The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How A Gang Leader Survived America's Worst Prison System

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

Diaz Aguilar went to prison at 23 years old and spent the next 22 years inside Mississippi’s notoriously violent prison system. In this episode, Diaz sits down to tell the unbelievable story of how he survived decades behind bars while navigating gang politics, corrupt prison staff, brutal violence, and a massive underground contraband economy. Diaz explains how inmates worked with guards to bring in marijuana, tobacco, liquor, smartphones, and other contraband worth enormous amounts of money inside the prison system. He describes guards cooperating with gangs, violent conflicts between prison factions, years spent in segregation, and the abuse he says he witnessed and experienced at the hands of correctional staff. He also breaks down the case that sent him to prison. Diaz maintains that he was convicted of manslaughter despite no DNA, fingerprints, or physical evidence tying him to the murder weapon. Over time, Diaz became a powerful figure within the prison gang hierarchy and helped operate an organized contraband business that could generate more money than many street hustles. But after spending nearly half his life behind bars, Diaz eventually had to face an entirely different challenge: learning how to live in the free world again. Today, he is rebuilding his life, pursuing professional certifications, working in management, and sharing his story through his memoir, Rosecrans. This is a story about prison corruption, gang politics, survival, institutionalization, and what it takes to start over after 22 years behind bars. Go Support Diaz! IG: https://www.instagram.com/diaz_santiago_55/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@diaz_santiago75 Book: https://a.co/d/00doiiEd This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Freecash! Sign up at https://signupfreecash.com/theconnect and get a $10 bonus! Hit the link, grab your bonus, and start getting rewarded for stuff you're already doing anyway. Shopify! If you’re ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to https://shopify.com/mitchell to start your free trial. Cloaked! See if your SSN is for sale right now. My sponsor Cloaked will tell you for free in 2 seconds at https://cloaked.com/connect Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 0:00 Intro: 22 Years in Mississippi Prison 6:51 Corrupt Guards & Brutal Prison Conditions 13:22 How the Contraband Operation Worked 18:20 This Episode Is Sponsored By Freecash 19:53 Cash, Money Orders & the Prison Economy 25:14 Cell Phones, Contraband Laws & Prison Education 33:37 Growing Up Puerto Rican in Compton 39:48 Gang Life & the Road to Mississippi 44:56 Why He Stayed in Mississippi & the Vice Lords Network 49:01 This Episode Is Sponsored By Shopify 50:11 The Fight That Led to 22 Years in Prison 57:05 The Evidence, Trial & Case Against Diaz 1:03:44 Anger, Isolation & Learning to Survive 1:09:03 This Episode Is Sponsored By Cloaked 1:10:54 His First Years Inside Mississippi Prison 1:17:52 Security Threat Status & Abuse by Guards 1:24:21 Handcuffed, Beaten & Prison Violence 1:30:49 Gang Wars, Stabbings & Prison Riots 1:36:17 Spending Four Years in Solitary Confinement 1:42:05 Prison Weapons & Building Connections With Guards 1:48:03 Smuggling Contraband Through Prison Guards 1:55:44 Rising to the Top of the Contraband Operation 2:02:33 Hidden Stashes & Making Money in Prison 2:08:48 Weed Markups & the Prison Liquor Racket 2:15:57 Smuggling Contraband Through Maintenance Trucks 2:22:03 Adapting Prison Survival Skills to the Free World 2:28:13 Life After Prison, Career Plans & Final Reflections Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was 23, man, when I went to prison, and I spent half of my life in prison. Man, when I tell you, it's Department of Corruption. I didn't see guards open cell doors to get people stabbed. They are working for the Department of Corrections, but they're actually working for the gangs. My first extortion was a guard. He was vice lord, and he brought in like 14 duffel bags, a straight contraband. If you do that, bro, you're the business. You are the business.

The state of Mississippi has one of the most violent, corrupt prison systems in America. Gang banging is rampant and prison guards routinely set up inmates to be beaten and killed. Just ask Diaz Aguilar, who served 22 years there for a murder he didn't commit. Diaz is from Compton and grew up in foster care and was quickly jumped into gang life. While visiting relatives in Mississippi, he was involved in an altercation where somebody got killed. And although he wasn't the one who did the killing, he ended up taking the fall for it. This is how he survived the next two decades in the most brutal prison conditions in the country. Working hand in hand with the prison staff, Diaz ran a massive contraband smuggling ring

that brought in weed, liquor, tobacco, and cell phones worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. This feels like a story from a prison in Mexico, not the United States, but it's real, every word of it. Make sure to check out Diaz's memoir, Rosecrans. The link to that will be in the description of this episode. Ladies and gentlemen, this one will make your palm sweat. It's Diaz Aguilar right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. What was coming home after 22 years in the worst prison conditions like? Like, so, you know, I've been diagnosed with PTSD.

And like, man, crazy. I didn't know how to operate a washing machine, you know, a dryer. I forgot how to drive. It was awkward because I haven't driven over two decades, you know. And it was just like, it's definitely something you have to, you know, you can't just go ahead first. Man, you got to take one day out of time, like literally. You were diagnosed with PTSD from the stuff that you saw in there?

Not only that, but now, you know, I've been stabbed, been shot in the head, you know, stuff like that, things I seen while I was in prison, you know, and it's, yeah, it's crazy, man. Yeah. When I tell you, man, mental health is real, that's real. You know, as much as, you know, I can pretend to be normal or say I don't have these certain issues, I'll be lying, you know, because, At one point, I was a product of my environment. You know, and it's, man, it's real. Man, you have people like literally that's really, really institutionalized

and cannot bounce back. Cannot. Can't even function out here. That's why they do stuff, man, to go back because they have to be under those kind of environments to function. They can't make it out here. You know, and I've been around those type of people. Even right now, like at my job, there's people that's so institutionalized.

You'd be like, and every day it's a blessing because my mind is not caught up like that. You know, I still have a way to readjust. You know, I have a strong support team. And I think that's what it comes to having that strong foundation. I remember being around cats like that. You know, not. I wouldn't like, wasn't friends with those. because I was short time and but I would hear them talk and it was the scariest thing

like you're so controlled you're so your mind is so institutionalized that you're like I don't even know how I'm gonna make it like we'd hear about guys getting out and then the same day they got released like just beating up the guard who was walking them to the bus to take them home just so they could go back and sometimes they wouldn't even prosecute because they knew They knew what he was doing. So they wouldn't even give him a charge for that. They're like, nope, you got to go. Yep.

I knew guys that did, man, 50 years for killing the cop. And they wanted to get him parole. He was already like 72 years old. You know what I'm saying? He was like, man, well, where am I going? I don't have nothing to go home too. All his family's dead or left him. Yeah, and he's already old.

He's like, man, this is all I know. You know, and then... Just get out and just spend one night with a hooker, dude. You'll be back in society. See, that's the last thing on their mind because then after that, then what, reality, man, you know, we live in a reality world. You know what I'm saying?

Like, everything we do in there is reality. It's no way to escape unless you're doing drugs. You know, it was one guy, He was one of my vice lord people. And his auntie actually was a captain in one of the units. And she used to take advantage of him, abuse him, shake him down, like really, really, like, mistreat him. And he told her, he said, the day I get out, I'm going to kill you. And so the day he got out, they had a homecoming, like, you know, party for him.

and she was there. He went upstairs and got a sought-off shotgun, came back and shot her, killed her on a spot, and now he got a life sentence. Wow. He said, I told you I was going to kill you. Yeah, it's somebody that's totally mentally ill

from the conditions they've been in and just untreated. Why else would they allow themselves to do that, you know? And then on top of that, like, And because I, and then they only gave me like $75. That was your gate money? Yeah, that was my gate money out of all that time. They didn't give me my Social Security, my birth certificate,

because I wasn't a resident of Mississippi. So he said I had to get it on my own. And they just go. You free to go now, you know. But good thing about it, though, that, you know, God always provided for me and always gave me a strong support team. You know, I always would have to include him

because if it wanted for him, I'd probably still be in there, you know, or my mom will be gone. Yeah. You know. You did 22 years in Mississippi State Prison. And the reason that is so crazy is because the media doesn't talk about it,

but the conditions in the Deep South prisons are like something you'd find, in a third world country. Man, 2005, they just stopped picking cotton in 2005. They were still doing it while I was there. You have people, man, in the cotton fields, like we're in slavery. Right. With the guards on horseback, with the shotguns.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, they call it the long line. And you're out there. You're picking cotton all day. You know, and they didn't ban that until 2005. And the killings, even to this day, I think, are rampant. Yeah.

Like way higher than the national average. And it's a lot of the gangs, it's the gang stuff, you know, stabbing, you know, like, man, when I tell you this department of corruption, it is that. So you think it's the staff that's allowing this rioting? in this crazy. Yeah, most definitely because you have a lot of the family members. You from this particular area where the prison is at, your family works there. It might be, you might be gangster disciple. So your family automatically inherits that, you know what I'm saying?

Because of you. You know, you have a influence. You know, they involved, you know, man, I didn't seem. guards open cell doors to get people stabbed because they they forget that they are working for the Department of Corrections, but they're actually working for the gangs. Yeah, I think I read it was either Alabama or Mississippi, the average annual salary for a prison guard is like $25,000. Yeah.

So they're poor just like the inmates. Man, we used to give a lieutenant. It was a lieutenant in my unit, man. I used to pay her, man, like $5,000 just to bring contraband in. But we can make over $30,000, $40,000. Like a 16-ounce water bottle, we'll fill it up with liquor. And the liquor itself is bottom shelf for $2. And we'll charge $100.

Right. You see what I'm saying? I might have 30 bottles. Yeah, I might have 30 bottles, and then here it is. A pound of tobacco might cost $13, $17 in a tobacco store, but I might treat it just like it's a brick of Coke. You know, I can make quarters, right, and make over, man, $2,000 off of it for something that only costs less than $20.

And how much do you got to pay somebody to bring it in? So it'll be a part of a package deal, right, because I'm not going to just get that in, right? So it's like I have the plug, I got the guard, but you can get the product. So how are we going to do this? We're going to split everything down the middle. You get 10 pounds of tobacco. I get five. You keep five.

You get four pounds of marijuana. I might get one. I let you keep three. You know what I'm saying? But we're going to go half on paying this guard. But I do all the negotiated. But he or she don't know none about you. One time it was a guard.

And he was, he was vice lord. The guard was. He was vice lord. And he brought in like 14 duffel bags, a straight contraband. Duffel bags. And every day I have to walk by one guard. Every time I made a trip who will put it in. in the ceiling in a visitation room, right? And every time I passed the guard, the turnkey was

$500. Every time. So just to pass him and not get searched by him, that's $500. Yeah. It's literally like the cartel sending a load of dope through the border and the guard just, the border guard just waves him through. And so what we did was because the unit I was in, the lieutenant that I had, it was only people under the five-point star under the People's Nation that have full access because we had jobs where we can roam all day, all night.

