 100 inmates, 50 on either side. I see four officers dressed in ride gear and the captain, same rank as me, standing there and a stalemate was Supreme. He's standing there, he got his arms folded, got about 10, 15 other inmates standing behind him and I asked the officer, what's going on?

They said, well, this came from you, came from your office. He has to be transferred to a cell because of his status. Now, I don't know Supreme by Kenneth McGriff. I know him by Supreme, right? So the name, when it came across my desk, it really didn't ring any bells. So I go all on the floor, I tell the officers,

I said, listen, you guys stand down, told my peer, I got this, you know, break it down and go on back up front. They didn't want to use force on him because they knew who he was. And so you got to be aware that this guy can put hands on you in the street. And if they tried to use force, then you got 50 inmates in that, that dorm that may feel obligated, you know, to jump in. And so it was a scary situation for those guys. So again, I walk on the floor and I said,

Pram, let me holl at you for a minute. So I'll pull them to the side. And I said, listen, you're the biggest thing that ever hit Rockers Island. You're a multimillionaire. You're a celebrity. You're fucking Supreme, man. You're a rock star.

I can't leave you in a dorm. you know, for obviously or for obvious security reasons. So he's laughing because he knows that I'm gassing him up. But at the same time, he knows that the stuff that I'm telling him has a lot of truth to it. So he said, okay, man, I'll transfer. So I said, well, where's your stuff at? This guy had about 25 pairs sneakers, 25 sweatsuits, three big bends of commissaries, cigarette back then.

were allowed to smoke, cigarettes, bean pies, carry cakes, potato chips, sodas, slim jims, the works. All that's his stuff. So I'm like, how much time you need to pack up, man? You know, you want an hour, two hours.

I'm going to go back up front. I got some paperwork to finish. He said, no, no, no, I'm good. I'm ready to go right now. So you start divvying up the property. You know, you take care of that. You do this. You do that with somebody, you know, so on, so,

gets back from court, you know, let him have this. And I personally escorted him to Chin Upper. Two and a half, three weeks later, I get a phone call. Captain named Danny Burke. He had the same style as me. You know, it was fan firm. God needed something. If it wasn't breaking the rules, he's going to get it.

So Burke calls me. He says, you heard? I said, heard what? He said, Supreme is in New York. He's in the street. And he's looking for you. I said, looking for me. I'm one of the good guys.

What are you looking for me for? And he said, hey, oh man, he said, he got something for you. He said, no, he ain't got nothing for me. As fate would have it, my wife and I, we're going to see my nephew, Dave Edwards play in Basie Park, that's Supreme's territory. I pull up, I'm driving a Mercedes-Benz.

My goal was to get a belly, because, again, I'm shooting for the moon when it comes to cars, but I fell short, landing amongst the stars, and I got a Mercedes-Benz. That's the philosophy. So I pull up in beige Mercedes, and I see three triple-black bensers across the street. Supreme spots me, he steps out of the first car.

He starts walking towards me. Now, my wife, her antennas go up, because, again, she was on the job, and, you know, she's no way around. She said, what's going on? I said, I got this. So I get out of the car. I meet him in the middle of the street,

and we greet each other with the traditional, you know, black hug and handshake. Then he starts to talk about how he appreciated the way I handled that situation back on the rock with the transfer, and, you know, he has something for me. And I said, no, I said, I'm good, you know. I'm going to keep faking until I make it.

You know, I said, I gather beige, bends, one, you got three black ones. I'm a thousandaire. You're a millionaire. I said, but I'm good. But he's laughing because one of the things I point out in the book, you got to know how to say no. And so he says, well, you never know, man.

You never know. Those were the last words that he spoke. And I looked at it and I said, you know, I don't believe this guy was trying to put me on his payroll, so to speak, or put his hooks in me where he's going to hit me off with a bag. Now he can come back and say, yo, I need you to take care of so-and-so, so-and-so.

He's over in C-95, or he's in the H-DM. You know, I need you to do me a favor. I don't believe that that was intent, his intent. I believe that he was just the type of guy who wanted to say thank you, and that was the only way he knew how. But again, being a student of the game, I ain't want no parts of it.

All these years later, looking back, I still feel the same way. I don't believe that he was trying to, you know, get his hands on me where he can, you know, blackmail me or gain control of the way I operated on Rockers Island in terms of helping him or any of his crew. Recording these interviews every day can get exhausting, and because I've been in the gym every morning,

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See the website for more details. How did you end up in corrections? Well, I knew I wanted to be a parole officer, a probation officer, correction officer, you know, police officer, something on those lines. For some reason, it never hit me or never occurred to me

that I should have considered being a teacher also because those are the formative years and you get a good teacher. You can put a lot of folks on the right path. But I ended up, you know, being a correction officer and worked out well for me, rose up through the ranks rather quickly. And I believe I had a positive impact on a lot of guys.

