Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Real Story Behind The Wire | Crime & Corruption

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

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I'm seeing that this is like a criminal organization. So I was born in the largest project. in East Baltimore. I was born in 1983. You have what's called the low rises, then you have what's called the towers. The towers are the larger buildings that holds more people. So as a kid growing up in Baltimore, unfortunately, I lost my mother at the age of four to drug abuse.

She had contracted HIV, and then she had OD'd off of shooting needles, her, H dog food, what it was called, famously known back then. And that was when it was real hurl in the game, the synthetic stuff that they have today. And were your mom and dad together at that time? No.

Okay. My mom and my dad split, I think, maybe a couple months after I was born. So she was a single mom at this time. And when she had actually OD'd, she had been gone for maybe about two days when my grandmother had found me in the house alone. So my grandmother lived not far from where my mom lived. And my grandmother had noticed, and this is the story. told over the years that she had noticed, hey, I haven't gotten a call or anything like that.

So what's going on? So she showed up at my mom's apartment and found her deceased and me alone. And like I said, two days that went by. So your mom had been deceased in the apartment with you and you were just going about your business. But she was deceased in the bedroom or something. Right. Oh, wow. Okay.

And as a two-year-old, you don't know anything. I don't even remember it, honestly, but... That's probably good. Yeah. So from there, my grandma took guardianship of me, and she actually raised me. So my grandmother was in the projects as well. And the thing was learning out of my grandma. My grandma was like the type of woman.

She was a businesswoman. She sold hot plates. She sold frozen cups, sodas, loose cigarettes, you know. And she was a loan shock. So I learned, you know. All out of the project. All out of project house, man. People knew that, hey, if you needed certain things, you can go to, her name was Miss Rose.

But the streets, her name was Miss Nuckie. And Ms. Nuckie was well known because she was a fair woman. You know, she was a good woman. Sometimes the bills can't connect and you might need a couple dollars. And she would be there to get it. But of course, that taught me, dollar on a dollar percentages, supply and demand, you know, just being able to flip a buck growing up under her. It really taught me a lot about self-respect and how people's supposed to treat you as well. And just growing up in that atmosphere, just being in the projects, one of my big homies, one of my big brothers, who actually were from my projects as well, was Dante Fatt Tadadoboxdale, who is the nephew of,

Avon Boxdale, where, well, HBO's The Wire, was based on Avon Boxdale, which was my big brother's uncle, blood uncle, like his mother and Avon, a brother and sister. So, and this was, but we're talking about years before the Wire ever even came out. Yeah. You know, I'm still a child. But I would learn things from the gentleman from the neighborhoods. It was always a lot of violence. Every night, it would always be sirens and shootings, and, you know, you would see.

drug deals, but it was a part of life. You didn't know, when you don't know, it's kind of hard to understand something that's wrong when this has been all you've ever known. So just growing up in the projects, just learning how to move around, watching my grandmother. Of course, I would work for her,

like during the summer break, I would sell frozen cups for her, and she would give me a salary. And for those who don't know what a frozen cup is, it's essentially like a snowball per se, but just in a star phone cup and you eat it with a spoon. So it's like a frozen snack that we would actually sell to the community. You'd make them and sell them, right?

We would make them and sell them. Right. So like in all of these neighborhoods, these lower income or, you know, poor neighborhoods, there's always, on every block, every other block, there's some old retired woman who's, and I had a bunch of Section 8 houses. And I remember one time showing up to pick up rent. And in the front room of the house, this woman had just tons of stuff out. Just tons of, like, she had gone to, like, Sam's Club, and she would buy, like, Snickers bars.

And she had just tons of stuff. I was like, what's going on? She's like, I'm running a store. And people, while I was there getting rent talking to her, people are, little kids are coming up and giving her, you know, whatever, a dollar or whatever to get stuff. Because they can't, you know, they necessarily have a car to go up to publics and back. And, you know, they want a Snickers bar. They want a couple of sodas. And she's, you know, she's getting them for whatever, $5 and charging $7.

Yeah. I went and got them. I brought them here. I stored them here. Right. So it's not that uncommon. It's actually, I didn't know about the loan sharking part. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

See, the thing is, but growing up in that environment, it teaches you the retail value of things and not to just take people's word for certain things. When you're actually coming up in that environment, you learn early, okay, if somebody gives me a 20, this is much, you know, you get to learn things outside of what they teach you in school as far as, like, real life, um, uh, like currency exchange. Right. You know, um, you learn in the firsthand because nobody wants to get, uh, uh, a change that isn't correct. And then that's a penalty from grandma because she's teaching you better than this. Before the house store even opens, she's going over certain drills and certain things, which you look, if somebody gives you a 50 or whatever, because it's no shortage. And the convenience

of having, like you said, that house store there to be able to, you know, give you the loose cigarettes. Because maybe Ms. Jones doesn't have enough money to go get a whole pack of cigarettes, you know, but she has enough money to come get some cigarettes. She still can feed that need of nicotine just by walking and knocking on the door. So I learned a lot from my grandmother growing up in the projects, and I learned a lot about people because I might have, let's say, a classmate who's talking about, hey, I might just over him, I'm talking about they, they might get evicted sometime soon. But I know that they're not because your mom came over to my grandma of his house and

borrowed some money, so that eviction isn't going to happen. But it's not my business to say that. You also learn that secrecy as well. What happens in this house stays in this house. This is business. And you don't say something that can interfere with business. So what if I would have said, no, you know, your mom came over and, Borrowed the $300 from my ground.

Then it's like, okay, now she's going back to our mom when that's supposed to be secrecy. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, and it's, you're also saving her, her dignity of having to go borrow the money. Yeah. Right. So, so what, so you, your grandmother raised you from then on? From then on. Okay.

Right. What about your father, in and out? Did you ever see him? So at that time, in the 80s, remember, this is the epidemic. So my father was actually strung out himself. And he and my mom, they were young parents. So I really didn't see much of my father at that time, even though he lived really close in proximity.

But what I now know today about addiction, the only thing on your mind is getting high. It's not about your children, your mom, your pop, none of that. Even though inside, that might be your intention. It's not going to happen, though, especially at those times in the 80s and early. So, no, I didn't see my dad for a long time. But moving forward, learning in the streets just from that business perspective and understanding

a business model for my grandmother, what happened was it allowed me to know that, okay, I might can use this in other ways. So crazy enough, my first plug was my great-grandmother. So my great-grandmother, so at this time, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm about 17. I'm in high school. My great-grandmother, she had about three, four pounds of wood in her, like, in our basement or something, right? The problem was that the bud had got, like, she had a flood or something like that. So all of, like, the TAC had got washed off of it.

So no matter how much you would smoke of it, you would not, you wouldn't get high. But some older guys from around the way, they had taught me, say, hey, man, if you hit it with some Jack Daniels or something like that, you'll at least get a little buzz from it. Like, spread with some Jack Daniels, put it in the microwave for a couple seconds, let it bake into it. And I did that a couple times. And me and a couple guys at school, I had a couple guys selling away from me and stuff. And we were able to at least flip enough to get some good. We didn't sell nearly three pounds of it. But it was enough to say that I'm entrepreneur. I'm seeing that supply and demand outside of the ground. We my house now. Right. I'm doing something and I'm saying, okay, if I have this, I'll get this.

So I was able to get some, um, some, some, some good at that point. So now me and the guys in school, we're feeling better. Number one about our product is we're not hearing, uh, you know, uh, how old are you at this point? I'm 17. Okay. Yeah, like 16, 17. I'm still, I'm still, uh, in high school. Uh, but at this time, my grandma, and she was, always very smart, right? So she knew that, see, some people who live in the projects live there their whole lives because of the convenience. But my grandmother always wanted better for us. So my grandmother, she raised me and maybe about three or four of my other little cousins from my aunt and my uncle. So she had moved us from the projects to

another neighborhood in Baltimore, east side of Baltimore, right off of Greenmount Avenue. It was called F&B. It was Forest and Biddle. there is where I actually seen the mechanics of the drug trade. As America turns 250 this year, it has me thinking about the people that really help build this country. Not the ones in history books. I'm talking about American ranchers. The men and women who wake up before the sun work long days and keep food on our tables

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See, in the projects, it was like, okay, you know something's going on, but you don't really see it. I see, I never sold drugs in the project. I was still very young at that time. We left the projects when I was probably about, uh, maybe about 14, you know, and then we moved to this neighborhood where you really seen the cornerman, the runners, the houses and all that. So this was a residential neighborhood now. Yeah.

It was no longer the towers and low rises. So just saying it there, it was like I really seen people getting rich. And now this kind of ties with the thing where I said I was in high school hustling, because now I'm really looking at people who I've seen go from virtual nobodies, but, getting put on by the older guy on the block, and now they're buying cars. Yeah. Now they have clothes.

Now they're part of that crew. And it was just different. You know, like, so seeing it firsthand that way, just like the users just run 24-7, 24-7, it like really, but my grandma, again, she took her same business model from the projects to up there. Because at this time, the projects had got tore down.

And because the city council, they figured that it was a high crime area. Let's knock these down and put some better living for the people of that neighborhood. That's what always happened. That's what happened here in Tampa. They bulldoze the whole thing. And then they put the nicer. It looks more like a suburb. Right.

But it's like Section 8. Right. But it's a, it looks nicer and it's, because, yeah, it's too much, it's better to spread it out. Right. Through Section 8 than it is to consolidate. But what we learned at Baltimore is when they did that, they just re-invited the same people who were in the regular. Yeah. So it's the same.

So they just put them in the same area again. Now, you have to kind of pepper them throughout, you know, everywhere. Section 8 is a better. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, no, you're right. So what I noticed was, so people had the option to come back, but they gave you your section 8, so you're right. So some people chose not to come back to that area. Like, okay, because like you said, you can take Section 8 anyway.

where, you know, long as the landlord wants to accept it. So you're right, a lot of people didn't come back. But for the most part, majority of those people went back to those same areas because they had the option to come back. In some projects that was knocked down in Baltimore, people didn't have the opportunity to come back because it might have been a different type of deal there, whereas though it wasn't like, like I know for a fact, right? So this is one project that's in East Baltimore.

was called Somerset. When Somerset got knocked down, they were all low risers. The people didn't have the chance to come back. I guess maybe the property owners or whatever it was. I'm not sure the logistics of it, but they didn't have a chance to come back, which meant everybody who left there, like you said, were peppered out throughout other neighborhoods.

Which honestly is probably better to the Section 8 because then you have the ability to go to, you're mixing in with more successful people and getting better schools, right? Like you're not in this, in this high density crime, you know, school district. You could be, you could be out in the suburbs. You could be, you know, sorry, that's just my take.

No, no, no. But I used to have Section 8, you know, and I, listen, and the projects here were, it was bad. It was bad. So go ahead. Sorry. No, no, no. Hey, listen, man. No, you're absolutely right.

And you get a chance at a better life. Yeah. You know, you don't even, you can go somewhere you've never even been before and build a whole whole other life there. But I believe, if you have. have the poverty mind, right, and you still have those tendencies no matter where you go, they're going to be the same type of tenant that you were there. But some people, they took those opportunities and they're thriving. Yeah. I've seen it. So now at this time, so like I said,

so I'm selling a week. I'm in high school. And my uncle, my uncle gave me a call, right? My uncle said a friend of his wanted to buy like a pound a wheat. Now, there's no way I can supply it. He wasn't thinking about me supplying it, but this was just a lick that had happened. He said, man, look, I'm not trying to get them that pound of weed. He said, what I can do is, I can give you 500, and I'm going to, the guy was going to pay 1,500 for it. I can give you 500, I keep 1,000, and you just shoot me, and we'll split the money, you know, and we'll just say, hey, I got robbed during the transaction.

So me being young, at this time, I'm probably about 18. I'm still in high school. I'm like, that's free money. Like, let's do it. Where are you supposed to shoot him? In what part of the body? Right. So we ended up,

we ended up deciding to shoot him in the leg because he was the type of guy who liked to work out a lot. So he was like, man, I don't want any damage or scars on my upper body. You know, so we decided on the legs.

So we were in an, I'm an east side guy, right? So even this, this happened in East Baltimore. So it's, area not far from Johns Hopkins called Church Square. And it's a project there called Clay Courts. But it's a real murky type of, it's a very dark type area.

So we back there in the back cut. And it was kind of like a movie. He's like, oh, whoa, whoa, you know. So we like, let's count the three. So it's like, one, boom. You know, I'm not going to wait for three. And so I shot him. So now, remember, like I said, we're only a couple blocks from John's Hopkins.

It's one of the greatest hospitals in the world. and we couldn't get a ride there. I mean, he's bleeding out, right? But what we learned is... I mean, you didn't pull the skin or something? You just shot him in the leg? Yeah, like the cat. Oh, okay.

Like, there's arteries and shit. Like, you could bleed to death. Yeah, yeah. So I shot him in the calf. Listen, and if I'm going to get shot, I want to see the ball. I want to be like, bro, I got shot, motherfucker. You know, I want it like in the shoulder. somewhere you can

oh yeah that's I got shot there yeah you know I'm gonna do some you know come on right but funny enough it went straight through didn't break a bone nice and to to the guy who actually gave us the money for the bud what happened was

he didn't really believe he got shot because it was so clean how I went through and and he was basically walking on it Like, it wasn't like, it didn't do enough damage to sell the story. He had the bullet wound. Which didn't really. I got a question. We didn't have people shooting each other here.