You know, and my job might be to go in there clean up the visitation room for the weekend, for visitation. So you had this one particular guard that was part of the play, right? I don't go speak to it. I don't go, you know, other than I'm gonna go clean up. So I have my little broom, my mop bucket, my mop, my little cleaning cart,

and I get only what I'm supposed to be getting, right? And I put everything inside the cleaning cart and throw the trash bags on top. I always will keep trash in it because everything is in the bottom and throw the trash bags on top. or I might keep a mop bucket, a dirty water where you can't see, wrap it up real good and waterproof bags, put it in a mop bucket and throw the mop on top and just bring it in. You're not going to look. And I do that.

She's already aware what's going on, but I do it because when I come out, I don't know who might be coming. You see what I'm saying? A captain, a lieutenant might be coming in to collect paperwork. and I don't want to get caught, you know, trying to go through and they're like, let me check the cart. You see what I'm saying? I'm just cleaning up, you know?

And so for me to go and come and leave, it's $500. You know. But that's well worth it. Yeah, yeah. Because your margins, that's better than street money. Yeah. And you got people actually paying card notes, man, paying mortgages and stuff like that.

Well, if the average annual salaries $25,000 and you give a guard 5 G's in one shot to bring in a bunch of liquor. I just made a month, two-month salary. But, so we'll have a system set up to where we might do it once or twice a month, right? So, $5,000 to us in prison is like $50,000 to us. You see what I'm saying? But we know what we're getting in. And man, we had, like, the maintenance workers, right, on my unit.

And there was a door that goes into the HVAT, the AC unit, right? And there's certain tools you need to actually go in the unit that they don't ever go in. And we had that access. And we just put everything inside the AC unit. But, you know, stuff that we're going to keep on the zone. we'll put it in there and we had access to the door because we got a key made. Smooth. Yeah, it was, it was.

So this is like you guys are operating the way that the Mexican Mafia used to have the prisons in California unlock in the 70s. This is how you guys are moving in the modern era. Yeah, it's wild. Money talks. Money talks, bullshit walks, man, all day. Like, when I tell you, man, like, all I tell you, man, like, all. all the way from the commissioner, he got locked up on federal charges for kickbacks.

Explain that. So I don't know if I could mention his name, right? But the commissioner at this particular time, you know, we had like these private prisons and whatever they were doing, I don't just know the whole entire inside school. I just know that he got locked up doing federal time right now for kickbacks.

Maybe it's like part of the Ponzi scheme. Probably companies. Companies that, you know, contractors, vendors in the prison, whether it's selling food to the prison or selling all of the things, utensils, toilet paper, soap, whatever it is, that's all supplied by private companies.

And they were probably paying him to get the contracts. And it might just say If it's roofing and they're not actually roofing, but doing real, real, real, real, real cheap labor. And hey, look, I'm gonna give you this. This is a kickback. I'm gonna give you so much. Like if you give me 50,000, I'm gonna give you 25,000 back,

you know, for, you know, I'm scheming. On however, however that system works, right? And he got caught up and man, he was doing it for years. He bought Mercedes, bought a beach house. You know, he had millions saved up and they caught up with him and he took the fall. And that was the commissioner of prisons in Mississippi? Yeah. And then we had the Chief of Security.

What she was doing was she'll have inmates, right, in different units. Once a month, the case managers would send out your account notice. Like how much money you have in your account every month. know, if you have insufficient funds or if you have funds on your account, and it always have your name, date of birth, and your Social Security. So when it gets close to tax season, she'll have these certain individuals getting as many as these envelopes as possible. Guys who got life sentences, they don't care none about the information.

They ain't going to never use it. Guys who are doing 30, 40, 50 years, she'll get it from those guys. Not the ones that's going home soon, but the ones who ain't never going home. And she'll get that information, they text, you know, they sold, all you need is your name, your social, and your date of birth, right? And she'll get that and she'll fill out

these W-2 forms with their name. They're already locked up, ain't nobody gonna be checking. And she'll begin money off of and then, and she'll give the inmates, you know, some money, right? And then she started getting the big head, didn't want to get the money out, and one of them told on her. Why wouldn't you? You know, so.

Yeah, you got nothing to lose. And all she had to do was just pay them guys. So from top to bottom, corruption. Yeah, corruption. And everybody's making money. Yeah. Everybody always says that nothing is ever really free. And look, you're kind of right.

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reviews. All you do is download the app, pick an offer. For example, you can get paid just for reaching new board levels in Monopoly Go. And make sure you enable app tracking. That's crucial so free cash can track your progress and send you your rewards. Once you hit the minimum withdraw threshold, you can easily cash out via PayPal, crypto, or gift cards. If you sign up using the link in my description or pinned comment, sign up freecash.com slash the connect, you get a $10 bonus, which puts you nearly halfway to your first cash out. Hit the link, grab your bonus, and start getting rewarded for stuff you're already doing anyway. So you guys on the contraband side, on the inmate side, you're dealing with huge money. Is it cash in there? Do you guys, did you guys actually keep cash?

Or is that all outside? So, Parchman, Mississippi, the state penitentiary was known for money orders, the money order boys. They were getting money orders in, right, before I even got there. With the throwback typewriters, you know, certain types of stencils you can use to manipulate the money orders, turn $50 money orders into $500 and turned $500 money orders into $50,000. And they were taking $100 money orders and turning them into $1,000 and they were getting cash. and the mattress you sleeping on probably full of money. Full of money.

That's what made parchment notorious at the time. And that's why the government started cracking down on money orders because of them, the money order boys. So you guys are actually trading for cash dollars inside the prison. It's not like people on the outside. You come visit me, bring me a money order, or I'll send you a money order in the mail for your. commissary right in some kind of way they'll have the money order and they'll change

they're out of zero or they change it from a hundred to a thousand you know they were finding ways to beat the system and then we once they got jammed up on that they went from uh rush cards to green dots to pay pals stuff like that like you just go uh to uh to Walmart Kroger's and get a green dot card put $25 on it all you got to do scratch it off and just give me the numbers it's just like it's cash and I get it and load it to my rush card you know yeah so those dudes in there bawling oh yeah most definitely and it sounds like it's the black gangs in Mississippi that are really got it in a smash well you know you have the white gangs too Simon City Royals.

What are they called? Simon City Royals. Okay. It's a gang that's originated from Chicago. And now they stronghold basically is in Mississippi. Like Biloxi,

Gulfport, you know, like the Gulf area of Mississippi. And, you know, they, they heavy. They are heavy. Crackers. Yeah, you know.

And dudes is crackers. But, you know, you know, because there's so much money, right? Yeah, as long as it's supply and demand. And, man, you can come out, man, you know, make it killing. You know, 2013, I had one of my home girls run off for like $35,000. I had it all on rush cards, green dots, you know. There's only so much you can put on each card.

And I'll try to max it out. And I might have 10, 12, 13 cards. And it went pretty good because the only thing I was doing was like selling commissary, selling that K2, we call it Spice, selling weed, selling tobacco. And she ran off with like with $35,000. Yeah, 2013. She were bald. 35 Gs in a Mississippi prison.

You might as well have half a million dollars. And then I was in a cell phone program. So a cell phone program is if you get caught with a cell phone, you go in this program for like a year. But you can't get no type of write-ups. And we had a captain, right, that would bring, he was a gangster disciple. You had a captain that would bring in duffel bags,

a contraband for us. We're in a cell phone program. We have more cell phones, man, than anybody in the system. That's how we got to, tablet. You know, we FaceTime. In 2013, my first time,

FaceTiming with anybody. You know, I never, it was unheard of to me, you know. So were you guys, and when you would get the cell phones in, would you rent them out, or would you just keep them for yourself? Like, how did that,

you could make a lot of money if you got a cell phone. So if you want to talk to your family, I'll let you use the phone for free a couple times so you can set up a payment. You give me a $25 card or whatever or just pay the phone bill and I work something out which you give you an hour a day You know and my bill lasts 30 days So we'll go to Walmart

We'll get the Walmart phones and pay as you go Right we will never get a contract phone So we're not supposed to have it So we'll pay as you go and when you don't pay the bill after 30 days it cuts off Compared to a contract Mm-hmm, and uh, Man, I might give you a couple weeks. You know, I might give you 30 days,

depending on who you are. You know, if you're a good pay person, I'm gonna lock you in. You know, like if you wanna hold it at night, I'm not gonna your time, I'm not gonna hold that time against you, right? I'm like, all right, go ahead. Especially if you're somebody, you know,

that I deal with on a constant basis and we cool. So you basically become like the self- phone carrier. Like you got to pay to keep this line going. But everybody's doing it. It's not, you know, no one particular gang. You know, we all have cell phones. And these are smart phones. I mean, you're FaceTime. These are not a little burner phones. No, these smart phones. So you can't keister those in. So you got to have the guards. Yeah. So I think the first time we ever got cell phones in was in 2004. And as technology changed with the phones, it changed in the system.

You know, and I mean, we're not going to the stores to get them. The guards are. You know, and now, right now, in the U.S., you can't go to Walmart and buy a bundle of phones. You can't. We're the reasons why you can't do that. You know what I'm saying? Not to brag about it, but, you know, these are the reasons why for people who don't know is the people in prison.

You know what I'm saying? Who made it? Who put stipulations on why? you can't go buy three or four phones. Because your people were just buying... About a bulk. Yeah. Just buying the whole shelf.

Yeah. And then like one phone might cost you $100 in Walmart. We'll put a $500 price on it, right? The charger don't come with it. You gotta buy the charger separate. And we'll charge your extra $200 for the charger. So now you're paying $700. You see what I'm saying?

So yeah. It's more. It's more money. I mean, you kind of get why people get comfortable in there where you can make so much money and live way more affluent than you could on the streets where you got to go get a job and, you know, you go back to the game, selling crack, you get caught.

There's just way more money in prison than there is in the streets, especially in Mississippi. Yeah, so then they come out with a law because a lot of people started abusing their phone privileges, right, so to speak. and making gang hits. There was a time we'll be on a conference call with the shot callers from the gangs in Chicago.

Like literally with the chiefs on the phone. You know, that's why we were so plugged in with Chicago. You know, like we're making calls. You know, all right, well, go pay them a visit. This and that. You know, and people started abusing that, right? It wasn't just in Mississippi. It started, we're the first ones in the system of all Department of Corrections

to start having cell phones. Then South Carolina. I don't know, probably between Texas and California, but Mississippi were the first ones to start having cell phones. And guys started abusing them, started having gang fights over these phones. People started taking people phones. People started getting stabbed in the head. I witnessed a guy in 2008 get stabbed in the head.