Ebron and I were talking on the way here. One of the questions was, you knew a lot of guys from the street. Do you think that helped or hindered the way you did business? And I was saying that it cuts both ways because it's your homies, the guys that you grew up with, those are the guys that's going to come to you, look around, hey, man, can you bring me some, you know, some weed, you know, can you bring me, can you bring me some,

some coke, you know, can you bring me the handcuff key? But the guys that I grew up with and the guys that knew me from around the way, they were proud to see me doing my thing. And they never disrespected me, and they never disrespected my position. And, um, I always did right by everybody. Give you a real quick example. You got a guy in the car to, he saucy, excuse me, Cap, or excuse me, Depp, can you get me to the commissary?

So the first question out of my mouth is, well, when does your house go to the store? They go on Monday. Well, today is Tuesday. Yeah, but I didn't have no money in my account yesterday. Now, the average guy is going to say, you got to wait until next Monday. me.

All right, man, let's go. I take him to the commissary and C95, the officer's name was Francis. Hey, Miss Francis, look my man's shop. Now, I got a friend for life. I walk into a housing unit. There's a problem. Somebody get ready to get out.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's my man. He's a good dude. So knowing guys from the street, I still got props, but the way I conducted myself with all the guys who were incarcerated, that got the same amount of respect and never had any problems.

Why do you think some officers wouldn't handle it that way? Lazy. Lazy. There's no other way to cut it. Lazy. Do you think that adds to violence in a place like Rikers? Yes, it does. And here's why.

90-some-a percent of all the issues that we have are program service, related. You give the guys what they're supposed to have. You're sponsoring away all the excuses they have to act like knuckleheads. And they got a thousand and one services that we have to provide to them by law. You got the visits, clinic, law library, religious services, barbershop, commissary. We got to change. change the linen every so often. You got a newspaper. Give these work you want working TVs in the housing unit.

Quiet games, checkers, chess, cards. You know, you make sure you have all that stuff in place and you're going to eliminate most of the problems. And I made sure that these guys had all the stuff they had coming to them. Recreation. You have, I was listening to a talk show, one of the former commissioners.

were saying how they had, it was some, I thought I said it can't be right, some astronomical number like 3,000 fires in one year, and then he was proud that they had cut the number down to 300. 300 fires in one year? And then I was pointing out to some folks that every time there's a fire or a flood, it's not just some random guy setting a fire

or some random guy just flooding the chair because water using a flood, water's going to go wherever it wants to go. And in the cells, you got guys they got their sneakers lined up neatly on the wall. They got their legal work lined up neatly across the wall. They got the commissary in the buckets lined up neatly. You know, other sweatsuits, clothes, whatever they have.

And if somebody floods, and it gets on their stuff, they got a problem. So everybody in the house knows that somebody's getting ready to flood and they give the sanction because we haven't been to the yard in two weeks.

We haven't been to commissary in a week and a half. We got one telephone and we got 50 inmates in here. The shower's broke. So these guys are flooding trying to get the attention of the administration.

But if you know what you're doing in terms of jail you got offices that's walking around talking to guys, you're having your inmate council meetings every week, and you're getting all this information, and then you just take care of those issues. You don't have the fires, you don't have the floods, and you have very few problems.

Now, you're always going to have somebody whose life's mission, their goal in life, is to make your life miserable. You're going to have those guys, but it's a handful, and you can deal with that. You know, so you just got to provide the services, and it's a cakewalk. What year did you get on Rikers, and how old were you? I came on the job in 1979.

I was 27. You know, I graduated from college. I was 22, worked at Spofford for five years, and resigned when I got called by correction. And I retired from correction in 2001. I was 49. Now, you said Rikers was considered a very dangerous place and violent at that era? Well, it was, well, Rikers Island, it's the largest detention complex in the country. It's over 400 acres in size, and there's 10 different jails on Rackers Island.

One of those jails are called the Roomsom Singer Center. That's where the young ladies go, and they get arrested anywhere within the five boroughs of New York City. So everything that I talk about pertaining to Rikers Island pertains to the young ladies who, are listening as well as a young man. Each year that I work during my 22-year career, over 100,000 new admission inmates

passed through the system. 100,000. And we're just talking about from the five boroughs in New York City. It's a lot of people. And on any given day, the count, a total count, would be between 18 and 20,000. A lot of people.