You say you shot him. What is the process of purposely shooting him? Is the gun, like, right up against his calf? Or are you three feet away? I'm probably as far from him as I am from Matt. something like this. No, we got to be close. We got to need a better aim.

What if you leave it a little bit off, you could hit a bone? I don't want to get shot in the bone. I don't want to get shot in general, but if I'm going to be shot, I wanted to go through, you know, through and through. Right. Yeah, this is, yeah. Okay.

So the guy didn't believe, yeah, so the guy didn't believe that he had been shot. No, because it was such a clean shot. Even though he had his paperwork saying he got shot, nobody in the streets reads paperwork. Like, not. medical bills. Right.

Paperwork. It was from court, of course, but not medical bills. So it was like, like I said, didn't do enough damage, even though he was literally shot.

Right. So, so as, so I shoot him, I let a couple extra shots off and add just to sell a little of the point that something had happened

in the area. Our cousin lived maybe a couple doors down from what happened that. They didn't know what was going on. But I go in there, I leave the gun in there,

and I like, I start, bleaching my hands and stuff but my uncle said no um i don't want you to go to the hospital with me let these guys take me to the hospital just in case because anytime it's a shot uh the detectives of that right so he was like just in case it some uh some daycare cops i don't want them to see some gsr on you or you know even implicate you he said let them take me so they hobble with him up the street um because we couldn't get a cab we couldn't get it was like no ride and that we had money right clearly you know so we like but nobody would take us so he had

I had to hobble his arms around my two cousins and they took him up. So shortly thereafter, the detective is calling me now. Like, hey, man, you need to come on down here and tell us, you know, what's going on. You know, so when my uncle was in there, clearly he said, I got shot, somebody tried to rob me and my nephew, you know, whatever, whatever. So I called my uncle, I said, man, because in my mind, I'm like, I'm not. not going to say nothing about nothing. He said, no, man, just go down there, let them know exactly what happened. You feel me? As, you know, we had rehearsed, and they're going to stop calling you.

He says, it's their job to call you. Somebody was shot. Yeah. So I go to whatever district it was. I go on there, and the cop, he's like, he said, so tell him what happened. He said, man, we just walking, man, somebody, you know, it was dark. I don't know who it was. They shot my uncle, and they took out money. So he slant, and this was like a little, this was a while back. so they still had record us. So he hit the stop button on. They're like, what if I tell you your uncle said that he shot itself? It was self-inflicted.

I'm like, well, I know that didn't happen. That's a lie. What I told you is what happened. You know, so he was kind of upset, whatever. And they let me out. And that was the end of that. Even the cop wasn't fine. It's like, it's too clean of a shot.

Right, basically. But that had taught me something about, because I had never been locked up at that point. I never been to jail. I never had a juvenile history, you know. So just being at this point in life and starting to really, like, get my feet wet in the street, it starts to show me like, okay, it's ways to do this, you know, and to make it lucrative. Like, one bullet, one shot, one night got me $500.

What else can I do to kind of, you know, you know, I'm telling you? Who else can I shoot? This could be a thing. Right. So from that point, I started dizzling dabbling and selling harder drugs now. I remember the first time I got arrested. I was probably maybe about six months after this because I was still about 18. Like I just turned 18. And me and a friend of mine, we were selling drugs and the cops, they chained us to like a light pole, like cuff, cuff, you know what I mean? So we're just like this. And they went in the alley looking for the drugs and all that.

And this is how green a copper just try you, right? So they come out there with like a pin with a gun on it. Like, look what we found. But it was one of their guns. They took it off their hip light. You know what I mean? Like that was going to pressure us to tell them something or whatever like that. You know, we clearly like, we know we don't have a gun in that alley.

So that's like, come on now. So we're like, man, that's your gun, man. You're just going to take us down to the bookings or whatever. So they're still looking. They never found nothing. But then they finally found out Pact. It was like some, some, some, some hard and some, some, some Doug food at that time, some boy. And that was the first time being at, so in Baltimore, you have Central Bookings.

That's the, that's where everybody goes through. And then from there, they'll divvy you out to different jails or whatever like that if you catch time. So that was my first time at Central Bookings. And just hearing about it and also being raised by gentlemen like, like, Dante Barksdale, they already give you the game how you survive in these places. You don't go and try to make no friends, nothing like that. You see somebody you know, you feel me? Even if you see somebody you know, you got to kind of fox them out a little bit before

you even go engaged because he might have been a sucker for you got over there. Now you didn't link up with a sucker and, you know, they say, versus a feather flock together. So you don't want to take on, you don't want to be burdened by somebody else's lack of manhood when you just see him from the neighborhood because I've, I've seen a lot of guys who were tough on the streets, and when they get behind that wall, it's a whole different situation. Right. What happened with that charge, though?

I mean, did you, because they found that, like, they didn't find it on you, found it in the alley. Did you take a plea? Yeah. Well, did you take a plea or did you say I'll go to trial? No, no, I took a plea. They gave me probation. And I think it was probation before judgment. So I'm thinking, oh, it's just slap on a wrist.

So I never knew that at that time that, because they try to tell you, like, man, if you take this PBJ, it's not going to be on your record. But then you find out it is on your record. And they basically lied to you. Right. You know, so now you have a record. And that was like the beginning of it all for me, you know, like just getting these charges, these charges that if I was smart enough, or if I knew that part of the game, I would have went and got a good lawyer. Right.

You know, but when you're sitting in that bullpen and you just want to come home. Yeah. And they're like, well, look, you can go home today. All you got to do is just admit that, you know, whatever, and you'll get this charge. And but it won't show up because it's a probation before judgment, you know. But me being young and naive, I took it, came home, felt like a champion, like I had actually did something. But in reality, it was actually, it was the beginning of holding myself down with these charges. But I didn't know at that time.

So from there, getting locked up with my guy around there, I had a cousin who lived in a different part of Baltimore. And him and his guys, like, they were like, these were real criminals. Everything I did up to that point, it was just kind of like dibling and dabbling. When I got with them in a project in Baltimore, southeast Baltimore, called named, rather, O'Donnell Heights, that's South East Baltimore. O'Donnell Heights was one of the most intense areas I had ever been, right, as far as, like, because now what happened is it was almost the equivalent to like some mafia type stuff, right? Like, hey, if I introduce Matt, right, hey, this is a friend of ours.

Right. meaning that, okay, this is a stand-up guy. So now I'm kind of... But you're also kind of on the hook because you're vouching for him. You understand? Right. But he was so far up

that his vouch was law. You understand? So it was like, but nonetheless, you're still in the hook for him, you know? But as a man, all you got to do is be a stand-up guy, though. All you got to do is play by the rules, follow, you understand? So it was not complicated.

But these guys, man, these guys were... was, they were on a whole different level. So they were like really, and see, let me explain this to you too, right? So today in Baltimore you have gangs. You have bloods, crips, all these other different things. But Baltimore is traditionally a neighborhood town, not a gang town, meaning I can be from Green Mountain Biddle. You could be from Pennsylvania and North Avenue, Park Heights, the projects. Just people would claim their neighborhoods, you know, not this.

on that. And that's how it had been traditionally for a very long time that being in Baltimore, your respect was based on you as an individual and where you came from, not what set you were a part of. Because a lot of times people can be a part of a set, but you ain't ever put no work in and nothing like that. You know, you're just riding off the set name, but nobody really knows you.

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New subscribers only varies by plan. And that's what we see a lot in Baltimore. I know people in different towns that arguably say the same thing, man. But when I went out there to O'Donnell Heights, this is when I really learned how to be a criminal. You know, like really, this is when I really sold my most drugs. When I really, like my first time being in a shootout where somebody actually shot at me, you understand um uh house raid after house rate and where uh at that time i had seen the most drugs that i had ever seen in my life um see before that like when me and my friend had got locked

up and they changed us to the pole we were working for somebody we would show up and they would have drugs for us we would sell and we would get a breakdown off of that out here like i say i was um catapulted to a position of power where um uh uh we were We had probably about 20, 25 people with us. Right. You know, when originally it was just like me and a friend of mine. So now this is like a criminal organization. Right.

You know, and I'm like, I'm starting to really enjoy this criminal thing now. Like, of course, they already know I'd have been to jail. So that's a plus. A badge, yeah. Yeah, you know, like, okay, like when you're introducing somebody as a stand-up guy, it's like, okay, so what has he done? Right. What kind of pressure has he been under?

Who was he around? You know, because these are important. You know, nobody wants to import a rat no matter who your family is, you know? So being out here with these guys, man, it was a whole different, it was a whole different, like, mindset. Like, I was in straight criminal mode. Like, you couldn't give me a job. Like a job. Right.

Work. I got a job. I got to be out here at Boston Street. So. Now, how's the money? I was just going to say that. What kind of money are you making? Yeah.

So let's say I went from making, before I got out there, let's say about $500 a week. Now that I'm out there, I'm making probably about $2,500 a week. Okay. And I'm my own person. Like, we have a source, and we have, it's unlimited access to this source as long as you got your money. Right. I wasn't even buying my own drugs originally when I was getting $500 a week. These guys were just supplying it.

It was their block. because they had their security. I was a worker. Yeah, yeah. You know, so then I was catapulted to a position where I actually have workers. And I remember one time my same friend who got locked up with me, my first locked up, it was the first time being locked up as well. I bought him with me out there.

You know, after I was out there a while, I made my bones and all of that. People seen, you know, my guy saying that I was reliable. I'm a stand-up guy, you know. I then I had the power to recruit people, you know? And so he was one of the people I brought out there. And I remember this one time in particular. So somehow younger guys, they had went on a mission like to go shoot at some guys or something like that, right?

So we were all in this one house. And what happened was we all sitting there, we smoking, we drinking and all that. And they was like, so we're in a house. So the way it worked out there, right, in this project. which was different from, like, my original upbringing, like, learning how to sell drugs, we would find whatever user that we could supply drugs with and use their house as a base, you know? So, okay, so, like, in particular, this one spot, when this happened, it was somebody that

they had a house. Of course, all the houses are basically the same size and all that. But we would strategically get houses in different areas. Like my one guy who was like the head of us, he was like a criminal genius, man. Like this guy could have ran Intel, IBM, any of that, man, if he was afforded those chances. But this guy, man, he was amazing when it came to criminal thinking and strategizing. And he was a shooter, you know, so it wasn't just all theory. Like, hey, you know, what would be cool?

No, it would be like, look, this is what we're going to do, whatever. So this one time in particular, so it was just me, my guy who I got locked up with. We were in a house full of our younger guys. So the way we'll work is we would be the enforcers for our younger guys. You know, like when we're outside. So that way the way it works is if our younger guys are out hustling doing whatever they're doing, us older guys would be out there to make sure that they're good. Even though we hustling too, but it's more of a team structure.

Instead of the younger guys that's being out there by themselves, even though they can 100% handle themselves, we would be just that extra layer of security. Okay. So they go shoot at these guys, right? And it's like seven of them. So they all go out there. And I'm upstairs like bagging up.

Some hard. At this time, hard was my main source of income and the main source of income for probably every dealer out there, at this time. H wasn't really something that was lucrative out there. Right. Because H comes with a, it's a system. You have to have, like, lookouts, corner men, and all that.

And for out there, it didn't have that structure. It wasn't like, so what we would call it is. So, O'Donnell Heights sat, like, on the city-county line of southeast Baltimore, right? But Baltimore City still patrolled as area, not Baltimore County. But it's almost like an island from the city. And I had learned that one Thanksgiving. I'll share that with you So I'm gonna get back to the shooting thing

Right so they go shoot right And my man he comes He's like yo they're on their way back And the police is behind them right So I'm upstairs bagging up And I had just got locked up before then too So at this time I have numerous Incarcerations

So I'm like man I think I'm bagging up like an ounce Or something like that all in dime bags Right and I just have finished up And he like man you better get out of that Man the police is coming behind them What I was out, whatever. Right.

So now I go to the bathroom. I'm like, man, I'm going to flush this, man. But then I was thinking about it. I'm like, I need this money right now. I just came home. So what I did was I went to one of the back windows, right? And I jumped out the window. So when I stood there, so I put in my mind, I was like, listen,

once I put my foot on this ledge, I'm going to just jump. Because I'll think about it and talk myself out of it. Right. You know, so I got this bag full of crap. And I'm like, I can't flush. I got to go. So as soon as I put my foot in a leg, I just jumped.

Boom, hit the ground. It's like a two-story building I was at. I jumped off the second floor, right? And as soon as I hit the grounds, like I tumbled forward, like on my hands, I stood up, just got the running. You know, so I got out of there. Luckily, insecurely, with my rocks, which made me happy. And funny enough, the same friend who warned me that the police was coming

got locked up that night by the police for, I think it was like trespass. Like some trumped up charge that they gave. even wherever, but he wasn't dirty. But it was just funny that, to me, that whenever I just think back on jumping out that window. What were these guys shooting at? Why were they shooting at somebody? Well, it's always rivalries.

Okay. So it was a rival. A set of guys who might have talked some smack or might have shot at us or whatever. You understand? It's like we would normally always. No. Oh, okay. So that's just like somebody's encroaching on your area or there's just a rivalry.

So you just go over, you know where there's a couple guys. You guys go over and you just kind of shoot at them just like a drive-by shooting just to kind of scare them. So what I would say is this. It wasn't just to scare them. The plan was always to hit somebody. Right. You understand? But in that particular, on that particular night.

So the intention was always to hit somebody. Yeah. You know, it was just that these guys were probably just out of bounds or something or, you know, and they were close enough to our territory that we can actually shoot at them, hopefully hit one of them or all of them, and we can get back to our aria to actually, like, to hide. Right. You know, like, you don't want to go somewhere, do something and can't get away with it. You know, I mean, you know, that defeats the purpose.