Damn, they lost his life because he's texting another man's wife, sending her new pictures and this and that light. She's not going to tell her husband. Yeah. And went up there and stabbed them in the head, you know. So they come out with a law. Law, I think it was like maybe 2012 maybe, or it might have been 15. And if you get called with any type of cell phone device or any accessories, well, it's Bluetooth

SIM card charger, the block of the charger or anything like that that connects you to a phone, it'll carry anywhere between three to 15 years. And that's in Mississippi. Yeah. And the worst thing you do is catch a charge in the prison system. Because nine and ten times, you're already two strikes. So by catching another charge in the system is a felony. So that would be your third strike.

So automatically you'll, if not get a life sentence, but you'll get the max on whatever that charge is so if getting caught with a cell phone is the 15 years is the max you'll get that 15 years and I know a guy who got 15 years and 2018 I actually uh I took a gamble with my own freedom knowing that within a couple more years I was getting out and uh because I knew about the law I went and got my associate's degree online with a cell phone. Wow. And even though they told me that I lied to the school and told them that my laptop, because I had to sign it electronically.

Yeah. And we're not, you know, computer savvy or phone savvy or smart savvy to the point where we knew certain. We were learning that we went, right? So I had to sign off on it. As long as I didn't have a drug charge, I can get financial aid. So I was getting my associate's degree in business and management, right?

And I had to sign off on it. And I was like, man, it's not working. It's not working. I'm like, they said, well, what kind of computer you have? The only thing I can remember is a Dell. You know what I'm saying? I said, I have a Dell. and it's not working, you know, and they were like, well, what kind of processor is or something?

I was like, man, I don't know. I just bought it. I don't know anything about any of that. And somebody said, man, police coming. And I dropped my phone. And when I dropped it, it turned to the side, like the long way. And my thumb hit it. And when my thumb hit it, it left a black mark like a dot.

And I look and I sign my name. I pushed the screen up and it says submit and I submitted. Right. And they say, congratulations, Mr. Aguilar. You know, you've been accepted into the school, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. School starts such and such a date. I was like, you're kidding me. So I did my research, but as long as the phone is compatible for Chrome or Firefox,

you can do online classes on your cell phone, on your smartphone. So you got a legal associate's degree in business illegally off a phone. So you imagine if they just had programs for inmates that you could take a degree online from prison instead of having to risk 15 years on a phone. And I did it. And the time the guards were coming in, you know, I had to throw my phone. And a couple times, you know, I lost my phone. phone I have to pay you know but so happens one of my vice-law brothers the one with the 14 duffel

bags it was one of his home boys from his neighborhood that was a correction officer bringing the stuff in and he was just like huh there you go he just told me a phone so even with these laws to try to crack down all this stuff if you got enough juice in there it's not going to affect you because the guards are working with you. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's the only way we'll be able to get it in.

Because one thing about it, you know, as long as you got bills, right, money will move you. The only way money won't move you is if you

already born into money. You know, and some people say, man, everyone has a price and they do. And some type of shape, form of fashion,

you have a price. Of course. You know, you name's Diaz. Aguilar. Aguilar. Yeah. You Spanish?

I'm Puerto Rican. So you're Puerto Rican, but you can't fool an L.A. motherfucker. I hear the Compton in your voice. Yeah. So you're a Puerto Rican who grew up in Compton. Yeah. Banged Vice Lord, which is a Chicago gang, and did two decades in Mississippi.

How? I have so many questions. Tell us about Compton growing up and how you ended up in Mississippi. Growing up, I mean, I've always been in the streets, right? Because I didn't really have no guidance. I didn't have a father figure. It was just my mother. She was so strung out at times, you know, to the point where I'm like, I'm in the streets.

been in group homes, foster care, the typical stuff growing up in L.A. under those type of circumstances. You know, always been around gangs, always had a lot of respect from gangs. You know, not saying I'm the toughest or the baddest person, I always looked at a man because I respect people. You know, I respect your mind. I respect, you know, what you believe in. That's what you believe and that what you believe in. Who am I to say anything different? All right.

But I always leaned to the red side, to the red bandana. Because, you know, I guess because one of my best friends got killed by some Crips. And he wasn't a banger. He was one of those types of people. He was blessed with a talent to play any sport. He perfected. And we was like, we was young, like maybe 16, you know, and they killed them, shot them in the head, you know.

And so, like, I wanted to be a part of something because it's the story never, it never differs from anyone else's story. Just want to be accepted. Just want to claim something, you know, because you're not getting it from home. That was the story back then. That's what everyone would say, you know, why did you join the game? to be accepted. You know what I'm saying? To have brothers around me, you know, support.

Not getting it at home. You know, it's just the mentality. And so I always got love from, from, even when I moved over on Greenlee from Wilmington, over the by the Crips, like Park Village, which is a Samoan gang, they hate essays. A lot of the Crip gangs don't like essays. But because I look Hispanic, they're like, man, what's so with you? You know what I'm saying? But when they start being around me, you know, I got accepted, right?

But I never like, I couldn't tell them guys, man, on Vice Lord. They're like, man, what the hell is that? They didn't know anything about that. They only knew, man, Pairoo, come to Crip. You know what I'm saying? They feel like, man, you're trying to bring something new, you know. So, of course, they'll try to, like, do some harm to you. So I always kept it on a low, you know what I'm saying?

But I never banged it in the neighborhoods. Now, if I go to the Pai Roo side, because every time I ditch school from Compton High, right, or when I was going to middle school, I go over to the Pairoo neighborhoods, Campanella Park, Lutus Park, Gonzales. Park, you know, I go there, man, where my people were at. That's where I feel comfortable with, you know, because in my heart, you know, I'm not in Chicago, so I look at these people like, we in Chicago, fictitiously in my mind, you know, so I always wrapped a red bandana.

And you have family in Chicago. Yeah. And that's how you're connected to Vice Lords. I see you got the Five Point Star. Yeah, Playboy Bunny. And then you got the, what is that, Folk Nation? What? On your neck?

Ah, nah, uh-uh. Now, if I'm vizel, it won't be no folk nation. All right. So they're at odds. Yeah. So I'm not going to say op, right? Because for one, to understand what opposition means, because that's where the word derives from.

Opposition. That means you opposing me, right? How am I, how are you opposing me if we still going through the same struggles? We have the same type of adversary, which is the police and the government, you know, things like that. I would always correct people when they use that type of terminology even in prison, you know. I was just trying to sound cool. Oh, yeah. No, no, I'm just saying, I mean, you know, because a lot of people don't know why they're saying it.

You know, even in prison, people would be like, or my opposition. How am I opposing you from growing? Am I stopping you from growing? No, I'm not. I'm in the same situation as you. It's the police, you know, that's opposing us. That is our opposition. Right.

You see what I'm saying? Well, your best friend got killed by a rival gang. So how is that not an op? Even though he wasn't in the lifestyle, right? And, I mean, yeah, in a sense, yes, you're right. Okay. But that comes with the territory, though. You know, you're always going to have casualties of war.

You see what I'm saying? There's certain things that come with lifestyle. You know, ain't nobody, you know, if you come from a Crip neighborhood and here it is, you're walking through a blood neighborhood, but you just came from that way. They're not going to sit down and ask you 21 questions. You're guilty by association. And some of the times that's what it is.

You know, it's a lot of people. that grow up in the neighborhoods and they're guilty by association and get caught up in gang culture simply because of the areas they live in not because they are gang members sure you know and sometimes those be the reasons you know but you have to understand and decipher what the what the process and what to accept for what it is you know because you're always going to have Cavalty's a war because a lot of people are guilty by association so how How do you go from South Central or Compton to Mississippi by way of the vice lords?

Okay, so the family that adopted me when I was living in Compton, they were from Mississippi. And every summer, they would go to Mississippi and to Meridian, Mississippi. And the last time we went, you know, I didn't come back. You know, they say you go on vacation and you leave on probation. And yeah, and that's how it really happened. How old were you? Like 23. Okay.

Had you done time back in Cali before that? No, no. Okay. I mean, I've been in the system as far as group homes, stuff like that. You know, if anyone's, like, familiar, like with McLaren Hall. McLaren Hall was one big, like, youth of thursday. but not for lockup, but it's a waiting place for you, you know, until you can get accepting

into different group homes or into foster care. It's a waiting, it's a processing place into the system. Okay. But not like being locked up in the system. But you never done real time. No, never. Were you in the streets, you know, hustling, gang banging before you got to Mississippi?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is that when you got shot? Yeah, well, so this after I left California when I got shot in the head, I was like, it was on my 21st birthday, February 5th, 1996. Yeah. What happened?

The bullet, like, grazed the back of my head. Where were you? In Virginia. Yeah. Trying to buy some drugs. Hit a lick. Trying to use the money. off the leg to buy this to try to flip my money and one of the guys that I knew he was the only one

that knew because I was trying to go through him to get what I needed you know it was some drugs that I was trying to flip you know and shot me and took the money and when I woke up you know here it is I got detectives asking me questions and I'm like man now it was a carjacket I try to take my car. You know, when the money was never brought up, either they had it or he took it. And if the police had the money, then why they never said anything?

You know, so it just gave me one conclusion. Okay, you got it. All right. That was up. Yeah, that's, he kept it solid, though. Who? You? Oh, yeah.

I mean, because, see, one thing I realized, when you are in that type of lifestyle these are the things that come with it right so you have to understand and know what you're signing up for when you join the gang you're taking the risk of losing your life or going to prison because it's going to be somebody man that don't like you because this is what you are you know

and once you understand that you know then you be like okay it is what it is You know, and some people can't handle the pressure. That's why they tell stuff, you know, because they haven't truly accepted the stuff that comes with it. Have you out there hustling, you high sign, and you're showing off, somebody's going to rob you because you say, hey, I'm a target.

Look at me, you know. And when somebody rob you, you can't go to the police. You're already doing something he ain't got no business doing. So what you're going to do? You're going to accept it for what? it is or you're going to get some revenge. It's the way it should be.

I was locked up with a lot of cats who were like, I robbed a drug dealer and they called the cops on me. I don't even know you could do that. Yeah. So, you know, once you understand the stuff that comes with being in that lifestyle, then that's when you got some that would keep it solid, keep it real. They know just it comes with it. So just accept it when it comes to you, you know,

because you still follow under that spectrum because you live in that life. So when I bring it to you, just like you brought it to the next person, it comes with it, you know? So you were selling drugs? I was trying to. I got in, got out fast.

