Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Most Dangerous Places to Work Psych Ward Prison Cop

Episode Date: March 23, 2024

The Most Dangerous Places to Work Psych Ward Prison Cop

On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs. Only dinner's July 18th.

This isn't the type of yard that people start at. The unit was SMI. Seriously mentally ill, like the mental health yards. You know, there was other guys that had psychotic breaks. And you would think, like, is it that guy or is it the mental health? meds he's on. He has toilet paper. He rips it, rolls it up, seals the ends with toothpaste. Does that again, does that again, braids it. I could jump off a cliff with it and it would still support me. And the inmate says to me so nonchalant, like, I'm like, Alice, don't do that, bro.

Right. Like, look, Alice, please, like, just please don't. He's like, it wasn't that hard. Oh. I'm like, well, wasn't that hard. And he goes, all I do. did was like 2011 I started working at this restaurant I was doing that full time then I was working the nightlife industry at night so I answered this ad on Craigslist for this guy that had security contracts all these different clubs all over Brooklyn and Queens and Manhattan and all that stuff he gets the contract at this club in a story of Queens it was a strip club but it was open seven days a week I didn't realize the position I was in when I went to that club because I I was so new to working in that type of nightlife industry.

Right. So I'm looking around. I'm like, man, like, these guys are spent a lot of money. Like they got all this expensive clothes on, jewelry, cars. Like I said, you got a Mercedes in New York with Oklahoma plates. It's like, are you from Oklahoma? You drove here? I'm like, no, they're just rentals.

Right. So the club is all criminals, you know? And I don't want to say criminal like in a derogatory way. It's not like these were like, a lot of them were nice guys. You know, just regular guys. It's just, you know, they played the hands. they got dealt growing up in the projects or, you know, in a much worse environment that I ever did. It's like they're just playing the hand and they got dealt.

They're following in their footsteps of their brothers, uncles, whatever it was. So I realized I'm like, all right, this is a cash cow. This is like, I'm going to, I'm going to, this is going to be my little, I'm going to stack as much money here as I can while I'm here. So at first it was just, like I said, it was Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then it became like five nights a week, six nights a week. what it would for like two and a half maybe even three years i remember i had one full day off and one half day other than that i was i was either at the restaurant or i was at the club but you're you're thinking you're making money just by what your hourly wages or are these guys

paying you to get in or so i was making 200 a night which for six hours of work no taxes i'm like all right that's that's not bad yeah you do the six nights a week but this club was filled with hustlers. What I realize is these guys, like if you're a guy who's getting money, the other term, a bunch of getting money, whatever,

they like spending cash because they think it gives them a sense of power over people, a sense of control over people. So you would have these guys showing up and let's say it was $50 to park your car in the parking lot. That's what the club charge. I'm like, all right,

it's $100 to park. It's $100 for the club and $50 for me. And they're like, bro, $100 to park, that ain't shit. It's like, I got it here. Take it because it gives them a sense of power over you. You're here to serve me. Right.

So I was like, okay, that's one hustle, right? And it wasn't even like just the day-to-day stuff. It was the psychology of it that interests me. Like I said, I think going back to my stem mom was like, that sparked my interest in just psychology in general. There's just like the psychology of everything. We all know that. I became close with the owner. at the club, right?

He's, I still talked to this day. He's a good guy. He's, I don't say a mentor, but, you know, I was close to him, right? So I could pretty much do whatever I wanted in that club. And what I told people, because I worked with a lot of guys, a lot of guys I worked at were incarcerated, right? Or a lot of guys are just these big black guys from the hood. Not there's anything wrong with that because there's not.

It's just, I'm, you know, I'm 6'4 to 270 and it's like, I'm like, who fuck are you? Like, Jesus Christ. But I told these dudes. I said, look, this is not your typical, like, make your fucking money here, dude. Make your money. Let me give you an example of how this is going to happen. These dudes are going to come here, lickered up, a group of five. All of them have been incarcerated, right?

There's going to be that one asshole that's going to mouth off to you on the way out about something, something that you may have done or you may know, who the fuck knows, you may know the guy from somewhere. I said, this is what's going to happen. That guy's going to mouth off to you. He's going to say, you're a fucking broke this, dad. You don't get no money. You don't get no pussy.

I said look instead of just coming in guns blaze and trying to break people's fucking heads open let them say that because this is exactly what's going to happen this club is so popular people want to come here so one of the guys honorage is either going to take out some money and say yo my man fucked up I'm sorry

we don't have no problems he just came home he was mixing the dark with the clear the fucking whole shit and then they're going to leave and the next time they're going to come back the guy's going to tell us boy you fucked up last time don't embarrass me go up and make it right with him so i would tell guys said make your money here everybody's gonna have there's enough money to go around jesus christ there's enough money to go

around everybody has their own little side hustles their own this they're on that make your money build your little clientele whatever you want to do or people that you just know that do certain things in the world and just let let the money rake in i had the luxury of working outside so i would id people i would search people i would you know help part cars, whatever it was, it was kind of just like, okay, if you're the guy that works outside and you know everybody, we're not going to change this up, right? So I did that in the summer, I did that in the winter, all that shit, just searching people constantly and everybody would come in, God damn, the motherfuckers search me worse than when I was in Rikers or worse than TSA or

worse than I was up top. I'm like, what are you doing if you fought? What are you looking for? We weapons. We know that shit. Drugs no one cared about. It's just we made a, we made a, we made a little bit of a hustle out of that. So let's say you show up to the club, right? It doesn't matter what you look like you're getting searched. So I'm going to search you. If you got some weed in your pocket, no, I do whatever, not a big deal. But you're dealing with guys that are used to hustling in the street. So they're not put, they don't want to get stop and frisk by a cop. They're putting the shun to their nuts or they're putting in the brim of their hat, whatever. Like when you do the same thing over and over fucking, I can't tell you hundreds of

thousands of people I've searched. You get good at it. Plus it doesn't, it's not hard to find weed when you think of it from a mile away it's like you probably got more on you right so i searched a guy he has weed under his under his nuts turning his ass cheek right okay give me the weed like no no i'm gonna put it back the guard no no no time out you fucked up you can give me the weed this is this is we created this me and my co-worker like you can give me the weed and go inside or you can keep it but then you're not coming in and there was only two ways this would play out the guy would give it up and say you're a piece of shit and they would go inside and buy away

for somebody else or whatever or he would want to try to strong arm me and say no fuck that like I build cars over there I don't go fuck if you know I can walk around all I want you're the one that wants to be here

and the same thing like I said before your friend's gonna come outside looking for you right your friend's gonna say you what happened my man like what happened

oh talk to your boy I didn't fuck up he fucked up and tell me what happened and then the other guy that was that guy buyer that was there was always there was always one guy in a group

that was an asshole and always one guy that was like, bro, I don't want no heat on us. I just want to come spend my money and fucking leave. Right. You're like, what would my man do? It was like, look, I told him his option. You can give me the weed and go inside. Like, those are the consequences of his actions. He got caught, you know, because I can't.

Look, I've searched guys before and they've had razor blades in their, in their, in their backwoods. I find all types of shit. Like I said, I've had my hand cut open before searching people. It's like you're dealing with people that don't function in the world the same way most of us do. Right. You're dealing with guys. It's like, all right, we're about that life.

We're going to a club that caters to people that all live the same lifestyle. We have to do what we have to do. So it just came back to it's like, all right, I'm going to go inside. I'm going to take that weed that I took from you and sell it back to you. Big deal. It's not like I, when I left at the end of every night, everything I had, I either just gave it away to people or just threw it out. Like, I don't smoke.

I don't want anything to do with this shit. I don't be driving home getting stopped with all this shit. But if that weed costs 50s, on the street, like, I'll sell it back to you for like 200. It's like, what the fuck? Well, I got to pay 200, bro. That bottle of patron costs $30 at the store. You just spent $300.

Right. Inside the club. We're not outside. We're inside the club. Cash is king, bro. You live that lifestyle, right? You're just mad because you're getting hustled by the white guy. That's all.

Just admit it. Like I said, I was there six years, no, seven years, six nights a week. You were there six years? I was there from 2012 until I moved to Arizona, 2019. I had no reason to give it up. Right. I was making a lot of money and I pissed away a lot of it, but I was having fun. You know, I went on a lot of vacations, did this, did that.

Like, I went to Thailand. I went to South Korea. I went to Germany, a whole bunch of places, right? But that was just like I said, that was the hustle I had. Like, or you guys come to the club, you don't have ID. I can't tell you how many people came to this club and they showed me their Rikers Island ID. That expired two years ago. right do you take it i don't doubt i'll accept it i'm like all right you know you got something

something else that goes with that like you think anything you think this is free all right what do you think also a lot of guys probably thought i was a cop because i was wearing the pants i let's be honest i look like a fucking god so um i just had no reason to give it up like it got to the point where there were guys that were paying me to keep their baby mamas out right right right they'd be Like, yo, you know, you know, such and touch, right? Like, yeah, look, here's my number. Text me if you see her pulling up. This is her car or text me if she's here or whatever.

Just keep her out. All right, dude, whatever you want. But you can't just, you can't, you got to be somebody that goes to the club and spends money because ultimately, that's all the club cares about. You would see the vicious cycle, though, that came with that line of work, right? So all these dancers are from. Columbia, Dominican Republic, poverty, right? These are not girls that, you know, it's study abroad.

Right. So they think the only way that they can make money in the world is to solicit themselves, objectify themselves, whatever. What that came to be was these women would see, these guys are spent a lot of money. This is a new group of guys here is spending money. Or let's go try to get attention and maybe they'll like us for whatever. They're strippers, a strip club.

That's what they're supposed to do. Um, but you would see the vicious cycle of, all right, now this guy's taking a liking to one specific girl doing what he does, coming in with her on her off night or you see them on Instagram at other clubs. I'm like, all right, whatever. She gets pregnant. She's thinking, oh, my God, everything's great. He told me he's a, he's a finance exec.

I'm like in 2000, never is he going to be a finance exec. Right. Like, you know, dilution. A lot of girls figure it out. It's like, all right, you're just, you're a drug dealer. Right. And they're not thinking long enough down the road to think, hey, he won't be a semi-success drug dealer for the rest of his life.

And what will happen is in two years from now, he'll go to jail for six years or five years and I'm stuck with a kid. Right. But at that point, now, let's say a guy goes away and he's like, look, God forbid something happens, my man has $100,000 for you. Because that could be away for a year. I could be away for however long, right? Yeah, that's a mistake.

These women think, yeah, it was a mistake, but these women think, I think, my God, $100,000. Like, I'm rich. It's like, yeah, you may think that, but you also leased a C-class Mercedes because you started making money and you're paying $1,400 a month. You've never had a driver's license and you live in the Bronx so your insurance is $900. Your overhead is $8,000 a month. Where the fuck are you going to get money like this to afford this?

You've moved your mom here from Dominican Republic. You moved your grandma here from Venezuela, wherever you're from. Oh, she's going to help us with the baby. We're going to stay home with the baby and you, you know, you go do what you got to do. Just be a good dad. That lasts for so long. And then the guy's out saying, oh, I'm going to the gym, whatever he's doing. And then he's doing the same thing at the club again.

And it's like, well, my baby mama, like, you need me for survival. I don't need you. All right. So I'm going to give you exactly what you need to pay bills. If the cable bill is $80, here's $85. Keep the change. Here's $200 for groceries. I want a receipt.

I want to know what the fuck you bought. So that sucked. You see these girls like, God, damn, they don't even realize they went up a little bit and then just crashed even more. And then when that guy gets jammed up, goes to prison, now what? Now you got that $100,000. You're going to burn through this and then where you've got to go back on the stage. Right.

You'd see girls showing up. Now you had a kid. Now it's been five years. It's, well. It's fun in the beginning when you're paying $30 for an Uber and then you're stacking all your money. But now when that money has to come in and go right. right back out it's like now you're just a typical american i started realizing some other things

about that club i always worked outside always right there were times i'd be inside but for the most part always like i was the outside guy like no you know everybody is blah blah blah um there was a point where i used to see this unmarked cop car show up all the time he would just hang out in the front hang up by the fire hydrant i never said a word to the guy a lot of the cops that came there were cool But a lot of them was like, all right, you're not here for me. But I used to think, I'm like, what is this club doing that's so different from all these other clubs? Because you hear about these clubs getting shut down left and right. Like, guys getting shot outside the club, all types of shit.

Like, what does this club doing that's so different? Because we have a higher volume of people. It's the same people that go to all these other clubs, but all these other clubs are getting screwed up. So the first time I realized, like, all right, there's something a little, it appears they're doing something a little odd. so that cop that would hang out, I never spoke to him, right? He would just be there and one of the busboys would come outside

and give him a black plastic back which I'm pretty sure was not food from the kitchen. Right. Not my, I never said a word. There's nothing to do with me, right? This guy would come at like 11.30 at night no one shows up until 2 o'clock in the morning.

That's why I used to love every year that would make a big fiasco over New Year's Eve. I'm like, nobody gets here at 2 in the morning. Right. I was going to be here at midnight. Anyway. come to find out that that cop was the narcotics detective of the year, some shit for Manhattan or NYPD, whatever it was.

He gets caught in Florida buying 10 kilos of Coke or heroin from an undercover and pleads out to four years federal time. So what I thought he was doing was either pulling people over outside of the club that I worked at and saying, okay, this happened outside of such and such club. because the clubs they it was all based on your liquor license every year you have to get a review of your liquor license it's like okay we can renew it but you have

assault assault assault on a cop property whatever it is so that's all it was they always wanted stuff to get written somewhere else like it happened in another club another club whatever it was I remember one day the cops came checking everybody's security licenses which happened more than once I didn't think a big thing of it was like I don't

take money, you know, whatever. After I worked at night, I go home, and about 10 o'clock in the morning, I check my phone and I have like 10-miss phone calls from my boss at the restaurant. I worked at. Now, like I said, I was doing that during the day. I'm like, all right, this is, I'll do this. I have a job on the books. You know, I have free, pretty much free food.

And, you know, I liked it there. I didn't have a, I needed both incomes. I don't need it, but I was like, I had no, what am I going to do? Just work at night from midnight to 5 a.m. All right. I call my boss, Chris. I'm like, Chris, today is. Sunday, bro, like, was I supposed to be in?

He's like, dude, there's cops here looking for you. I'm thinking that it's cops that I used to work because there was cops that work there off to do, like moonlight, hang out, you know, whatever. A lot of guys that worked at Rikers Island, the Rikers Island was like a mile away from there. I'm like, look, just give them food. I'll deal with it later. He's like, no, bro, they're here looking for you. I was like, all right, whatever.

So we're all out of bed, drive over there. it's the same cops from the night before. Like, what? And the guy, the guy walks up to me, he's like, Stephen Todolidi, we know you work here. I'm like, well, yeah, you know I work here. You just, my boss just called me, of course you know I work here. You're shrunk up at my job.

He's like, we know you work at the club. I'll leave the name out of it just because it's still open. And like I said, the owner was a good guy. He's good to me. They arrest me, telling me that I have, an open warrant from something that happened four years ago and like that's impossible i'll back up a little bit when i was 18 my prom was on my 18th birthday right go to the city we had no idea what we were doing drinking probably one of the first every time i was drunk couldn't hold my bladder

get out in the middle of time square and piss in front of everybody get a citation for public urination when i go home i'm like how am i going to tell my mom this my mom was one of those like like I want to rule with an iron fist. So I just never told her about it. I just thought it was just going to go away. Like, yeah, you just got a citation. It just disappears.

Right. No one cares. It'll just go away. So on my 21st birthday, I got in trouble again for we were just late catching the subway. So I jumped to turn style because the train was right there. Like, oh, whatever, we'll just jump. We'll go. I didn't know that there was cops right around the corner.

So they stopped me. And they were going to let me go. It was like, dude, you didn't tell me you had this. Wren out from when you never paid the ticket when you were 18 so I'm like fuck he's like look no big deal look I can't let you go now they were cool they weren't being dicks So they took me to whatever whatever you got I don't even know it's called central booking I don't know what it was Um so I sat there for two three days and I remember it was in a basement this is like to the day like probably one of the reasons why to this day I don't like overhead lights because you're sitting in that cell and there's a fucking light it's just on yeah And it's on and it never goes off.

But I had never been exposed any of this shit before. So I go see the judge. She's like, you're here for this. I'm like, yeah, she's like time served. The two days was your punishment.

Stay out of trouble for six months. If you get any, if you get caught up with anything in six months, instead of it just being a citation because you're like, whatever this is called, you're going to go back to jail for it. I'm like, I don't get in trouble.

That's fine. Like, I don't care. So all this stuff happened years later. I was like 26 at the time. So this cop is like you have an open warrant from when you were drinking, or not drinking, driving, urinating public.