You want to do the harm, but you don't want to get caught for it. You know, you want to try to get away with it. if you can. And if you don't get away with it, of course you got to stand tall on it. So I believe that was the mission that night to, like, oh, these guys over there. Oh, we've seen them.

Sorry, somebody might have just tripped, because this back one next tail was out. So somebody might have chirped the phone like, I've just seen them guys right. You know, blah, blah, blah. Like, oh, yeah. So they went over there probably about seven deep, you know. And leave the cops back to your area.

You take off because you don't want to get arrested. Yeah. And my friend, arrested that night but like I said it was a trumped up charge so he came home probably two days or something like that and um are you still I mean are you you're not living with your grandmother at this point you're living no okay you're you're you're making whatever 10,000 a month right now living someplace you're driving a vehicle right okay so now this is still O'Donnell Heights

so O'Donnell Heights I would say it's about from where my grandma lived on Green Mountain Biddle that's probably about 30 a 40-minute drive, right? So that's a nice amount of space between grandma and where I'm actually going dirt at. So, and this is why I was saying I'll get back to it, was that I never realized that how much of an island O'Donnell Heights was.

So at this time, I wasn't driving. But I had, I probably had like $1,600 in my pocket, right? It was a Thanksgiving of whatever year that was, like, 0,2,03, I don't know. And my grandma was like, hey, boy, come on down here. you know, eat with us, whatever like that. But on my mind, I'm like, man, I'm going to sell these drugs because I know everybody's going to try to leave the projects, go wherever they,

or be in the house to celebrate Thanksgiving. And that means that's more money for me. So I say, ah, my mom, I'm probably not going to make it. I call my grandma of a mom. I say, I'm probably not going to make it, whatever like that. So this was probably like around about three in the afternoon when I tell her that. About time 10 come, and I didn't make what I wanted to make. And I'm trying to get out of there.

So you got the Travel Plaza, which is. just a couple blocks from O'Donnell Heights. So they got cab stands there. So I walked down. I couldn't get any cab. This is before Uber and all that. I couldn't get a ride at all. So I was literally stuck in the projects.

There was nothing, no ride, no cab, no sedan, nothing that would come get me. And I'm talking about I'm trying to pay them extra. Like, look, I'll pay you double. I just need to, so I, in that instance, in that particular Thanksgiving, I learned that if you don't have a vehicle, you are stuck out there.

Right. It don't matter how much money. I would even took the bus if I could have, just to get downtown Baltimore and walked, I don't know. But I knew if I had got in the city, I would have been able to actually, you know, get a ride. Right. But there was no transportation from there to there.

And it really sucked. But that's just the type of area that was. It was self-contained. And like no outsiders could really like, like even if the guys that I didn't get along with seeing somebody who don't belong out there, it had been a collective action. effort to get them out of there.

You know, like, sometimes you can respect a person that you beef with. Yeah. Like, it doesn't have to be that, you're my enemy and I hate your guts. You know, it's like, hey, we're just not on the same side, you know, but you're still a stand-up guy. You still take care of your family. You still, you know, you do the things that a man's supposed to do, even though we're not on the same side.

Yeah. So that the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of situation, right? Right. So at this time, like I said, like 2002, 2003, so this is like when HBO presents the wire. and the wire was rated the number one show of all times, like several times throughout the years. And if you see some of the actors and actresses who actually took part in that show

and how their career is going amazing, like you had Michael B. Jordan, Idris Alba. I remember, so a lot of times, what I learned is a lot of us from Baltimore, we didn't even watch the wire because we were kind of living it. So I didn't watch the wire until every season was over with.

And when I really watched, I was like, this is really a good show. You know, it was some inconsistencies from... Was it based on a book or... So it was based on the criminal life of Avon Boxdale, who was a Baltimoreian from West Baltimore. But the time period was off. So what they did was they took some stories from the 70s and 80s and just like kind of transplanted.

Modern isome. Modern isom. Right. Because, like what I said earlier about Dante Fat Tata Boxdale, that's Avon's nephew. Like, I'd never really personally met Avon, the guy. But the show was created by Ed Burns and, I forgot the other guy name.

But one of them was a police who was actually on these guys, arresting them at the time when they were doing stuff. And the other one was actually working for the newspaper, reporting what was going on. So it was very ingrained in them. This was their life at one point in time. And I guess they got the HBO pitched it, and it went on to be, you know, wildly a great show.

But like I said, the thing about the wire, right, and being from Baltimore, no matter where I go around the country, the number one thing that a person will ask me, or anybody from Baltimore, this is a real current thing. Is Baltimore really like the wire? Right. I hear that so I could be in Arizona, I can be in L.A., it doesn't matter. When a person hears that you're from Baltimore, that's what they want to know,

because the country consumed it and ate it all up in real time. People who actually living that life, we wasn't really watching it. But then I remember that I had seen a couple guys I knew. Like, I would see them shooting around the town, like making the show. But at that time, all of that. I was worried about was money. I wasn't worried about being on a show. But I remember this guy who used to live next door to my uncle,

he had explained to him. He said, I got a role on there. He was one of the guys who worked with Stringer Bell at his print shop, you know, and he had showed like the back behind the scene. You're like, okay, it must be a big deal. I didn't even know it was from HBO at that time. What year was this? This was like 03.

At the time when they were filming the wire, like for a lot of us, we didn't watch it. I know a lot of Baltimoreans to this. day who never watched the series itself, even though they know a lot of family members who played a part. So the thing that made the wire so great was they actually shot it on location. So those are real projects. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We are here to support your business through every stage of growth, from your first pitch

to your first acquisition. Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all. under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. And what they would do is, so instead of having Ms. Jones look out her window the whole time that they're filming, they would go pay it. Like, hey, Ms. Jones, we've got $200, $250 for you, for you to keep your family in the house or whatever. Because for this scene, we just need the

courtyard to be empty. Yeah. No looking or whatever. Or let's say it's reverse. Hey, Ms. Jones, we know you got three kids and four grandkids in here. Once you have them just out here running around or hanging up clothes on the clothing line or whatever, you know. Right.

So it was lucrative. Very authentic. Very authentic. Right. So it wasn't like it wasn't as if they had to import actors to play these parts. Now, no, these were real people from the community who were actually partaking. and this amazing project that really helped shape the lives of a lot of different people. Like, for instance, like Snoop who played on the wire, right?

Like, she has a real story that she had before she actually started acting and stuff. And, like, right now, she's doing plays and stuff. Like, that's amazing to say that, hey, I started off here and I'm still keeping it going as an artist. You know, because in Baltimore, we don't have a lot. Like, we don't have any definitive artists that we could say, oh, that guy made it. You know, like, you look at Atlanta, you got all these different. You look at New York, you know, but there has not been one artist from Baltimore as a single or rapper per se. Like, we have Drew Hill.

Let's say some of the most famous people is modernly. We would say, like, Jada Pinkett, Smith. Also, like, if you think about traditionally, you've got people like Billy Holiday or. Like Reginal F. Lewis was like one of the first billionaires, a businessman. He's from Baltimore. So Baltimore really doesn't have a lot per se in the sense that you have just a person you can point your finger at and say, this is a successful person from Baltimore who's a multimillionaire and still making money and relevant today. In comparison to a lot of our other towns that might be close, like Virginia and Delaware,

that have people. but to the wire, the wire was just amazing because, like I said, my big brother was Dante Barksdale. And that's the name of the lead person from the Wyatt is based on Avon Barksdale. So the namesake, the Barksdale name means a lot in Baltimore. And to have this guy as like a mentor of my rest of pieces, he passed now, but he was. He was a mentor of mine who gave me a lot of different game and understanding of how the streets go. And this is before the wire even came out and even after the fact. So he really opened my eyes to like how to really play the game, how to really go about this thing and be successful at it.

Don't just be a knucklehead to say you're selling drugs to sell drugs. Like if you're if you're hustling, if you're doing anything in life, try to do it as best you can and try to help change the lives of your loved ones. And that was something here instilled in me. You know, so during the time that the wire was out, we were still in O'Donnell Heights, selling drugs, being violent. I'm catching charge after charge. And later, I'll reveal the relevance of it, but it's just that when they're giving you that option to go home that day, it sounds so sweet.

Yeah, yeah. But you don't realize that you're copping out to something that's really making you a career crook in the eyes of the court. And I didn't realize. You show up in front of six felonies. And then they, where you've been getting passes over and over again. And then one day they,

they hand you a 20 year sentence and you go, well, how's that possible? I've never, I've been faced all these charges before. I've never gotten anything. But now you're a career criminal. And that's what we were, it's kind of like when the cops sell you, the DEA will sell you,

they'll do one buy with you. Well, you could arrest me right now. No, we want to get six buys because then he's bought over. half a pound or half a key and now we can give them 10 years. So you could have bought it one chart. You could have arrested me right then. You knew what I was doing right there. You rested me. I could have got probation. You're going to give, you're going to wait until they add up to a 10 year sentence. Like, come on. That's like that's not right. Like, you know, you should have crabbed me the very first time. No, it's not how we do it. That way we get rid of this guy for 10 years.

Right. We want that accumulation. Yeah. You know, so at that time, like I said, I'm thinking I'm just making out like okay I'm getting locked up in house raids I remember one time right when I was out of O'Donnell Heights so one inaccuracy that the wire had was that when the undercover detectives will come they would call them narcos we don't call them knockos in Baltimore we call them knockers all right like okay but I remember one time so I'm in this in this trap house and I'm about to buy some work because I ran I ran out about to buy something. So now that I'm in there, me and this guy,

we're playing Madden, whatever Madden was at that time, like Madden, 06, 05 or something. And I look out the window and I see the knockers like coming from both sides about to raid the house. So I get up and I run, I go to the back door and I got to the back door right before they actually got to kick the back door in. So I already then bought the work,

I got it in my hand and I'm running. and the police chasing me. So, right, because he saw me. But I got out the door before he got to the door, but he chasing me now. So we, like, felt like it was like a, and I wasn't always, you know, this size. I used to be slimmer and more, in better shape. But so even way, I leave him, I throw what I had got. another police pick up the run from a different area

like tackle me they get me down and all that and the police who was originally chased me he finds what I threw now I'm thinking I'm good all that I'm like all right well you might get me with a you know eluding or whatever so they take me back to the house that they just raided at that time I had like some gold fronts they were on my pants

and they dropped off when I got up and ran so now that they got me They found the stuff and all that. They're like, who fronts these? You know, I'm like, man, they're mine. You can get them here. You snip them in half and throw them into evidence bag and all that, right? So I'm locked up now for like maybe about a week or two.

All right? So I'm like, okay. Because my guys have bailed me out. Now, let's say I got out 5 o'clock that morning. 8 o'clock that same morning, they came and raided the house that I was in. Same knockers. So I was outside. Completely different house.

Completely different house and a different part of the projects. You know, so I'm like, man, I'm home for three hours. And from that stent, so I was logged up like a week to 10 days, two weeks, something like that. Then they raid the house that I'm in. And now I'm gone for like nine months now. You know, so I literally got like one breath of fresh air and was gone right back again. So it's like, man. And that's just one of the treacherous parts of the streets.

You never know where it come from. You never know who snitches on you, you know, unless you take it to trial. But just generally, it's just a tough way to live, you know. So just about the wire. So at that time, we were really outside living this lifestyle. And so from the wire, like the Freddie Gray thing, right? Freddie Gray was a young man in Baltimore. And this was a national headline.

He actually was killed by Baltimore City Police. So he was in that custody So he was literally This is West Baltimore now He was a known Figure in that area So he was just like running somewhere Like running for a ride or something like that

Right And the police had seen him Running and they must have assumed That he was either doing something Or about to do something So they chased him And they put him in cuffs And when they put him in cuffs

I believe it was Behind his back And they shaggled his ankles And they just threw them inside the cruiser and took them for what they call a rough ride. So that rough ride ended up in his spine being severed. What is the rough ride? What do you mean? When they don't sit you up in there and put the seatbelt on you.

When they just got you in there and you just... You're bouncing off the walls. You're falling on the ground. You try and get back up. Right. Okay. So you're getting smashed all around. Correct.

Right. And this is a paddy wagon? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's brutal back there. Brutal. Right.

So it's not like you're in the back of the car. No, you're in the back of the car. It's cushion. You can't go very far. Here you're falling. Six feet this way, eight feet this way, four feet the up. Come on, man. And his spine was severed.

You know, so when that happened, that's when the Baltimore riots actually happened. Is that when he told them when he was getting out? He was like, I can't stand up. I can't stand up. Yeah. And they just, they thought he was bullshit. And they just dragged him in anyway. His back was already broken at that point.

Right. You know, and that was a very, very sad thing because for us being in the street at that time, we knew it could have been any one of us. Did he die? He died. Yeah, he died. And that's where the Baltimore riots happened. He died maybe a couple days after that.

And, like, at that time, I was so disconnected from watching the news or anything like that, that I didn't even know about it until after he was already dead. And like for guys like us in the street, like even with a street code, you still stand for something. And like, okay, as a police, you got a job to do. If I'm breaking the law, it's your job to lock me up. If I'm locked up, it's my job to keep my mouth shut. That's just the way it works. But to have somebody back get broke and I'm under, you know, arrest, that was unacceptable.