You know, I wasn't always a drug dealer. You know, I'm not going to even say that I was a drug dealer. I was trying to get it. get my feet in it. But that didn't work because I presented an opportunity for someone that I knew that wasn't expecting. He saw away because that's part of the game. So when you got to Mississippi, you're 23.

Why did you stay? I don't know, I guess because the girls at the time, you know, they were fascinated. They haven't seen no one like me. The LA swag. Yeah, the LA mentality, you know what I'm saying? It's different, you know, the whole conversation, you know, we talk fly. You know, people from LA, you know, we say we mean and mean what we say.

And I was just like, well, the people that I moved out here with live here already. So, you know, what else is out there in LA for me? It's wide open there, too, for a guy from L.A. It's easy to go to a small town in Mississippi and open up shop or get busy, whatever you do. Yeah, I kind of like, and then come to find out that there were vice lords. Yeah, so explain the connection between Chicago and the deep south Mississippi and the gang diaspora that goes back and forth between those two places. This is really interesting.

So I guess it goes back to slavery. You know, when the slaves were actually became free, they all migrated to the north. And the north at that time would be like places like Chicago, Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri, Detroit, Detroit, you know, places like that. And then later on when you find out that a lot of your family is from those places, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis. And then the people that founded these street organizations, actually came from the South.

They may not was born in the South, but their parents moved and they were born in Illinois. Right. Right. But they still had strong ties to the South. That's why in places like Mississippi, you know, it's a real strong. a center for these street organizations because they during the summer they'll migrate down to the

south you know for the summer and here it is they're passing it on just like the crips and blus did man throughout the country right you know it was a pandemic you know and they brought some new it stayed it spread do but you say the the leaders of the vice lords the headquarters is still Chicago. Yeah, most definitely. But they're just controlling and getting money out of places like Mississippi. Well, because of the infrastructure, because it's based on a structure, right, and you have people that will migrate, you know, it's just like even if it was drug traffic, you know, you drop

stuff off here, over there, you know, you got people that's orchestrating it, running it for you, you know, just no different things. the gangs. You know, Mississippi is definitely a stronghold for places like for the vice lords, for the gangs of disciples, black disciples, you know, like, you name it, I practically met every gang from Chicago and Mississippi. Wow. That's wild. Yep. Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the world's number one e-commerce platform. It's what we at the Connect use when we have merch to sell, and it's what most businesses prefer. If you've just started a business, the last thing you need to think about is all of the

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ls at the end. Go to Shopify.com slash Mitchell today to hear your first chiching. So how did you take your fall that ended up with 22 years in prison? Um, so what's crazy is that I actually was convicted for a crime I didn't even commit. So, uh, we go, over this person's house. And we're at the house. We're chilling. I actually knew the guy. So one of my partners was messing with his ex-wife. He happened to just get out of jail from domestic, domestic violence, abusing her. So we're all over there. We're chilling. Even the chief of police son was with me. And he's vice lord. But the guy that was dating the girl, he wasn't vice lord but he was a wannabe you know he was claiming vice lord but he wasn't

officially vice lord we just tolerated because it was somebody we was hanging with you see what what I'm saying and uh her ex-husband was a part of another gang set and his friends were part of another gang set so he was feeling some type of way of the fact that I knew these guys Right? So I go outside to go get some cigarettes. I used to smoke cigarettes then at this time. And this happened in 99. I stopped smoking cigarettes in 2001, right?

And I go outside to get some new ports as I was getting in the car to get the new ports to come back out of the car from the driver's side. Two guys jumped on me. I wasn't expecting that because I knew them, right? So it went from whatever that guy told them, but they knew I was vice lord, and they knew the other guy that was in there was vice lord. Our other partner, he'll only claim vice lord around us,

but he'll never like showcase it, you know, to other people because he knew he wasn't vice lord. We'll let him kick his hat a certain way, wear some colors, whatever. And next time I know, I know for maybe good 10, 15 minutes strong, we're fighting, you know, and the element surprise is real when you're not expecting that, you know, somebody snatched you out the car and then here it is, you know, you're getting feet and hands put on you, you know. And next time I know, somebody in the house gets stabbed. Even in my discovery, it was witnesses that made statements telling the,

the detectives that wasn't me. The person ended up dying? Yeah. Hmm. The witnesses from across the street that can look in the house, see the whole entire thing take place. Even the guys that I was fighting got on a witness stand and testified and said that it wasn't him because we were fighting him outside.

How can he be here and there at the same time? Right. So no fingerprints was on a murder weapon. They found it in the sink, right? The eyewitnesses from across the street saying that it wasn't me, right, that they saw the girl running the house stabbed him, right? Because her boyfriend and her ex-husband were fighting. So I guess he was getting the best of the boyfriend. Right, right?

And the eyewitnesses said that she ran in the house, stabbed them. The guys I was fighting testified and said that it wasn't me because we was outside fighting. Later on, even the kids testified and said that it wasn't me. And they still tried to... Still convicted me. They had the head prosecutor. And it wasn't even a high-profile case. So everyone was trying to figure out why was that.

the head DA doing my case. And then the chief of police, his son told his dad everything that happened. And I called to talk to him. They were supposed to help me. And I think it was like some weeks later, before I even went to trial, he resigned. He stepped down.

So what was the charge was manslaughter? Manslaughter. Well, at the time, because they really didn't know the stipulations on everything. First, they tried to hit me with murder. Right? Like, murder. They hit me with murder.

I'm outside. Like, my fingerprints, how y'all going to say it's me? You know, plus, I didn't have a good lawyer out of public defender. What town in Mississippi? Meridian. Meridian, Mississippi. Yeah, that's a place where you can get lynched.

So it goes back. Back to when I earlier, when I was explaining to you about the three civil right workers, right? Meridian has a cleaner called Imperial Cleaners, right? I don't know if it's still there now. I don't know. But the sheriff that was involved in those three civil right workers was a Klan member. And he came, he was the sheriff in Meridian.

So Meridian have deep, deep ties in clan history. Right. You know, the clan was very active in Meridian. Right. And you were talking about the three civil rights workers back in the 60s that were murdered for trying to... Yeah. Establish voting rights.

Right. You know, freedom, the freedom writers. Yeah. Yeah. And where they got killed at was like 15, 20 minutes up the road for Meridian. And that was organized. That hit was ordered by the then sheriff. Well, he helped.

he helped in it because I was actually in the cell next to the guy Sam Bowers that actually green lighted the hit on the three civil right workers he was the imperial grand wizard yeah this is clan racism yeah all the worst parts about what we think about the deep south that's meridian yeah that's the culture yeah and uh certain nights at random reservoir Don't get caught at nighttime in the reservoir in Meridian. Why? Because the clans have their meetings. Even to this day?

I don't know to this day, right? I know back then, right? You can't even pay me to step foot in Meridian right now. You can't, you know. So nobody else was charged? No. The woman wasn't? No.

No one got on a witness. on the witness stand and testified to say it was me. Nobody. So what evidence? What did they have? What was the DA saying? Police. Police. Saying what? That they saw you? The police said it was me, that the evidence was me. But how? If they don't have a murder weapon, they don't have a print on a murder weapon, and you're outside. They asked me what I had on, right? And I told them what I had on.

So they found a hoodie, appear to be blood, but even red paint when it dries up. it can look like blood so they never and then they said that i was standing in the pool of blood right so if i stand stab somebody and i remember i had some all-white rebutt classics on my feet and the all-white rebod classics they are white no blood and anything on my sneakers i had those sneakers on from the time i got arrested until i went to processing and rankin county into the system of MDOC and there was no drops of blood and anything on my sneakers. They didn't receive no type of clothing from me, off of me, my fingerprints or anything like that. So there was no DNA evidence? No, none. So they said there was a hoodie inside by the knife

or by the body? No, it was in the car or something like that and they said it belonged to me. One of the guys that was with me said that it was mine. And they said, okay, if there's- And there was blood on. If there's blood on the hoodie, then that must be related to the guy who stabbed the deceased person. Yeah. And they said, let's say if it was my hoodie and I stabbed somebody and there's blood on the hoodie, why does it none on my sneakers? I got all white sneakers on. Yeah, it's not a good defense. No offense.

Like, you could people kill people in prison and don't get any blood on their shoes. But if I'm standing in a pool of blood, Why there's no footprints leaving or anything like that. Like there was no blood on me purely. Were there any bloody footprints leaving the house at all? At all. Huh. And they found a knife in the sink.

Did your lawyer call up the woman to the stand? Man, like, I remember this like it was yesterday. Nobody. The DA did. But none of them even said that it was me. And why would you disclose my gang affiliation? What my gang affiliation have to do with anything? He's just trying to get a conviction.

He's trying to say, hey, look, he's a gangbanger. Must have been him. He's just playing off prejudice at that point. And then here it is. The chief of police, he resigned. He stepped down. After your case? Oh, no, I'm sorry.

No, prior. Prior to your case. Yeah. And it was an active white chief of police. Did you, was it a jury trial? Yeah. Yep. One black person. Yeah. So I'd have had federal prosecutors and judges come to the prison to talk to me. I try to do motions to get back in court. And they said, man, there's no way we would have convicted you, you came through our court, our courthouse. He said, there's no way, no way. He said, well, what recourse do you have if you have an unfair trial on a state level? Obviously, you appeal it through all the different levels of the state court, but you can appeal it on a federal level, I believe, right? Yeah, but only if you within the 200-something days, 257, 275.

There's so many days you have to be within and by the courts prolonging it, holding your stuff, don't want to give an answer to your motion. Like they'll just wait, wait, wait to the deadline, send it back. And by the time you even publish it or try to get it entered in the courts,

your time then ran out. And they were finding ways to do that. And then, but if you don't have the money to even get proper representation, it's even hard too. Yeah. You know, and that was my case at the time. Yeah.

You know, so then I was like, man, look, man, I'm just going to die in here. It is what it is. What was your sentence? 22. Oh, so you did day for day. Yeah, day for day mandatory. Did you meet other cats in there like you

that were sitting there for crimes they didn't commit? I mean, well, you know, everybody everybody's innocent you know everybody's innocent you know what I'm saying but only your

your evidence were determined that you know what I'm saying not a word of mouth and my evidence was saying that you know and I was just like man and like everybody

turned their back on me everybody everybody everybody everybody up and turn their back on me So it was even a time, I think it was like Christmas, even Thanksgiving. I called the house.

I had access. I got a phone. And, you know, just check on everyone, man, because it's the time of the year, man. You know, we're still human at the end of the day, right? And they were like, man, don't nobody live here by that name. We don't know you. Hung the phone up on me. Yeah, so, you know, like, you find out who your family is.