And then the thing with the turnstown, I'm like, no way, bro. I'm like, I have the police support in my apartment. I'll show you right now. Because at that time, I was trying to get hired by Rikers Island. Like I said, I majored in college in something that was good for nothing. Right. So when I got out, it didn't hit me until I started to get a little bit older. I'm like, all right, what am I going to do?

Because I'm working with guys that are 45, 50. And I'm like, dude, I'm making more money than you. on half your age. Like I don't want to be this. And like I said, my mom was a nurse and she worked her whole life. She worked her ass off. She had a legitimate career. It's like, you know, now she's retired, playing grandma doing what she wants to do. And my dad never really had anything. It's like, I don't want to be that. I don't want to be with some woman that I'm obligated to be with because she has A and I have B and together we make C. Right. So I was like, all right, what can I do for a legitimate career? And this guy that I work with, he was like, bro, why don't you

Can't work at Rikers Island with me. It's like, you're already doing, all these assholes are at Rikers Island. It's like, you're good at it. You know how to deal with people. Like, I was never one of those guys. I'm not hot shit. I'm nobody. I don't want to get into fights and flex my daughter.

Dude, that's stupid. I don't want to go to work fighting people six nights a week. Right. Like, this is not smart. Like, think logically about things. He's like, come work at Rikers Island. So like, all right. Like, I didn't have any family growing up that was cops or in law enforcement.

Nobody. Do the cops take you down there? they take you down to Central Booking again. What do you mean? The cop said you have a warrant. Oh, right. So, okay, so yeah, sorry, segue away from that. So I had the paperwork in my house that said, like a minute's transcript or whatever

it's called that said, this is what happened. And when you were 18, this is what happened when you're 21, stay out of trouble for six months. And it goes away. And it goes away. I tried telling the cops that the cops, because when I went to the restaurant, I was in like the equivalent of pajamas because it was right down the street from where I lived. I'm like, dude, I didn't even brush my teeth.

I'm like, I don't know what's going on, but you got something is wrong. Like, oh, that's okay. We'll follow you your house so you can put clothes on. So I go inside. I remember I told you, they didn't have a doorknob. Yeah. I can only lock the door from the inside. I think these guys thought that I pulled a fast one and like took the doorknob off in a second

or I had like some, uh, some fall safe system where I could just like wheeze them. Whatever the fuck it was. I don't know. This was the first time I've ever been in this situation. So I was freaking out. so I locked the door and I'm telling the guy through the door I said look dude I don't have any weapons

this is ridiculous like I have this paper right here because I'm thinking I'm like all right I'm just trying now to get hired at Rikers Island I'm like if I get anything jammed up I'm fucked right I'm thinking anything's gonna screw me up they put me in handcuffs they put me in the back of the car

it was a Chrysler 200 Chrysler like not a 300 not a Chrysler Pacifica 200 whatever it was some little sedan I remember there was the two guys in the front and the guy in the back was sitting there on Tinder the whole time. I'm handcuffed behind my back.

I'm like, I don't understand what's going on. They told me, like I said, that I have the open warrant, all this stuff. I'm like, you expect me to leave that you jerk off from the city that were doing this at night came to Long Island for this? I'm like, half these guys at work could have been in prison.

Half of them were still on parole. What are you talking about? they told me they were taking me to the courthouse they didn't take you home no I had gone I went to the restaurant I had gone home right to change in my clothes I got the paperwork they didn't care okay and I was like all right like I'm gonna make this worse on myself if I try to fight this like what am I gonna do then my landlord's gonna see I'm like oh god it's like all right whatever like I'll come out they put me in handcuffs put me in the back of the car and they said they were taking me to the courthouse they took me to the precinct

in a story of Queens where they work which is close to where the club is. The guy in the front seat turns around and like I said the guy next to me he's like this is like the easiest overtime I don't go for shit like I don't care about any of this

swipe it on Tinder doing whatever the guy turns around he's like look we know you work at the club and he starts showing me pictures of that cop and he's like they're trying to get you it's an excuse to grab you

and everybody he's got a warrant we're taking him down And I think they thought, okay, this fucking white guy from Long Island went to college, like, we'll be able to press him a lot easier. Yeah. The other Neanderthals that work here. Yeah. I don't want to say that in a negative way. I talk to a lot of them still.

And he shows me pictures of there over there. The cop is by the fire hydranton right here. I'm hanging out over here. Probably playing Angry Birch, whatever I'm doing. He's like, we show you all these. Like, you tell me every Tuesday night? I got Tuesday night for the past 10 years, not 10 years, but you're going to tell me you never spoke to him. I'm like, do you have any pictures of me speaking to this guy?

All right. Never said a word to him. I find out a couple months later, I'm like, okay, he went down to Florida. I got caught buying. Right. The drugs that he was transporting, right? So he got jammed up. He wound up doing a couple years in the feds or whatever it was.

But all that was to me, I was like, wow, what's this club up to? Or what are all these clubs up to? This is my first time ever being, like, introduced to this. I'm like, yes, all these guys in here are criminals and selling drugs. and doing whatever they're scammers doing whatever they're doing but that's not that big a deal but like how did this club

and all these other clubs how do they go about potentially buying off a cop or paying off somebody that works for the liquor authority whatever was that's what was interesting like I said it's just the psychology of all this stuff

I was like man it was interesting it's one of those things it's like what were they trying to get you to did they explain to you what's happening they just asked you a bunch of questions you said I've never talked to the guy I said I don't and I was getting a little mad because they

they didn't have the AC on in the car. So fucking hot. I know all of us. It's not just me that's hot. It's all of us. First of all, you put me in handcuffs all the way from Long Island to here.

That's not comfortable. Right. So you don't have a warrant. There's no fucking warrant. You just pick me up. You illegally. They thought that they could just jam me up because I'm probably the easiest

one that's trying to go find somebody while his parole address says he lives here, but I don't know what the hell. Yeah, yeah. For somebody on probation, you pretty much throw him in jail for anything. Right. But they don't really have anything on you,

except for they realized that one point you got arrested twice, it was quashed, but at least it gives us an excuse to grab him. Right. And it was probably, like I said, the easiest one they could fuck with. Maybe we can scare him. I like, dude, show me a picture of me.

Like, I literally never said a word to him. Like, look, obviously you've been down. If you walk past somebody three Tuesdays in a row at the same time, you never say a word to each other. On the fourth time, that's the routine. Just walk past each other. It's not an issue. That's how it doesn't look great.

you're talking to some cop either in front of all these guys. So, yeah, there's all kinds of incentives. But like I said, I didn't know what's single. I was doing my, I thought, like, I'm doing my own little hustles. I don't care what this club does. This is great for me. Right. So they said we were taking me to the courthouse.

And then when they took me to the precinct first, they realized, like, this fucking guy doesn't know anything. Right. We just wasted all of our time and all his time. They take him to the courthouse, take me out of the car, take the handcuffs off, get in the car, and they left. They're like, what do I do? There was nobody there.

Right. It's like, what the fuck? I was like, all right, I guess I'll just go home. And I'm playing it over and over and over in my head. I'm like, what was that about? Well, what was the club doing? What do you think it was doing? The only thing I could think is I think that they were just giving the guy money to, like, I said,

if something happened outside of this club, because he was like the lead narcotics and tech or whatever, write it outside of that club because that's our competition. We want them to close down. Right. That's the only thing I could think. Yeah, help keep our liquor license clean. Right. So I go back to work the next day.

I told the owner what happened and he was just kind of like, all right, like, whatever, go back outside, go to work. He gave me like a couple hundred dollars to the inconvenience. Like, go back out, go to work. I was like, man, like, what? What was so serious that they had to do all this? Or who's in charge of this, this, this Muppet crew over here that's trying to figure this all out? So I just go back to work, right? Go back to work.

It's like, it never happened. I didn't tell anybody. It wasn't a big deal anyway. Because like I said, you're dealing with guys that have done real prison time. Right. guys with the whole buck 50 on their face and they got this hyper-aggression what um so what how long did you work there after that five more years six five more years like I didn't do anything wrong why did you end up leaving I moved to Arizona I mean you just decided to move I mean it was

in a reason like it was like you met a girl so when I applied for rikers I don't know your fans whoever watched so like man you couldn't get hired at rikers you're a loom Listen, I interviewed a guy from Rikers. What was his name? Haywood. Heywood. I read his book. He's great.

He was great. And I read that book and I'm like, I get it, bro. You got baby mama drama. You got alimony, this, that, and it's like, yeah, you need that money. That check, you're losing a lot in taxes. You're doing all that overtime and it goes away. He was funny, too, because he was. I read his book like 10, not 10, like, fuck.

Must have been eight, nine years ago. You know, Will Smith's production company optioned his story. like three, like two or three times. And then because of the Will Smith fiasco thing. Yeah, the slap hurt around the world. Because of that, they were like, listen, we're cutting back. Like, we're going to have, we can't read it. We're not going to option it.

We're never going to be able to do this project. So they didn't option it again. That's why he's kind of back out trying to, I think, pump up the book again. Because he thought he had something. He thought he had like, hey, Will Smith, you know, they're going to do this. Like, that would be a great story. This isn't like some independent, you know, film company. fucking Will Smith.

Well, and here's the thing. Like, that would have been a great series. Yeah. You know, because you could have done the whole, because I've never seen anything like that. It's kind of like the dirty cop, but it's not. Like a guy, Mike Dowd? Yeah, he's like in the,

yeah, but Mike Dowd is like it's a dirty, kind of like a Serpico or something. You know, it's a dirty, he's in a dirty, you know, precinct, that sort of thing. Like that's, you've seen those movies. But his would be a dirty cop in the prison system, working with multiple different types of inmates and trying to dodge.

investigations into him. Plus, there's stuff going on on the outside. Plus, people are meeting them on the outside, giving him cell phones, giving him stuff to bring inside. How many times the dog almost walked by and catch him? How many, you know, that could be a really, that could be an ongoing series. And it'd be different, you know, a little bit tweaked a little bit different, but. And, and tough. I tell people, it just, like, I think a lot of people, a lot of, like, state-old moms and housewives, they have a fascination with true crime and prison. It's because, Prison. They have fascinations of the prisons, too. It's because people don't have access to prison.

Like, I can look up a whale and then go whale watching somewhere. I can look up Tanzania and go to Tanzania. You can't look up a prison and go to prison and see either your own. My side or your side. Right. You know, you can't just find out what it's about. So it's a vastly different environment. Right.

You know, it's so foreign. And you can't imagine that, I guess, also, this is happening in that building right down the street, that this is how people behave. And this is a completely different society that's going on. It's a whole different world. But so the, so you never, so you never got hired on at Rikers. Right. So the guy that owned the club, he had opened another club in Brooklyn. And this was like another thing that was just fascinating to me.

That club had problems. I didn't want to work there to begin with because it was upstairs. So you got to deal with everybody outside. Then they have to go up a big asslite of stairs and go around and then go up, do whatever they do. Like, how do you throw people out of here? Because we just have, like, drag people out. Right.

Unless you have a bad knee. Yeah, the knee wasn't really the problem. I never really thought about that. But, yeah, thinking about it, I was like, I probably should have done all that stuff. But so the club in Brooklyn, I'm like, you would see the same guys. I see at the club. Sorry, I was just thinking about something. So I had a business partner named Dave Walker.

He was six foot six. And we were partners in a, he actually took over a mortgage company from me when I got in trouble. And he was six foot six. And at one point, we were opening a second location and we were bringing boxes down and there was a staircase. And the staircase, this place must have been built in the 70s or 80s.

So it wasn't like it was 10 steps and then a platform. It was literally like 30 steps going straight down. Like, if you fall down this, you're dead. You're dead. This was the old warehouse that I was in. And he was not in great, he was in bad shape.

He was extremely overweight. He had spinal piffida. Do you know what that is? like you have a your spine is like you have like a bad spine right like it's actually you're getting holes in your discs and stuff like he has back problems he's on he's he's on oxies he's doctor shopping i mean he's a mess he also he's a he was a CPA you know he was a master's degree in tax um smart guy but i mean he he had problems we had a million dollar life insurance policy on him and on me it's like those stairs are gonna make me money somewhere i remember we were

walking down the stairs and I was behind him with a box. And at one point, I kind of stumbled, right? Like a second stair, I, like, stumbled. And I, and I, and he's only, you know, because he's so tall. He's literally, and I'm so short. He's, his head's like right here. And he was only a couple of a foot away from the box. Like, hit him in the back of the head with that box. If I'd fallen over and pushed him even a little bit, he's going down. And so, listen, the internal dialogue that I had in my head for those 30 steps was insane. Because I was thinking, even if you fall and he survives, you tripped. You just almost tripped now. I know there's no cameras here. I don't have that. There was no cameras, no cameras. It was in the back.

And it was also in the back. Like, nobody's around. And so when we got to the very end, he's like, who, he's already out of, out of shape. By the time we got down the 30 steps, because he's holding boxes, too. He's out of breath going down steps. He's out of breath going down the stairs. So he's like, and he turns around and kind of looks at me and I go. I got it.

I'll go up and get the next one. Oh, no. I just looked at him. he goes, what? And I go, you just have no idea how lucky you are, bro. He goes, what do you mean? I said, I said, I said, I almost, I stumbled. I told him what happened. I said, the whole way down, I said, you realized if I just pushed you, he was, I'd never survive that. And I went, whew, I said, listen, I said, you went through a lot, huh? I said, oh, I was struggling. He was, plus, we got that million dollar policy. I said, don't think I wasn't thinking about it.

Like, we were laughing and laughing back and forth. So I was thinking about you coming down the stairs. You're five, six, right? we me no i'm sorry six sorry sorry five six sorry you're six foot five yeah you're six five yeah yeah that's a smidge on that but yeah so when we're at that club the one in brooklyn i'm like all right so what do we do we're gonna fight these guys in the room take him to the elevator take a break go down and then fight them on the way out and then you just drag him out right there and whatever and i was like all right but it was just the i don't know what it was like you were dealing with the same fucking guy like i would literally see them one night at one club one night at the next club

And the owner had told me, like, look, I need you here. Busy nights in this club. Busy nights in this club. Like, I don't want to have seven, six days straight of this crap. I want, like, my money nights, my, my downtime nights. Like, I don't want all gas, no breaks all the time. But I started working there. And I'm like, why are these guys that I just saw that are always cool, acting like such

fucking assholes now? And it's like, what, because you're in Brooklyn? You have to act like an asshole? You fools all live in Sunset Park? It was, it just made me think of like, you know, the names, like, you think about prisons in like uh big sandy has that name like you go to big sannie you have to act like an asshole you have to act like you're hot shit or a tough guy and then i don't know what at fort dicks or something it's like yeah well fuck off there because it's a it's an easy yard

bloody beaumont or you they all have these these names like uh yeah i know what you're saying like guys are like it's like i know so many guys that had gone to yazoo in the low but they were like yazoo is crazy and i'm thinking of myself i know i know at least a hundred guys that have to Yazoo and then come back or went to Yazoo and when they went to Yazoo they were perfectly they were docile here but they go there and they act up um yeah so i mean i know what you're saying i don't know what it is if it's the environment or just that it's that it's that it's the environment of that prison that allows you or it's something you can get away with or it's expected and this will tie it a little bit more i was going to say you know what happens in prison two guys would come from

another prison and they'd be telling you about man at a other other prison we would never let this happened and this and this but you're in a group of guys of 20 your little click is made up of 10 or 20 guys and you're sitting there going yeah but we don't we're not we're not fucking like like you you're you can act like that you can act like that they'll grab you they'll throw you the shoe they'll ship you back there or they'll ship you to the medium you can act like that the medium all day long but sorry we're not doing that like we're not running around smashing all the chos I'm not doing it and so they would they bitch and moan but then before you know it they were docile just like everybody else it's like okay well that doesn't that's not how it works here

And it was just shocking to me. And like I said, like we're talking about prison down the road. My experience is like it ties in. So the club. Yeah. So the club's a fucking disaster, dude. It was, it was fights. And I was like, these guys are just, they could literally kill each other one night.