So the city roared and that's when the Freddie Gray riots happened. Now, for me, as a street guy, that was, I mean, I was helping with the riots, looting and all that. Like, I had so many PlayStation's and sneakers and, like, man, it was everything. Like, it was like, it was like we were printing money, you know? I mean, which isn't necessarily right, but this is the frustration of the youth, you know, that's actually going on. Like, we knew that this could have been any of us or any of our loved ones. This man literally didn't do anything. He didn't have any weapons on him, didn't have any drugs on him.

You know, so he died in the hands of police and, like, you know, nothing. They weren't charged with it, you know. So, man, we tore the city up, man. And it was a fun time at that time, and I know he might sell crazy, you know. And this is just me looking back in hindsight, being a young guy at that time. it was just like it was just a sense of lawlessness and the thing was that the police what we learned was and later data that they stopped police in the street so they were intentionally allowing certain things to happen within the town so like even if you called 911 and i'm not even talking about at the time of the riot sometimes over like weeks to lead behind it um uh they they weren't doing their jobs you know like so if an old lady had fell somewhere something like something like you Like that, like the EMS, none of them were coming out. And that kind of suck for the law-abiding citizens.

Right. You know, like, you can't make the majority suffer for the minority, you know? And we learned that that's something that happened. So during the time of the riots, man, like, we were going up in the game stops, the foot lockers. You mean, it was so crazy because you'll see so many shoes, right? And it'll just be the left shoe. people had bags full of just left shoes. Because they put out the left shoe on the display.

Yeah. You know, so when you're writing, you don't think to yourself, you know what? You know what? I need to go in the back and find that kind of time. Yeah,

you don't have that type of time. So, you know, so you might meet up with somebody who got a bag full of right shoes. You're like, okay, got these and there's so many different game consoles.

But as a crook at that time, It was like, it felt good. It was like some get back at the police, you know, at the system, rather. And like I said, it really felt good to be able to have a little get back, even though something so bad had happened as far as Freddie losing his life. I didn't personally know Freddie, but we all coming from the city is a Freddie or know a Freddie. And it just wasn't right. It didn't sit right with us.

It was a lot of pharmacies being looted. So all of the percocets, all of that was on the streets. But what we also learned was about the Gun Trace Task Force. Those were the disgraced Baltimore City police who they only focused on guns. But these guys were so bad, man. They actually all got federal bits. A couple of them died, I believe. I remember Herschel.

I know I remember Herschel specifically. And he passed and he died in prison. But, man, he was terrible, man. I want to paint a picture for you for you to understand that let's just think about a half a mile, right, worth of drug territory. Everybody's doing their own thing, right?

But when these guys came around, and remember, they wasn't even looking for drugs, quote unquote. It's supposed to be guns. What they would do is, is like somebody from all the way up the block and be like, hers so in them out, hers and her. And the whole word would just echo down

the whole area just to put your fellow hustler on point that the cruddy police is out. Right. Something's bad is going to happen. They're only around here to do bad. And they were convicted of selling drugs, murder for hire, robbery, all kind of different things. I personally witnessed certain things

when it came to being on the blocks that, because even though I was in the projects hustling, right, I will always make my way around the city because I'm a well-known guy, so I'm not just stuck in the projects, you know, I might go anywhere. So I remember in particular, I heard a story of a gentleman who got hurt very bad. Some people lost their lives because if the police grab you,

nobody believes that, okay, so this one guy, right? He was on the block, police grabbed. him, right? He had drugs and money and stuff on him. They took him to a block maybe about 15 minutes away, robbed him and let him out. So in the mind of everybody else, if the police grabbed you, you're going to jail. This guy came back like a half an hour later. And they're like, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be in jail. He's like, man, they robbed me, took my drugs and my money and put me out the car. but what but the the more reasonable scenario is you gave them some information they let you go right because that would that's eat that's that's that's well that that's a hell of a lot more um reasonable than they robbed me and took my money that people don't believe that right but in hindsight

now we know that that that's exactly what they were doing these guys were making a million dollars like they were real drug dealers like um and actually uh HBO, again, they had produced a limited series called We Own the City, starring, what's his name, John Bergenthal? I'm talking with the famous actor. You know his face. I'm sure I knew his face.

Yeah, yeah, he was very famous. He did the accountant with... Oh, he's the white guy? Yeah. He's the guy in Stranger, not Shanger, the Zombie Show. What's the Zombie Show? Walking Dead. I know.

He was in the first couple seasons. He's a cop. He plays the brother of... Ben Affleck? Yeah. I say it right? Yeah, yeah. And the accountant.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's a good actor. Really good actor. Yeah, he also played The Punisher and all that. Yeah. So he played Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, who was the head of that GunTrace Task Force, and it came out on HBO. He plays a good dick.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You really, he really believe he's an asshole. Yeah. He did an amazing job with these guys. But again, a gentleman, vent, such as myself, being from the streets of Baltimore, I know the inconsistencies.

I know the bust that they didn't actually put in the actual film because they were doing a lot more dirt. Like they were taking hits. Like if they had you working for them because they just robbed some guys in South Baltimore and they got five bricks and they say, hey, we know you out here nickel and diamond here.

I'm going to give you these five bricks. This is how much I want back. You know, like a real regular drug transaction, except for they were police. So you're looking at it like, okay, you got the protection of the police. You got this work that's free, you know, and it just sucked because it made the scale so uneven.

So you could say, oh, yeah, I know Carl, he's over there on Miami Street, and he's doing this, this, and that. Now I'm on their radar, and they're going to come rob me or kill me based on whatever information you give them, you know? So these guys, man, they were terrible, man. I'm talking about they will rob you, strip you, all kind of like, like they were just regular gangsters with a badge. Right.

You know, and all those guys, they caught like, most of them called like 20 years or something like that, 10 years. They caught big bits. But like I said, I know one of them is actually home now. He did an interview on a different platform. He was just talking about, like, but he was the one who ratted on all of them. So, of course, he's like, yeah, man, I didn't know that. No, you knew.

Yeah. Y'all had bust down Rolex. All kind of stuff, man. This was crazy. Well, I was locked up with Greg Jr., which was the, he was on the drug task force in Atlanta, the ones that were doing the no-knock warrants, and they ended up kicking in a retired school teacher's door and shot her. She shot at them because she thought she was being robbed.

Like she's 70 years, something years old, and she hears, bam, bam, bam, bam. And the whole thing was that they grabbed somebody, took a bunch of drugs off him, said, would you get the drugs? And we're going to let you go. Right. They gave him an address. Then they took the address and they said, man, this guy just, he just said, man, the guy's got keys in there.

This is what, I mean, you could go rob him here, take what I got. They said, okay. Then they went to what they had was a certified CI. He certified his word is good. And so they took, they had him sign an affidavit. They go to a judge. Judge reads it. And this is from so and so.

Okay. judge signs off on a no-knock warrant, and then they go and kick in the door. Well, it was a bad address. It's just some old lady who's retired. And she hears, bam, bam, bam, bam, at, you know, whatever, 11, 12, 1 in the morning. Boom, the door goes, she wakes up,

grabs her a little 22. And shoots when the guys walk in, boom, they execute her. Then they say they found some pot or something in the house. Oh, yeah, we found her stash. It's like, nobody believes that, bro. And so what happened was, then so after about a week

juniare realizes like this isn't going to work like not only like the um what is internal affairs is tearing is tearing apart their whole their whole story now the FBI is coming in so the FBI is like wants to interview them he immediately goes to his lawyer goes straight into the uh US attorney's office in Atlanta and says I'll cooperate against all these guys wow um and then he got and he's the one that shot her too by the way He's the one that killed her. He got five or six years in the state, and he got charged federally, which he wanted to be charged federally, for violating her civil rights, and he got them to be run concurrent.

So he got to do his state time in the feds, and he was pissed that he had gotten, the federal judge wasn't bound by anything. So he got a little bit more time. So he was going to end up having to do like an extra 18 months. months in the federal system. So he ended up doing, let's say, five years. He had been robbing for 10 years, 10 years. He was a multimillionaire. He kept everything.

So they let him keep everything. And the other guys that he did testify against, which all took police, by the way, those guys only got like 10 years apiece. Nobody got a bunch of time. And he had horrific stories. I mean horrific. We're talking about like chasing a drug dealer one time. Remember the one guy I told you?

He's running. So you know how they have the like the bridges that go over, you know, like an interstate, right? Like that bridge, whatever you call that, overpass, whatever. So this guy was running. And so you know how they got the overpass and it goes down like this? So the guy was running and he ran and he thought he was going to jump and be able to hit that. But he just an extra 20 feet and he jumped. So now he's 60 feet up.

And when he comes down, he hits a fence, the fence line, and the pole hits him in the back of the head and rips his head right off. So the body's laying on the ground and the head is literally on the spike. I mean, and he would tell us these stories. It was just like, and he was chasing. He was like, yeah, yeah, he's fucking crazy, right? And it was like, like you chase this guy and he jumped. And, you know, granted, maybe he shouldn't jump.

Maybe he shouldn't run. but I don't think he thought he was running from the police. Right. I think, yeah. But, yeah, Junior was up pissed. He had to do like an extra year, 18 months or something on the, for, and he shot and killed this woman. And when you would say to him, when he would bitch and complain about it, I'd go, bro, you shot a school teacher. And he goes, he's like, she shot me first.

I go, you were breaking in her house. I was a cop. And it was just like, you weren't a cop. Right. You know, luckily you had the protection of being a cop. That's the only thing that saved you from not getting a life sentence. That qualified immunity. Yeah.

So anyway, yeah. He was a rat bastard, junior. Horrific. You can get him on the show. We had the, remember the prosecutor who knew him? We had the guy that was once a district attorney in Atlanta. Remember, he knew him? He's like, oh, I know him.

I know him. Because I know he said horrible. He said, the stories you know, ten times worse. He's like, I promise you. He said, I know tons of stories about the guy. He's horrific because he's not going to tell me. Right, right. He's going to put a little twist on everything.

So it's a little not so bad. Yeah, yeah. He probably pushed that guy. Yeah. Like, for real, man. Like, they are the worst, the cops, the cops, man, because they just feel like they got the whole, they are the most dangerous part of the judiciary system, man.

Because you have to figure it out in front of the judge, but they have your life in their hands. Anytime that they pull you over, cuff you, you anything, you know, and it sucks, man. Those are the ones like, like I said, like Hershey and them, when they were on the street, man, and the thing is they had, like, they can go anywhere. So they weren't like in a certain part of the city.

They can travel to a whole, because they were the gun traced task force. Violence happens in every sector of Baltimore. So there was no, oh, you're just over here and this and all, man. They was everywhere. And how they got jammed up was they actually had put a track on the vehicle of some guy that they planned on robbing and killing. But what happened was, I think it was the DEA or some other agency had a track on it already.

So they already tracking this guy. And when they found the other tracker, they like, what is this doing it? They ran it and all that. And they found out that this was a city cop. And that's when everything started unfolding for them, you know? Like, yeah, these guys, man, they were some of the worst of the worst. So what they opened up an investigation to kind of feel like something's wrong with that. Something's not right here.

Absolutely. And then started putting it all together. They don't have to watch, you don't have to watch somebody for very long to figure out, because they start saying, oh, we were here or we did this. You weren't there. And that's not what happened. We were watching somebody for a week straight and put the, look at the reports and go, no, they're dummying up reports.

Something's wrong. Right. And I think that's, I think that was one of the first things that really got them a little jammed up was when, because the overtime. They got so greedy, bro, you're making $30,000 a week. Right. But you still want to get the overtime too. Yeah.

That's what really, I believe, I believe that was like the thing that really put the police, like, IA on them. At first, like, how are you guys getting all of this overtime, man? You know, so. Well, the feds love to bust local cops, local corruption. They love to bust it. The FBI was actually initially mandated for, government corruption. Like it started off as this is an agency

that looks into government corruption. It then branched, they then branched out into other avenues, but they love a good government corruption, especially as the local cops because they get to make the local cops look bad, like look at these fucking, these guys are scumbags, so we're

up here and they're scumbags, and we busted them. Look, look, they were taking advantage of these these poor U.S. citizens that were just trying, you know, they're just, we're looking out for you. It also makes them look out like, we're looking out for you. But then you go through the federal system, you go, you're not looking out for it anyway.

Right. It's not what's happening at all. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. What you said, Jr. And all of those guys, man, may they, you know, rotten hell? Because they definitely, I'm telling you, man, they're like a part of the biggest problem.

You know. There's no perfect system. Oh, no. You're never going to have it. Maybe when AI gets involved. maybe when the cops are all AI and even then there's you know

people will realize right away like what the parameters are and what I have to say that they'll let me go what I have to you know how do I get out of the cuffs I got a chest pain oh chest pain let him out of the cuff put them here do this it's like yeah I got it if they are American bots they'll just put their hand on it

and say oh your heart is it's a normal rate you're right you're fine damn it that's going to be bad Listen, how old are you? 43. Oh, yeah.

You and I are, I don't know if I'll make it 10 more years, but Jeff hates it when I say that. My wife, she gets, he's like, don't say that. I don't think I have 10 years in me. But in the next 10 years, boy, things are going to be insane. Yeah. They're going to really, I don't know what's going to happen. But, uh, you're right. Yeah, maybe it'll, maybe it will be, um, maybe there will be, but you would think that

that'd be when the last thing, any type of real interaction, right? Like if you're building cars, that's one thing. You fuck up on the assembly line. It's just some parts. You know what I'm saying? It's just not a big deal. You fuck up dealing with somebody. No, it might be a problem.