You find out who your friends are. You find out hope it's a learning process. You know, and you become hardened because the only thing around you is concrete and still now. So you become one. You know, your mindset starts to change. You know, you start feeling emotionless, right? You start feeling, I don't care about your feelings.

You know, shit, anybody care about mine. You know, so then you, you start feeling, you know, So then you start becoming a product of your environment. You become savage, you know, and that's what it was. It's the only way to survive. And it was like, man, yeah. Like my prison jacket, my prison file, I was labeled as combative offender. Like, I would strike inmates and staff.

Like, I would stab you. We don't go on the yard. We're going on the yard. You know, we might may not be going on the yard for the right reason, but we're going. Don't tell me because y'all's shortest stag. That's not my problem. That's a you problem. You see what I'm saying?

So in the next 30 minutes, you need to be calling yard call. All right. So 30 minutes were all around. We ain't going on the yard. You know, we had them little pedifiers on the zone. I said, hey, what's up, man? We're not going on the yard? Nah, man, I don't told you, man.

We sure to stab. All right. Well, you're going to stay past your shift now. I'm going to get you some paperwork. And I go over there and stab a pedophile in the neck, on the chest and the arm, you know, and I grab him. I say, hey, what you going to do? We don't go on the yard, man.

He going to the infirmary. I'm going to stab shit out of. Man, go ahead on with that, man. And now I stab. And we'll go on the yard. But it was like my first, the earlier parts of 2000, you know. When you're really angry, you're really bitter. I'm young.

Yeah. You know, I'm young. I'm still in my early 20s. You know, I'm 23. I'm 24. You know what I'm saying? Like, man, I don't care. You just sentenced me to two life sentences.

Because to come up for parole on the life sentence is 10 years. So you just gave me 22 of two decades. It's not guaranteed. I'm going to make it. but here I am. You see, I'm not, never been on no psych medication. I'm not screwed up in the head. You know, God provided for me, you know, it was a learning process, you know, and I won't be here right now if it wasn't for that.

Not me letting my mind get trapped within the creases and the cracks of the wall, you know, because it can happen. but I never allowed that. I use it as strengths, you know, to say, you know what, I'm going to pull y'all wrong. I'm going to make it out of here. And I did. It was a struggle, trust me. You weren't taking nothing at the beginning.

And you were telling me that, too, off camera, like dudes in there would just let their minds go. Yeah, bro. And they end up taking their lives. And it's never the ones with the shitload of time. It's always the ones that got less than five years, less than 10, you know, less than three years, like, they don't know how to cope.

But it's always, I always admire the guys that already did 15 and 20 years already. Like, they still, they cope, you know. They're not trapped. Institutional, yes, of course, because this is all you've been knowing, you know. But I spent half of my life. I was 23, man, when I went to prison. and I spent half of my life in prison. I got out when I was 46.

You see what I'm saying? So it's like at times, you know, I flip in that prison mindset because it'd be something somebody that did, something goofy or something stupid. And it'd be like, man, if we was anywhere else, you know, you wouldn't even be acting like this or doing this. You know, and there's these things. even been obstacles and challenges I have faced,

even out here in what we would consider as the free world, you know, at work, dealing with people, man, just talking, just saying stuff, you know, not knowing, man, who you're talking to. You know, you're not aware or conscious of the things you're saying out of your mouth, you know, and I had to really like check myself and not like, hey, you're not in there.

chill. And most people don't understand what you just went through. And they don't. Like, and you can't really expect them to. Because I don't really try to talk about it, right? Because, you know, people are quick to like want to stigmatize you, you know, and when you have those, those type of people that think like that, I try to do it for educational purposes because I'm around a lot of young people. So I try to educate them. Like, look, you know, why you know, why doing this. You can't do this. You know, if you glamorizing this lifestyle right here, you know, this is what can happen, you know, and if you get locked up in the system, you're not going last long because somebody would take your life from you, you know, because for one, you play a lot.

You don't know when you need to sit down and man up. Today's episode is sponsored by Cloaked. My sponsor Cloaked dared me to see how exposed my personal information was online. So I went to their stuff. site, I entered my phone number, and no joke, in two seconds, it found my social security number for sale. That was terrifying. Data brokers make billions of dollars selling your info to spammers, scammers, and worse. You consented somewhere in terms that nobody reads, including myself, and they're betting that you won't do anything about it. Most services only clean up after the damage has been done, but every new sign-up you do creates fresh vulnerabilities.

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c-l-o-a-k-ed dot com slash connect and enter your phone number for a free security scan and 30% off any cloaked plan. Once again, that's cloaked.com slash connect for a free security scan, which will terrify you. It's all out there. Plus, you get 30% off when you use my promo code. Privacy is not dead, folks. It's cloaked. Well, you were in there for something you didn't do. So this is a little different. But how did you survive? Tell us about the early years. Where did you first go? And what were the conditions like? And how did you end up, you know, running with the vice lords and kind of taking control of the units? So, you know, I was always a leader, right?

At some point, you know, we all follow something, you know, if you want to survive, right? So I first landed in Green County. It's a South Mississippi Correctional Institution, SMCI, Area 2. I first landed in a building, A-WRey, one A zone. So when I first made it to the unit, the guys were like, man, we don't want a number game bangers over here. I said, I'm going over there. That's why I want to be at. I want

to be what they at, you know, and that was my mentality, man, you know, and everyone else is like, because it's like you just left processing, right? So now you're going to your, what you're going to be at for a while, you know, and at this time, it was more of, you know, and at this time, it was more of a transit building, stay over here for something like maybe think like 90 days, then they shoot you out either maybe to another prison. So Green County is just like parchment, right? Parchment is the mother of all prisons in Mississippi because that's the state pen. And so Green County was crazy.

Man, when I tell you, man, that is like a game. Gang capital, Green County, man, that is like the gang capital at that particular time, right? Fight. A1, A2, B2, C1, those were the buildings, right? Man, look, I would tell him my partner on the way coming up here, right? I said, I had a CD player that belonged to one of my vice-law brothers, and I sold that CD player three times. to three different people, you know what I'm saying? Because I didn't care.

You know what I'm saying? Who's going to contest it? You know what I'm saying? You know, like, man, I'm young. I'm doing 22 years. You want a problem? I'm going to give it to you. I don't care.

What are they going to do? Lock me up? I'm already locked up. They're going to lock me down, put me in a hole. I don't care. It is what it is. So I would try to do a lot of the administration CID, which is like a criminal investigation division, right, where they try to investigate

you committing different types of charges in the system. Like I was bad about extortion and racketeering, so they would try to bring up charges on me, try to catch me doing it, but they could never prove it. And then I was, so it was broken off. the sections, right? So it was like A1, A2 over here, B1, B2 over there, C1 and C2, right? So we had a committee of everyone under the People Nation sits on this committee that governs the whole entire prison, right? So because I was like always active, my name is out there, you know what I'm saying? I didn't go by Diaz in a prison system.

I went by another name. It's a street name that I had, right? It was J-S-S-A-N-E. J-H-H-N-E. And there was a, some vice-law brothers of mine gave me that name. Why? I don't know. But it was J-Same. So I got the name.

My name started ringing. They made me, I went from a building commander to over the section. So I'm over two buildings. And then after a while, they had a set up to where they had like two spearheads. Spearhead, cold spearhead, you might be over, well, one, two, three, four, five. You might be over five buildings over here and you might be over five buildings over here. You know, and like, it's different from a shot call from San Quentin.

Quentin, right? One of them type of shot callers. But if I say move, you move. You know, I can put demonstrations down, orchestrate them. You know, I had a voice. So you were managing five different wings, cell blocks, if you will. And when I went back down there, 2007, I was actually the spearhead over the whole all 10 buildings. That's insane how organized they have it. Y'all. That's crazy. And but after a while, as the years went, went by, I kind of like, I started thinking more

about like, man, I actually might have a chance of going home. Right. You know, so my mindset started changing. I started thinking more like, damn, if I do this, what is the chances of me getting more time? And then 2005, I get into it with a warden and try to stab a warning in the neck. with his own ink pen in 2005, because he put his hands on me.

Tell us that story. So I was sent to a minimum security prison, right, where the sheriff department runs the prison. It's like a jail. It's like a jail. It's like a jail. And I didn't like it. I'd rather be in the state penitentiary

because that's what I'm used to being around. I wasn't... to make a name. I was just trying to lay low and play slow. I won't try to get caught up with the vice lords or anything like that. And some kind of way they started finding out. They say I was having gang meetings because I had rank. It got leaked out, right, with the administration. I never was the type to want to shake hands to show my affiliation. I should be like, just give you some debt. but I was guilty by association. So, and how they do it is,

if you hang with them, you are part of them. I'm not going to be a gangster disciple. I'm not going to be hanging with gangster disciples if I'm not a gangster disciple in some kind of shape, form of fashion. So then, you know, they found out I was on STG, which is, I'm labeled as an active core member, which at the 9-11 you can be labeled as potential terrorists in the U.S. STG security threat group.

I also was labeled as an STS, which is security threat status as an individual, not as part of a group. So I had two of those titles on me. They wanted to lock me down within 24 hours for, for nothing, just because they wear my prison jacket. Man, you are a problem. And they try to put me in a cell in the blind spot because they were from to jump on me.

The guards were. Did that happen a lot? Yeah. Yeah. Most definitely. Like in the bigger prisons, like Parchman Green County, most definitely. I don't know that happens in Texas. We hear stories where inmates get thrown off the tier.

Man, when I tell you, man, they would knock your teeth out. They would get other gangs, right? If you're a problem to come kill you, they'll cover it up. Green County, lieutenants and the captains murdered somebody, and they cover it up. All they did was just they may don't retire. Yeah. So, you know. Yeah.

And it was a disclosure claim. Can't talk about it. It didn't happen, but you had an eyewitness, and he saw the whole thing. They actually killed a guy themselves, an inmate? Yeah, yeah. They beat him to death or what happened? Yeah, they beat him to death with radios. Holy shit.

With radios. I have a scar right here above my eye. Lift up your hat a little bit. I have a scar right here above my eye where they hit me with a radio. Yeah. And they busted in. I have to get stitches. They have to take me to handcuff me.

bottle shackle me, take me to the hospital, to the free world hospital, get stitches. Because I was being defiant. I wanted listening to him were doing what I was supposed to been doing. So they hit me. And, uh, uh, so when he hit me, this the warden, you know. So they were, they were trying to put you in a blind spot where there were no cameras and just have their way. Yeah, and why? I don't even know. I wouldn't even causing no problems. I wouldn't even doing anything, stirring no problems up or anything. I'm trying to stay out of the way because my time can be a little bit more comfortable for me in these kind of conditions and these kind of environments than being in the state prison. But then I'm like, no, hell, no, I can't do this. It's the wrong kind of atmosphere. You're not who you say you are. You're snitching. You know. You messing with what homosexuals?