And so when you have, that many people in one system, yeah, you're going to have, you're going to have violence. But if you got the right administrators running the jails, the violence can be kept at a minimum. What was the average crime people were there for, or the most common? In my opinion, I never did the actual research, but everything was centered around drugs. They were arrested for stealing a car to sell apart. to get drugs. They were arrested for armed robbery

trying to rob somebody to get money to buy the drugs. They were arrested for loitering, waiting in the hallway, the cop. They were busted for having drugs on their possession to sell. So drugs was the common denominator. You know, it wasn't directly a drug sale, but crimes were, in fact, being committed

to get money to buy drugs. So somewhere along the, line, you know, the drug thing was a part of the... Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. O-D-Bringes your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit O-D-com to book a demo.

It's O-D-O-O-O-com. The equation. How are the officers back then? Is it like what you hear now where there's, you know, corruption, there's issues with, you know, say officers sleeping with inmates or vice versa. Well, that happens in every agency, but it wasn't something that was widespread. You know, I had a guy who played,

I played a lot of basketball, as I mentioned, and I played on our Olympic team. One of the guys on the team made a bad decision, had a relationship with a female inmate, and, you know, ruined his life. So that was just, that was, that was one incident throughout my whole 22-year career.

You know, so it's not widespread, but, and you may have had some incidents where somebody had an inappropriate relationship and it never came to light, but I don't think it was something that's widespread, but it happens everywhere. And in terms of the officers back then, I'll take a guy like Ebron.

Ebron worked in C-74 and he worked in the Bing. Now, Rackers Island was considered to be one of the most violent jail systems in the country. C-74

was the most violent jail on Rackers Island. The Bing is the most violent housing unit in the most violent jail in the most violent jail, in the most violent jail. system in the country. Ebrod had that housing unit. Never had a problem because he cared about people.

And, you know, he went in there and just did his thing. Some of the things he did was atypical. You know, I'm looking at this guy. He got rings on every finger. You know, he got the gold chain. And I'm like, what's this guy? The first thing that coming to in my mind is, Well, he's using those rings for brass knuckles or something.

You know, so that was my immediate thought until I, you know, got to know him, saw how he operated. You know, he had a little bit of flare about him. And, you know, that was just his style. You know, so I left him alone because he was keeping the guys quiet, never had any problems. And, you know, so you got a lot of good guys like him. Now, one thing, you had a lot of officers who were in the closet.

And what I mean by that is I was out front in terms of helping inmates. God don't want to know when his court date was. When I'm in my office, I picked the phone up, call down to the general office. Hey, man, when does Rod Jones? When does he go to court? Or whatever they needed, I was there to do it for him. A lot of officers are the same way. But you get labeled an inmate lover.

A lot of guys don't want that title. me, I was proud to wear it. I wore it like a badge of honor. But a lot of guys, even though they're out there, they're doing the job, you know, they're doing it, you know, on the down low when nobody knows that they're really, you know, helping the inmates. So you got a lot of good guys,

and you can't be no chump working behind that wall because you got, you know, you got the toughest guys in New York behind that, behind those walls, and we don't have no guns. So what we have is, you know, your brains, your wits, and you've got to be fast on your feet. And so you've got a lot of officers back there, females, and they're doing their thing, you know.

What was the survival rate for officers to actually stay on the job? So say a class, an officer class graduates, they're on the job. Are they lasting for, you know, say a 10, 15, 20-year career, or are they quitting? What's that percentage? Yeah, well, during my era, everybody made it through them. Now, it's a different story because the guys don't feel safe. The administration is horrible.

And again, and it's not their fault. What happens is, again, the mayors, they come in, they bring their guy, make him or her the commissioner. And that commissioner came from probation, parole, some other private industry. agency or a police department and another part of the country, and you put them in charge of Rockers Island, it's a total different arena. But they have the chiefs, the assistant chiefs, the wardens, the deputy wardens that's holding them up, showing them the ropes, sort of speak. Anytime there's a problem, they got somebody who they can lean on to get the answers, get the problems done, and keep it moving. Now they're at a point where they're not only bringing in

the commissioners, the commissioners are bringing in their people. So they're replacing those layers of protection in terms of the information. And so now you have the blonde leading the blonde. And it's a mess. Bill de Blasio, this is when the downward trend started. His goal was to close Rockers Island. Now, if the intention is to reduce mass incarceration, I'm your God. Put me down.

I'm going to leave the charge. But the reasons that they're given, it's a little disingenuous. You know, if you're going to tell me that we want to close Rockers Island because it's too dangerous and there's nothing we can do about it, we got to shed it and put the inmates in borough-based jails. The commissioner, his commissioner, got on nationwide TV and set it with conviction. It's too dangerous, nothing we could do about it. We got to shut it down. The jails are old. They antiquated.