Big problem. Yeah. So we'll see. Yeah. Only time will tell, you know. You have to do some test runs in some place where the people don't really matter, like the projects or something. We'll do some test run.

If anything goes wrong, you say, no, let's do the test run in Beverly Hills. Oh, hey, don't get crazy. now these people will sue. They're going to have lawyers. So what's, all right, so where are we? So basically, we was talking about the Gun Trace Task Force and how cruddy and corrupt they were. And they all got like 20 years.

Yeah. Except for the one guy who snitched on all them. I think his name is Gondo, Mammu Gondoh. He was a detective with him. He tried to play it like he was innocent. He was only, because you know, they actually had footage of these guys. They had went into somebody house, right? It was like 300,000 in there.

They had popped the safe open, took all the money that they wanted, closed the safe back. They thought that they were like restarting the body camera right then and there. Right. So they had already stole what they wanted, closed it back up, and act like they just popped it over. Like, look, look what we found, Saj. And the Sajk came out of there, like, hey, don't nobody touch nothing, nothing. But they had already stole everything that they wanted. So a lot of that footage that, it was a lot of different stuff that they were doing

that not only made them hot, but kind of made it easy for the fares to see what was going on. Because I think when you're working on that level, it's a certain level of arrogance that comes with that type of lifestyle. Like, you're above the law. I am the law. And then the more you get away with it, the more emboldened you become, the more cocky you become. So what was the name of the guy? Gondo.

So Gondo was the Ethan Hawk character in Training Day. Yeah, that guy. I didn't know. this guy's crazy that God you guys showed up Right, right, right And God, that was a good movie

Yeah, for argument's sake All of those guys in that task force Was the equivalent of Denzel Washington's Cockta in there You know, so just imagine Five or six Denzel Washington's From Training Day That's running one group

That's supposed to be getting guns off Yeah, man, these guys were terrible You know, I personally never got arrested by them And I'm glad that I didn't Because who knows, man. You know, I'm a bigger guy. You know, they had a thing for roughing people up. And it was just like, that's what made the Freddie Gray thing so unique and so important.

Because it was like, okay, this can be any of us, any day, you know. And or it could be our son, anybody. This guy literally did nothing and lost his life. And the cops got off on it. But just to get back to the whole Baltimore thing. So another thing that happened in Baltimore as well was it was a national headline about the gentleman Tavon White. Tavon White was a gentleman who he was incarcerated at Baltimore City Detention Center, what we call BCDC, also known as Stale Side. I think at one time that was the oldest jail in the United States

like one of the first jails ever built so it was still it still had bars on the gate oh man it was horrible there I had actually the time there but not when Tavon White was there Tavon White the headline that he had in Baltimore was that he had got maybe four correctional officers pregnant they had got their name his name tattoo

on him. He, and he ended up telling as well, but he had the whole jail basically under his control. Any contraband come in,

anything, they had him on wide tap saying that any last word that said about anything here, it comes to me. So,

God was bringing in drugs, contraband, you know, phones, all this other stuff. And he had the jail on lock for a while. But see,

the thing about that is that Tavon wasn't doing anything that hadn't happened before him. Right. It's just that he was hot with it. He got jammed up with it. I know when I was like, so Tavon White thing, I think that was like 2017, 2016, something like that, when the feds got on him and found out he got to. So, hardly enough, the female correctional officers thought that he was going to come to court

and stand up for them, but he told all the court. This is like getting out of jail free card. she attacked, I didn't want to. These women are taking advantage of me. You know? What was I supposed to do? I'm in handcuffs. I'm there.

I mean, they told me they take away my privileges. They, you know, I had no choice. Right, right. So he, so of course, he went to court and he revealed everything, you know. So a lot of, some of them ladies doing like 20 years, the babies that he had in prison. God, what was the guy we, the guy from Rikers Island, we interviewed?

We interviewed, we interviewed a couple of them, but one of them, was literally. He was a stream yard. God, he should, he would be great. He was, oh my God, you got to,

I'll send you this. Listen, and he tried the whole time, he tried to be like, yeah, it was, you know, like,

he tried to be like remorseful, but he's selling drugs. Right. He's selling, I mean, just across the board. And then the one thing was, he's like,

if they, if the inmate, he's in, some of these inmates have tons of money. Right. You know, they got drug,

empires like they can send in there they're they're paying all kinds of money he said some of these guys like you know they want like a guard a female guard to have sex with and he would go and he was pimping out the female guards and so he would escort the prisoner even you know there's cameras weren't cameras everywhere then but there were cameras i escort the prisoner and he would go into like a closet and then the then i would you know i would kind of leave or let him have access to the closet he'd go in the closet then the chiefs. chick would go and she'd meet him. And I was like, and he's, he is in, they're getting like, what was it that they were getting

like, 1,500 and he was getting 500 and they were taking 1,000. He's like, and this guy's meeting, you know, meeting them two, three times a week. That's what I got when I shot my uncle, remember? It was the, the five. Yeah, yeah. But he's doing this and I was like, and he was telling me, I went, remember I said, I said, bro, what do these chicks look like? He was, oh, man, he's, come on, man.

He couldn't saw him. He goes, you know what they did. They didn't look good. You know what they did. I said, they look good. Come tell me true. What, they look good. And he was like, come on, man.

Like, he's trying to be like, you know, like sad or like disappointed himself. But he's like, man, you know, they didn't look good, man. Right, right. He's like, but they was prison. And it was. Yeah, that was. That was so. He's trying hard to be like, like he's remorseful.

Stop it. God, he had a gambling addiction. But the stuff that he was saying, some of these guards in, like from Rikers, the stuff that's happening in those in those places are, it's outrageous. And you know, you got, you don't need much for a, uh, uh, or they would get a guard. And, you know, they have like, but badges. Okay. I got a badge.

So now they're getting them to pick up drugs on the street and move it from here to here. So you're running your operation outside. I got you picking up. You're a guard there, but I, but you got a badge. So I know if you get pulled over, said, hey, man, I'm a CEO. was, oh, yeah, they're going to let you go. You're picking stuff up from here to here to here, and you're thinking, and then you're getting paid well, right?

A couple thousand here, a couple thousand. You're thinking, man, this is nothing. Do this twice a week. I'm going to make $20,000,000 a month. This is a joke. But by the third time you pick it up, you realize that that inmates working with the DEA and you did the guy speak.

And now you're doing 10 years, and he's walking out of jail. And it was like, wow, it's kind of brilliant, really. And who did he give up? A guard, or a cop, really. essentially a cop. So the other inmates are like, hey, I get it. I hear you. You know, you didn't. It's not like you're taking out another street guy. Anyway, sorry. No, no, no, listen, because you make a good point. I mean, that's how all the drugs or contraband get in the jail. It's always the guards. And it's always the guards having to meet with somebody.

You set it up and they meet with such, because that's how we used to do. We used to pay guards, like this is before the Tavon White thing. You know, like I said, I was never arrested at the time that he was arrested, but even back in the early 2000s, you know, 2010, 11, stuff like that, like when we had guys that was in jail, because you have to remember that these gods are from the community, you know, so I might have grew up with this guy, you know? That happens all the time. I actually was writing a story for a guy in Coleman. When he first got to Coleman, he saw a guy that was the older brother of one of his friends

and walked up to him and saw him and was like, hey, and the guy, guard just kind of shook his head and looked at. He goes, you could tell, like, they made eye contact. He was like, he was kind of like, hey, you know, and he went. And he knew right then. He's like, what the fuck? So he kept walking. And then later he walked up to him in the unit.

He said, listen, don't fucking tell anybody you know me. The moment you tell somebody, I know that guy is you're gone. They'll ship you. Did you understand? He said, you say, you say anything. And we had guys that were there that used to, the chick went to high school. Like a new CEO, he gets in there. He's like, I went to high school.

He's telling everybody. He's like, he's going to be here for about a week. He's staying in, you know, they're doing count, and then 11 o'clock he's going in there and talking to this chick in the best of someone's good. Fucking 10 of these guys are going to write copouts. She's not going to say anything, but, and then sure enough, two days later, they come in, pack him out, put him the shoe, and he's on the next bus out. I mean, it's that, you know, or that the, the cell phones, all the cell phones are brought in by the COs. And that's as simple as some CEO walks out to the parking lot and your brother. is waiting there and sees the CEO walk out and says, hey, man, can I talk to you for a second?

Listen, man, you want to make two grand? I just got to just give this to my brother. That's it. You know, if you say no, fine, I'll walk away right now. They're like, fucking give me the two grand. Right, because I got this cash right here. Right here. Two grand, you already gave me the phone?

Right. Fuck, what's your brother name? All right, I got you. You'll have it tomorrow. That's it. It's that easy. Yeah. And how they did it in Baltimore, they would put it in their shoe because they would search

their whole body, but they would never search the shoes. So that's how we was getting a lot of phones and stuff in. And the CEOs don't want to catch each other. Yeah, no. You know. Yeah. Because they end on it too. Yeah.

Like the corruption is so thick and so deep. It's like, who wants to turn down? Like you said, an extra 10 grand a month, just bring us something in? Right. You know, I'm not doing anything beyond this. Yeah. You can justify it to yourself. And you think I've been doing this for three years and, you know, like,

it worse they're going to do is fire me and they're not going to catch me. I know I've been getting checked down for three years straight. I know exactly how to walk something in here. Nobody, and my, I eat lunch with the guy that shakes me down every day. He barely, never even found something. He wouldn't do anything. He'd be like, fuck, motherfucker, are you crazy? And then he'd go, get the fuck out of here.

Don't do that shit again. That'd be it. Yeah. You know? The problem is you can't trust the inmate. because the inmate's thinking he's been bringing shit in all I got to do is

fucking write a letter. We have a contract, a verbal contract that this is what's going to go on every time that I need it. And guess what? I give you a bonus this time. It's Christmas time. Let me go and give you an extra thousand. Well, I mean, think about, the FBI wants to catch that guy bad. You know, they call it, he calls his agent on the, on the street,

tells the FBI, listen, I got a fucking CEO who's bringing him fucking shit. They don't even care that they don't even care that you're the one who's giving it to him No, I've been bringing in drugs or phones,

everything. Plan a thing, my brother will meet. He meets him here the whole thing. You'll tell your brother your brother's like, oh, fuck, okay,

I'll do it, no problem. He didn't give a shit. You get to get out an extra five or ten years early. Right. And what is it? It's just some CEO. Right.

The CEO totally trust you. It's been three years. Right. Yeah. What's that, that federal, I'm not sure if it's a law, but I know

that's the thing that they was talking about Big Meach with where you can turn somebody in. Third party rule 35. Okay. I knew you would know. I know all that. Yeah, I don't think me, you know,

it's funny because I have a buddy name Pete and Pete was very smart guy. Pete's looked at all the documents and he just insists that he's like, he just doesn't think that Meach did anything. He's like, I just don't. I don't see it. It's just not in the documents.

You know what I'm saying? But other people, you know, disagree and, you know, it's a whole thing. Right. Nobody cares about the truth when the lie is more entertaining. Yeah. Yes. You know, like when the lie is like buss and it's like, oh, man, but the truth is boring over there. I'm going to go with the lie.

That's how most people are. And that's how all these conspiracy theories, how much fun is it to think that we never landed on the moon. And it's, and it was all faked. And they spent billions of dollars and all of it was fake to fool the American public. That's much more fun than no, we did go to the moon. Right. You know what I'm saying? Nobody wants to believe.

You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, oh, that's not nearly as exciting as this being this massive conspiracy to fool the United States and the Soviet Union. Right. Yeah. No, you're right. It makes sense. I haven't heard they said Stanley Kubrick. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, filmed it. It's a little Hollywood, a lot of somewhere. And it never happened. Then when people talk about what, the fan, I mean, not the flag. Look, you see ripples in it. It's no airspace. So how is it catching a breeze? Yeah, this, stop.

There's been like five different of five different nations since then have done multiple, sent multiple satellites to go around the moon. They can actually see the tracks. They can see the sites. They can see like they're all, Japan's in on it, India's in on it, Pakistan, like China. You don't think China would want, you don't think Russia would want to, would want to tell the American public your government's lying. Right. Come on.

But I hear you. No, you're right. Right. So just to get back what I was saying about, just the corruption and the city jail in that system. So they have since knocked that jail down. Seems extreme. Yeah. I just said. You said it was an old jail. Yeah, it was really old, man. It was very bad there. You know. You've ever seen Atlanta's the prison in Atlanta? I think it's Atlanta State Prison or Atlanta Federal Prison? No. Straight out of Shawshank, man.

But that's how Baltimore City jail was. Listen, when I was there, right, I remember it was a guy who he obviously had gotten into a fight before I got there with like some gang guys, right? And I mean, he was a stand-up guy because what he did was so he had raccoon eyes, you know, like, like bustle-lipping and all that. But he hid out in his cell for days healing himself so the guards wouldn't see him and put him on lockup or start asking questions and stuff like that, right? And, like, when I first seen that, when I got, because I had been to Central Bookings, I had been to county jails. But when I got to Baltimore City Detention Center, man, that's a gladiator school. I mean, I remember I seen a guy get stabbed and the knife went through his body. Like, the guy hitting him, and you can hear it hitting the floor.

You know what I mean? Like, they had what we used to call big whites where it was like a piece of, like, bent metal that they were just sharpened. A lot of times it would come from, like, the window area. where it was bendable to actually get a piece of that metal. And, man, you're talking about shanks this long. And that's not counting the handle. I'm talking about just the blade. I'm talking about, man, I've seen people get thrown off the tear.