Pedophiles. Pedophiles, you know what I'm saying? Oh, hell, I don't want to be around this. Nah, man. And I tell them, man, send me back to Green County of Parchman. I didn't ask to come here. Y'all sent me here. I don't want to be here.

They told me to pack up. I said, for what? They said, man, warden said, man, you're going to the hole. I said, no, I ain't packing up. No, hell, no. I ain't packing up. I said I haven't done anything, you know. So they try to put me in a blind spot, try to get two guards and him to jump on me,

had put me in handcuffs and jumped me, right? So when the warden hit me with the radio right here, and I was like, when I saw that blood, I tore into him. He had a canary yellow dress shirt, right? And what a, what a seam is that on his shirt where you can see it, he tried to run and I grabbed him by the shirt and they ripped it off the sleeve you would have thought it was made like that and he dropped his gold plate of ink pen and by the time I could stab him in the neck with it his 12 guards came from the side door with block guns and hit me with the block gun right here

knocked the wind out of me he was like right here on me and I didn't see him I didn't see any of them because I was too zoned in on him I was from to kill him they tried to get him they tried to me five more years on that. Did you hit him with the pen? Nah. You weren't able to. Yeah, because they hit me with the block gun. And so then they took me to medical handcuffed me to a gurney. Three deputy sheriffs come in, right? They put them low like baseball gloves. They put them on. They fin of whoop me. It was two two big white dudes, right, and a black dude. So this happened. In one of their jails, like, close to Meridian.

And I used to go on the Navy base in Meridian to play basketball. And that black sheriff that was with them remember me. He said, Aguilar? I said, yeah, what's up? He said, man, what you? Oh, he's like, hey, let me talk to him. Let me talk to him. Y' up, God's my witness, bro.

That's the only reason why, man, they ain't beat me senseless, Yeah. Maybe he killed you. He was like, man, what's going on? And I told him. He's like, man, man, we always been getting complaints about this warden. Always getting complaints about him. He was like, look, he said, man, we got to transfer you, man, to Rankin County.

I said, it went over the radios. Right. So I even got in the warring's face afterwards. Before they handcuffed me to the gurney, I told him. So the other two guards that wanted to judge. He asked them in front of me. He said, y'all want to take turns on? Y'all want to whip them?

They're like, nah, man. He's like, man, they ain't what we signed up for. We ain't signed up for that. And I told that warning, he called me all kind of bitches, holes and this and that. I said, I wasn't all that a few seconds ago. I said, that was you doing all that screaming.

I said, I should have killed your bitch ass. That's what I should have did. And he was like, he would talk, screaming in my face, spitting in my face and stuff. I said, take the handcuffs all. Me and you.

You want somebody to jump me? Take the handker's all. Let it be fair. Me and you. Come on. Take him to medical. I said, I know it. So, man, I'll kill you in here, man.

So prior to that, handcuffed me to the gurney. The deputy sheriffs came in. And the only thing that stopped them from doing any harm to me, me was that black deputy sheriff. He remembered me from playing basketball on the Navy base in Meridian. And he helped me pack all my stuff and transporting me back to Rankin County.

He was like, man, you know, they're going to press charge on you. They're going to give you five years for assault. So, man, I don't care about that. He said, look, man, he said, you know we were going to come in there. You know we're from to come beat your ass, right? but no questions asked. He said, yeah, I know. He said, if it won't for me knowing you,

he said, you won't even be recognized right now. He said, that was our job was to come in there. They from to come in there and mace me. They were from to amace me first and then whoop me. When you're handcuffed. I'm handcuffed to the gurney. Fuck. Right?

And one of the guys, as soon as he come through, he already had his gloves on, so when he comes through, he comes shaking the mace can. They were going to spray the mess. And I couldn't cover up. There's nothing I can do. Because they, I was kind of bent low, not standing up, bent real low, right?

The gurney was tied to the wall. So, nothing I can do. And then I was handcuffed to the gurney real tight to where it's cutting. Now, I got, man, scars on my wrist from when they did that, you know. And nobody believes you. That's called torture, by the way. That's like a human rights abuse. They don't even let you do that with prisoners of war.

Man, look. You're not allowed to do that to somebody that's cuffed. They were going to do that, man. If it won for that dude knowing me. Did any guards ever get killed while you were down? Like, it seems like that's a dangerous thing to do around guys that have nothing to lose. I'm sure beat up.

I ain't going to say killed, to my knowledge. A lot of the stuff we know because of the cell phones, because we stay in touch with everybody in the different. facilities, right? But prior to the cell phones, our way of communicating was only within that institution alone, not abroad.

But to my recollection, maybe beat up, stabbed. Yeah, like, beat up, beat up. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Only because, you know, they don't know how to talk to nobody. They come in there

You know Maybe you got picked on when you was in school in elementary It wasn't me I didn't do it So they take that out on us They talk to us crazy They mistreat us And

You know the only thing we know how to do Is react to it With aggression Do you think that the violence That the staff commits against Inmates in a place like Mississippi Do you think that creates a culture of violence within the inmates themselves?

Most definitely. Yeah. I think that not only that, but, you know, idleness is the devil's playground. Like when you don't, when you just cramers up, because at one point, it was only 60 main unit, 60 to a zone. Two or three years then go by, it becomes 60 to 120 now. You see what I'm saying? And I don't know if this was true or not, you know, but I heard talks about it because I'm the majority, right? Because the majority, you know, within the system at this particular time was gangster disciples.

I was on a zone one time where we were just nine of us and 79 gangstor disciples. Yes. Wow. And they'll try to flex. Go up there and turn the TV while you watching it. You know, man, it's gangster house. You know, and, man, it's crazy. If you allow that stuff, man, then, you know,

they'll keep pushing and pushing. So you just, you pushed out the door. You know, but everybody ain't going like that. It don't matter, you know, what our numbers are as long as you stay together. So then, who were you with then? Vice Lords. Okay, right.

And you got the gangster disciples. Yeah. So in the prison system in Mississippi, the gangster disciples was always the majority. Okay. Vice Lord was always outnumbered. You know, you might fall on the zone where it's 23 gangster disciples on, seven Vise Lords. You know, and we was never the type, like, even when we was in numbers, we'll never be the type man to, like, be the aggressive.

We'll always come with understanding compared to them. If they're the majority, they're trying to flex. They try to have their chest all stuck out. Everybody, they're all killers now. You know what I'm saying? And that's how they were moving.

Did you ever have to go to war with them? Every day. Every day. Sometimes we'll have, what's we'll call bangings, right? Which is huge, like, gang riots. But they gang fights. So they have to come in,

And sometimes they have to come in with state troopers, right, to get control of the prison. You know, guards can't even come on his own because we fighting. That's how naughty. And it was one incident one time with the gangs of disciples and the vice lords. One of the guys run upstairs, he was a Latin king. I told him to come back downstairs. So don't go up there. He's going up there and get a shank.

his knife and the whole top tier gangster disciples the peons or the guys that's neutral that's not affiliated they downstairs with us called peons

yeah peons or it's not that many of us but you can't be in the cell with me unless you're blood four corner hustler black peatstone Latin king something under the five

five point star So as soon as the count time ended, it was on. So when the land king go upstairs and go get his knife, you got the gangs of disciples in his other cell. They get in their knife. They want to stab the shit out of him. They don't like him. I go up there to get him.

They literally push me out of the way almost down the stairs just so they can stab him. they said, man, we're going to let you make it. We don't have no beef with you. We got beef with him. But it's their responsibility to ride. And they literally, like, pushed me out of the way. They didn't put their hands on me.

And it stabbed him up. So when he got downstairs, right, some kind of way, his leg was behind the door. And they had the door up against his leg and they was constantly stab in his calf muscle. You know, with them homemade knives and stuff, you break off the fence, turn into an ice pick, stuff like that. And there was another guy, another vice lord,

that was in the cell, should have been with us, because only seven of us, going to cell and you had a crypt, hit one of his home boys. unjammed the door, they ran in on him, took his knife from him, and used his knife, and stabbed him 30 times in the eye. And he lost his eye. And when nothing we can do about it. Because we was outnumbered.

There were nothing we can do. But just watch him keep getting stabbed. Do you remember a really crazy riot where you were just like, I can't believe this is my environment? Yeah. Did you end up getting stabbed ever? No. So I got stabbed one time before I ever went to prison. Yeah, I never got stabbed in prison.

I got stabbed one time before I ever went to prison in my hand right here, right here. I never got stabbed in prison. So, I don't know, man, because, you know, my character because, you know, my character, because I was always more of an educator, right? Like, man, like, what are we doing, man? You know, why are we doing this? You know, because I didn't got older in my years now. I'm not as young and wild like them.

Now, if I was still in my 20s, right, I've been on the same stuff they on. It wouldn't even care. But see, a lot of them, they don't have a whole lot of time. It's the one who got three years. It's the short timers. It's never the ones that have a lot of time, right? Because you might be in the whole and segregation, man,

for the remainder of your sentence. And just think if you've got a life, you're going to be in there forever. So, you know, you do what you do to make it. You know what I'm saying? But the ones, man, who initiates or provoke these riots are the ones that short-timing. That's crazy.

For real. And that's basically how the system is. Right. There's never the ones that's home for them for a while. It's never them. Sometimes, yes, at times. But 95% of the time, it's the short times, man. The ones that's going home three years, five years. Anything less than 10, they're the ones, man, who initiate a lot of the BS that goes on.

You know, then sometimes, you know, it, They'd be chemically unbalanced. No coffee, no caffeine, no nicotine. So it throws them off, you know, and they can't function without it. So the only thing they know how to do is, is, you know, with aggression. So, and the older guys are probably either hustling

or figuring out how to, you know, get out. Yeah, you know, to peel their cases. Yeah, after so long. Mm-hmm. Maybe the first part of a sentence, they might have been wild, like me. But as you, like, man, I only did 12, 13 years now. Like, man, fuck this. I'm tired of this, man.

I can't keep doing this. Did you do some time in the hole? Yeah. I did almost four years in a hole. Consecretively or different stretches? So, like three years, I was in the hole, right? Because of my behavior, you know, for disciplinary reasons. and then they let me out for maybe 12 hours

so I can like make commissary, get hygiene products, stuff like that, you know, get stuff. And then right after those 12 hours, they locked me right back up for a whole year again. After three years, they gave you 12 hours just to breathe. Yep. Did you know they were going to throw you back in?