And then the next night, they'll be the other club in Queens and they're fine. The only issue I ever had there, which it really wasn't that big a deal because it wasn't so much what the guy did. It was like the back end of it. So I searched this guy one time. part of the rule was like look if i if i find something on you weed's one thing dude that's basically just the commodity i'm just going to sell it back to you if i find something on you take everything out right because if i search you again and i find anything else now it's your go go jump in a lake i don't care you're not coming in that that would like infuriate him

he's like dude you're already caught bro just give it up like this isn't this isn't i'm not the feds running down on you like just give it all up long story short i searched this guy he took out one thing and then another thing. I'm like, dude, just go. I can't deal with you. Go home. Right. His friend comes back a little later. He's like, you know, he just came home. This is, this is the night before Thanksgiving. So that's a big night for people to want to go out. And I look, dude, whatever. I never had a problem with you. Your honor, Raj. I get it. Your boy just came home. I don't know him. I'll let him in. I'm going to search him again. Tell him, I'm going to violate him. Worse than I have the first four times because I don't know him and I'm

like, you know, look, this is what it is. I know I'm the white guy from Long Island, but I do this shit every night. Search him again. He goes upstairs. Cool. That's the of it. Like two hours later I hear screaming on the radio, there's a fight or something. So when you go in this club, when you go up the stairs, there's a lot, they had like a, not a kitchen, but they had like people that were catered food and they put in like the sternos and all that shit. And then you would, there's co-check there and then the room, the rooms of the club was over there. So it's that guy's honorage that's fighting, right? So the guy that I had the problem with, he sees me. And it's like these guys, they talk about how tough they are breaking necks and throwing haymakers. And the guy

took the pan with the rice and he threw it at me. Like, that's your thing? You're throwing the water at me? Right. But then he took the pan with the water. Now, if you know, the little sternos underneath. Yeah. That's just boiling water. So that steam keeps the food hot. He took that and he launched at me. I used to have the video on my phone, but I go like this to just block it. And I had a hoodie and an underarmor on because it was cold. It was the night, like I said, night before Thanksgiving. So I never knew what started that whole thing, but dragged the guy out. We go, like I said, we go down the elevator. We play that elevator music on the way down, and it just picks back up when we get

out. So I don't know, drag all the guys out. And the cops wound up arresting the guy that, I guess the one that threw the water at me, or he was in part of that honor, Roger, whatever it was. But a couple of them got arrested. Now they get to spend Thanksgiving in jail. Yeah, probably the 40th time in their life. but um my adrenaline was so high and it was cold and i was like no right you know whatever

it is what it is like i was never one of those after something happened i was like high five and dudes i'm like dude i didn't want that to happen right i don't enjoy coming here like use i don't want to sound it's going to sound pathetic like just use your fucking words to get out of this shit right you can talk anybody at anything like i've done it in prison you talk people are trying to kill themselves right i started noticing afterwards i was like yeah my arm is fucking hurting. So I pulled the hoodie off and like I said, I had an underarmor underneath.

I can show you guys the pictures after how gnarly it was. But I peel the underarmor back and the whole layer of skin just peeled off my arm. Because he threw the boiling water at me and I blocked it like this. And I'm like, oh, thank God that didn't hit me in the face. Yeah. So the cops had seen that and they're like, wait a minute. So they're like, okay, now we could charge a guy with assault or whatever it was. I'm like, I'm not present job.

I don't do any of that shit. I don't care. they called 9-1-1 to come look at the burn. I was like, I really don't want to do this, but whatever. They're like, look, we can take you to the burn center. I'm like, dude, I want to go home. It's Thanksgiving Day. Just give me some burn cream or some tattoo cream.

Whatever. It's not that big a deal. So I go home and that was the end of it. A year later, I keep getting a call from an unknown number. So I'm thinking it's right. I don't know people call me. I'll circle back to that in a second. but it was the Brooklyn DA's office.

And they're like, is this Stephen Todali? I'm like, yeah, what the fuck is? What was this? And he starts telling me my name such and such. I'm an ADA with the Southern District or whatever the terminology is. He's like, do you know some name? Like, what are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about.

Like, do you remember what happened on Thanksgiving last year? And I'm like, no? Because I forgot about it because it really wasn't. It was like, all right, whatever. It happens. It was basically like just a little, a minor burn just on my whole arm. Right. The guy's telling me, he's like, look, we want to prosecute this guy.

We want to charge him. We want to let him know that he can't do stuff like that. I'm like, dude, this guy's been down like what, three, four times? You're not going to get your message through by charging him with this. He's going to get what? Two days in Rikers. He's probably already down for something else anyway. They'll just give a time served for that.

Right. I'm like, I don't care about this. It's over with. It happened. You know, it is what it is. So the, the guy tries to entice me. He's like, look, we'll give you a parking pass and we'll give you a voucher for lunch. Wow.

I was like, Jesus, bro, you're my, my, my, my, I could be sleeping right now, but you want me to come in at nine in the morning in Brooklyn. All right. I'm like, you know how long it's going to take for me to get to downtown Brooklyn? Are you smoking? What's wrong with you? I'm like, I'll pass. I'm like, how much is the voucher?

It's like, it's for $6. $6. What am I supposed to get a hot dog for $6? Yeah, a hot dog. Yeah. And I was supposed to give it to some, some food truck guy. He's like, what, no, I want to care. What does this shit?

I want to claim this and, whatever. So I'm like, I'm good, dude. Like I said, I don't care. It happened. It's over with this. This is the, I kind of signed up for this. Right. You know, I chose to work.

It's like, look, my sister's a teacher. She didn't sign up for her school getting shot up. She signed up every little badass kids. Right. He calls me again. He calls me again. He calls me, bro, what's going on with you right now? And I'm realizing, I'm like, dude, you just want to jam this.

guy up, get a conviction under your belt because you're, so I finally, I finally wind up going in. He's like, we want to convict this guy. I'm like, dude, how long you've been out of law school? It was like, three years. I'm like, okay, so you're just, you're doing your ADA stuff. You're paying your dues. You're doing the job that nobody wants so that you can promote and make yourself look at how you can present. Look at boss. I have a 97% conviction rate. Look at all these things that I've done. Like, don't let your ego get involved in the way of your own job. Like this, this is, that's all you're doing. You just want to easy. conviction to make yourself look. I said, I'm the victim. I don't fucking care about this guy.

Right. It's over with. I don't even know what he looks like. So I said, look, this is last time I'm coming here. Don't call me again. Never heard from him again. But I was just like, man, these guys just want to convict. Convict. Convict. And I'm like, what happens if this was like something serious? It's like you have the weight of the government on your side against Joe Schmo who has nobody helping him. Just another funny story about the club, like the type of things you see that just become normalized. There was this one bartender. Like, The bartenders became the main attraction at this club, right? Just, I don't know why, whatever it was.

But there was this time that one of the bartenders, it was her birthday. And she was like in a lot of rap videos. And she has like a name for herself in the industry. So a lot of people came out for her. So her daughter shows up and the daughter brings her little scammer boyfriend. So it's like, first of all, I'm not a father, but I wouldn't want my daughter with a fucking hustler. Right. So they come in.

And I remember looking at this. Like, this is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in my life. So mind you, it's a strip club. Everybody gets there $1,000, their brick of $1,000 or $10,000, whatever they get. I see a lot of money to go through that place. And I remember looking at this and she's on, the bartender's on stage twerking for her birthday thing. The daughter's boyfriend goes on stage to throw money at his girlfriend's mom. And I'm looking around like, am I the only asshole here?

I think this isn't normal or is this is my, am I the asshole for thing? this isn't normal. Like, you're throwing money your girlfriend's mom. But anyway, just like, that's like the title. It's like you see stuff in prison.

It's like, okay, this is just normal because of where I am, but this wouldn't fly in the real world. Right. Like people taking electric cords and boiling water, boiling water,

would it make it a stinger? It's like, okay. It's not a normal thing, but it does work. Right. So, so back to,

uh, so that whole DA thing, like the, with the thing on my arm. I was just like, man, you people are just, you just want to jam people up

like you don't care what this guy's up not that I care either what his upbringing was but it's just like man what if that was me because like I said I grew up with there's the haves and the have nots and I was like kind of in the middle and I was like man it doesn't take a lot

to be a have not it doesn't take a lot to just be get yourself jammed up in something like I was telling I was telling bozade before like would you rather be guilty and now would you rather be rich and guilty or poor and innocent you know it's like you don't

If you don't have a lot, like you're screwed. You can't go back to the government. Rich and guilty, you still got a chance. Poor and innocent. You're meatloaf. Yeah. So what happened with Rikers? Right.

So I go through, it's not really that's insatiable story, but I go through the whole Rikers thing. Like I said, the guys that were working at the club with me, a lot of them work that Rikers. I'm like, bro, you do this shit every day. Like, it's the same people. They just wear jail clothes. Right. It's the same people. No change.

No, you know, whatever. It's like, you'd be good over there, bro. Like, do 20 years. get a pension, Paul quits, move to Florida. Whatever. I used to start hearing a lot of people talking about like, you know,

when I get older and I retire, like people that are like your age, like older than me or whatever. You're like, you know, when I get to that age when my son graduates college or when I pay off my mortgage, when my pension kicks in,

I'm moving to North Carolina. I'm moving to South Carolina. Somewhere my money stretches for like, fuck New York. I'm leaving New York. And I was like, I'll keep it in the back of my mind. So Rikers Island,

I go through the whole problem. process and this was in 2015, maybe even 2016. So I got a call. I started the whole process, went through the whole thing, and then I was kind of playing the waiting game. I got screwed up because I pled guilty to three speeding tickets in, I think it was a year. I had a GTI at the time, so I was like dicking around, driving fast. And when you're on the Bell Parkway going from Long Island to Brooklyn there's once you get deep into Brooklyn there's just nothing but like motorcycle cops and highway guys it's like they pull you over you're done so I got three speeding tickets in one year and my license gets revoked not suspended revoked so I can't drive for six months so at that

same exact time I was going through it at Rikers Island and they said no we can't hire you you don't have a license so I got disqualified all right and I remember thinking like fuck man I was banking on that. It wasn't like I was banking on it, but it was so right there in front of me, and I was like, I know I'd be good at it and, you know, whatever. So that's like 2016. So I put it aside. I just keep working at the club, keep doing what I'm doing. And then I had a friend that was a DJ at the club and he winds up becoming a cop in Arizona. And he's like, look, why don't you just try to become a CEO out here? And like him and I are similar. Like, he's still friends of this day. Do you end up getting your license back?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it just got revoked, and then I had to wait six months and get it back. But I thought you just go to the DMV and just say, I did my six months, get my license back. But I had to, like, submit paperwork and had to go up to Albany. It took another four months to get it reinstated. I was still driving every day. I was just, you know, driving like Grandma Rabinowitz, not trying to get pulled over. Right. So that screwed me from Rikers because, like, as you know, like, if you got to go out on a transport, some CEO has to take you, they have to have a valid driver's license.

So I got, whatever. So I wait. And then I'm just working out of the club, just doing whatever. And fast forward to end of 2018. Like I said, I was working at the club that entire time. Another sidebar. So across the street from this club is a, you know what halal carts are? Like food, halal carts.

You know what that is? Halal carts. Like food, they're just food carts. Food trucks. Yeah. Food truck or food car? Oh, the little carts? No, they were trucked, but they're just called halal carts.

But it was like the food truck. where you get like gyros and all that stuff. So across the street from the club was a poultry place where they made all of the stuff for the carts. Okay. So when the sanitation guys would come around, and the winter it wasn't bad, but in the summer they would put the little fork things

and they would flip the dumpster over. And a lot of times they would miss. So in the summertime, there'd be rotten chicken guts and lamb guts and all this horrid stuff and it would stink. Like your picture going to, to a club, you're liquored up, or maybe you just finished eating, and then you go to this club and it smells like rotten corpses.

Right. Um, that was just funny. You would see people walk up and it would just like hit this like zone of like where the stench comes to just vomit everywhere. Um, we realize we could open the fire extinguisher outside or the fire hydrant and it would just blow all, blow everything away. But it's just funny. It's like that's right across street from this club.

Right. Like night and day. Like during the day, it's an auto body place in a chicken slaughterhouse. And that night it's this club. but so fast forward to the end of 2018 I go to Amsterdam with my friend Ed who worked at the club he's kind of like my boss

that's my boy right there he's a good dude so we go to Amsterdam and then when I came back I took my other friends off I was like you know let me just go out to Arizona and try the I'll take the CO test whatever what do I have to lose because I had tried again for Rikers I just had to wait a little bit

so because I had to wait for the stuff to fall off my driving record. So it got to the point in 2019. In 2019, I turned 30. So I was like, man, I got to just switch something up. I got to make a move. I don't want to be doing the same shit I am when I'm older.

It's like, this has a shelf life this job. It's like being a shipper. It has a shelf life. Like, you're not supposed to be doing this when you're 50 years old. Right. So I go out to Arizona. I take the test. And I remember thinking, this probably isn't good.

I was hired in like two weeks. But meanwhile, the Riker's things. thing was like six months right but that was like all right it's just different out there like the paperwork was a lot less and I had nothing to worry about like I don't have any criminal issues like I said the thing with the the cop from before like that was them just trying to screw me and do anything wrong right so I move out to Arizona so I gone to Amsterdam New Year's Eve 2018 to 2019 come back take the test and by March of 2019 I was living in Arizona so it was like a quick process um I didn't really say about a lot of my friends

I just like, I'm not one of those, like, I don't like attention on me. I just, like about my family, got up and left. Drove there, took everything I could fit in my truck. Drove out there. It took me two days. I signed, I chose to work in the Phoenix prison. And the only reason why I chose Phoenix specifically is because, mind, I'm from right outside New York City.

I've never been to, I never even been to Arizona. I can't live in just a random place in Arizona where there's a prison. like Safford, Arizona or Winslow, like these small little like prison. I can't do that. You know, it's like, I got to live where there's people. I'm used to being where there's people and stuff going on.

So I chose Phoenix because I've heard of Phoenix. I didn't know what type of yard it was. Right. So I go out there and the academy was two months. Maybe I'm like two months. Like, this is a joke. And I'm thinking, I'm like, none of this shit, these people are telling them, this is going to matter.

Right. None of it. Like, none of it at all. And then halfway through, you had to go work at your unit for a couple of days doing like training or whatever. And I didn't know that it was an intake yard. Like I said, I chose Phoenix because I wanted to be in civilization. Right.

It's like, Phoenix, there's four major sports teams in Arizona. Like, cool. You know, there's a lot going on, which there is. But I didn't know what type of yard it was. So I go there, do the academy, start my OJT. and Phoenix Yard is on eight-hour days. I had the miracle of starting on day shift, which is like nobody starts on day shift.

And everybody would think you would want to go to swings. You don't have kids. You're a young guy. You're in a town. Like you probably want to go party. Like, I don't like those swing shift hours. So I started on days. It was kind of depressing because so any county in Arizona,

when you go to court, you go to prison, They take you from county to the Phoenix Yard. That's where you get processed. And then you get sent to all the other prisons in Arizona. I was like, damn, Monday through Friday, these buses show up from Maricopa, Coconina, Yavapai, Pima, whatever. All the county are like, there's that many people going to prison. It's Monday through Friday. These people are just coming in, coming out.

How many people a day come in? Maybe there'd be days where it's like 40. There's like 200. But it's like every fucking day, bro, Monday through Friday. Wow. Yeah. And I'm like, where's the crime at? Like, where's, what's all this crime at?

I don't see all this shit going on. You know, even, even when I'm back at the club, I remember thinking like, all these guys sell drugs. Like, where's the party at where there's all these drug users? Right. Because these guys make a lot of money. Like, where's the party? But anyway, so the club, uh, not the club, the, the unit was intake and then on the other side was SMI. Seriously mentally ill, like the mental health yards.

Okay. That's what I said. I don't know if in the feds, if it's SMI or EDP. emotionally disturbed person. I don't know. I'm not sure. But it was like the mental health yard. So you would go to work, you would get assigned a post.

The guys on the intake side, they would just be there and they would roll up and go to their yard. It could be a day later, a week later, a month later, whatever it is. The other guys on the other side, they like lived there. They were like, that was like their assigned housing unit. Like they were there for the mental health program. Behind that was like right around, it was kind of right around the block. There was a low functioning.

It was a low-custody SMI-R, but it was dorms. It wasn't cells. You know, you could be out from sun up to sundown, which there was a lot of guys there that were crazy, and there was a lot of guys there that were just hideouts. You could tell a lot of these guys are hideouts. They're just working the system, and they had that, like, narcissism about them.

Like, I got over on them. Look at where I'm at. I should be at RastMax or something right now. Yeah, they didn't want to go to a normal prison. Right. They're kind of hiding out by saying they have mental health issues. They know how to play the game. There's only so, there's only so many things that you can accomplish by being like a mental health

that made in prisons. Like they could put you on watch, give you a shot of Thorzine, put you on all these meds, put you out a different yard. And plus it's in Phoenix. So it was centrally located for a lot of people. Um, I started to get the, the vibe of like, this isn't it. Like this is what I signed up for. Like you said, because on the intake side, there's no store.