So when you go from Central Buckings, which is the equivalent of the Hilton Suites, because you've got TVs, you got wash machine dryer, you're eating on your section, to Baltimore City Detention Center where, like, going up those steps to go to the gym, like, man, you might walk past a body right there, man.

It was a very, very treacherous place, you know, and after this gentleman did what he did, Governor Hogan, I believe it was at that time, knocked the whole jail down, you know. But yeah, it was a very, like, it was like one of those places that, honestly, I believe if it still stood today, I don't think the violence in Baltimore would be as bad. See, because when these kids get locked up, they've already heard about the bookends. They already heard about baby bookends. But like I say, the Buckins is like the Hilton Suite. But when you, if they would have had a chance to go over to Baltimore City jail, it'd have been different because the whole atmosphere is different.

It doesn't matter if you're in a gang or none of that. It's just like you don't want to be, you don't want to be, nobody wants to be in any jail. Yeah. You know, but the conditions is just so much more horrific that I think it would deter certain first offenders and people like, that who's still early into their criminality, I think it would kind of make them say, hey, I don't ever want to go there anymore in comparison to somewhere where you got a wash machine and a dryer, flat screens, and it's just a whole different game. So I do think that that would actually deter or it would have if it wouldn't have been knocked

down. So going from the projects in O'Donnell Heights, selling drugs out there with my guys in them, I had made a move to what's called Down the Hill. That's East Baltimore. Where it's like the Monument Street area, blocks from Johns Hopkins. And that was a pretty lucrative spot down there. That's when I first had kind of learned about Herschel and them, the Gun Trace Task Force.

That's where when I said they'd be hiling down the blocks, hursowing them out. A person wouldn't tell you you dropped your wallet normally, but they're willing to save your life to let you know these crooked police are coming. Right. You know, so that was just a sense of unity as well. You know, you might not even know who's screaming it, but you heard it and you need to move accordingly

because if they catch you, it's going to be something bad. You're not just going to jail. Jail was fine. It's a part of the job when you're actually, you know, when you're in the streets. But to say that I'm going to be robbed, potentially killed, because they could be coming down there just to do a hit because somebody somewhere else then gave them $40,000, $40,000. This is a cop. This will be surgical almost.

Right. You know, it's not going to be sloppy. It's not going to get back to me. You know, none of that. With hopes anyway, you know. So you would never know. So people would just clear out. So from being down there after a while,

I essentially moved to South Baltimore to an area called Brooklyn. Now Brooklyn was my last run. and arguably my best run. So remember, from having gentlemen like Fat Tater, Dante Barksdale, teaching me along the way of how to not only hustle but be a man, like he was a mentor. And he actually was a part of an initiative

in Baltimore called Safe Streets. Safe Streets were, it's a program where they have violence interruptors. They go to high violence areas, and they try to mediate, you know, hey, before you kill him, let's try to figure this out. Right. You know, so shout out to Safe Streets and the Peace Team.

You know, those are good people in the community who are trying at best to stop the murders. And so Tater was a part of that later in his life, like once he had really changed his life over. And he would just try to teach me different things, like how to convert from the streets. But, of course, I'm still young at that time. And I'm just looking at it like, man, The money's there. Yeah. I want to make it.

What else am I going to do? Yeah. Get a job? Yeah. I'm never, even if I could get, even if I got a decent job, a decent job is just not going to pay the amount of money that, you know, you're just not going to make $10,000, $20,000 a month at a regular job. No. If shit, you could be a lawyer, you're not going to get a job making $200,000 a year straight out of, out of college. Like, it just almost never happens.

You know, there's always the bullshit. You know, is it called, is it called White Collar, that series where these guys are making tons of, you know, they're all walking out from Harvard or something and getting these massive, that just doesn't happen. Like most of these guys end up working for an insurance company for $80,000 a year. You know, you just don't make money. And that's, and they've got, you know, they got law degrees. Like, you know, what are you going to do? Right.

No, I get it. I get it. And that's pretty much I was looking at it, Matt. You know, like, man, look, I'm not trying to go anywhere and be an apprentice and, you know, not made. done it, you haven't done real time yet either. Right. Like you haven't done like a 10 years, because when you get the 10 year stretches in there, you start going, maybe McDonald's looks pretty good. Right. And that's what I was saying to you earlier about, like, how getting those PBJs and stuff originally caught up with me. So now we kind of at that point. So you're right. So I've

never did any extensive bits. I will always go to court and I would cop out now that I'm out Brooklyn, right? So I remember times when I was still down the hill, right? That's what we call it in Baltimore. That's East Baltimore, a couple blocks from Hopkins. So down the hill to Brooklyn is probably about 40 minutes. So it's a nice stretch. You know, it's nowhere in there in the same area. But I would go because my kid's mom lived out there. So let's say I'm stopping at a store getting like soda or whatever like that. It will always be, I remember this one time. so I would have my rocks on me from in town. So this is closer to the county line. And things go for double out there. So when I'm selling for Nichols in the city, these are dimes out here. So for the first couple times,

I would stop at the local corner store. It would be a crowd of maybe three or four users just out there. And I would overhear him like, he's got us waiting 40 minutes again. But I was reluctant because I'm like, well, I don't really want to, I never hustled where I lived at, you know, in the same area pretty, pretty much.

So I would be like, I'm not even listening. I just go get my stuff and go. But at about four or five times within maybe a month and a half, two months of hearing how disgruntled these people were to spend money with somebody who has them waiting so long, I decided to start serving them.

It's just about people helping people. You're just a good guy. That's a good guy. I'm just trying to help them out. I'm trying to help you. I'm helping you out. Right. Customer service, man.

So I got one of their numbers and stuff like that. And so I started. So at this point, once I've seen the floor out there, I just stopped going down east side. I was predominantly based out there now. So now I'm selling them. what I was selling for Nichols for 10. So I'm doubling my money for one.

And they're buying in bulk, small bulk, not like 20, 30 or 100. You know what I mean? They're buying, let's say, like, 10 pills at a time, you know, at least. So now I'm starting to see a little, you know, return on ROI. So I'm like, okay. But I had acquired this one customer. So now, let's just say, probably within like three to six months, right? I'm doing well out there.

I had this one customer, and he would always tell me, say, man, look, your stuff is, your stuff is okay, man. You know what I mean? He said, but I got this one guy who has some really, really good stuff, and he only sells ounces or better. Him being a low-end user, he'll never have ounce money, but he's had what he's had before. So he said, I think if I put y'all two together, you could clean up out here because he's not doing, like, he's only doing like wholesale. He's going no retail. Right. You know, so after about two weeks.

So he's saying replace your source with this source and you'll have a better product and then I can buy from you and I get the better product. Right. Right. And for the amount of people that I had, he was saying that that product from that gentleman would solidify everything that I was looking to do. So I said, okay. At about two or three weeks because, of course, I mean, I'm naturally, when you're in the street, you're naturally skeptical. And, you know, I'm like, well, this guy might be trying to put me with the police or something. Yeah, that's what I'm already thinking.

Yeah, I'm like, man, I'm not doing that. So I had about three weeks of him badgering me because this was a very good customer of mine. Like I knew his mom, everything. You know, this wasn't just a guy who would just call and just serve him. No. So I was like, get that guy a call, man. So the guy, he came, so he had some cars somewhere. So the thing was that I suppose been looking at car.

to see if he had a vehicle I wanted to buy, but at the same time, he's bringing something for me to let my people check out. All right? So he brings like an eight ball or something like that, right? Sample. Yeah, sample. In Baltimore, we call them testes.

Okay. Yeah. See, that's another lucrative thing about Baltimore that I learned in other towns that they don't do. We will have 100 to 200 pills of like, of, like, of H. To give away for free. Right. You know, like, so it's a,

daily thing to give away testers because today, Matt, you might have a bomb, right? Everybody coming to you, you made $10,000 a day, right? You know, but I might have a bomb too, but most users are not going to break what they already getting. If they know it's a missile here, they're going to go there until it's not. But I got to drop testers. You know, Kobe got dropped testes. You know, everybody, so, okay, I might be buying from you, but I also got these for free.

I might go in the house, I might buy five pills from you and I go in the house with 10 pills that was all testers. So now that's how they, as users, kind of how they figure out where they want to go. Because remember, when you're selling dope in a place like Baltimore, the thing is that it's highly organized. See, when you're selling a, you know, a rock, you can, it's just, you can just have it in your pocket. Somebody want it. See, and that's what makes Baltimore unique as well is that it's an open-air drug market, meaning that you can literally go anywhere in Baltimore and buy drugs. I've learned in other towns that you might have to know somebody

who knows somebody who knows somebody and by the time you get it and got skimped out of, stepped on and everything else. No, in Baltimore, you could literally pull up right now to a corner where it looked like some action going on and get something good. And that seller will honor his word because it's so many drugs are so plentiful

and I learned this about towns to have ports. Like it's right there and you're getting it right off the boat. So I don't have to do a lot of stuff to it. So, like, when I was in the streets, I used to have people come from PA, Virginia, all of that. Because if I'm in PA, I got to go through so many loops to get it. But they might have a runner that comes to Baltimore, well, let's say, $1,300. And they have, like, a list, okay, get this much H from this spot, get this much hard, get this bud, you understand, I'm saying? And that's a system that they have there.

And it works out for them because, number one, the runners are, you know, taking all the risk. I'm in my house. I'm just waiting for you to call me and I come meet you at the local 7-11. I pick up my part of what you actually. But the runner might be going for 10 different people with that 1,300. Right. You know, so he's just, but that's one of the unique things about Baltimore that it's literally everywhere. Like if you, where city hall is, five minutes from city hall, people selling, you know, a boy in gear.

And that's just the way Baltimore is. So when I met with a gentleman about the car, he gave me the tester. But one thing I always learned from my big brother, Teddy, he said, man, always go with money. You know, like if you're sure that it's a deal and nobody's trying to set you up enough like that, go with money. Show him that you are about business.

You know, so I went with like enough four ounce anyway. Like I think it was like $1,300 at that time or something. So he gave me the eight ball and I gave him the film I said I want to you know what I mean I'm looking to do real business with you I mean of course I don't say like well but at least showed him enough that because remember the referral was a user so he didn't know if in hindsight I can only imagine what my guy was telling the guy like yeah man I'm telling you you know he's a good guy he's always consistent you know I think probably telling him the same thing he was telling me

to kind of pump it up. So I just felt like it was in my best interest to make sure that I took money to show him that, hey, like, yeah, the referral was a user, but I'm not a user. Right. You know, like, don't think that he finessed this situation just so me and him can go smoke an eight ball together.

No, I'm really here to move on to do business. So now, of course, at this time, I don't know if he's going to keep the money or whatever. I don't know this guy. He bought an eight ball, you know what I mean? But you got to have some sort of faith. He called me a little,

later he had it. And from that point, that's when my whole life changed. See, at this point, I had already got so much experience from just being 17, 18, or like 15, 16 when I had, with the bud from my great grandmother that was no good. And I'm still in high school to being locked up, being in O'Donnell Heights and East Baltimore, F&B, you know, watching everything. And so now I'm really ready for the game. I know. everything that I need to know. My P&L is amazing at this point. You know, like, so what I would do is, as I'm getting to know him,

I used to have like 10 cars spread throughout the projects, right? Like I had a Land Rover, Accra trucks, Lexus trucks, you know what I mean? Just cars that I could use like as hard drives, basically. Like so one car, and I would never drive the cars per se, unless I had to move them for whatever reason. So I would drive to the car with a car. I wouldn't get in the car and drive it or something like that. So I would pick opportune times just to go ahead.

So like one car might have bags full of 20 rocks. One car got money. The other one got nickel rocks and dime rocks. You know what I mean? One had guns. You know, that way I would never have anything in my house. Right. That was the whole key that I always learned.

Don't have nothing in your house. Don't eat where you shit. Right. So now I'm doing great dealing with this guy. And not only am I doing great with the work that he got, I'm talking about, man, the girl that he had was white as the lamp and just like rock hard. And I'm talking about, man.

Like, when you got something good, what I learn is you can just stand behind it so much more. And again, we're testers. So now that I'm acquiring this land out there, because I really wasn't hustling in the projects, you know, so the guys in the projects, they never really knew me. I was like on the outskirts of the project. I would be catching everybody who's really spending money. What I learned is the people in the projects, they got $7 for $10 pill. They got, you know, it's always some shortage of cash.

But I'm dealing with people who coming from Pasadena, Brooklyn Park, all different. You know, Glenn Bernie, all these different arias surrounding the projects. So I'm really, really making out at this point. And what I was saying about the testers is, if I see somebody waiting somewhere, I just get in my number and just drop like three pills in the hand. You know, because for me, I'm getting so much of it at this point. Right. And it's so good that I know.

See, what happens is this, right? When you're in the projects or in an area, it's usually like one or two guys who run that area. Yeah. Meaning this, right. So let's say this guy got bricks of, and he's like, he's serving all of us, right?

So whatever you buy, let's say you buy a nine ounces. Let's say all of us buying nine ounces, right? But you're selling yours as nickels. I'm selling mines as 30s. He's selling his as 20s, 25, whatever it is, right? So it's all different sizes, right?

But it's all coming from the same guy, and his work is a six. So it means that no matter what, No matter how big you got it, no matter how fancy you got it, it's a six. And mostly everybody got it because he's serving everybody. But my guy wasn't a part of that system. So I knew that these guys were predominantly getting it off from one place. So now that I know my source is different, I can afford just to give you some

because you're not going to go back to where you were at first. You're going to call me. Right. You know, and I just gave you a free hit. So you're not even, the money that you probably was going to spend with these guys, you can go and go get something to eat with that or save that for whatever, whatever you're going to do. I just saved you some money.