No, I didn't. Nah. Fuck, bro. Because, you know, everything's based on, man, your behavior how you act they don't want you to be the cause of a riot or they figure you might trigger something you know just because of your status or because this is what they know for you to do so they let you stay out and GP you know just so you can make commissary or you know get some soap and deodorant and toothpaste and uh notebook paper and stamps and then they

scoop you up lock you right back down again that's why I said I did like four years I don't even count the 12 hours what do they what do they first throw you in there for fighting stabbing's trying to fight the staff they tell me to come in and I wouldn't I make y'all come get me I'm not coming in you know what I'm saying you know y'all only gave me an hour I don't want no basically trying to tell them what I'm gonna do you know and they'll write me up getting caught with knives stuff like that and then just becoming a problem so they locked me now so after getting so many tickets so many write-ups that's

when they give you the whole shot yeah that's the process because they'll say all right well you doing six months in a hole or you doing a year and there's a a time when you'll end up going to the hole. It might be 30 days after the disciplinary hearing. It's not going to be right then. Unless there's a stabbing, you've got to be removed, or just because you get caught with a knife or some contraband, you know, like drugs.

Nah, you just go through the regular process of disciplinary, but if you stab somebody who got into a fight or any type of physical confrontation, automatically you go to the hole. Did you actually get caught for stabbings or just suspected? Nah, sometimes they know I did it because I tell them, you know, like, hey, we're going on the yard or what?

You know, like, man, what are we doing? I'll be back in 30 minutes. And then, you know, at 30 minutes, we ain't going on the yard, then I go stab somebody. Not to the point where I'm killing them, but I'll stab him. I'm like, man, you'll be all right. Take one for the team.

Dude. Take one for the team. I'm sure that made them feel better. Yeah, I mean, but, you know, they're already half-ass scared. You know what I'm saying? Because, you know, one thing about it, like I was telling my partner on the way up here, you're not going to do a real person like that. No.

You know what I'm saying? Because it's a lot come with it. They're going to stand their ground. Not at 10 times, man. And a lot of them are juiced up affiliated, or they got homeboys that's affiliated. That's a whole other... Now they're coming back at you. Yeah, you know what I'm saying?

When you got pedifiers, we already know, they know what's up. Ain't nobody going for that. You touching little kids and this and that ice, well, this is what comes with it. Because you got praise and the predators. You know what I'm saying? And, hey. So you would take a shank just to poke them? just to force the guards to let you guys out.

Tell me about that. Did you know where to hit them just to... Like you're just being in the arm. Just a little discipline? Yeah, like in the arm, nothing like where you just jugging and really trying to hurt them. Because if you don't, like with those homemade ice picks, it can cause internal bleeding and they can die.

Right. You know what I'm saying? So if you just make something out of fiberglass or something like that, Yeah. You know, to wear a break skin or whatever. Not to the point where you just, you know, you're trying to jug, you're trying to kill something.

Did you ever see somebody getting jugged, like killed? Yeah. Yeah. Over the bitch word. Yeah. Got his whole head hanging. Had to use, you know, them wood staples? They're using for a carpenter.

Had to staple his whole head back. for calling somebody a bitch. And they were on the yard. Yup. It was a land king. His name was Killer Kate. He went in with three years, and now he got a life sentence.

And that dude died? Nah, he didn't die. They staples head back together, though. But he ain't going to use that word no more. Fuck. Yep. And thought, you know, when nobody going to do none about it.

And he was, you know, made an example out of him. So they got pieces, they got shanks on the yard. You guys are going straps. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, got to. Fuck.

Sometimes we take it on the yard with us, you know. Yeah, because one of the guards was his girlfriend. What? Yeah. The guy that stabbed the other inmate, his girlfriend was one of the guards. Oh, shit. Yeah. So he needed to look tough or he felt like he needed to look tough?

It just, you know, she provided an opportunity for him to get stabbed. She ain't known none about it. We was on the tier, and we talking, we in lockdown. So when we go on the tier, it's like, it's cages. We go in, you know, like bullpins, one by one. You know, we shackled from head of toe. We got base chains on us, ankle bracelets, handcuffs, you know we're maximum security you know we're like high-risk inmates and uh the guy

called uh the Lank King a bitch he's like man we do whatever we go in the yard blah the Lankine didn't say nothing he didn't say nothing he's like hey man you slide that over here tell me I said bet slim the knife we're going to yard he over there talking to his homeboys nothing happened like he ain't got a care in the world so while he running around handcuffed or girl taking the handcuffs off of him like putting them in the bullpen but she's not closing it for him sticking his uh wrists out through the hole to take the handcuffs off she just took him off while the gate was still open and run past her and he was like now who the bitch now and stabbed them in the head and all this just came down.

God. Yep. Damn. You know, that's serious. Yeah, and then they rushed them in to the infirmary, and they had to use, like, one of them staple guns with the real heavy-duty stables to put all that back. Fuck.

What year, how deep into your stretch did you make those connections with the guards? to have those routes. In prison, the main objective is to learn fast. You'll get lost fast. Man, probably because I had to learn the game. I didn't understand the politics. And every day, you know, our number one thing, our way of surviving is through observation.

You observe. You know, you move as they move. you know he either a predator or you're a prey right either you're gonna be in the way or you're gonna stay out the way but you can't be do both can't be in the way when it's all good then when it's heat you out of the way nah either you win you all the way in or you out you know what I'm saying and that's even for the gang members everybody's not in the way you know what I'm saying everybody ain't trying to hustle everyone's just trying to do their time but I'm just happen to be affiliated You know what I'm saying?

Everybody is not trying to hustle because some people hustle because they have to because they don't have no other means. They don't have nobody from the outside, you know, providing. So they got to find a way. And your family and all your friends turn their back on you, so you really had to make something happen.

My first extortion was a guard. I extorted a guard. Well, actually, it started in the county jail because we couldn't have sick. And I had a guard in the county jail, and I had this friend girl of mine every Tuesday. She'll leave like two packs of Newport 100s and a $20 bill in the brown paper bag on his front seat. So when ship chains around 11 o'clock, he'll bring me new jumpsuits with the cigarettes and the $20 for him. And that was my first, my first, you know, tasting it.

Then when I got to prison, it was a guard. I got him to bring. So our thing is to make you feel comfortable, relax, right? Start talking, kicking in with you. You know, it ain't going to happen right then. You know, make you feel like, man, you know, you accept it, you know, let you hang out with us. You know, make you feel like you want to us, right?

And then I'm like, hey, man, you smoke weed, man? Like, we might have him watch, catch us smoking weed, let him know this is what we're doing. But it's all an illusion. You know what I'm saying? We just, we're painting this picture to you, right? That we, this is what we're doing. You know, I mean, we're actually doing it.

You know what I'm saying? But it's a mind thing. Like, hey, man. You smoke weed, man? Yeah, sometimes. Like, shit, man, smoke wooded us, bro. Make you feel comfortable while you're around us, you know what I'm saying? So he said, no, I can't do it on the job.

You know, just like 2000, 2001. And that's like, man, bring me some weed, man. Bring me some weed. Because he saw me one time stab somebody, right? He was there when it happened. He didn't say nothing, right? So I was like, okay. Yeah, I'm gonna go, yeah.

This guy's cool. Yeah, he's all right. I'm like, hey, man, appreciate that, man. I'm like, man, damn, well, I could have been going to the hole. You know what I'm saying? So I asked him, I was like, hey, man, bring some weed in. So I told him how to do it. Like, at this time, they weren't checking food.

They weren't checking food at this time. It went on them, but years later, they start checking food. You got to bring in a clear backpack so they can see what's in it. Oh, you mean when the guards brought in food? Yeah, when the guards bring in food. Like their lunch? Yeah, they lunch and stuff. They weren't checking the food then, you know, but now they check it now.

So I tell him, like, get a footlong subway sandwich. Just roll the weed up in the blunts because I'm going to need something to smoke out of. Wrap it up real good and surround wrap. Put it in the sandwich. Bring it in. He started bringing it in, this and that. Then I said, I was like, okay. But how did you get the Subway sandwich?

How did you get the Subway sandwich to you with the Blunts? So he worked in my unit in my building. So when he come in, you know, he's not bringing me the sandwich. He'll just take the weed out, the sandwich. And then when everybody go eat, he'll give me the weed. You know what I'm saying? Oh, because he's there. He can eat his lunch.

Yeah, he could eat his lunch there. On the unit. Yeah, on the unit. Yeah, on the unit. Because he'll warm it up in the microwave or some, you know, walk around. Everybody don't want to dinner. He'll come give me the weed. Just slip it on your cell.

Yeah. Now, so we had open dorms. Okay. Open dorms. And at this time, it was like 60 people. And as the years went by, they added 60 more. So it's 120 people on the zone now. Wow.

Compared to it was 60. And so. Then I told him, I was like, man, man, bring me a QP. You know what I'm saying? Bring me a quarter pound. So much weed. I didn't already got him to start violating now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're roping him in. Yeah. So I got one of my vice little brothers, man, to where we get the weed in. You know what I'm saying? Now we're trying to network. I don't have access to it, but you do. So he already bringing stuff in for me. So we're going to see if he'll bring that in for us.

Right. So I kind of told him, like, look, man, I'm trying to get this QP in, but I'll pay you. Like, what you're charging me? You know what I'm saying? But at the end of the day, whatever his number is, it's not the number I'm going to give him. I'm going to get him what I can give him, right? So I tell him like, look, check it out. So I try to coach him.

So the whole object is to make them feel comfortable of bringing it in. Like, the right thing to do is to bring it in. You know, there's no obstacles in your way. It's just all in your head. You know what I'm saying? Don't think that you violate it. Don't. Then you're going to get caught.

You know what I'm saying? I said, look, we get the QP. You wouldn't even know, man, did it's a QP? We'll compress it. We'll get it almost, man, to a size of an hour later if we can. We'll compress it as small as we can. And all you got to do is just bring it in. Throw it in your food, right?

And bring it in. The only way he's going to puff out is once you break the seal. You know what I'm saying? But as long as you compress it and tighten it up real good, you know, you're good. So he said he'll have to think about it. So all of a sudden now they started pulling him somewhere to another unit. I was like, hmm. So when he sees me, he's like he's avoiding me now.

Right. So I was like, so we go on the yard one evening. I go over there to where he's at. man, what's up, man? Man, you sure been acting funny and stuff, man. Ever since I asked you to bring that QP in, like, nah, man, just, you know, they don't want us to get comfortable with the inmates

so they're moving us around. I said, yeah, you sure that's all it is? You said, yeah, I said, okay. I see, you know, I'm going to know if you said something, right, that you don't want to be over here because you feel intimidated by it. I said, you know, I'm going to find out, right? So he was like, yeah.