Yadda, yeah. And I'm saying to myself, the officers who are working for this guy, they're listening to that and they're saying, we're in trouble. because if he feels that we're in a losing battle or no win, you know, we can't win. And he's a commissioner, so he knows all. He's our leader. You know, he's like the Wizard of Oz.

Then we're in trouble. It's like you got a fighter. He gets knocked down in the first round. Goes back to the corner. And his manager says, you can't win, man. This guy is too big. It's too strong for you. What is the fighter going to do?

You're going to throw in the towel. And so that's what these officers did. They're not coming to work. They're doing just enough to keep them getting fired. Why? Because our boss said, what's the use? We can't win. It's out of control.

We can't get the control back. And from that point, it's just been downhill ever since. If you've been watching the show lately, then you've already noticed my new chain. This is from GLD, and trust, me when I say you're never going to see me again without it on. And don't worry, this isn't the cheap stuff. The first thing I noticed when I got it was the quality. You can actually feel it when you pick it up. It's got a nice weight to it. The clasp is solid. The stone setting looks incredible,

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It seems as though every administration and corrections, both state and federal, always blames the one previous to them. And it's just never ending. Right. There's no accountability. Right. Well, I mean, it used to be accountability. But again, back during the days when you had that one person brought in from the outside

and you still had the folks who came up through the ranks there to support. So I'm coming up through the ranks. I'm a warden, and my goal is to be a chief, but you're bringing in the chiefs from the outside. Now the chiefs from the outside are coming to me. Hey, Warden, Rob, how do we handle this situation? I'm going to look at this guy and say, you're sitting in the chair that I should be sitting in.

You figure it out, and that's what they're doing. You know, so it's a bad situation. Why did you want to move up in the chair? And there's a lot of officers that are happy just doing their 20 years and retiring. Right. Well, two reasons. Number one, I'm always shooting for the moon. My goal was to be the commissioner.

And I fell short, was a warden. But I also found out that as you move forward, the high you go up, the more change you can make. And the system is broke. Now, as I got sidetracked, but we were talking about, mass incarceration in terms of Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio wanting to close down Rackazin. Their goal, if they were on the up and up, was to, again, reduce the prison population.

But they're going about it all wrong. You're talking about a population that's been reduced to 7,000 thereabout, and we want to build four borough jails and have maybe 1,000 to 1,200 inmates in each jail. So if you look at that, you're talking 1, 2, 3, 4,000, under 5,000 inmates, the system can hold. You've got 7,000 inmates on Rockies Island.

So if you had the jails built today, you don't even have enough for the 7,000 that we have. So now we're creating another problem where we have to start releasing guys that should be incarcerated because we don't have room to house them. You know, so that's just another problem. The other issue is, if we're saying that Rackers Island is too violent, it's too dangerous, do you think that if we take those same violent inmates that are on Rackers Island,

put them in brand new borough facilities that they're going to stop doing what they're doing? they're going to stop assaulting officers, they're going to stop extorting other inmates, they're going to stop stabbing and slashing other inmates who they can take advantage of. It's not going to happen. You've got to change the culture, but you've got to have the right people in place

that know how to do that. You know, guys that know how to jail, so to speak, and somebody that actually cares, guys like Ebron that can, you know, make those type of changes. And you have guys in the system that's currently working on Rock and Zanella correctional officers, but the administration has to know how to identify those guys. And the only way you're going to know that is you've got to be out there in the field, walking,

seeing what your staff members are doing. Guys aren't even making tours. So, yeah, it's a mess. So what do you think about these headlines, especially recently? They just closed another unit. You know, and the public seems like Rikers is heading in the direction of it actually being permanently closed. Do you think it's all a lot of, like, malarkey and just, you know? It's going to be a way, sometime in the future.

It's not going to be tomorrow. It's not going to be next year. It's not going to be within the next three or four years. And here's the thing that they're not understanding. The Manhattan House of Detention was demolished. The city paid $125 million, $125 million, to demolish the Manhattan House of detention. The Brooklyn House of Detention, 275 Atlantic Avenue, was demolished.

The city paid $60 million to tear that building down. Queen's House of Detention, the city paid $43 million to demolish that building. So you're talking about $225 million just to tear the buildings down? Now, right now, the price tag to build a borough jail. in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island is the only jail, borough, rather, excuse me, that's not slated to have a jail built there.

You're talking at, right now, the cost is at $13 billion, with a B, $13 billion. If you want to, if the jails are antiquated, Rackers Island is 400 acres, chair down one of the old jails, or just going in and refurbish it. and then change the culture of the inmates,

and let's do what we got to do at a fraction of the course. Why won't they do that? Your guess is as good as mine. And again, so the right people aren't being called down to testify in front of the city council to get their opinion. And so you listen to folks who have, I mean, again, they have no clue. And, but, you know, who am I? How were the conditions physically in Rikers during the 70s, 80s, 90s?