So using that model of, you know, being willing to lose the small, you know, I might bag up a half ounce just for all testers that I'm just going to go around and just drop them here, boom, boom. And people, it says something about you as an individual too. and I'm already pulling up in something nice. You understand? So it's like, this is the type of guy I want to do business with.

Instead of somebody who you might be trying to go buy something from and they might try to rob you one day. No, you can feel comfortable that the business that we're doing is secure. And even if you're short, man, like, in hindsight, I was the type of gentleman that I don't care what you had. You could have, if I'm selling, let's say, $10 pieces, right? You can have food stamps, bring them here.

You can have rare coins, bring them here. You can have football cards, give them here. You know what I mean? Because you're going to get high. You understand? And that was the whole thing. I wanted my clientele to stay high, you know, like. Horrible.

I'm just saying, like, for me, with that business model, it worked. I yelled at you that you're pitching it is you being a man of the people. I'm Robin Hood. I care about these people. Yeah, man. I mean, because what I learned in addiction is, You never know what somebody might do to go get it. You understand?

You're really looking out for him. Really looking out for him, man. You know, I'm keeping you out of jail, man. You're about a wouldn't tipped over that 7-Eleven or something like that if I can give you these free ones. But nonetheless, so I'm doing great with this guy. And one night, a buddy of mine he had told me, said, man, look, let's go take over this block. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder.

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That's ghostbed.com slash Cox, promo code Cox. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply. See site for details. It was in northeast Baltimore. So I got all the work that I need. So I usually will go get a motel room somewhere, bag everything up or whatever like that. And, you know, I can go get it later once it's all done, but I don't want to arrive enough

and I don't want to have nothing in my house. But this was a very, very lucrative deal. So I went to like three different hotels in the area. No rooms available. So I'm like, man. So now I'm putting a position. I'm like, man, I got to get this together. So I end up, I'm in my house on the table like something like this.

I got the mirror going across my table. So I got the hard that I'm bagging up. I got, it's a long mirror, so I mean, so I'm scooting down, scooting up, just handling, you know, making packs of everything. So I got my hard, I got my, my, my, my, my, my, and I got like some, maybe some straight, powder and everything has its own designated its own, so nothing's

touching, you know? So, I'm putting this together because this is going to be one of the most lucrative deals that I'm going to come across because I got the plug. With this guy, what happened was I got up to a point where I was buying like five bricks from him, and

he had liked me so much. Remember, just starting off with just coming with money, that he would front me everything that I buy. So now I'm sitting on like 10 bricks of hard. And I could have always did it myself, but he was a chef.

He always made sure that it was it melted down right. It was what they wanted. It wasn't a lot of bacon, soda, none of that, you know? So I'm living the good life. Ten bricks just because I took time to start serving these people who were disgruntled.

You know? So we're going on trips. Like my ex and I, just We live in the life. Like I said, I got like 10 cars, you know. But that night that I actually did the thing in my own house, the police kicked my door in.

How did they get to your house? So I lived in the projects, but I never hustled in the projects. I never bought anything in it. So again, what we was talking about earlier, but that's CI thing. You know, it was a CI in my paperwork. You know, I don't know if it was my neighbor next door to me who was hating on me because he's seeing how I had came in the area and how I started. He didn't know what I was doing because, I mean, I can't say what somebody doesn't know.

But what I'll say is this, I never sold drugs in the projects. Right. You know, so it could have been my supplier. It could have been, you know, it's so, that's one of the biggest headaches. And, you know, like one of the worst things about when you're actually in the streets is that anybody could have snitched on you. And you don't know how they got to. a warrant to kick in the door. You just know they got a judge that signed off on a warrant. Right. And this is based on a CI. Like, CI said you were in possession of drugs.

They got a warrant that kicked in the front door. You got it all, back door. You got it all. Back door behind me. You got it all laid out on a mirror. On a mirror. Yeah. Right. It's not what it looks like. You see all the cops with the guns and then you're. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but it was in my best interest to carry it the way I did, right? So when they kicked the door, and it was a tough door because they had to hit it like seven times. So they get in. Lucky for me, there was a joint sheriff task force from the surrounding counties and not the Baltimore City Knockers.

See, the Baltimore City Knockers would have tore my house apart looking for whatever they could have. Right. This Joint Task Force, Sheriff Task Force, I won't say that they were greener, but they were happy for what they seen on the table. They were like, bingo. But right to my left, where this light is, right? I had a floral book bag, backpack that had a 40-caliber pistol

and two bricks a in it. You know what I mean? They never even looked at the bag. They were so happy. but what they found in front of me that they never even touched the bag. You know? Okay.

If it wasn't for that oversight, I probably wouldn't be here today. So I'm sitting there. I'm playing it real cool. I'm like, man, look, y'all got everything right here. They then bought my kids' mom and my son's downstairs. They're young at the time.

They probably like around six and seven or eight, something like that, I think. So they just think it's a kid's book bag. Probably. Okay. You feel me? So I said, man, y'all got everything. I'm not going to resist arrest anything.

Y'all can just take me, grab everything, and just take me out of here. I don't want to upset my kids or their mom any more than it already is. I'm not going to resist whatever. And the lead sheriff, it was a guy, they had masks on, all kinds of stuff. So he was like,

he's like, I can respect that. I got you. They said, put them in cuffs, and they got everything off the table. Put me in cuffs, got me out of there. The whole time I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there. I'm giving my kids. his mom, the eye look like, like, like, get that book bag out of here because they might

spend the bin and come back in an hour. You never know. Or maybe Baltimore City or get a whiff of it. Like, oh, they raid me. I don't know. These are very credit police. So, um, uh, so now I'm locked up. Are you thinking it's going to be another slap on the wrist or a year or two or something

like that? Yeah, such you're thinking. Yeah. I'm thinking like, I bet I had the song and dance before. Yeah. So when I talked to my lawyer, who was a good, like a high power, now I got high power lawyers, you know what I mean? He tells me, he said, man, I remember verbatim. And this is where we was talking about earlier.

I said, he said, all of them years, are you taking double distribution and all the, he said, man, your record is fucked. He said, you don't have room for anything. I'm like, what? I said, I was getting PBJs and stuff, though. they was let me out the same day. He said, man, that's how they do you. He said, they make it, they get you out of that, but it just keeps compiling.

And it makes you look worse and worse every time you go in front of a judge. Right. So now and I'm like, so he came up with the plan that I was a user dealer. You know, like, hey,

this guy doesn't really need jail time. He needs rehabilitation. He's using these drugs. Yes, he's selling them, but he's using them to sell. Yeah, he's only selling for it to support his happen. Right, you know. And 10 cars.

Well, they didn't know that. They didn't know that. And honestly, at that time, I was riding so dirty that I didn't even had the cars registered. You know, I would just have like some play, man. It's like the Wild Wild West, man. You just get away what you can get away with until you can't. Right.

And so I never had any of those vehicles like in my name or nothing like that. Like I had a gentleman who worked at a dealership. I think it was a Hyundai dealership. And he gave me, he was a, it was a customer of mine. And he had gave me a dealers plate that I would, you know what I mean, swap through the vehicles whenever I need to do whatever. So now I'm sitting in the jail and I'm noticing, I'm like, just like things this ain't the same from when I was younger.

Like I have a lot more to lose now. Like this is the first time I actually been arrested since I had children. So I'm just looking at. I'm like, man, I got to get home to my kids, whatever, whatever. And what I learned was going through the program. So what they got is called 8505. That's drug court, but 8507 is actually going into the program. So once they got me out of jail and I had to go to the program for like six months, now I'm sitting around people that I would once judge, once serve. A whole time I was in jail, I was just thinking about because where they gave us,

it was like diesel mechanic books. I'm going to be a diesel mechanic when I go home, you know? Right. But when I actually got to the program and I started learning more about addiction, I started to understand the part that I was playing. Like, what we learned in addiction is this, right? So addiction is primarily made of two key components.

That's obsession and compulsion. If you add those two things to anything, you'll be addicted. No matter if you're shopping, eating, sex, gambling, drugs, beer, it doesn't matter. If you add obsession and compulsion to anything, you will be addicted. It could be video games. It doesn't matter.

So once I started to learn more about addiction and how it actually plays a part not only in our lives, but in the lives of our loved ones, let's say you've never done a drug at all in your life, but your brother do. He got three kids. His addiction is going to affect you if he's like in your life. You're like, man, I can't let my nieces and nephew go into the system. He's locked up again. or you might have a savings that you had to spend to get them out of jail.

And, you know, it's just like it happens to affect us all in some sort of way, right, the addiction part of it. So now I'm in this program. And the psychological part, the psychological part of it is that when they get me out the van, so I got the three-piece on, I got this, and I got the shackles on my legs. But guess what? This program is just like a residential house. it's no barbed wire. There's no correctional officers. So I can leave out of here any day and don't come back.

But guess what? They're going to smash me with all that back time. You know, which was like, what, like 15, 16 years or something like that. So the psychological part of it is like, okay, like I got a roommate who's here because he chooses to be here. He wants to get his life together. I said, I never knew about please. like recovery houses. I always thought that as a dealer, if I didn't see somebody that I used to serve, they were either dead in jail or they found something better. I never knew people consciously went to places to try to help themselves. You know, and here it is. At that time, I'm the guy. I see the guy who used to buy from me. He's Lord Chubby now, looking good, head cutting all that. And I go and drop something to saying, here, man, come holl at me. Not even thinking about the fact that you look like this because you went somewhere to get it together. Now you're sitting there with evil in your hand like, man, like how hard is it for a user to just throw them down or say, man, I don't want that?

Yeah. It's almost impossible. You know, so now I'm sitting around these people. I'm doing groups. I'm listening, learning. And like, one of the biggest addictions is gambling, man. Like, I know people that take the TV off the wall while their family is watching it to go get on the dice. You don't know, the roulette wheel, or the cards, whatever like that.

But they don't smoke, they don't drink. They don't do anything. You know, so I started to learn more, right? And it was a gentleman at a program that was on the same block as the one that I was in and he took a liking to him and he had told me, he said, man, look, he said, when you get out of here, you should come work for us.

I'm like, work for y'all. Like, do what? I mean, I'm still thinking diesel mechanic and sell some work, you know? I'm like, man, I still got all the same plugs. You know what I mean? And I still had like five cars from when I was locked up. So I was locked up probably like,

maybe like a year and a half, you know, and that's when I came and did the program. But I'll not forget, I came home March 28th, 2020. Within the next couple of days, everything was shut down due to COVID. Right. So I slid out, you understand? Yeah, lucky.

Yeah. Man. Would they shut that program down or what do they do? No, they shut the world now. Oh, no, I know they, I'm saying, like, because there were people that, like, they shut down programs. They'd send me either to jail or home or the jails, of course,

people were dying in the jails for COVID was everywhere in the prisons. Right. And so what happened was I learned that they had stopped letting people come out of jail. They had freeze that. So if you was in jail, you was in jail. They weren't letting people come home. So I had slid out March 28th, like a couple days before they actually hit the country with that. So for me, learning that after watching the news, it made me feel.

even blessed. Right. You know, so when this gentleman telling me about this job, I'm like, okay, tell me about it. So he said, man, it's called like a house monitor.

Basically just babysitting. So I'm sitting there. I'm like, okay, all right. So I get to do the job. I like it a little bit. Then I found out about being a housing coordinator, which means that you're a little bit

above the house managers, you get paid a little bit more. So I say, okay, I still want to sell some dope, you know, but, you know, all right. I'm rocking. with it a little bit.

I see, I see what's going on. You know, then the thing that changed my life, equally to me meeting this guy who had all that, that good stuff, um,

I found out about being a peer, a peer recovery coach. I was like, so this, I'm not babysitting no more. Right. They say, no,

when you appear, you get to, you get hired off your experience of the streets. Huh? You mean you're going to pay me because I know how to sell, you know, boy and girl? Yeah. But the thing is, now that you're on this side, you'll understand why those people kept coming to you and you get an opportunity to actually help them change their lives.

Wow. I never knew something like that existed. Right. So I went from being a peer recovery coach to becoming a certified peer recovery specialist to being a registered peer supervisor, which is essentially like, you know, drug counseling. Right. So now I have found purpose and I was so good at doing that other thing

that now when I come and I go through those same areas and I say, hey, man, let me help you get off this stuff. I know some places that might be a place for you. So now I'm in a position that I have the tools to help fix some of the things that I actually messed up, you know? And I never thought it was even possible, you know, to say your lived experience as a dealer or as a user. Because I had my own addictions. But what I learned is my biggest addiction was fast money, fast women, fast costs.

Like, it's the money, man. Like, it's a lot of people out here who never did the boy and girl or any of that. But they have actually been so affected by that lifestyle. Like you said earlier, like, man, ain't no other job going to just pay me $20,000. So you get so attuned to that that you don't look for a way out of that. You just try to keep finding ways to be successful at it, even though it's almost like the definition of insanity. It's no way. Because it's so, and then nowadays, with all this technology, it's like, man, like they catch you on the facial recognition and put you at a certain point to say, you know.

And so when I found out about the peer thing, I kind of went full blast at that, you know. And so I started working at some of the programs around the city, learning how these systems work and getting the extra tools that I can get to actually help people. So now when I go into the communities and people know me for that, they now know me for this. So they're like, man, this guy always had the best, this, this, and that. So if he's saying that he got a program, it got to be good. This guy's known for quality. That's how, like, people in my city see me.