There's no politics. like they'll be there they get shipped out and what a lot of people had told me was they're like this isn't the type of yard that people start at

a lot of guys that have been doing it for a while like you never even used to be able to start here they just changed that recently because we're so short staffed everywhere right so a lot of guys were like

yeah I started at Florence I started at Lewis like Florence was the first prison in Arizona in like the early 1900s was built by inmates um so I started to get this

feeling of like I don't really deserve this to be here like I feel like I had to like go pay my dues somewhere else kind of and something else had happened I'm not the biggest fan of like okay me and you are co-workers like I'll be respectful of whatever you want and we'll chop it at work like we're not friends right you go home to your life I go home to my life you're a work friend yeah right we're not hanging out you you put people you get people the same training you put them in the same uniform you put them in the same environment for the same common ground like we're not fucking friends bro like we're just not so a lot of people would you know be friends with people like a lot of guys on swing shift they would hang out with each

other there's always somebody trying to get some doc pussy which i just never understood i never understood that but whatever when you stay for overtime like a lot a lot of the other units you can show up whatever you want and just work as many hours as you want right but when you stay at that unit, you had to stay the full eight hours. So you're doing a 16. So I would do 6 a.m. till 10 at night. I would see a lot of people, like when you stay for overtime, you get to pick your posts. They're like, all right, I want to go to Ida or Ida back pocket or whatever it was. You can pick your post, which is they give you that luxury. I would see a lot of people that were talking about like, yeah, let's go out tonight. Let's do this. Let's do this. Or, you know,

whatever. And I'm thinking like, if me and you were working together and you and I are going out partying doing drugs. When we go back to work, you're going to get paranoid if I'm telling other people what we're doing. I'm going to get paranoid if you're telling everybody else what we're doing. Like, you know everybody's business. Like, I guarantee every inmate at Coleman knew every officer's business. Meanwhile, they never spoke to them a day in their life.

I started thinking, like, you guys are, I can't tell you what to do. Like, I can't tell you to hang out with, but you're going out and doing stuff and you're just partying. You're not doing anything bad. I think you're like putting on Snapchat and ADW. was friends of you on Snapchat, the captain's friends did you on Snapchat or on Facebook? And it's like, wait, he just called out today.

Why do I see him, you know, from Cinco de Mayo with a drinks in his hand, whatever it is? That didn't sit well with me because I knew what was going to happen. I'm like, and at the time, I'm like, look, I moved all the way across country for this. Like I said, I wanted out of New York. I was like, I had a good run at the club. New York's going to be there if I want to go back.

So people started getting, I hate to even say it, people started getting walked off because they were refusing to take UAs. Now, mind you, you have to take a UA when you start this job. And unless there's a really specific reason, they're not just going to randomly UAU if you come to work every day, do your job. So I'm like, look at you fucking, look at you people. You're hanging out. You think these people are your friends.

You're partying. You're telling everybody your business. Then you go back to work. You start getting snitched on. Now I have to take a UA. You fail. And now you get fired. Right.

I don't want any parts of that. Like I said, on the other side was the main. mental health stuff. So the Phoenix yard, it's just like a big rectangle. There's two intake parts, and part of it was a mental health yard. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at like those guys were housed there so you would go there and you would see like that's like

all the banging and shit eating and the real gel stuff that's where you would see it but it still had that ambiance of like it wasn't like because they're like murals where there's like butterflies and shit painted on the wall it's like how's not going to help but you would that was just going to help some guy threw a butterfly with one wing and you you think he's rehabilitated but You would see things there. That was like an introduction. Like, all right, these guys aren't just here for a week and then they get shipped out. These guys are like here.

And you would see these guys like with these, I don't know, in the feds. Like in Arizona, if you go to prison, like there's inmate one, then two, then three, the numbers are ascending. Right. So if you went to prison in 2000 with, and your number was 1,500, and you go to prison, anytime you go to prison again, you're still going to have that number, 1,500. Yeah. So if you see a guy with an old number, he might have been down since. he got that number or he could have been in and out his whole life or he could have gotten

it 30 years ago and then came back to prison 30 years later yeah so you would see guys with like I think right now they're probably up to like 38 so like 380,000 maybe 3 7 you would see guys are like zero four numbers and I'm doing the math only when you go to prison like 78 right like you've been down this whole time and they're like yeah it's like what like it doesn't compute in my head like guys to tell you like I've never had pizza out yeah I haven't had a dog in 30 years it's like you know never seen an iPhone never seen an iPhone never driven a car it's like no god but at the mental health side you would start seeing a lot of like things you know things that happen in mental like I said I think part of the reason why I like

that was because of my stepmom and all her crazy ass issues right not that I wanted to fix anybody but it was just interesting to me so you would see guys eating their own feces right right um like this one guy we were talking about before he would eat his own feces he would take the little shamrock milk cartons i'm sure you remember them make flowers out of them right plant them in the feces like this is a true story right like they're gonna grow like they're gonna and water them with his urine the guy would lay on the ground and rear his legs back and pissing his mouth all types of shit and you would think like is it that guy or is at the med he's on.

Like we're talking like it smelled so bad in some of these cells. We would power wash them through the trap and like kind of like forced. Like this guy, this guy didn't even want to come out of his cell. We'd like beg him to go outside just so we can clean it. So it's not like a hazardous situation. Right. You know, there was other guys that had psychotic breaks. Like there was one guy, I forget his name.

But he, um, you could tell like he something happened with his face. Like he started like peeling his face off. Um, a big thing like a big thing like a big. culture shock was nobody in New York is smoking meth. I don't know if they are now, but I never heard anybody that smoked meth in New York. You go to Arizona and it's so prevalent. So you hear people talking about it. You would hear the same story over and over.

It's like, you know, I was making a lot of money. I was in real estate or construction or whatever and I got introduced to meth and I was partying and then I got hooked on it and I was just up for 10 days straight and I had a psychotic break and I started hearing things and, you know, I just beat somebody with a shovel at a gas station for no reason and caught 12 years for it. Right.

And it's like, it's going back to what I said before. It's like, we're all just one little fucking issue away. Right. Like, especially here in Florida, everybody getting hooked on pills. It's like, at the time, people were just doing it for peer pressure because they wanted to be cool with their friends and now it fucked up their whole life. You know, and

And these guys, it's like, it's the crazy things. Like these guys are like, they're like, yeah, I was successful. Like I had a wife, kids. Like, I was successful. I just got jammed up in this stuff. And now I'm just in this system. And I can't get it together. And I remember when I was in college one year, I had, my senior year, I had mono.

I don't know if either of you about it had a mono, but I had a bad case. And I remember I would get, if I went to college upstate New York where it's freezing. At one point, my mono was so bad that I, uh, my temperature was like, 104, 105, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it was so high that I was, I was hallucinating. Right. My roommates found me in the backyard laying in back of my roommate's truck. I was like, bro, what are you doing? I guess because I was so hot.

My body was so hot. I just had to cool down, so I just went outside because it's cold out. And I remember thinking, like, when I was talking to somebody one time, I'm like, what if I would have done something when I'm in that, like, manic, crazy state of mind and would have fucked up my whole life? What I would have gotten in my car or just anything? I'm like, God, damn, man. Like, you see these people and it's like, all right, you know, things happen.

Like, you hear one story, the next story, your next story. You see guys that it's like with these old numbers. And I was talking to this guy I worked with. He's like, yeah, this inmate, he has like, like, Muhammad Ali syndrome. Like, what's it called? Like, all those blows to the head and he's just like delayed and he's like slow. Yeah, where they've got that the little tiny micro, like little cisks or something in their skull. kind of like the that the the um the football players get right CTE yeah is that it

yeah I think CTE is that I was called but um I would hear stories of like yeah that you know this guy's been down since the 80s and he was a cell war he was like that cell door open he was he was pounded on anybody his cellie his his his staff whoever it was like all these years of all the blows to the head and this is the final product of him I'm like what a horrible job of rehabilitation that was right that yard was, like I said, it kind of sparked the interest with the SMI stuff. And like, you would, there's another inmate. I'll leave his name out of it because he's still in there.

This guy is very low functioning, right? Right. A lot of people in prison are low functioning. We all know that. But he knew how to try to hang himself by making a rope out of toilet paper and paper towels. Seems pretty high functioning, actually. I'm not sure. You think, you think you're like, I don't know how to do this shit, but it's like, I can take a zero Bob Barker roll of toilet paper.

I don't know if Bob Barker does all the federal stuff. Yeah, they do. Yeah, a little clear tubes of toothpaste and all that stuff. And the Bob Barker, uh, shower slides. Oh, Bob Barker. Price is right. Price of, he got the price of everything, that guy. But, um, you know, I'm like, I would hear his story.

Like, how is he hanging himself? He's on watch all the time. And it's like, he has toilet paper. He rips it. Like, rolls it up. Cells the ends with toothpaste. Does that again? Does that again?

Braids it. So now you have three little strands that you braid it into one. Now you do that two more times. Now you have three braids and you braid that together. And he even showed me like, I'll show you how to do it. And it was like, it was like rope that you, like I could jump off a cliff with it and it would still support me. So this is like your typical image. It's like, this guy's never going to be another one.

He like smoking meth, psychotic breakdown constantly on watch. You ever on a constant watch? Me? Yeah. I know you're timed in the hole, but there was a lot of guys that'd be, so you know when you're on the watch, you get that green or yellow smock, you can't. You can't. It's too, it's two. They call them the suicide smock, the turtle shells. Yeah, the turtle suits. Yeah, the turtle suits. So I would see this guy and he's just constantly on watch. And you would hear him briefing like, Cox, you're sitting on this watch. You're sitting on this watch. I'm like, people are like, I don't want to sit on him because they know it's like five minutes in. He's going to just flip the fuck out. out. So I would see a lot of guys, like, at this point, I've been doing this for not even a year. I'm like, who can I? I can't tell somebody else for doing this for 20 years. I'd do their job. Right. I just had a little bit different approach. I was like, instead of being that CEO that's like,

shut up inmate or just give him what they, like, don't acknowledge him unless it's like for medication or psych or whatever. I was like, let me just try to like engage with this guy a little bit. Like he's clearly a low function. I'm the only person this guy has to talk to. Right. And like I said, I'm not a hug of thug. But I was like, Let me just try to make this day easier for myself. Teaches me the alphabet, you know, the whole hand signal shit. Because I was like, all right, that's good for me to know. Not that I can keep up with people that are fucking talking about both hands and two different people. You guys are pros.

But he taught me sign language. Like, all right, you know, that's, that's productive, I guess. I'm keeping him entertained. Right. And he starts telling me, you know, his mom was a lawyer. And I know, he gets a lot of store, a lot. And I'm like, what the fuck cares about this guy? And he would get a store, his $100 worth, he would just give it all out.

And I'm like, do you need to stop doing this? People are taking advantage of you. Right. He would go on watch because he would expect something back from the guy. It wouldn't happen. It was never going to happen. So he starts telling me one day, I was like, I got to keep this guy calm. I was like, tell me how you lost all your teeth.

All right. He was, you know, prison. These guys have no teeth, whatever. So this is the most honest thing I've ever heard an inmate say. He says to me, he's like, yeah, I've been in prison. 2008, and I've been in a lot of fights, but I haven't won a single one. I was like, that's honest. Usually guys talk about their breaking necks and, you know, smashing in people's

skull. He's like, yeah, I never want to fight. And I'm like, all right, well, thank you for the honesty. And he's like, yeah, this tooth, you know, I was at, I was at Buckley. And I told some black guy, he should, his children should get hung from a tree. And then I lost a tooth. And then this tooth. So you're bringing these fights.

He's bringing on. So I was like, this guy, um, I asked a, uh, a guy, uh, a guy, uh, a guy. a swastika if his last name was Cohen and it's typical stuff and then he tells me this one too what about that tooth is like front tooth he's like yeah I was giving this guy a blowjob one time and I was using too much teeth and he

I got scared and then he said if I use too much teeth he's gonna hit me and then he hit me and then I had blood tooth and cum all my mouth at the same time so it's like this is like 7 a.m. It's like this is like the guy I was talking about before that was eating his own feces

I remember I called my mom after the first time because You see it once. It's like, all right, whatever. So I'm seeing him eat his feces. I'm eating my breakfast. He's eating his breakfast. And I remember calling my mom. My mom,

am I fucked up if I could watch another guy eat his own feces and I'm eating my breakfast and it doesn't bother me? And she's like, I was a nurse for 30 years. Like, you just get used to the shit. You just got used to it quicker. Yeah. I was like, all right. You know, this is all like my first year.

You start seeing stuff. You get the uses of force, the basic stuff. But I had to venture out. I had to I had to go to like the real pens just as he was like I didn't want that violence I didn't like I said I just I got to see what it's like

right it's like if you're in the military like you almost want to see combat even though it's like why would you want to see that so when I start seeing everybody like snitching on people I'm like you know I'm gonna go down to these other units and do overtime down there so I was in Phoenix you can go

I lived on the East Valley you can go an hour away there's a whole big ass prison there's two prisons There's one called Florence, which is the town, Florence, Arizona. There's Florence prison, which is South unit, which is Chalmos. East unit was a minimum camp. North was a worker dorm. Central was like a four yard, like a pen.

So you can just go down there and show up anytime you want. Like they'll never take, they'll never say no. They're so short staffed. So I would kind of do rounds. I was like, I'm going to go to East unit one day, South, North, whatever. And what I used to do is like when I would work my six to two, I would go home, eat, shower, maybe sleep, go down there and work four to ten

because then I had to go home and then go back to work at my unit the next day because the unit I worked at there wasn't always overtime. Right. You know, there's a lot of people getting hurt or whatever, like it would be there, but then it wouldn't be. But you go down to Central, it's always they're so short staffed.

And I was like, you walk in and it's like, you got the big, it's like the walls and the nickname Gladiator school. It's like, I don't think every prison in America was Gladiator school. Just throwing that out. Every prison is gladiator school it's like we get it there's only so many things that could happen people get stabbed we get it gladiars school you had to put in work you had to fight you had to deal with the

politics so you go there and I used to go to the back to CB6 right go to Casson Casson's the mental the high custody mental health yard so you go there and it's just like it's single men's all these sort of tiny like you see guys it's like okay the bed is as long as

at this table and this table is like 5-8. So it's like the majority of the people in here can't fit in this bed. Right. You know, you see guys standing up and they're above like the top of the cell doors. But I'm like, this is like,

this is like the dangerous crazy guys. And they're all single man cells and the banging and the screaming. And there's this one guy who would constantly lick his fingertips. I mean, day and night he was doing this. And it's like, you have to get raw doing that. Right.

You know, you see guys that are just like, they got brains of like four-year-olds, five year olds like what are you in here for right and you have guys like yeah I was just born black at the wrong time it's like what did this like what I couldn't imagine being like older black guy like in the 70s or the 80s it's like with the way the justice system is like like like pictures of these guys in like the south like angola and louisiana it's like man like you guys are fucked like even if you were innocent you're fucked

you know that goes back to like you look at these guys like at one point you were just a regular guy. So I start doing overtime down there. I started doing overtime right down the street from Florence is a whole other complex called I'm in. So I'm in is SMU, which is where I wound up working at. Then there's two Chomo yards, uh, IHP yard, which is like integrated housing. That's like it's like, uh, you got the political guys, right? Like I hang out with the blacks or the whites with the whites, the Mexicans with the Mexicans. But then when they get like tired of this, like I got I'm trying to do another 50 years before I get out of here. I don't want to deal with these politics.

I'll go to IHP yard. It's like it's PC, but we're not PCing. So you'll have like a black tranny with a white skinhead. Right. But they're like, we signed IHP, we're cool. Yeah, yeah.

We know on the regular, on the regular yard, you would never excel up with each other. All right. So you see that. But it's like, I don't know, I guess the feds might be a little different, but in state prison,

everybody knows everybody. everybody knows everybody's business everybody knows everybody's from another story this this is well how many people are in that 50,000 50 I was going to say there's over 100,000 in the federal system and 50,000 just in Arizona back to the CB6 stuff and I think part of the reason why I was exposed to criminals from the time all the time being at the club right right and I'm like these guys are are pretty decent you know not decent, like you have a lot of assholes here and there, but it's like, if you just speak to people the right way,

right, you'll be fine. Like if there's situations where like, there's no words can get us out of this. Like, all right, we have to do what we have to do. But I wanted to go to the other yards because I wanted to see what it was really like.

Right. So like I said, when I would go down to Central, you would, you know, or I'm sorry, go down to Florence, you could be at Central one day,

which is like the oldest prison in Arizona. That's where the death row guys used to be. You know, but it's like you're typical. It's like three tiers, you know, with a wall on the other side and, and, and, or CB2 was like, I think, a hundred years old. And it's like 27 cells, three high, 27 cells three high. You go there and it's like you start seeing like real prison stuff.