Well, again, jail is jail. I mean, what are we looking for? You know, again, I'm the first guy that's going to say everybody got to be treated, right? They can't be in horrible conditions. The jails were clean. It was overcrowded. You know, we didn't have no empty bed space, but they were clean. They were run efficiently.

We just had so many inmates that, we were doing an impossible job, impossible job. And one thing I just, I want to point out in terms of the makeup of the inmate population, I used to give tours. And whenever I gave a tour, it was a meaningful tour. So I had a guy who worked downtown, his name was Antonio McLeod. He was part of the civilian personnel. He sent a judge, and I believe it was three or four first year law students.

took him on the tour of C-74, all over the building. We were coming out of the boughs of the jail, walking back to my office, and they stopped me, and they said, excuse me, Wharton, where do you have the white inmates at? I said, I give up. No, he said, where are the white inmates? I said, I give up. I said, you're the judge.

You decide who's coming to Rockies Island and who's going to live or who's going to die. You know, you got to tell me. We're the white inmates. And they sat there and they kind of thought about that. And I said, hey, this jail is a reflection of the other non-gails that are on Rockers Island. Now, during that time, I don't know, maybe you had 10 white guys on Rockers Island. And I spoke to one of my sources that's currently working on Rockers Island right now. He told me the other day, I haven't seen a white inmate in 10 years.

Again, I don't have the stats, but I'm telling you with the naked eye, it's going to be, you'll be hard-pressed to find a white inmate. So, again, when we go back to talking about reducing the MA population, I'm all with it. I'm for it. You know, but we got to do it the right way. You got to be responsible with it and make sure that we're not just letting guys lose that really should be incarcerated.

And we're not, again, we're not just, letting them go because we don't have space to hold you. You know, but it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, a crazy situation when you think about the numbers that I gave you and shoot, it could be 80% of those guys were there because they didn't have money to pay bail. I've seen guys that, um, would work, a job, take his little money, keep stacking it, and then you have other inmates in the housing unit would pitch in to bail guys out, got my head a $500 bail.

Couldn't make it. You know, but he worked. And the other guys who were his friends and his housing unit, they're all pitched in. Hey, give me $15 here, $10 here. You know, didn't have some commissary for a week or two,

but this guy was able to hit the street. And so, and that, when you look at it like that, yeah, something has to be done. But the way they're going about doing is just shutting down Rockers' aisle, and using violence as the reason as of why we're doing it. Yeah, I don't know.

Where do you think it went wrong with the decay of Rikers Island? I have a lot of officers that come on the show that say there's cell doors that won't even shut on the grounds now. Right. And that was starting to happen prior to my retiring. You know, you got to see, these aren't the cells with the bars. These are the sliding doors. So they were able to, over the years,

you were able to lift those doors up off the hinges and during the midnight tour, they can lift them up and just come out, officers sitting in the A station, he'd see three or four guys out on the chair talking. Yeah, so that stuff was happening, but that's nothing that can't be fixed. You know, you don't close Rockers Island down because you got some cell doors that don't work.

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to sell doors, yeah, I'm in charge of our maintenance crew. Listen, this is priority. And housing area 10, we got four doors that you can open by lifting them up. Need you to go there and take care of that problem for me. How long to take to become a warden? Well, it took me, took me a minute. Now, I rose up through the ranks rather quickly. I was a captain.

I had four years on the job. Three years later, I was an assistant deputy warden. Two years later, before I cracked my 10th year, I was a deputy warden, which is one step under a warden. And I stayed at that rank for until my 18th year, 18, 19th year, to my 19th year. Yeah, because I was awarding for three,

the last three years of my career. But I stayed at the rank of deputy warden for a while. That's why a lot of folks that see me, they still call me Depp because I was a Debt for so long, even though they know I was a warden, Dept just comes out of their mouth. But yeah, it took me a minute.

Not because of the test, it's, you're appointed. But in terms of, you know, taking the test to be a captain, astered, taking the test to be an assistant deputy warden, aced, I mean, I was so good with the rules and regs that I was one of the guys

that were writing the test. for candidates who wanted to be captains and assistant deputy wardens. I wrote the test because I knew the rules backwards and forwards. What were some of those rules like back in that day? It's just basic stuff. You know, inmate, you know, two guys have a fight. You got to separate them, put a separation order so the two will never meet. Transfer one guy from just housing unit to another jail.

with the adolescence was a little more difficult because the only adolescence year we had on Rockins Island was C-74. So you've got to put one inmate on this side of the building, put the other inmate on the other side of the building. They don't go to recreation together. They don't go to the mess hall together. They don't go to the yard, as I said.