So it kind of makes it easy or easier for me to be able to connect with these people now because they know that for a long time I was a certified street guy. Right. You know? So it's easy to have a conversation with somebody and say, man, because the respect is already there. So it's not my job to get anybody off of anything, but it's my job to give you the support and resources that you might need. I gave you my number, man, call me any time.

You know, I might send a personal Uber just to pick you up to take you somewhere. because your life matters. A lot of times we think when we out in the streets or an act of addiction that we don't matter. Nobody cares about me, you know? And it's become my job to reconnect that. You are still a human. You are still somebody who is worthy of love and respect,

but you've got to give yourself a chance. So from going through all of that I went through to where I'm at now, and it's like redemption. Every time I can see somebody who came into the program, They was 120 pounds and blotchy skin and hair missing and all that. But now they then got up to 180 skin clear, looking for the job, family back, you know, together. Because what we learn is a lot of times the people we serve are the backbones of their family. So when they're doing bad, the family's doing bad.

But when they're doing good, the family's doing good. So it's like, it's rewarding, man, you know, to know that the same destruction. that I used to play a part on and like look forward to it is good. I was just going to say, do you feel like, I mean, out of how many people that you, you contact and actually help, like how many people actually take the initiative or accept your help? And out of those, how many people does it really help? Because, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like it's like inmates getting out of prison. like, you know, they get out, like, when they're in prison, they all want to change.

They're all going to do this, they're going to do that. And then they get out, and it's a little tough, and they immediately revert back to crime. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, with the recidivism, right? It's like 80 fucking percent or something's outrageous. So within the first three years. So I was wonder, how many people do you, how many people that you make that offer to, you probably make it to 30 people before one person takes it.

And then out of those, that person, how many of those, people if you'd have 10 of those people how many of those people actually you know it really does 20 percent of those people you know what I'm saying do 20 percent or 30 percent of them actually say okay go through the program and then actually change their lives you know what I'm saying like how I'm sure 10 percent those obviously if you talk to 30 one of them says okay let's say take we take the 10 of those go in they go through a portion of the program but how many does it really affect you know what I'm saying And it's a, it's a, I mean, I already know it's a, it's a, it's not from talking to you, just, just knowing people. It's a, an extremely disappointing number that it actually works.

I mean, the ones that it does work, it's, it's rewarding kids. You're like, wow, like, there's a success story. But the amount of people that you go through, it's got to be horrible. I mean, like that's, it's like being a social worker, right? for child services or something, like I could never. I could never, because it would be so overwhelmingly depressing for me to know that I was putting all that energy out here. And it's got to be just soul-crushing to watch these people. And it's not like, and they're just devastating their lives.

It's like, how can you not see that you're destroying yourself and everybody around you? And they just, it's just that addiction is just fucking horrible. So to answer your question, right? Number one, compassion fatigue is real. Is that what I'm saying? Yeah. It's cults confat. Okay.

Yeah, man. Oh, I can see it. Yeah, you burn out. But for me, uniquely, coming from the perspective of being who I was, I know that people are only ready when they're ready. Give you an example. I know people who got cleaned in a house. When they were just ready, they like, man, I'm done with this, man.

You know, it doesn't happen often, but when you're, What I'm saying is that, so if I told, to what you said about the numbers, if I spoke to 100 people, 30 people were receptive, Tenham actually did it, right? That's a win for me, even if it's just one out of the 100, because in a place like Baltimore, it's ground zero for addiction. Like, we have more programs in addiction than most cities triple the size. Like when people try to compare like Chicago to Baltimore, it's almost impossible because Chicago is like four times bigger than Baltimore. But the crime rate is very similar. So you're talking about a spot that's a fraction of Chicago having the same amount of homicides and violence and addiction and everything else. For me, it's just I understand that it's not going to apply to everybody first time.

but you just can't give up because there's so many people, Matt. I'm talking about, man, we got to have a spot in Baltimore, downtown. Baltimore's called Lexington Market where, man, you go through there any given day and it's like a hundred of hundreds of people's out there who are buying, selling, looking, you know,

like all kind of different things. Like Skid Row. It's like Skid Row in L.A. Right. They've got them kind of consolidated to just one area. Yeah, but not. Or they do it to themselves. to themselves because it's an open-ed drug market.

Yeah. You know, it's probably like, have you heard of Kensington and Pennsylvania? It's an open drug market. We have also a spot in Baltimore. It's called Penn North. That's Pennsylvania Avenue and North Avenue. You know, it's just wide open. So there is never a shortage.

And sometimes people just need that extra time. Okay, if I come talk to you today, say, hey, man, let's figure something out. You might not be ready today. Right. You might have to get some affairs in order. You know, whatever. There's so many CPS cases and stuff.

So these are complicated situations, but a gentleman such as myself, I refuse to give up because not only are these my people, a lot of these people are young people. And they are the future. Like, what I learned in this field also is that a lot of times the vapes that we see people with, they're not vapes that just have THC or nicotine. in them. It's people who are making solutions for the vapes that people are vaping. So I also work with children. And it was this one case in particular. He had told me that he had took a hit of the vape near his locker and he woke up in the nurses station. He took, he said he took one pull off the vape. So there are people who are manufacturing those liquids to go in there as well, the same way like people were manufacturing the perkinsets and stuff

like that. And the technology is getting so good. It used to be a point that you could see a fake one from a real one. But now it's almost identical. Then you don't know when you take it, you take an 80% fall, which means that that's a lethal dose. You know, even like right now, it's probably about 11 different variants of 50. Now there's so many of a variance, meaning that I could be sitting right here, I can sit directly in front you, right? You give me a UA, and it won't find it because that variation is not going to be caught by the cup. Right. But I'm right here, how my mind, and you can see, like, Carl, you can see, like, Carl,

you're high. And I'm like, no, I'm not. Come on, you aid me. You feel me? Yeah. So I'm just saying that, to answer your question, that for a gentleman like me, I just can't give up the fight. My grandma found me in the house with my mother, who died from, you know, abusing opiates. So it's just been in me the whole time to actually get to this point in life from all of my lived experience to try to help whoever I can help. So that's like the most rewarding part to me That sometimes it could be somebody coming down the street I talk to John Doe, John Doe, I don't get out here

But I talked to John Doe here, give me a minute Right That's all we need is just that little slither of time So like right now in Baltimore I have an organization that's called Baltimore Recovery Alliance It's on all social medias And it's on YouTube, Facebook

was it Instagram and TikTok and I'm currently doing a docu series just based on the bringing awareness to you know

to this crisis that we actually have on our hands they spray f***ing on the marijuana so for instance I got kids that I've seen who come to the ER

and I know they only smoke I know these kids but when they do the UA on them it has It's because these dealers are spraying it on there. So now these kids are thinking like, man, I don't want it. I don't want no loud unless it's coming from John. You know, because John got that fire, but you don't know.

You're getting so high off of John Witt. And no other is comparing to it because he's doing something to it. Right. So now that means what? That you are prone to having an overdose and you have no idea. You know, so it's so many lives to save, man. And sometimes just giving the information and making the information available is something that can save a life. I might be an uncle to a nephew who's doing something that I know he shouldn't be doing.

But I can get the information I just pass on here. Now, if you get time, just read this, whatever. Because I also learned that sometimes the messenger is just as important as the message. We know, like, as men growing up, our dad or somebody could have said, hey, don't do this, whatever. You know, well, you don't know nothing, Dad. but then your cousin can take the same exact thing and you're receptive to it. Right. So sometimes the messenger is just as important as the message.

And that's why I learned that that's where I kind of fit in. The docu-series that you're doing, are you shooting at yourself? Yeah. Okay. I mean, are you just walking around? Are you actually interviewing people? I'm interviewing people, people who are in active addiction as well as clinicians, like psych nurse practitioners, social workers.

doctors, people who are in recovery. You know, so it's a plethora of different kind of people who, so I also have live interviews like on location with people who are out there using drugs and stuff like that as well. And as I said, it's just to kind of bring awareness that, man, the help is there, you know? Did you ever see soft light iron belly? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I was, that might be. I was thought to myself, well, one, Kobe and I. We thought about like getting a A loke getting a studio right next to There's the state probation office We're like these guys walk right out You can be like hey you want to come do a podcast Like this guy is you know but in your case it could be the same thing

You've got you know you've got direct access to people that are in recovery that might be willing to just sit on a stool put it set up the camera good lights and hit it just like like Mark Laida does and then just like just record the whole thing. You'd have to edit it out because you'd be shocked at how much editing he does. He'll, he'll, I was talking to him one time. He was like, listen, I might have an hour and a half video, two hour video. He said, it may end up being a 20-minute video. That's how bad these guys are. He's like they, you can't, they can't stay on track. They're all over the place. But they're also on drugs at the moment. You have access to guys that are probably already in the program. They're going through the program. They could tell their story and their

story of recovering what they hope to happen and then you could put that on a youtube channel probably generate you know some some income okay you know something to think about because you know what do you need he's got he's got a great a really nice backdrop some some some some cool lighted camera you know and he's got like one camera they actually has two cameras um he was like one and then he has one where he sits at the he sits it down on the ground and okay and then he takes some photos and stuff but you don't have to the photos. I don't know if you ever watched one because like as you watch it he. The black and white. Yeah, he

does the black and white, you know, but you don't have to do that. You could just video do the good lighting and good camera and set it up and put it on a program. You never know what's going to take off. People have been stealing his ideas for he complains about it all the time. If you get a chance, check me out

on Instagram. What is? It's just on Instagram or do you have a YouTube channel? Yes, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook is Baltimore Recovery Alliance. So we've already, we're probably about 70% into it. I'm looking for funders, you know, because I don't want it just to live on YouTube. So like I've actually spoken with people from Johns Hopkins and other neighboring hospitals

and programs for funding and sponsorship so we can kind of get it to the world because there are smaller towns that don't have the numbers that Baltimore have, but they have the issue that Baltimore have. So at least, and I'm going to tell you something. In addition to that, right, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people from Baltimore might not notice, but a lot of the panhandlers that we see in our town don't even come from Baltimore. What happens is somebody can have a daughter who's addicted to opiates and they live in Wichita. And when she goes to Google who has the best opiate programs, Baltimore's going to pop up.

So she'll send her daughter to Baltimore, right? Daughter trying to get clean and all that. But then what she found out is that what she was paying $1,000 for in Wichita is $5 in Baltimore. And it's plentiful and it's better. And she got money. She's not poor. So she's writing back home, texting whatever. Hey, send me some more money.

I'm doing good in the program. The whole time, she's felt victim. Yeah. You know, and that's actually, that's a unique thing that I actually had found out via research that a lot of these. people are not even from the city, but they're here because they got caught up. But there are so many success stories as well, though, Matt, you know. And I think that, you know, with your help, that's a good idea, you know, that maybe I can help take this thing to another level and really give people the support

that they need, man, because addiction, all it tells you, it lies to you. It's like, you know, the chip on your shoulder, all it does whisper nonsense in your ear. We are all right. We're doing good. Don't nobody know. But everybody knows when you high. Yeah. You can try to straighten up and, you know, no.

Yeah. You're high, you know, so, yeah. I got one question for you, for you kind of on your own personal journey, you said just learning and the education is kind of what made you flip to switch. Is there anything specific that happened or that was said through that program where you just kind of came to the realization or, you know, I'm just curious because a lot of times when guys come on, like, their switch happens why they're in prison.

They're like, I just can't do another 20 year bid. It's just I'm too old. I can't go do that. Was there anything specific or is it just kind of slowly realizing, you know, that the effects of it all? So for me was reliving my mother dying from drug abuse. You know, when I started to understand addiction, it kind of, made me understand that it was her doing, but it wasn't her fault.

You know, like, sometimes we're putting situations or we're in atmospheres that are not conducive to success. So when I started thinking about my mom, who actually was found dead from, you know, using needles, it kind of like it replayed in my mind about the moms outside of my mom that was found like that the help that those sisters didn't see back then in like what 1980 something

there wasn't programs like that you know right it was like remember there's a large group of people who still think that addiction is a choice some people don't understand that addiction is a disease the same way heart disease. If you had heart disease, you will go see your heart doctor. You know, if you had whatever it was, diabetes, whatever, that's what addiction is.

You know, so once I learned that it was more than just people wanting to party and that this thing really takes a toll on communities, families, individuals at such a mass rate that I no longer wanted to be a part of that now that I knew that it was almost like exploitation of somebody in a weaker state. So it kind of, you know what I mean? Like, why do that? Especially when I found out that I can make money the right way by being on this side of the fight. I don't think I ever felt good about selling somebody drugs.

But I do feel good all the time when I'm helping somebody get. into a program or I see somebody working a job like, hey, Mr. Carl, I really appreciate what you did for me, man. I wouldn't be right. I wouldn't have my kids right now if I didn't. You understand? Like, that's, that's the biggest thing for me that let me know that it was time to make a change. I just followed the steps that were, you know, there for me. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me favor. Hit the subscribe button, the bell so you get notified videos just like this. Also, we're going to leave all of Carl's links. Go to Baltimore Recovery Alliance. We're going to leave that link. You can go there. Anything you

can do to help him, there's a place to donate. Also, you can go to his social media links. You can go and follow and subscribe. And you can, like I said, you can reach out to him at any time. He's more than willing to talk to you of anything you can do to help him. Thank you very much for watching. I really do appreciate it. See you.