You start seeing like, you know, one time back half George, one time front half Henry. Like the things when people say like, how do people get raped in prisoner do drugs? Don't they get caught? It's like, no, because. we're only walking around once every hour and be everybody is shouting out that we're coming so if you get caught you're an asshole yeah now is when you start seeing like that's when I started like these guys are like inmates that are like are you guys acting this way because you're here are you guys acting this way because this has been your whole life since you're a kid growing up

with your dad's in prison and gangs and your mom's out doing whatever and your brothers are here like you know this is a different yard this is like you got your politics like if a if two black guys are fighting over there and you're a white guy, you just keep moving. You don't even turn your head. You know, if it's two white guys fighting, you don't turn your head. And I think there's a misconception and I could be wrong. But like when you hear these stories about people getting beat up in prison or people getting stabbed, it's like a lot of the time they were stabbed by their own people because they did something wrong or they did something that was against this stupid politics and this culture, you know, you're a white guy. You're going to hang with us and

go beat the shit out of that guy. It's like, dude, I only have 30 fucking months here. I want to do my time. You just want to get everything out of me that you can to better the cause. Right. It's like, all right, you know, you can relate to anybody in prison. You could talk to anybody. It's just knowing how to talk to different people. Well, I always say that it's, if you get stabbed in prison, like you, you had it coming. You probably had it coming. You know, like it's, unfortunately, it's, and I'm not saying it's 100% of time, but 99% of the time, you brought it on yourself because usually they've given

you multiple opportunities like they don't like first of all we got to get somebody to go do this and that guy basically has a good chance of him being shipped himself so now i got to have you come convince you to go stab this guy or beat this guy up you're going to be shipped by the way and of course you're you might be like oh i'm closer to home close to my house like i get visits i get like why am i what's happening here so yeah usually and usually they've given the guy multiple opportunities to check in to make it right to pay this to apologize to do something to try and fix it. Right.

It's not like your first offense is like you're getting stabbed tomorrow at chow time or this is that this is what's going to happen. Right. You know, I think it's like I said before like prisons only have a certain level of accessibility to the public. That's why they're so interesting to people. You could see it in movies.

You could see it on podcasts and it's not like what you see. It's not race riots every day. It's not people doing 3,000 burpees a day and eating 10 bags of tuna and it's just it's not realistic. No one can operate with that level of aggression and frustration and anger for that long. You're going to bust a capillary in your head and die. Most of the times you're walking around. Dude are just watching TV doing this, doing that. But mind you, at this time, I was at the Phoenix yard. I was just spreading out to seeing what all these other yards are like. So I made my round, my rounds through all of Central. Then I go down the street to I'm in. So you have

SMU special management unit it's a five yard so guys aren't coming out unless they're cuffed up like there was chomo's there like it's four wings right and then each wing has four clusters and then each cluster has six pots so it's five cells or four or five cells stack too high and then you're just looking out of a concrete wall so that's where you see guys like fishing stuff and but those guys are burnt all day all day they're just burnt in those cells and it's hot in Arizona. You're cooking. The craziest thing was, guys used to,

there's swamp coolers, but maybe they were repaired by some HVAC guy in colonial times. Like, I'm sure you're cooking in there, man. Fuck, guys would just sit on the concrete all day and sweat. A lot of guys used to say that the time there goes by faster than at open yards. And the shoe? It's basically the shoe, but you're just housed there.

They had wrecking all that stuff, but you're like, okay, you had wrecking showers every other day. Um, when I was working, I actually wound up working there full time down the road, but you were working 12 hour days, which I liked better. I like 12 is better than Nates, but who cares? It's not important. Um, you would go there and you could have wing four, it's closed now. That's not really am I talking about it, but you could have wing four is like the political guys,

like blacks with blacks, whites, whites with whites and, uh, natives with natives or natives with Mexicans. so let's say the back half of wing four Baker Charlie that's all that political bullshit the front half is the guys that want to PC up and I can't tell you how many guys you go I leave work on my Friday and I come back on my Monday and it's like there's a lot of you guys from the back half that are now in the front half it's like you guys pieced up that quick over God knows what a fucking bag of tuna a bag of this a bag of that whatever it was like those you guys live in this life I thought you you were about all this anyway but it's like

I never had any issues there. You know, I can respect the guys that, like you always see those guys that, like, are trying to fight their case or trying to better themselves, but they're just,

the overall population is like, fuck that, dude, you're just going to be this, just go with the flow. It's like, I can respect that guy that is trying to get his shit together, trying to give himself a fighting chance,

holding on to that optimism. So you would see things like, you know, you walk past and it'll be like, the guys they're working out at this time or watching Young and the Restless. A lot of soap operas. A lot of soap operas.

They love the soap operas. They love the soap operas. And they know the price of everything on the price is right. It's bullshit. Because guys, like, I remember when I first went to Central, I was at dialysis. And these guys are coming in and they're doing the thing where you get like a boat a vacation and like a refrigerator or something. And they're like, yeah, it's 28,490.

And the other guy, and it's like, yeah, he's right. Like, that was on there 11 months ago. And I'm like, you guys fucking suck. I was trying to sit here and guess you ruin it. He's like, dude, we have nothing to do. Yeah. I mean, I didn't even think about that. But I remember this, uh, this one Mexican guy.

This is great. This I got my nickname in prison, which is a word I've used in this podcast, but you'll never, you never understand it. So as you know, in prison, everybody has a last name or a nickname. Nobody has a first name. my last name is todaldi not common doesn't roll off the tongue that easily whatever when we do our walks if i mean if there's two of us in a wing if i do pods one i do odds or even so if i do one three and five i do one three and five the whole shift because whatever

inmates i might have spoken to about something last walk you know i might have an answer for them the following walk whatever it is you go up and you see this guy there's there's this mexican guy and he's like trying to learn how to speak English. He didn't have a lot of stuff in itself. He didn't have a TV. He didn't have a lot of stuff. He's like trying to learn how to speak English. I respect it.

You know, like I don't know anything about him. I don't know how much time he's done. Whatever. So he's reading, he's a short guy. So he's reading my shirt. And he's like,

de, dad, dad dal di. I'm like, all right, cool, you got it. Right? By the time I walked down the run and come back,

he forgot. Come back to next walk. Eddaal di. Cool. Next walk. Edaldi. I'm like, cool. He's getting it.

He's not going to remember him by tomorrow, but he's getting it. The next walk had come around, and at that unit, the bubble was up top. So the control room was up top. They had to open the doors themselves. So they were cell doors, pod doors, cluster doors. So you would hear the pod doors opening, and they would know that we were coming around. Because otherwise, they're closed. I hear the guy say, he said it in Spanish.

Like, he said to the guy and said, oh yeah, how do you know, that's a police, a, it's a number of the police, very alto. What's the tall guy's name? He's like, aye, I'm gonna say, is it a tamale? Is it a tamale? And I heard that walking in and everybody started laughing. So for the whole rest of my fucking time there, I was tamale. I was like, you know what?

It's not disrespectful. Like, it's harmless. Like, I'll go it. It's not like he's calling me like buttercup or some shit. Like, whatever. So I was officer tamale. It didn't help that. I was wearing a beige uniform with brown pants.

I was going to say the guards would all, they'd have, like, they had a guy named sniper. they had a guy name You know, all the guards had Well, and some of them just had Yeah, like you said, their last name If it's a con, like if you're an officer And you're Cox, okay, you're Cox

Yeah Nobody wants to say to Daldi all day Like who the fuck wants to say that shit? Well, I was gonna say what was it? It was really funny Was when the cops would call the inmates By their nicknames. Like we had a guy named Porn Star

And you'd have like a female cop And she'd be like, Porn Star, get over here? And you're like, did this is a setup? The cop just call him porn star? And his name, his nickname was Pornstar, because he had all the dirty magazines. The one that was renting them out? Yeah, he'd rent them out.

Yeah. Come back all crusty. Yeah. So he was porn star. Yeah. Somebody was like, why is it? Why do they call him Porn Star? I'm like, well, first of all, he had his neck fused, right, from the spinal, the, whatever, the vertebrae were all fused together.

They're like Frankenstein. Yeah. So he turned like this. You know, so he, and it was kicked kind of forward. so he's like and he would he hey Cox what would they say up there

you know and I go they said such and such oh okay and so like you look at like this was not a porn star and I was like well it's not because somebody was like why they call him born star

it's like the guy's named tiny and he's like six eight 400 pounds yeah or you have yeah you have you have gordo you know you have yeah this it's a lot of the same names over and over again but it's just funny

it's like I said before everybody fucking knows everybody it's like that name haunted me everybody knew I'm like, you're in Wing 1. You can't even hear Wing 4. Right. But whatever.

Like I said, I went with it. It was harmless. It was funny. But, um, that unit, they mixed a lot of, um, like I said, wing one would be, uh, a political guys. And then Wing 3 would be detention. So that could be assholes from all over the state. You walk down wing three. It's like, who are you guys?

Where have you come from? And you'll see guys, it's like, well, there's like this other guy with a swastick on his forehead. And he's, um, he's blind. and he only has one leg and it's just constantly with the racial I could show you a picture of it I don't know if you want to see it

but you want to see it? Sure. This is the type of stuff you see in state prison. Yeah, I was like, remember the guy with the forehead? I told you he had the tattoos on his forehead

and on his face. He was tattooed everywhere. The horns. Yeah, and I remember when I talked to him I was like, bro, why did you do that? He's like, when I came in the system, I had, he had like, whatever let's say 10 years to do in the state and then five years to do in the feds right

i was like okay he's like well they sent me the prison they sent him to he said literally almost every other day somebody was getting killed being stabbed he's like that's how bad it was he said and i was joined a gang to try and just to be safe he's like you don't you have to like he was actually a very normal guy when you talk to him right a lot of them are yeah and then you're sitting there talking to and he says um he said and to be honest man he said after the first year he's like I didn't think I was going to make it Like I saw guys coming in with five years And getting stabbed

Or guys getting killed Or guys sees like it was that bad of a prison He was now this was 15 years ago Or whatever 10 years ago He said So I never thought I was gonna finish And I think the sentence was like 15 He did 10

God that seems like an attorney I couldn't imagine being Well so then he gets out after 10 years He is now I'm going to the Fed to do my Fed time Yuck He said That's better than state It's better than state

He said so I've got five years He's which basically I'll be out in four. He was, I can be, he's, I can do four years in the Fed like, like it's a joke. He's, that's nothing. And he was like, he said, so he was, I didn't think I was going to survive. I would hear guys say that they wanted, like, I'll do five years in the feds as opposed of doing two in state. Oh, yeah. That's the type of shit you hear all the time. His, the reason he got the tattoos was he thought, you know, fuck it, I'm never leaving this place alive. I might as well do, you know, yeah, I'll get this tattooed on me. Yeah, I'll get this tattoo some. You know what

would be cool? Tattoo some. I like this picture. Tattoo those horns on my forehead. Like, he's like, you know, you just do nuts, crazy stuff. He said, I was like, yeah, but oh my God. Yeah. This is the exact representation of state prison. And it's like, all right, he's in detention. And he's calling the next guy perverts.

And there's all these end bombs in the ear. And I'm like, dude, you're a pervert. You yourself are a pervert. He thinks, I'm not a pervert. It's like, because you're blind with your cataract side, You think that that justifies what you did? And it's one thing that's like, look, if you're a pervert, you're an asshole, you do what you did, you keep your mouth shut. But this guy's like loud and kicking the door with his one leg and pissing on the floor.

And it's like, what's funny to me is that the guys that would walk around talk about, you know, fucking guy over there's a snitch. And I'd be thinking, like, I know you snitch. Like I did your paperwork. Like I've looked at your case. Like, you know, we've talked about it. And then they forget. they told you and they're like fuck and it's like what are you doing so i see that all the time um it's the same thing i you would find out i had a guy who was locked up same thing uh everybody

thought he was locked up for like weed or something but really it was looking at pictures of little kids on the internet and he's locked up and he's going around like fucking that guy's a fucking sick over there it's like but what do you do who are you talking to like i know what you're here for like just because you got these other guys convinced he said and the guys with uh i like the guys that, when they get the glasses, they intentionally get the Chomo 3,000. It's like, you could have picked any other lens that is still not going to

look good on you. You picked the Chomo 3000. Yeah, these are the thick, thick. The bars and then they're like rounded. It's like, dude, you're, it's you know, it's like, okay, I get it. You go to church. I'm just like a fucking priest all the time, but um, and I think it's funny because

like all these things that you're talking about. I do my walk. I deal with like, their time I didn't speak to for years. I never had to speak to. There's, it's every fucking walk they want to talk about something. But you're going to, it was easy for me to move around because it's like, look, you're still people. For all I know, you may be innocent, you know, and it's like you live that gang life, that street life. I was dealing with that for years, making money off you guys.

You know, you're just here now. It's like, I'm not going to talk down to you. Like, you'd see these guys, I would see guys that I was working with that they were like, you know, don't think you can ask me anything until you're in. Uniform is in compliance. You take down your laundry line and you take the cover off your light. And I was like, listen, let me tell you how this should go. A Cox, Sergeant, whomever is coming through later. You just take this shit down, let him do his walk.

And then you could fucking bounce and then put it all back up to normal. Right. I got you. I got you. You're going to get a lot further with that because then they're like, cool, he's on my side. He's not a dick. I'm going to comply as opposed to the other guy. Go fuck yourself.

Like, I'm not taking it down. Damn. Like now you just made it so much worse where if you've made it seem like, hey, bro, I'm with you. I get it. you got a lot of time. You want to be comfortable, but do me a favor in about an hour this guy's going to come around.

It's like make, you want to, like I tell me like, you want to go to work for what we get paid and argue with, there's a thousand, we're responsible for 458 people,

just me and you. All right. You want to argue what they're gonna be here tomorrow. Well, you know, another thing is, I used to hate that. I,

you know, there would be guys that, this happened more at the medium, but it didn't happen to low, too. Or the guy, the tattoo guy, would go into the CEO

and he'd go, Listen, man, I got a guy. I tattoo. You know, I tattoo. You know, right. He go, I got a guy. He's coming in. I'm supposed to tattoo him.

Like, I don't want to be different. Oh, they go, listen. Fucking, a lieutenant comes around at seven. Do you understand? So you make sure you have your lookout. When he comes around, don't have anything out. Go separate ways. Wait till he comes.

Talks to me. We sign the papers and leave. Like, don't, don't get me a fuck up. Let me do his post check. Let that door slam so you know he's out and then go back to what you're doing. Right. You don't have to worry about me. I'm not going to fuck with you.

But if you get me fucked up with this, with the lieutenant, then you're going to have a problem. They're like, no, no, I get it, bro. I get it. They're like, so don't get some idiot for your lookout. Don't have an idiot as a lookout. He's going to fall asleep. Right. It's funny, too, when you said they would say coming, you know, in, in a, in Coleman at least that they would just, they wouldn't say come and they go, woo, woo, who, who, who, who, you're here, that just means the cops are coming.

That's like, the police. And they didn't never call them, they don't call them COs. You know, they always always, like, they always. The police. It's the po-po. The cops. Yeah, the cops. Cops are coming.

But, but, but, like in the unit, yeah, we're not, I used to, I used to say, I used to say, I, I, I, back to the Phoenix yard. So, like, you know, at an intake yard, you don't have a watch, you don't know what time it is, you know anything. I used to hear a guy's bang, like, hey, C-O, C-O, what time is it? I'm like, bro, I'm a prison guard. He's a CEO. Talk to him.

I don't know anything to do. Same fucking uniform, same job. Like, yeah, what time is he told me to ask you? But that's his typical jazz. So like another thing, this is another thing that killed me is the way time is perceived in prison, right? So the guys at the intake yard, they go there, they get processed, then I get, so I remember one time I got called in because the guy was like a Max Cousy, you got whatever. He's coughed, take him to a cell, open the trap, take the cuffs off of him, and I hear somebody banging on the glass. And when you come from intake to Delta or Echo, that's what they're called, everybody's up looking at you because like, oh, I know him from County.

I know him from RingCon, whatever it is. So everybody's hiring this guy. Where are you from, fool? He's looking around, looking around, looking around. Then I hear somebody call his, like, a name only he would know, like, whatever, whatever his nickname is. Tea dog. Some shit.

And he turns around. He's like, he's like, how much time you guys? Like, man, these fools gave me 15 flat. And he's like, that ain't shit. I ain't tripping on it. You know why? I got nine months back time in county. I'm like.

So nine months off your 15? So what are you talking about? You have 15 flat. You got nine months back time in Canada? What the fuck you're worried about? You think you're at the exit gate? All right. It's just like things that just get normalized.