They don't go to commissary together. And, yeah, just make sure that the two don't lock heads again. So now you were a deputy warden in the 90s? Yeah. What would your role be as a deputy warden on a day-to-day basis? Well, see, I was in charge of programs. And when I went for my interview to be promoted, one of the things that I told the chiefs was a good program's deputy warden is underrated. They control the violence in the jail, which is the security deputy warden's job.

They control the overtime in the jail, which is administrative. deputy wardens uh uh role and so they started looking at me like why do you say that well if you have good programs that's going to reduce the violence and if it's reducing the violence then you're going to have less officers getting hurt going out sick um playing overtime writing reports so the overtime is going to go down the security deputy warden is going to look good because the violence is down but it's all centered around you having programs I had boxing events, intermarial basketball tournaments, handball tournaments, track meets, outside entertainment,

brought in comedians, you name it. We did it. We kept the guys busy all the time. There was a lady, her name was Sandy Lewis Smith. She told me early in the game, either you entertain them or they're going to entertain you. And nothing could be further from the truth. at some point, guys have to have to understand that you got to give these guys something to do.

There were times when you were walking to a housing unit. The TVs don't work. They got no checkers. They got no chess games. They're just sitting there. So they say, okay, we want to get some wreck off. The next person that walks through that door, be the officer, another inmate, we're going to bum rush them. And now they know once they do that, the squad is coming.

But they just wanted some activity. You know, so they would do something crazy. And the alarm would rank, so now they got something to do for the next two hours. It's come up. They're being searched. They may take a few guys down to the intake area. You know, and so you got to entertain these guys, or they're going to entertain you. Now, do you think that reduces the chances of them coming back?

Well, that's not a part of the recidivor. part. I don't believe so. The recidivism part was we had program, we had the Institute for Energy Development, we had the Wintersdorm, and the Wintersdorm was my pet pee. And I called it the winter's dorm because most people, especially young kids, they live up to the expectations that you place on them. You got guys in the street named Rambo. named Killer, you know, all these crazy names, and they live up to those names. So my name is Rambo, my name is Killer.

You know what they're out there doing? Trying to live up to that name. So you have a lot of kids who were told by their, you know, their parents and their teachers. You're never going to be anything. You're a loser. You're going to be like just like your father, yada, yada, yada. It sinks in.

And guess what they do? They be just like their father, you know, become somebody who's not a law-abiding, citizen. You're in the administrative seg. You're in the Bing. You're a troublemaker. I went into the Bing,

took all the inmates out of the Bing, made them sign a contract. I said, I'm going to put you in the dorm, but you've got to go to school. You've got to have group meetings every day. You've got to respect the officers. You've got to respect the guy that's sleep in the bed next to you. And you can have working TVs.

You're going to go to recreation every day. The showers are going to. be working, new blankets for you. Whatever you need, you're going to get. You just got to go to school and you've got to do the right thing. Nah, I want to stay in the Bing. Some guys said, okay, I'm going to try it out. I said, you can always come back to the Bing.

Took the guys out. Eventually, we actually set the Bing down. Took everybody out of the Bing, put them in the Winters Dawn. And so they left with GEDs, and it reached a point where, that nobody was failing. The folks from the state who monitor the testing,

they actually came and set in when the kids were taking the test because nobody was failing. They actually thought that there was some cheating going on. That's how good these kids were. And they're smart.

You know, we just got to have somebody to believe in them, show them that you can be successful and insist on it. They went to school every day. I mean, it was a joy to work in. C74. And again, prior to me doing what I was doing, not just pat myself on the back, because you got the officers did to work.

They just got to believe in the leader and turned that jail around. We were averaging 50 slashes a month. Alarms going off every five seconds. Put it down the single digits in about three months. That's a, yeah. That's a kind of job. Ebron and the other officers working in C74 were able to do. do. How do you feel about the use of solitary?

Well, again, I ran CPSU, the Department of Central Bing. I shut down the Bing and C-74. So I know that we can run the agency without the Bing, but you still

got some guys who are going to do some things that need to be taken out of population. And the officers is a morale killer. you get assaulted today, the inmate that assaulted you gets infracted,

but there's no, there's no bing? Where is the deterrent? You follow me? So my thing is we had to put these guys in the frame of mind where they were on assaulting officers. They weren't doing the crazy stuff. But again, it's a lot of work. You know, went home tired, mentally drained, you know,

every night because it's a lot of. work. You know, you're constantly walking, you're constantly talking, you're sharing stories, you're listening to the guys, making sure everything is right and cutting your vacation short because you don't want things to take a step backwards when you're not there. It was a lot of work, but it can be done. But you've got to have people who are willing to do it, willing to roll up their sleeves and just go out there and get the job done. But to answer your question with the bang. It can be run without it, but you got some guys who need to be taken out of general population at the very least. And they actually, at one point, they had stopped arrest,

re-arresting guys. You know, you assaulting officers, we had an arrest unit. Somebody came in, you got re-arrested, and we tried to get the time to run consecutive with the time that you were with the crime that you were originally charged with. So if you got a year and a half for doing whatever, you got six months for assaulting an officer. Now you got two years. Now they stopped arresting inmates for assaulting officers and just made it worse.

I don't know if they're going back to re-arresting inmates for breaking the law. So anything that you would get arrested for in terms of breaking the law in the street, You should get arrested for it, breaking the law while you're in jail. You know, destruction of city property, for example. You know, you bust a toilet bowl up and break the TV. Get arrested for that.

And so when you stop doing that, you start to lose control. So if you're not putting guys in the bank for slashing or stabbing another inmate for assaulting an officer. And all this stuff is on camera now. then how do you control them? I can control them. Ebron can control them because we're going to put the work in to change the mindset

and stop this stuff from happening. But for the guys who want to do that anyway, you've got to take them out of population. So if I was there, what I would do, I would have a special unit to shoot for guys who assaulted officers or stabbed other inmates. You're not in population,

but you're not in the best. Bing either. But see, for me, I make it so enticing that you'd have guys breaking TVs that get put in the shoe, the special housing unit, because I would have hand-picked offices. I would have working TVs. I would have them going to the yard, three, four hours a day. Everybody would have a job working in the housing unit itself, you know, serving the food, sanitation duties, whatever it is. Everybody would be working. And a lot of guys

would hear how they're living, they want to come into that unit. And then you could take that unit and then expand what's being done there in other housing units. And that's what we did in C-74. We just took the Winter's Dome. We took the Institute for Ender Development and we just kept moving.

And every housing unit in the building was a program housing unit. We even had an equilateral housing unit because I knew that we had guys who were Muslim. We had guys who were Baptist, Catholic. You know, you can go into any housing union. You see some guys in the corner with their Bible, some guys with the Quran. And I said, you know what? We can put these guys all in the same housing unit and let them all live in peace under one roof.

So we did stuff like that. It was great. But again, it was draining mentally. but you got to have the know-how and you've got to want to do it. How are medical and psychological services during that era? It was, again, it was top flight, medical. You want to go to the clinic, got a pass, go down to the clinic, get yourself taken care of, mental health.

You were screened, everybody screened medically and mentally when you first come in. And if it's deemed that you have a mental health issue, you're seeing you're putting a mental health on housing unit. Some guys try to take advantage of it. They got Bing time. So now they're hearing voices, they're seeing things. And because we couldn't put a guy that needed to be in mental health into the Bing because you can go in there, you can hang yourself. So guys started playing the game. So everybody was all of a sudden had mental health issues.

So I don't know how many guys that are in mental health housing units really need to be there because they were trying to duck the Bing time. And also guys were using that as a means to stay out of the general population. Because if I got to stay in general population and I know I can't handle myself, I go into a mental health unit as a form of protection. But the problem with that is once you're in the mental health housing unit, You got to take the medication that's prescribed to you. And if you're taking medication that you're not, that you really don't need,

it could cause you problems. So you have that issue. You got guys going into a gay unit figuring they'll be safe there, but you got the booty bannets that are signing themselves in just to take advantage of those guys. All that's in the book, you know, because we talk about, you know, the jail piece. And, yeah, you know, so if you know how to jail,

It's a piece of cake. What about your mental health over the course of a 20-year-plus career? Hey, hey, I'm good. I'm good, you know. Proud of the work that, you know, the staff done. A lot of guys left Rockers Island, shooting for the moon.

All of them had a plan. They had goals. My good friend, Fernando Mateo, he was one of the volunteers that came in, taught the guys how to install carp and he said, when these guys leave, I'm going to have jars waiting for him. And I told him just the other day

that where I'm from, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. He kept his word. Guys left, had jaws waiting for him. You know, so that's, you know, you feel good about that and it gives you the energy, you know, to get back in there and keep getting the job done.

You know, so when I retired, I was a young guy, 49, had made a fistful of money. You know, big house in Long Island, you know, pool in the ground. Big house out in Naples, Florida, you know, Gator community on the golf course, driver Bentley, you know, doing my thing. You know, but I want young folks to know that there's another road you can take to have all those things.