It's like, okay. Like you're, you know, make sure you don't even unpack your shit. You're rolling back out of here soon going home. Like, dog, you're not exactly at the finish line. You're still at the starting gate. But what can I tell about? That'll stick with me forever. He's like, they gave me 15 flat.

I got back time in county, bro. I'm about to be over this. I'm like. Um, I was like the, uh, um, well, you know, the, the COs in a Coleman would get upset if you called them a guard. They would, they get, they go, they go state, like, the state has guards. I'm not a guard. I'm a C. I'm a correctional officer.

It's like, whatever. You know, it's like, all right. You know, it's just silly. God, there were some real dickheads.

There was a guy who fought MMA. M8 or? No, no. This was a guard. Listen. I bet he was the coolest person in that bitch. No, he probably wanted it.

He was horrible. He's one of those. He's like, I'm going to flex my chest everywhere I go. Yeah, his name was solo. And he literally, like, you know, he'd just be walking down. He'd go, hey, inmate, you know, turn around.

And he, you know, just to search somebody randomly, right? And he grabbed them and they got to be like, hey, man, and then that was it to him. Dumping them. I mean, listen, I literally would. You'd be, you'd be looking at there'd be, the walls are five foot, right, the, the, the, um, the, um, cubicles. So at the low, I can, you can just see over them.

And I mean, I hear, hey, inmate, what the fuck you? And you, all I saw was legs in the air. Woo! Boom. You hear that slam and it's like, holy shit. So you walk around just a. kind of take a look, right, as I'm kind of leaving, and he's got this guy just, oh, sorry, he's got them all wrapped up and pinned, you know, he's got them all tied up like a, like a pretzel,

you know, and it's like, geez, and he did this, this was like every few days this happened. He was, and the other, even the, listen, the other COs said, oh, yeah, solo, yeah, he's a dick. Like, they all hated his guts. Yeah, and that's, and he had a bunch of swastikas and, and, and, um, SS and stuff on his arm. Lightning bolts, 88 on his knuckles. He had to have They hired him But he had to wear a sleeve

So they had a sleeve to cover all his tattoos Because they were all racial stuff And he's beating dude's asses left and right I never once Walked into any unit And I get into Lewis later on I never walked into any unit and said I want to flex my authority on these people

I want to put you on report I don't want to do fucking paperwork We're gonna have to talk some jerk off sergeant I don't even like look this is this might not go over well with some of your viewers that are in this line of work in prison from my perspective it's not even the fucking inmates out of the problem it's the people you work with like i said you're putting all of us in the same uniform same training we're not friends right you know now i'm not saying like you can't be friends just people i'm

friends with i talk to every day i used to work with but it's just like i don't want to work with this fool like i'd rather do wing one by myself i'd rather do double the work to not have to work with this person. Well, it's funny why I talk to, I've talked to other, you know, other COs and stuff. And one of the things is because at least in the federal system, they have like a really good union. So it's almost impossible to fire them. So they have to get convicted of like a crime to get rid of them.

And so what they do instead is, they move them. They move them. But you can't force someone to relocate in the federal system unless it is, um, you know, So they would offer them, hey, you know, we got a position here and you could move here. And they're like, oh, I'm getting paid the same. I don't want to move there. Right. Well, when I moved to Minneapolis when I live in Texas.

And you can't fire me. So what they do is they say it's so if a position opens up that is a raise or, you know, you're getting a promotion. So it's like, okay, hey, you're, you're. Worse you do, the more you move up. Exactly. So I was like, how bad does the bureau, the top of the bureau prisons have to be? And this happens all the time. That's funny.

You say that. So these guys would get moved up. Well, there was a woman at the pen, this black chick at the pin that was at the low. And she was a fucking terror, bro. Everybody hated her. And she was a lieutenant. Well, it came to find out, they moved her from the pin because she was under investigation. One, she got a DUI.

Two, she was under investigation. Now, she had been. She got a, and she would under investigation for something else besides a DUI? Yes. While she's got that and dealing with that, she goes under investigation. Here's what happened. She's at the pen. She's harassing a new officer, a married officer that she wants to get with.

She's texting him inappropriate stuff, everything. I think I know this story. So what happens is at one point, she's harassing him like really like bad, like to the point where I think he even put something in where he was like, hey, she's harassing me. I want to leave me alone. He's one of those. He went to HR. If you do that, you shit, you're dead. Because his wife had new.

what was happening. So she's furious. What happens is the chick gets pulled over not far from where they live and gets a DUI. The cop says, I'll let you off. We'll leave your car here, but somebody has to come pick you up. Because if I put you in that car, he calls the guy. She calls the guy. She texts the guy and says, I'm begging you to just come get me and drop me off at my place. I'll make it worth your while. I'll suck your dick. Me while the guy's at home with his wife or something. Yeah, it's like 11, 12, 1 o'clock in the morning or something. He gets this. His wife's like, give me your phone, looks at it, and she's like, oh, no.

So I think that's when he ends up calling, like, HR and what he files a complaint against her, and he's got the text. And, of course, she ends up, I think she ends up getting the DUI. So they move her from the pen to the low, and she's, she's just a complete bitch. Like, she's walking around. She's just fucking with every single person she can, just absolutely evil. It's like, you just got a DUI. they can't seem to fire her.

Ultimately, I think she moved, she got some kind of a, they moved her across the country and gave her some kind of a new position or convinced her to take another position and leave because she was such a problem. But that's what happens, they become a problem

and they just ship them somewhere else. I say it to us, like, okay, once you get above a lieutenant, with A-Z-D-O-C, it's like, okay, C-O, Sergeant, Lieutenant. Once you get past lieutenants, like Captain Major, like, who did you burn to get here?

Right. did you like if you're if you're a lieutenant at one place it's like some inmate died on on a constant watch they're going to move you to this prison and same thing and promote you and it's just like it's it's it's it's the only line of work where the worse you are the better you do right and that's my thing it's like I'm not kissing ass I don't want to play game I don't I just want to do my fucking job I'll give these guys what they got coming I don't mind passing around a bag of tortillas to another guy another officer would be like absolutely not I'm gonna write you for doing that because you're going to get compromised like no dude you know what maybe if this guy

gives his friend over there bag of tortillas and you look there's nothing in it maybe my day might go a little smoother all right maybe these guys know not all these cool we're not gonna we're not gonna we don't try to get over on him he's cool he's he's respectful to us he gives what we got coming and don't get it wrong if you're an asshole and I do what I'll do what I have to do I'll do what I have to do you know it is I signed up to be in this environment like I couldn't stand when people you would hear people like they would get thrown on like these guys know like if you throw somebody, then you get moved. If you were assault an officer, then you get moved if you don't want to

PC up. So you would have people that would complain this fucking guy just threw piss on me. It's like you're a CEO in a mental health yard. What did you think was going to happen? Or they're all going to behave. You're going to give them graham crackers and put them from the TV and they're going to be fine? It's what's going to happen. Not for nothing. All this contraband

that's in here who brings this shit in? Yeah. Doesn't just come from Keefei. Right. You can't get an iPhone 6 off Kee for $800? it doesn't work like that people brought it in um yeah what's funny is like after covid they a lot of the COs retired or during COVID they retired because CEOs were getting sick several people died several COs died um and so the CEOs were like look it's it's rampant here like it's way worse the prisons than anywhere else so we're gonna you know they started taking retirement well the problem is so many of them took retirement then left the new guys came

men, they don't know anything. They're seniors in three years. Right, exactly. And that's what, it's funny. My buddy Pete was telling me, he's like the most senior officer at Coleman Lowe has been here three years. He said, so everybody else has been here, 18 months, 12 months, 10 months. And after six months, you just don't have the experience to really know what's going

on in the prison with it. When, you know, most inmates, I mean, most guards, they walk into a, they walk into a unit, and they hear certain things and they look and see certain things. They know pretty much right. like pretty much they'll be like okay something's going on there's tension there's a fight there's going to be a fight everybody's got their showers right they got their boots on they've got like some things i can know something but a guy that's been there three to six months he don't have a fucking clue or they smell something a guy who's been a CEO who's been there 10 years would

be like somebody's making hoot somebody is somebody burning batteries to use it as a wick yeah you know so but the the new guys don't it takes years before you start to figure that out You would see these guys making hooch. I would walk past guy, so I was like, bro, are you, let me look, what's your number? Oh, three, one, okay. You got to let the air out of that bottle

or it's going to fucking explode and smell like old potatoes in here. Let the fucking air out. I don't care if you're making hooch. Somebody gave you the bread, somebody gave you the tomato paste to start or whatever it was. Well, and keep mine, too,

these guys are making $35,000 a year. So if somebody goes to them in the parking lot says, then I'll give you a grand to give this cell phone to this inmate. They're like, that's a fucking thousand. I used to hear people say, And like I said, I'm not better than any other man or woman that works here. I'm not.

It's just like I said, I'm exposed to different things in my work history and lifestyle. It's like, okay, you bring guys that it's like you were working at in and out before you did this. And you just came into work in this environment. Right. And you started at this yard, which you might have not known what type of yard it was going to be. But like, I would hear guys in the parking lot that I'd say, yeah, man, I just got an F-250. You know, 19, 20-year-old kids, like, right, if you're living at home, the money you're making is pretty good. But it's like, I got an F-250.

I got a 40-inch tires, a nine-inch lift. I only got to work two over-times a week to pay for it. Like, bro, you want to have the nicest truck in a prison parking lot? Like, you're-backwards, bro. Like, you're not getting it. And it's a stereotype a lot of, like, burnout, want-to-be cops. And I get all of it. And then the way I looked at it, like, when COVID hit, I realized I'm like, all right, this is recession-proof.

You know, like, people who isn't, like, even like now in the tech world, tech's like, oh, most money you're ever going to make. And all these people in Microsoft and Google, they're all getting laid off. But I remember, this is going to get dark real quick, when COVID happened, I was still at the Phoenix yard, the intake yard. So when they would bring the intake guys, if you violate parole in the Phoenix area, you go to that yard to get processed. Right. If you're in Yuma, which is three hours away, if you're in that area, you just go over there. So they would bring guys in.

And I have the two guys that I've ever processed, I probably did the paperwork wrong in all honesty. This one guy comes in, high as a kite. smelled like not exactly a Christmas ham. Shrip him out, do the whole routine, you know, run through your hair, lift your feet. I'm like, dude, how long has your finger been like that? He's like, what finger? I'm like, dude, where are your fingers looking?

He'll figure it out. So he looked at his hands and he had a ring on. And the guy was probably like a shade darker than me. His whole finger from the front half of the ring down was dead, black. I mean, like, asphalt black. I'm like, how long has your finger been like that? I'm like, when did you get out of prison? He's like, six weeks ago.

I'm like, okay, did you have that ring when you left prison? No. So what happened? He's like, I've been getting high the whole time. And I don't know. I forgot about it. I'm like, you forgot that your finger died. He's like, yeah, dude, I've been getting high.

Like, it's not that big a deal. Like, all the, the emergency thing we have to do, a guy goes to the hospital and he gets an amputated. Oh my God. I thought that was going to be the worst thing I ever saw on a strip out. A couple weeks later, same thing. I'm doing over time at, I always used to choose this place called Ida, just because it was like, it used to be low functioning guys, guys that like, you had to tell them to take their medication

or they would just walk up and down the hallway. Like, there's this one guy. He would always put his shoes on to go to bed and then walk out of the cell and take his shoes off and walk out without shoes. This is the same guy that he would stand in the yard. I remember this. And he would always be like, it's Arizona, but it's fucking hot. He'd always be like, did I leave like the stove on?

Did I, did I, did I, did I pay that bill? He always, like, looked like he was forgetting stuff. Right. It's like, Jones. Get out of the fucking sun, dude. You're going to die. You're just standing here in this fixed spot. I get out of the sun, but this guy didn't know any better, but.

We had a guy, so it just reminded me, we had a guy, so they had a volleyball court, right? Hey, we had volleyball, too. And, uh, uncoordinated people are you going to see. They had a guy that they called Sandman because he would lay there and do sand angels. He'd lay down and do sand angels. And so he'd walk around. If you walked behind him, like, he always had sand in his hair. He always had, like, you know, the cops would walk out and yell at him, get up.

Shake it off, where you go inside and piss everyone off? Right. That they call him Sam. Sure. That's pretty cool. So the only other, um, Ida, like I said, Ida had the low function guys. And in the back part of it was like four cells where they were put parole guys until they got processed and dealt with. So I get, I have to go strip this other guy out this one time.

And I'm like, this fucking guy is tall, like way tall. with me. He's probably like six nine, six, ten. I check his ID, same exact birthday as me, same day, month, year. And I'm like, we took pretty different paths. Yeah, the same starting point, pretty different paths that end up in the same place. Guys at Cheeto. Right. Cheeto is, did you ever get where the Cheeto was? It's a transgender in prison. Now, you have to understand in Arizona, we're wearing orange. So the name kind of. If you're, if you're, transgender you wear orange? No, no, everybody wears orange.

All the image wore orange. But, you know, you're a cheetah, you're a transgender and orange, like, yeah, Cheetos. Cheetos. Like, Tamale fits. It goes with my name and I'm wearing beige anyway. I'm like, this guy's tall. I've never, never seen it before.

He didn't buy, he wasn't rude disrespect. He was a night, you know, whatever. So he's probably like six, nine, six, eight, I'm six, you know, with boots, six five, so his tits are right in my face. And, um, I go to strip them out I've stripped out guys before but this guy and the last guy

were like I was like Jesus like the picture like you go in a bathroom and there's urinals and have like those little partitions so you could have people next to each other but they can't see each other so doing a whole routine

he takes off his clothes strip them out and I remember looking at like he turned around he did all that and I'm like lift your nuts and I pause for a second what am I looking at?

What am I looking at? What do I mean? miss. I'm thinking I do like the wrong steps and he's like I don't have any nuts and I'm looking at I'm like you don't that's what's missing you don't have fucking nuts and I was like okay

what did you get a hog from like here to Miami I was like there's a Cheeto the guy didn't even want it was gigantic anyway but it's like that's like the things you see in prison just get normalized it's like okay um go go back on that cell whatever my start says to go

so he's telling me later on Because the door to my where I would hang out There was a cell right across from it So the guy was just talking Like I said he wasn't bothering anybody He was like he was by himself And he's like Did you ever work at Rast?

That's out Lewis I'm like no Well yeah I had but I wasn't like ever stationed there But I've worked there And he's like yeah you know Like you know a lot of guys in prison They like telling their business to people And other guys like they don't want to tell anything So he tells me he's like

I didn't want my nut And in Arizona, if you're already receiving hormones, they can't deny you it. They continue it. Like, you can't go to prison, say I'm transgender and start it unless it's changed. But if you're already, if it's documented that you're already getting it, they'll keep giving it to you. So the guy's like, I just didn't want my nuts anymore. I think I just had too much estrogen in my system. And I just, I just didn't want them.

And I'm like, okay, I can understand maybe you don't want them, but what exactly was your game plan? And he said, he said something that was so ridiculous. I'm like, I can't even doubt it. And he's like, it wasn't that hard. Oh. I'm like, well, it wasn't that hard. And he goes, all I did was I took a string out of my boxers, like the ones you make fishing lines with or laundry lines, whatever.

I took the string out. I wrapped around my nuts really, really tight like you would do with a rubber band on your finger. And I'm visualizing that. I'm like, I get it. And he's like, I got really high. He's like, I didn't just do this on a whim. I thought about it.

I'm not like the rest of these inmates. Okay. Yeah, you're worse. You just don't realize it. and he's like I got really high I passed out and when I woke up my nuts were dead and he's a white guy

so he was like they were dead so I cut him off on a nail clipper I got high again cut him off with a nail clipper but what I did in account for is how much blood there was going to be but once again this is like you know I just ate subway

maybe it was for Chipolte it's like now I gotta hear this in the end of all talk about this type of stuff and then I'm supposed to go home and tell my family I'd say maybe a normal day at work no big deal all of you let's have dinner

so he's like yeah you know I cut him off with a nail clipper there was just a lot of blood so thankfully the CEO was come around on his walk and then he called you know ICS or whatever it was and that was it and I was like so they came and did the rest

snipped them off and sniffed them off and no he snipped them all the way off the nail clipper there was blood everywhere and then they shit yeah he sniffed them off with the nail clipper I didn't realize he completed the act and that's why I thought I'm like so what happens if they just die and he's like well then I just have dead nuts

and they probably would have to cut them off anyway because then it's like necrosis or something that's going to get your body and make it worse. But his follow-up statement to that was after he completed that story, he's like, do you have any extra cool? Like, you know the little crystal light things

that guys get? He's like, do you have any more of the cool-ups? I want to put it in my shampoo so it's scented. That was his immediate comment after telling me about what just happened last time he was at Rast, which is nuts. Like, yeah, dude,

would you want lemonade or pink strawberry? What do you want? What do you want, dude? Like, this is the type of stuff you see. So I go to Lewis to start doing overtime. Like I said, Phoenix is here. Florence is a mile east. Phoenix or Lewis is a mile west.

And Lewis has like this horrible reputation. And I knew it sucked from the beginning because when you go there, it's a parking lot. You go through a Sally Port and then it's six different units. But you have to take a trolley to get there. Now they knocked it down. You could just drive there. So like you have to get to work 45. minutes early just to get to your post on time and you don't get paid for it.

So I go there and instead of just showing up, you have to go, when you go to the Salliport, there's a sergeant there, he's like, who hell are you? I'm like, I'm from Phoenix, doing orders to go to Rast. Like, where's Rast? Where do I get the key set from? He's like, just figure it out. Okay, try to figure it out. Like, I'm on the clock anyway, so I don't care.

So I go to Rast, I say to the sergeant who I've never seen before in my life, I'm like, what do you want me to do? He's like, you ever been to Rining? I'm like, yeah, he's like, it's a. same setup. Like, okay, cool. So it's buildings that are just square little buildings and then there's two stories and there's a door in the middle, you know, whatever.

He's like, it's just like Rast. But these are all PC inmates. I'm like, oh, that's not like Rast then. Rass is I-H-P. Like, people think you go to a PC yard, you're safer. You go to a PC yard, it's everybody snitching everybody and it's, it's all kosher and everybody's happy here. And it's like, no, really.

Like, you go here. And it's like, okay, instead of it being black, whites, Mexicans, whatever, now it's like, this white guy, snitch on this white guy over a drug deal that happened with this guy's sister 10 years ago. It's like, every man for the fucking selves. Right. It's a disaster. And this is the one like, you, I don't know if you ever seen it, but there's like this whole news article about the cells at this facility because they weren't the doors that slammed shut. They were the ones that had the magnets that slid open. And the inmates knew that if you put something on the magnet and it would keep cycling and eventually die out so they could just shimmy the door open all the time.

You literally can see videos on YouTube of guys just opening their cells and just running anywhere they want. I was working with another officer and I was like, is this your uni? He's like, no, dude, I'm from Yuma. I'm like, Yuma. Yuma is the only prison in Arizona where you can't get any overtime because they're fully staffed. It's like on the border. So it's fully staffed. Like you go down there and they're speaking Spanish on radio traffic.

He's like, whatever. I'm like, so how are you from Yuma? He's like, yeah, I work six to two at Yuma. I take a bus, not a bus, I'm sorry, a van pool at three o'clock that gets to Lewis at 5.30. So it's two and a half hours. I work for three hours and then I take another van two and a half hours back to go home because I have to go back to Yuma the next day and go to work. So like I get paid for eight hours.

I'm only doing three hours of work because I'm here for three hours. The guy that relieves me later on was from Red Rock, a C-O-4 from Red Rock, which is like a lieutenant, but you chose the admin route. But Red Rock is two and a half hours the other way. And they're like, yeah, it's so short staffed here that people from all over the state have to come work here that to do one 12-hour day there instead of like an eight-hour day at the normal unit. Like that's how bad it was with the staffing.

So I'm with the guy from Yuma, we go to the Chow Hall and these guys, you know, I wasn't the Fed, but, you know, you take your sunglasses off, you take your hat off in the Chow Hall. Right. At least where I was, that's where, where you went out at Central, that's how it was. you, you feed it in-house. So it's a little different, but that's like the rule. I'm like, okay. So I'm standing by the door.

I'm like, nobody has their hat off. Nobody has your cell phone off. I see a guy, shit you not. I don't know any of the, they might recognize me from somewhere else, but I can't tell the fuck you guys. Are you all wearing orange? You know, I don't, you're, you know, I don't know who any of you are. I see a guy sitting like this on his phone.

And I'm looking. at the guy and I had my hat my sunglasses on too so I was kind of the asshole but who cares Arizona's pretty sunny this is an inmate this is an inmate in the chow hall and I'm thinking I never want to come back to this fucking place again the only other thing I knew about this place the guy cuts his own nuts off so the guy's on his phone looking dead at me bro like like this he sees me over there and I'm like okay the guy that I'm with from yuma he's like let's go over there and like bro if you go down that fucking aisle you're gonna get both of us killed just stand there you're going to walk through the chow hall the aisles in the chow hall and go up to an

inmate and tell him what he should or shouldn't be doing with every other inmate watching him you're going to get both of us killed just stay over here somebody else brought it in for him anyway right he sees me talking to the other guy about it so his is like bro you're caught you're caught so all he does is just turn around and face the other way and use the phone all right okay chow's over go back into the building you know it's it's people want to cover their doors, but it's like, all right, at least we're on count time, take the cover off your door. Right.

Or at least don't cover the door directly. Cover like just your bed. Right. You know, so it's like we can see it because there's nobody dead on the floor. We could see your foot moving around if you're watching TV. But you walk around like, I don't understand how anybody can work here when it's, it's like, it's like, it's like you're cool that an inmate is okay at one yard, but you go to another yard that has a different reputation.

It's just a fucking disaster. And I would hear these guys. talk about Lewis that went to the Phoenix yard and they're like, nobody starts at the Phoenix yard because it's so easy. It's like, you got to pay your dues almost and work at a different yard and come here. So, like, let me just, you know, see what it's about. See what it's like, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, if the guy that I'm working with is from Yuma and the guy that relieved me is from Red Rock, who actually works here? Right. Nobody. Like, it's that bad. Like, the staffing was that bad. I know every prison short staff and every department in short staff and all that stuff,

but I was like, I'm not going to subject myself to this. And I would hear people say, like, I want to go back to RAS, the RAS max, or I want to go, like, the guy with the toilet paper is like, I want to go back to Rass Max. I'm like, why, Contrell? Why do you want to go back to Rass Max? I never understood that. Like, the higher the custody, the more you're in your cell, the more these guys like it. Yeah.

Well, I mean, in the feds, and I'm pretty sure this is how it is a state, is that, that, first well, the COs, you get away with more. The lower yards. In the low, I was saying in the high, in the high, in large yards, you get away with more because the guards are like, they're like. Picking their battles. Yeah, exactly. Like, do I, like, this guy's got a life fucking sentence.

You know, he could pop off any time. Anything could go wrong. These guys, you know, they've, they don't have a lot to lose. So that the COs are a lot more, one, you know, respectable, respectful, so respectful to everybody. And two, they let you get away with more because, They're like, the guys never leave in here. It's like, don't die.

Don't kill your cell. Right. Right. And then as it goes lower and lower, by the time they get to a camp, they're talking to everybody like they're just dogs, you know, because that's where a lot of the guards that are undisciplined and have behavior problems themselves end up in the low, secure, or in the camps, in the lows because they know he can talk to these guys like anything. They won't, they won't do anything to him.

Because they don't want to get moved from there. They don't want to go back to a medium or a pen. You attack a guard. That's a bad, that's a bad issue. Um, but even that like, you know, you're not, like I said, I tell me, the only way, the easiest way to get through working in any prison is keep your word and just be able to talk shit. Don't take shots at people. Don't call somebody a punk. Don't talk somebody a bitch. That's all we do all day long is talk shit. That's how we communicate. If I, if I walk in my run every day and somebody's fuck you, fuck you. And then one day he's like, what's up? Good morning. I'm like, suspect. Like what's going on here? But you're, you're right. It's like, you pick, your battles in the higher yards. It's like, I know that if I have a problem with this guy, okay, you're just intentionally being an asshole. I'm going to talk to the other black guy that's in charge of this pile. Like, yo, can you shut your fucking boy up? Right. Because if I have to

start coming in here and sell search somebody, you know, I'm going to have to do my job. Right, right. Everybody's going to get very, very, very uncomfortable for everybody. Right now, everybody's comfortable. They've got what they want. They're happy. Let's keep it that way. Are writing kites to people or to, you know, he owes me two coffees. He owes me. He took, he took a, he didn't pay for a soap, what's it called? When they carved soap like origami or not origami, like carved soap into a statue. He didn't pay me.

He owes me $3. I'm like, you charge $3 for that? Soap cost $2. But I guess this type of stuff you see it's the low cuts. It's like, I don't understand why, like what, it's, I guess it's just like a culture thing. You have to act like the, like the guys in the club. this club where in brook we have to act this way i was like i mean you guys want to make it hard on yourself go ahead but you know i think about the you see some of these guys and like

you hear some of these stories like some these guys are just complete fucking monsters some of these guys you deserve to be here but you look at a lot of these guys and it's just like nobody ever loved you like you didn't have a parent you didn't have a mom that was she was strung out or she was tricking her got doing your dad was in jail and you you know you were you were you were just dead you were you were you're destined for this so back at SMU it's like a lot of things just become like as you know like like the story you say about the guy that had the heart attack yeah and he dropped dead like we're all got through lockdown let me just over his butt go get some coffee and come back yeah like that's normal it becomes normal in prison so I'm at

SMU one time and a lot of people didn't like doing constant watches every once in a while it was okay because the way that you know was set up you are walking up and downstairs all fucking day you're walking 10, 12 miles a shift, 150 flight. It's just the way it's set up because it's so short staff. So every once in a while, like, I'll do a constant watch. Plus, for whatever reason, it was a, uh, constant watch is you just have to watch the guy's 24 hours, right? You know, at Coleman, they have the inmates do it.

I heard you talk about that with Zach. I'm like, yeah, a trustee or whatever, like they would not have that and. Yeah, you get a, you have to go to a little class. You take a little, it's a little, you get a little certificate and then they, and they pay you you for it. That's like the guy, the guy that I have. had said the the one that taught me how to make the toilet paper i was like i can't just sit here and ignore the guy like it's just he's brain doesn't operate like that but um so i was sitting on a

constant watch at my unit at smu and i didn't even know this guy so and a lot of those guys that were in um pod one no wing one dog they were guys that i just got shipped in from other units so i'm sitting on my inmate he's not talking he's fine he's just not talking, the inmate next to him, you know how this goes. Like, if you're getting transfer from one unit to another, you don't have any of your shit, you're just stuck in a cell waiting. So, like, the only person you have to talk to was a CEO. I think this guy realized, like, all right, this guy's like, you didn't do anything to wrong

me. I'm going to treat you normal. You didn't, you have not done a single thing to me yet. I don't care what you did to get here. He's like talking about stuff and he was telling me about Winslow, like this, you know, I've never been to, but he was telling me about that. And, um, mind you, I'm responsible for the guy next to him. on watch.

Right. So it's a 12-hour shift and we're like five hours into it. It's like almost midnight and I'm like, all right, everything's going smooth so far. He gets up to take a piss and the inmate says to me so nonchalant, like, you mind if I cover the door? I'm like, Ellis, don't do that, bro. Right. Like, look, Ellis, please, like, just please don't do it.

Like, I'm not yelling at the guy. Like, what am I going to do? Open the trapping, yank. Oh, fuck cares. Like, just don't do it. He does it anyway. and he like like another one just straight to there was no speaking it was it was cold to boiling hot i looked them up afterwards and he had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend's dad or something

beat him up and then he tied him behind the back of his truck and dragged him on the highway until he died Jesus you know it's and he only got like 15 years for it too but it's just like okay now I understand it's like you went to zero to 100 and then you just you just lost it right I didn't know that inmate like I said that was for them I've ever seen him and the same with the guy next one but the guy next one wasn't on watch he was just there because he was waiting to get moved around for whatever he did at another yard so it's around midnight and he starts acting up and I was not one of those ones like if a guy starts banging his head I'm like look I think you're just going to bang your head I think that somebody's going to call ICS right away

It's like, nah, let me get some blood. Let me see, let me see that forehead turn a little red. Like, let me see if you're really about it. Right. So this guy starts banging his head and flipping out and doing all this. So I have to call, you know, ICS, everybody comes in reports. Open the trap. We spray them.

Spray them again. It's like, you can't just spray somebody 10, 12 different times. I think it's going to magnify the effect. It doesn't. They bring in the fogger. They fog them. We have to go get, you know, some of the available riot gear, which is next to nothing.

We put it on and my lieutenant's like, Todaldi, there's a bunch of other guys, because I was the one that was on the watch to begin with, but a couple other guys like everybody else, because everybody else, if you're on camera, you have to do a supplemental report

and the LT doesn't want to do that. So like, we have to go in and get them. I'm like, all right, dude, we just hose this whole cell down. This whole pot stinks like gas and the OC spray and the fogger and all that shit. We go in, we get them out.

Put them in the restraint chair. I have probably had five minutes of training on a restraint chair and if it's 10 people fighting for the same thing it's like okay you put your seatbelt in this thing I was supposed to put it in right so like this chair's not even we're not it's not even set up right

we take the guy to a medical decontaminate him just leave him under the thing in the chair running he's screaming at the top of his lungs nurses come they give him some type of shot whatever they did we put him back in a cell we do the same exact thing 20 minutes later spray them fight him again i don't know what the fuck set this guy off again we literally had to do the same exact thing twice or i mean the shot didn't do anything the shot didn't do anything i don't know what it was but he started acting up again we

had to go in there and take him out again this the cell is still grimy from before he's still wearing the the smock from before we still have it all over us we had to do it all over again after this whole run the guy kind of calms down finally so by now it's like five in the morning because he's in medical for a while like they're doing his blood pressure and they're like you got these nurses they have to like call a doctor they like they can't make decisions on their own right so the guy finally calms down I catch him on my journal I do my report and it's shift change and I start hearing like you could see through the skylights the sun was coming up it's like all right shift change it's about to be 6 o'clock the guy in the cell next to him it's 6th in the morning he comes to the door

I was like, good morning, Todaldi. That was your night. I completely forgot this fucking guy was even there. Right. And I was like, my co-work was, like, what the fuck? He's like, bro, where were you? You didn't hear, we're looking at him like, you're just playing us, right? And he was like, what, what?

I'm like, you haven't noticed anything since you went to sleep. You have not noticed anything. Nothing sparked your attention. Bro, I can't even sleep in my bed at night. My phone can light up and it wakes me up. Right. And this dude is sleeping through banging and kicking all the other inmates are kicking all this shit.

And he's like, dude, I've been in prison for 30 years. I could sleep to the end of the world. I'm like, that bothered me for probably like two weeks. I'm like, you, how does what, how do you sleep through that? Yeah, I think the spray. It's one thing that the noise. The second is the vibration of the doors on a ship, but the spray, the this, to that.

And you could tell him like, this dude wasn't lying. He didn't notice. because if you would have noticed he would have at least come to the door or whatever he would let's do it but like you we spray we gas like five whole caters and this all right next to you i remember so they used to give us two they gave you like you got like two sheets and two blankets scratchies and the blankets i would wrap up one of the blankets you know in like a so you wrap it so there was about this long right and it was so it was about this thick and then i would lay on my pillow and the blanket and i would wrap it around my head so I could it drowned it out everything and then I would go to sleep listen you'd have to wake me up you'd have to go and shake me to wake me up but until I kind of figure it out that contraption I couldn't sleep at all because all night long it's yelling and screaming and people moving around and banging and yeah so I'd have figured something out you know it's like when I would go to like um you know the chummo yards are they're called at least on there

are called cook and meadows right so there was chomos and where I was they were just like I don't behavioral stuff or whatever but you go to cooking meadows those are um buildings and then oh it's like too long hallways but they're just double stacks of bunk beds on both sides all it's like a hundred guys in each you know sides right two four it's probably 800 people in one building and i'm looking and there's no cameras in there and i'm looking around and i'm like you know these are chomos but first of all i like this Arizona does this they uh let's say you go you go down for GP stuff, arm robbery, aggravated assault, whatever. Can't pay your debts, you know, shit happens.

They move you. Right. Can't handle it there. They move you. And I was like, dude, now you have to PC up. Right. If you go to PC, I think as you know, like if you sign out, you don't get to sign back in. Right.