And I always point out that just because you see a guy, riding around in a so-called luxury car that doesn't make that person a success. What makes you success is, in some cases, is being the first person in your family to graduate from high school and to go to college. You know, what makes you a success in a lot of cases is pulling your homeboy

or your home girl's coat when they're getting ready to get high. Now, that ain't the way to go. You know, pulling your home boy's coat when he's getting ready to get in the car that we know is stolen. you know, makes you a success is stepping up to the place

when you see somebody being bullied or disrespected. You know, so I talk about all that in the book, student of the game, and, you know, my work is not done. I'm just going to keep doing it until probably until I close my eyes. I don't know.

What was something that you saw at Rikers that has really stuck with you all these years? Just a sheer number of people. And it didn't really hit me initially because what's the saying, you can't see the forest for the trees

and never really realized that this was crazy. Think about those numbers. Again, 100,000 new emission inmates every year. You know, 18,000 inmates, you know, in the system. That's a lot of people. And we're just talking about from the five boroughs in New York City. That's the most crazy thing in the world,

you know, that, I experienced just being amongst all those guys. But I was able to walk, you know, just like I was hanging out in the park. Do you think someone could find that type of success that you've achieved in corrections in today's world of corrections? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Again, you just got to want to do it. Just got to want to do it. So many people are anti-working corrections now, though. Well, right now, I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. And again, because of the leadership.

not their fault because again it's a different beast, different animal. You know, I hate to use those terms, but it's a different arena. And so the folks who are running the agency, they got to have the knowledge and the skill set needed to turn things around rather quickly and to lead this agency into the challenging future. They don't have that skill set, you know, and we're going to have the same result if we move the guys from Rockers Island and put them in, you know, those billion-dollar jails and the burrows, it's going to be the same thing. You know, you've got to have the right leadership. Was there ever an inmate you encountered that really stuck with you all these years later?

Uh, not really. Not really because, again, so many guys, so many years, you know, one guy, but he was, I didn't meet him on Rockers Island. I met him at Spoffett. Name was Willie Baskett. He's the guy that they changed the law over where you can be tried as an adult if you're a juvenile or adolescent.

They can try you as an adult, depending on your crime. Willie was on my dorm in Sparford. I had A4. And what he did was he shot somebody on the subway, I believe it was, with a shotgun. They asked him, And he said something to the fact that I wanted to see the look on his face, you know, when death was coming. And then they asked him something else.

And he said, well, I know I can only get 18 months. That's the maximum amount of time you can get. It didn't matter what you did. And I think he got out, killed somebody else. Same thing. And now they said, no, no, no, we ain't having that. We're going to start trying these guys as an adult. So he always stuck with me.

But again, he wasn't from Rikers. I met him at Spofford when he was a juvenile. What about celebrities that came to Rikers Island? They had a guy who wrote in the belly of the beast. It's a book years ago. I was a rookie correctional officer. He was the first guy with a little fame that came through. but all of the so-called gangsters I met,

on Rikers, some I knew from the street. Anthony LeBorg, I called him Nikki. He's in the book. We grew up in the same neighborhood. Him and this guy named York killed a police officer in Queens. He was a part of the Black Liberation Army. They both died while they were in jail, never came home. But again, he was one of the guys who was up there in terms of being notorious.

You know, knew a lot of those guys from the street. What about, wasn't the guy from a Bronx tale there at one point in the late 90s, or was that later after you retired? Well, I never rubbed elbows with him. You know, I only liked to talk about guys who I had right under my care, custody, and control. So just, you know, inmates. you know, doing their thing. And I dipped my thing and had a great career.

When you retired, what does that feel like after you put so much energy into a career like that? You know, it was great. You know, I knew I had dipped my thing. You know, I dipped my part. But again, I never quit, you know, because now my goal when I was working was, again, to reduce violence into high-ready recidivism. Now that I retired, my goal is to keep young people out of the system altogether. And so that's what I'm focused on now.

Do you feel like you have more power now as a civilian doing that than you did before? Well, I have a bigger, bigger audience, bigger, bigger arena, a lot more kids that I can reach that's not in the system. It's out here living in the cities throughout the country. So I have more people that I can touch. What's one lesson or the biggest lesson that your career gave you that you want to share with everyone? We all have a story to tell, and you can't use your story as an excuse to do the wrong thing. Most successful people will check that they use their story as fuel, energy, and motivation to become successful. No excuses.

When you stop making excuses, buckle your seatbelt up because your life is going to take off. Well, Warren, I appreciate you coming on the show today. Hey, I appreciate you having me. Yeah. And we'll have the link to your book in the description this episode. Yeah, yeah, this is the book, man. Student of the Game. Get it on Amazon, eBay, wherever.

Barnes & Noble, everybody got it, life-changing information. Gotta get it.