So if you go PC, you're done forever. And then you can leave and come back in 10 years. You're still PC because someone's still going to know you. So if you can't cut it in PC, guess what they send you? What? Chomo yards. Okay. So you see a lot of GP guys.

guys in chomo yards you see guys I'm like and they have to what and they basically it's like you're going to do it do your time here or in the shoe that's it and you got guys and they try to run the politics like it's going to like it's going to be a gp or I'm like dude you know damn well first of all if you had this mentality why didn't you try to just play along with the games when you were at central when you were at kibab or at mori and all this shit you you're trying to run gp politics in a chomo yard but you just go down these long hallways you can turn around and it's like you literally have to pass 200 bunks just to go back to where civilization is and it's like it goes back to what I'm saying like guys get booty

snatched in there and turned out and it's like nobody from the time the door opens all the way over there it's like three minutes till I get back there right plus some asshole is going to stop me to distract me for some reason right it's like that's why people like yeah people get away with stuff it's like the like the Jeffrey Epstein thing there's no way that you take Jeffrey Epstein you put him in that cell he's going to kill himself he doesn't know how to be an inmate. He doesn't know how to rip a shirt and make a noose and he doesn't know how to be an inmate. Like that's like acquired knowledge as you progress through that, I don't want to say career, but it's like he knows how to be rich and do shit on the street,

but he doesn't know how to be an inmate. He wouldn't know how to make soups and and stack milk cartons and put it under the metal table to use it as like a stove almost. You know, it's just like he wouldn't know how to fish stuff. Right. It's like I think he was like, oh, the cameras weren't working. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they weren't. I could tell you, majority of the cameras where I've worked don't work. Right. They just sit there and it'll just say user error or whatever. And it's like you can put it in an IR about it and it's just going to get thrown out

with the rest of them. It's like they're not, it's just, it's 24 hours, dude. There's always something going on. You can't get this shit fixed. The turnover rate is so high. It's like I almost felt bad for some of these guys. It's like, you know, this dude right here is just trying to do right for himself. He's trying to figure, he's been down for 10 years.

He has five left. He's trying to get it together. Right. He can't get it together. because he doesn't get to do what he wants to do because there's nobody that fucking works here because they don't want to pay people enough to work here so they just get buying the skeleton crew.

And that happens in all these prisons, I'm sure, across in the country, in America. And, you know, you can't expect to be in that line of work and then not take shit home with you. Like, you can't just see some guy like, I just cut my nuts off and then go home. Like, it's not going to bother you eventually. I can say it's never bothered me.

But I also was able to just turn it off. Just like when I would leave the club, like I would leave the club. club at like five in the morning and at 10 in the morning I was working in a restaurant talking a you know good morning missus whatever you want your side of meatballs or what you know you go from one extreme to the other you know I even had a guy and like people think like you know when they say like 90% of the prison population is getting out first of all that's slanted because you could be getting out 80 years you're not getting out I had a guy never bothered me never ever bothered me

didn't want to talk that's that's fine bro you do whatever you want to do because you're not bothering me either you know I don't bother you don't bother me whatever I catched him tattooing one day. Did you pay for the whole tattoo already? I was talking to, you pay the whole tattoo? It was like, yeah,

bro, I already paid it. I was talking to the guy that one I never bothered me. How much time you got left, dude? Like, you're down for what? Aggravated assault?

He's like, yeah, I'm six, I'm six in on a 10. And I'm up for parole in eight months. And I'm like, all right, I've known you for a couple years.

You've never bothered me. I like, look, I took the motor out of the gun. I kept, kept the movement, I was like, you guys deal with it. I'm not gonna write I don't even know how to write you up right I care like don't die don't

assault an officer like I'm doing the job as best I came on I don't care about petty shit I don't see the guy after two weeks something or maybe he is getting pro whatever it was he gets he gets rolled up somewhere so two months after that I'm leaving my apartment and I hear somebody say what's up to dolly and I'm like no no no no no I have a first name I'm in the real world I have my D.O.C. pants on, but not my shirt. Yeah. Like, what the fuck?

I have a real... Like, Fraddle, nobody even knows my last name here. It's just my fucking neighbors. And I look over, and it's the same guy with the tattoo. Crush in a 40, smoking a blunt. He's like, we're good, bro. You don't got to worry about nothing. And he moved in two doors down for me.

And before that, I had had words with those... Not really words, but they had little kids. And I'm like, look, I don't care if your kids are outside all night long running around. But the only thing, can you... Can you please tell them to leave the little matchbox cards in your... It hurts to step in a fucking matchbox car. Everybody's done that. It hurts.

We didn't have like a good dialect, not a bad dialect, but he's like, don't worry about nothing, bro. Everything's good over here. And I'm like, man, it could have been a little bit different if I would have busted your balls about that tattoo gun. But it's like, look, these people are, these guys are going to come home. And like, everybody talks about prison reform and this and that. It's a lot bigger than just...

Right. it's a lot bigger than just you know I completed my GED program while I was down I said look I went to high school I got a I learned about the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria who the fuck has a job learning about that shit right and I feel

I hear so many stories about the feds guys like I do 10 years in the feds over five in state like there's so many this there's all this these programs like Arizona these folks don't got nothing yeah like these guys are these guys like look in Colorado if you do three years with no tickets you get a year off your sentence. I think, that's a pretty good deal. You know, and it's just like, well, the feds, the time of the feds now is even better because the first chance act or second chance act, I forget

what they call it, but like it's like the something that Trump signed into, which is saying, hey, if you guys program, we'll let you out early. So it's funny, now all the, all of the ACE, the continuing education courses, right? I'm sorry, adult adult. Adult. Adult. continuing education courses. All of those classes are full. Everybody's signing up. Everybody wants to get a certificate. It's like what you said about the ARDAP class, everybody was like, bro, I'm, I got to finish this class. I got to finish this class. I got people that count on me. It's like, yeah, now that you actually have a chance of getting out, now it really matters. Yeah, yeah. Where before it's like, it's funny because like with ARDAP, like if you have a gun charge, you can't get ARDAP. If you have, if you have anything violent, you can't get it. So it's like, well, that doesn't really help these guys. Like, you know, like it doesn't, it shouldn't matter. Like give them, give them the year. if they complete the program trust me it's not it's not even if you're faking it you're going to learn something yeah but um and and now if you're taking um like the amount of time that these guys like for

the time i would have gotten i would have done with the new program i'd have done like seven years instead of 13 right it's is long time you're supposed to still be into what 30 30 that's my out date was 20 30 i can't like i would see a lot of guys like that's crazy to think about like i said well i can go in there for 12 hours. I'm like, this 12 hours took a lot. Dude, it would get to the point where I was like, I remember I used to get not burnt out with overtime because when I first moved to Arizona, I knew my friend that became a cop, but he was with his wife and kids and he's doing his own thing. Like, I just moved here. I got to figure out what I'm doing. I got to work. I was working a lot of overtime. And you can do 32 hours a week of overtime. That's the max. So I used

72 hours because at the time, like now I'm engaged. Right. My fiance wasn't living there at the time. We met when she was there for a weekend, but she moved there, you know, after that. But I was like, all right, I don't have anything else to do. I'm not really good at hanging around doing nothing. So I would just max out my overtime. And then I remember one time my girlfriend was in town, I would like take off the week that she was there. I was like, hey, maybe you want to? She's my girlfriend at the time. And I was like, hey, maybe you want to go get some chow? Yeah. Fuck. I do that all. I do that all the time. I was like, God damn. I'm like, I'm getting institutional. I'm like, God, damn it. Listen, we do that. You know,

But you, you, and everybody, like, you at least know the whole lingo together. Like, you use that lingo together. Right. But, like, Jess, so my wife took ARDAP. And so there's terms in ARDAP that you would use. And she would say, she'll say, I'll say something, I'm telling you, this and this and this is going to happen. And she'll go, that's super optimism. And I'm like, don't, don't.

She's, I'm just saying you're, you're being super optimistic. You're struggling with accountability right now. And she used to do that all. She didn't really do it anymore. But first year or so, when we both got out and we were seeing each other, she used to do it all the time. It would crack me up. She'd say, you're suffering for a way. She'd go, you're holding resentment.

That's the problem. And I, stop it. And it's like I said before. There's times I felt like such an asshole. It's like, I remember sitting on a constant watch. You couldn't bring books in. You can't bring a hardcover book. It might be whatever.

I'm like, look, dude, I'm going to bring a book in. I'm sitting on a constant watch reading a book about solitary confinement I need to go play video games or something I need to but it's like this whole like I said the whole psychology of interest because I don't know how you could put somebody in that environment

and then think like everybody says the same thing like I got out and it just went too fast and you know these guys that take these medications that they're like okay you get them at six you get your noon meds you get your evening meds we give you a two week supply when you get out they either try to sell it for money or they take it all right away to get high

and then they're right back two months later because they went off the deep end again you don't even know who they are anymore. I saw a guy when I was at Phoenix he just a little fucking manipulator he wanted to go to the other side the open yard. He somehow convinced his celly to hang himself

because his cellia was low functioning and he did it in the porter closet and then he got moved to the open yard so they rewarded him. They rewarded him for saving his celly. No, they rewarded him for his celly dying and they figured they were like he's the culprit, let's get him out of here.

So he doesn't teach everybody else to do it. So they move him to the other yard. Wow. You know, it's like it's a good line of work to be in. Like I think like it is recession proof and that paycheck's always going to clear and it says that. But you have to have a certain level of compassion when you go to this environment and you see like I tell my fiance this all the time. Like, you know, and you don't know what this vibe is like the way him and I do, but not all perverts look like perverts.

Oh yeah. Dude, you can see guys, I'm just, I look just like you, bro. That looked normal as fuck. It's like, you did what? Like, not all perverts, how they're like short little bald fat guys with the BDIs and the Chummo 3,000. It's like, a lot of these guys are just so normal looking. Listen, my ex-wife came to see me one time, and we were in visitation, and she's like,

what's that guy here for him? Like, bank robbery. She's like, what about that guy? And I go, I think he ran a Ponzi scheme. And she's, what about that guy? I go, drugs. That guy, drugs. Just, what about that guy over there?

and I go oh you're not going to believe this and and that's the one yeah and and she goes what I said sex offender and she went no what do you mean I said yeah I say like he was like he would I said and he's actually like hands on like he actually went and found like a 13 14 year old girl like was having sex with I said pictures on his phone the whole thing and she went but he's so good looking like she was so I was like anyway tall good looking guy and I was like yeah I said he's a what we call a sleeper like you wouldn't know you know you wouldn't know if he didn't have to provide paperwork he could have lied about some other shit and made it up he actually did because he actually did lie for a long period of time until somebody eventually outed him and it was another guy a friend

of mine named turk turk was not it's not really turk he's turkish but anyway um uh turk was an art at with him and he's like this guy was super hard on the shows like it was overly he's trying to like make it seem like you're the yeah you're scum of this it's like he really was pushing it he said i just felt like something was wrong he said well you're an art app right so guys like tell on each other right that's like do you call the people up like about the salt in the kitchen it's like you brought salt into the kitchen then you have like that what was the thing you said oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i was that one yesterday yeah fucking guys crying over salt that's probably that's only at a low

yard so so we're sitting there um i'm sorry we're so Turk was in an art app program with him and so something had happened where and Turk was like like I knew I've always felt like something was up

but what happened was the guy had done something I don't know what it was he hadn't he did something you know something minor but when he came by Turk cell he said hey now Turk what's going on he said hey bro he said

he's like like they know and he goes what he said i mean i i don't care like i'm not going to say nothing but it's getting around like people as soon as one person knows everybody knows and he went and this guy thought they're talking about how he had maybe smuggled some chicken out of the chow hall like like it was something like a few people knew but he's like it's getting around and it's going to catch up with you i'm just letting you know everybody's they it's getting around and he was like fuck but what he thought so that's what turk is talking about that but what this guy thought was they know i'm a show so he's like does so-and-so know like which was his like best friend right and he's like no but he's that if if he doesn't know now he's going to know within a couple he's

within he's going to know by tomorrow morning because tomorrow morning is the um is the uh the morning meeting and somebody's going to call them up or something along you know so he's like he's going to know by tomorrow and he's like fuck so he's still turks talking about the chicken this guy goes and i don't know he said he goes straight to his fucking sally and outs himself he's like bro you don't listen i want to just talk to you before you hear this this is what's going on this is what and he said he just lays it all out i i mean i knew she look i knew she was under age but how long did he go from oh he'd gone like two he got like three years or something right like wow like he didn't he somehow or another he got prosecuted for the photos but not the chick that he actually whatever um and he ended

up in the fed right the feds pick up the case the the state never prosecuted or he got charged with both so here's what always kills me you can get caught with like like a thousand photos or something of underage kids right in horrific acts and get three years in a federal prison in the state you can actually get a hold of someone you can be caught having sex with like a 15 year old girl or whatever and you're 25 or whatever um or 35 and you're having sex with a 14 year old or 13 and end up getting two or three years or probation it's like photos in the Fed three years that's a that's a mandatory minimum state you might get probation for actually getting your white hands on on somebody like so so that's what so he he was doing like

like state and federal time at the same time or something like that, but he's in the feds. So anyway, he goes, he outs himself. And I mean, he just... When did he realize, like, yeah, I just added the wrong thing? I think it's, I don't know if at some point he ever figured out that Turk was like telling him something because Turk, Turk knew something was up. And he said, so I said that. He's like, and I was specifically, you know, I went out of my way not to be specific because I wanted him to think that. He said, but I didn't know it would blow up the way it did. Like, I just thought, he would try and he's get he said i i don't know i said i didn't know what was going to happen but

anyway so that was the guy that i'm sitting in there with my ex-wife talking my ex-wife and she's like him i'm like yeah listen to this so i tell her the whole thing boom boom boom and here's what's funny about that guy that guy leaves prison first of all he had uh like a a a girlfriend or wife that was coming to see him all the time she also looked very young now she was probably 22 or 23 But she- Yeah, but if she was 17, they wouldn't let her in. No, I know that. But I'm saying, if she had told you, I'm 15 years old, you'd believe her. Yeah.

She's 22, but she looks young. I got it. So he's engaged to her, married, I'm not sure. But what happens is he ends up, gets out, gets out. I mean, this is how long I'm there. He gets out of prison. And then two years later, he comes walking in the fucking door. He violated probation.

What happened was they, violated his probation because he had an email address that he didn't tell them about and somehow another they checked his phone they found it but then once he was there he got re-indicted like they did that to get him off the street he they've then like a year or so later he's now thinking okay I'm about to get out go back on probation they indict him he was actually communicating with some girl and she had sent him photos or whatever so it's like he had a compulsion that he couldn't, you know, and when you talk to these guys, you know, like a criminal knows a criminal, right?

You talk to him and you realize, like, you're not a criminal. You're just a pervert. Like, you're just a weirdo. You can, you can be dealing, I can be dealing with a death row guy, the most violent, dangerous person in the world. And if, if you are respectable to me and I have shown, it's like, I'm, he does my job, he doesn't treat us like derelicts. We're already in here.

Their job is not repunish us. You can have a good rapport. all right but you can look at a he's not wrong at a pervert and you can be telling them you're going to get life and prudging you get butt-fucked by neanderth all those things he's like he's just thinking like man that girl is so cute like you it's like dude am i speaking gibberish to you what's going on right now yeah there's not there's something it's a light's off dude and i tell my fiance and i tell my nieces as i look as i get old they look not all perverts look like perverts right like if you see a guy that's like he has scars all over his face

wearing a red bandana and he has tattoos everywhere it's like i do you're you're just trapped and do what you have to do but you can just see somebody it's like that guy right the wall street guy the the the white collar guy or the guy was the guy mike walsh talks about the banker he's like an invest in the investment banker that he had to he hires mike walsh which is a an attorney and has Mike Walsh fly to Vietnam to find three under a or three Cambodian prostitutes that this guy is being charged with the government saying they're underage. He's saying they're not underage. So Mike Walsh has to go. He spends like a month there tracking them down, gets them visas, brings them back to the United States to explain to show the government, look, boom, and they drop the

charges. Now, when I was funny, when Mike Walsh was telling me a story, I was like, I was like, oh, okay. I was like, oh, okay, so he was, oh, okay, so you got him off. He's like, yeah, he got off on that. And I said, oh, so he was, he was innocent. They were, he's like, oh, no, no, no, they found a couple thousand photos on his, on his, on his, you know, on his computer. Like, no, he was innocent of that, yeah, he was, he got like 20 years. But on my stuff, I got him off. Like, you know, that's, he's a lawyer.

That's all he cares. I did my job to the fullest. But yeah, like, it's like, you're an investment banker with tons of money and you're doing this. What are you doing? You're, there's something just deeply, fundamentally wrong. but I don't know it just goes back to like the whole like system in general it's like you know I don't have you have kids or I don't have kids it's like like if you don't give these kids love in the beginning it's like fuck they're just that disavit like I just think that I don't have kids

but you know what's like what does somebody do like what can you be forgiven for you know it's like the child shit it's like I know guys I have like 350 your sentence is like obviously you just had the worst lawyer because your stuff has run not concurrent it was consecutive for you to have a 350 year sentence it's just like where did that switch go off in your head where you thought this is what I wanted to do and then you got these guys that are just these predators in prison and they prey on these young guys and it's you know it sucks you can go at 18 and have two years and your fucking whole life's fucked up on the way out hey I appreciate you guys watch and do me a favor and hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified

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