So one day he popped back up, in our unit and I told I said man what you gonna do man I said look I pulled my knife out that I broke off the fence made into a ice pit I tell I said hey don't come to work tomorrow man if you ain't got that you need to bring it tomorrow I don't give for what building you go to I need my stuff man but don't come back here don't come back to work so he tried to get another gang involved right they're some uh sima city royals they're a white gang they're from they from chicago you know what i'm saying so one of the guys that's uh one of the shot callers for them me and him was cool right and uh so he didn't know that he tried to go to him to work a deal with him

to get me out the building he didn't know that i knew all this yeah you you're You know what I'm saying? So he said he was gonna bring in a QP to him, right? I said, okay, all right, this, did what he doing? So my intent was when he come in, I was gonna go on and stab, let him know I won't playin with him. But then Dirty, the shot call up for the Simon City Roy, he was like, nah, man, don't do that.

He said, man, we can finesse him. What I do is he give me the dope. I give you two ounces, right? And I keep two. I said, all, cool. You know what I'm saying? Because I know the money I can make, and then we could flip it.

You know what I'm saying? But I went to one of my vice-law brothers and kind of ran it down to him. You're like, no, man, you can't do that, bro. He said, you can't do that. And you say, uh-uh, because you're already over the section. And by you being in a position, he said, you can't do that. He said, because they'll, they'll smash you.

They'll hurt you for that. Who? The vice lords. Even though you're one of them? Yeah, because it looked like I'm catching out. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm catching out. You ain't supposed to catch out.

You know, it was like I'm running from something. You know what I'm saying? But you're just hustling. That don't mean none. They don't care about that. You know what I'm saying? Because then I had a status. I'm over the section,

so I can't just leave like that unless the administration is moving. me. Oh, I see. You're trying to get moved to where the guard is at. No, I'm trying to get moved somewhere else out of the building because the guard will bring dirty the drugs if I leave the building. I see. But dirty going to give me half of the drugs if I leave. See, the guard don't know that I notice. He's thinking that dirty getting me to leave. But when I talked to one of my vice-law brothers, they were like, no, you can't. You over the section. got status, brother, it's not a good look. You know what I'm saying? I was like, damn, yeah, you're right.

You know, then I talked to some other people and they're like, nah, if you do that, bro, you're the business. You are the business. I'm saying. I'm saying. You know what I'm saying? I just like, man, two houses is a weed. It ain't even worth it. You know what I'm saying? Put my life in harm's way like that, you know? So if you catch out, you're a target. Yeah, because it's like they look at that like catching out as a coward move. So then how did you how did you eventually get somebody in pocket to start bringing stuff? When that didn't go through, prior to that, I got shipped out, right? I got shipped out and stuff to another facility, right?

It wasn't until later on in the years that I was actually, man, able to get guards, you know, because you all I already had people already in play that's been there, that was getting stuff done. So I just get in with them. And it was until like maybe 2016, up until the time, it was time for me to go home until I were actually having a guard doing for me. Oh, all right, so it was late in your stretch

is where you kind of ascended to like the man. And I'm not going to even say 2016. I want to say it was like 2000. than eight because, you know, we have relationships with guards with the women guards. Like real relationships, bro. Did you have a relationship with the guard? And she was like a lieutenant, like, like a three-stripe sergeant that might have been, like, however they do they ranks, bro.

But she was ranked. She was ranked, yeah. So she was like over the shift, right, in another prison. And, you know, she'll bring me food, nothing too crazy, like, you know, depending on who her superiors are, like the shift commanders, whoever the captain is, like she might bring me a bottle of or some tequila or some Everclear or some food. She didn't brought me a phone in one time, you know, stuff like that. but me actually paying to bring stuff in for me until like 2016. Yeah.

What was the best moneymaker, do you think? For the product? Mm-hmm. Tobacco. What do the tobacco sell for? Like, did you guys sell them in sticks? Um, man, we got a little sheet of total paper, right? And just put some on there and sell it for maybe $5.

you know or we'll get a something maybe that big and sell for 25 so what I used to do when I get tobacco when I have people that can afford it and people who can't I make small ones for a dollar or if they have chicken just give me your chicken off your off your tray they have hot dogs give me your hot dogs off your tray you know what I'm saying you know stuff like that stuff that I like eating, just give it to me. Huh, here you go. Want something to smoke, huh? Or sometimes just I have so much, I just go to everyone that smoke, huh?

Here I go, just so want nobody tell on me. Yeah. Just keep everybody happy. Yeah, just keep everybody happy, man. That's really it. Because a lot of the BS come from because they don't have no cigarettes, the nicotine. It throws you in the rage, you know. And I know because I used to smoke.

You see what I'm saying? And I stopped. May of 2002 is when I stopped. I was in the hole. So, and what's your profit off of a pouch? Do you bring in, you have them bringing in like pouches of tobacco? Yeah, it might be like a four-pound bag. And that costs you what?

It depends where you go, maybe $13, $14, maybe $17. How much are you paying to bring it in? Oh, it won't be just an individual bag. it might be 10 of this, five of this, it might be 10 pounds of tobacco, two pounds of marijuana, 20 bottles of liquor, like the 16-ounce bottles, right? Maybe some food that I can cook in the kitchen, because I worked in the kitchen too, stuff like that. Oh, you're like a 7-Eleven, dude.

Yeah. Because you're odd. Yeah, because the guard that I was paying, the lieutenant, gave me access to where I worked the yard, clean up around the whole entire unit, and I can work in the kitchen. So you have mobility? Yeah. Yeah. That's how, what does two pounds of weed look like when it's smuggled into a prison? It's, it's small. Like a ball? Yeah. And is it Bammer, like Mexican brickweed? Or were you guys getting in some good shit? Oh, to my wheat? Yeah. Man, we was, were you getting in some Cali?

Nah, I mean, it was weed that was profitable. It can sell because it's weed. You know what I'm saying? I had guys. I knew guys, man. I still talk to the day that live in Atlanta. You know what I'm saying? First guy, man, I ever smoked Cushwick.

He was getting Cush in. And he was going, had the case managers bringing it in. Wow. A lot of pounds. And that's the fluffy. Yeah. So if you got two pounds of weed, 10 pounds of tobacco, liquor.

Where are you stashing all that? That wall, right? I could put a trap spot in that wall. You'll never know it's there unless I'll show it to you. In your cell? Yeah, right there, in that wall. Wow. All I need is the tools to cut it,

just big enough to where I can put stuff in it. And I get a laundry bag that has, it looked like a fishnet laundry bag. Mm-hmm. get a strain, get some paper clips, tie them together, make it look like fish hooks, right? Whereas maybe three or four on every end where hooks up. I tie it around real, but it'd be the heavy-duty paper clips.

Knock a hole in the wall, just big enough to put your hand in a bottle of a 16-ounce bottle in the phone, right? and I get the same color paint as the wall and I get surround wrap and I paint the surround wrap over the hole and I just take this surround wrap off put everything in the laundry bag and drop it all the way to the bottom

and just leave it there and I just get my strain with the paper clips put it down there and fish it back up because it's going snatch into the the fish in that laundry bag, it's going to hook it. And I just pull it up. Boom, boom, boom.

Whenever you need. And then just drop it back down, cover it up. I only pull out, only what I need or what I'm gonna say. Yep. And so you got cell search. They never found it.

Never, unless somebody tell it. Wow. Yep. That's the only thing about an open dorm. Can't really hide because everybody can see. Right.

So you have to pacify everyone. Yeah. You know, you got to spread the love around. Yeah, having your own cell is the ticket. Yeah. Or if the floor is more of a tile-looking, you just throw water down there and get the tools you need to get the towel up. Right. The only way to do that is with warm water because it's glue up under there, right?

You get that tile up, you put water down there, let the water sit to loosen up that cement. You just beat it. Boom, boom, boom, boom. To where you can, like, put a phone, put the size of a phone right there and put the tile on top. You just want to, you just want to fit your phone, nothing else.

And you'll be walking over it all day and we don't even know it, you know. So you were comfortable in there at one point. I mean, I did half my life in there. I had to. Right. It was about survival, nothing else. Yeah.

Do you think you made more, money hustling in there than you ever did on the streets? Um, nah, no, because I work, hustling wasn't like my main forte out here. Mm-hmm.

You know, because I don't mind working. I met before. Before you went. Probably in there. Yeah. Yeah. And you made the lieutenant a lot of money.

Yeah. Because every time she brings me some is $5,000. Fuck. Nothing more, nothing less. That was what we had. agreed on no matter unless my contraband what I'm asking for is starting to double in size then she going to want more as long as I stick to you know and the only way we knew how to do that to to beat them instead of it being like three or four pounds of tobacco hole we started to compress them

right and we can get more and at the time she ain't going to look So you had somebody on the streets that would take care of all the compression, get it already, and then he would just pass it off to her. So what it was is like, me and you might get together. Like, hey, man, I got a plug. Somebody that would bring it in. And you know anybody that sell this? So, yeah, I know somebody.

I said, we'll put something together. I get it in. And we'll negotiate either. I just pay the whole five, right? and then you give me half or whatever or we just split it down the middle. You know what I'm saying? And we're like, okay,

you get 10 pounds of tobacco in, I want five. If you got four pounds of marijuana, I just want one. You got 20 bottles of liquor. Give me six. You know what I'm saying? Because you're the most important.

You got the way to get it in. So you don't even have to put up your own money if you don't want. And I'd just be like, well, look, she won $5,000. what you're going to do. You know what I'm saying? And then we just go have.

Like, I'll tell you what, well, I'll put up three. You put up two. Yeah. Because I can make it back right here off their tobacco. And how long does it take you to run through like a load,

like a load of tobacco, marijuana and liquor? It varies. It varies because you're not the only one. Mm-hmm. You're not the only one. Sometimes you might have to sit on it. And sometimes there's a chance.

that they'll find it. You know, you got the K9 unit. They have dogs. They have dogs that sniff the lithium from the batteries of a cell phone. So they can smell that. And nine or ten times, you're keeping your phone with the contraband.

So if they find the phone, they find everything. So, you know, it's really on... Supply and demand, though. Yeah, because you may not be... able to get it in as fast as I can or we might get it in around the same time so basically you're gonna have your customers I'm gonna have mine did you have workers or were you just going hand-to-hand with it um a little bit of both mm a little bit of both because you might just be like you know you you're my people so you might be like hey man such and such trying to see man

if you got this you got all right huh and you're like hey man let me get something to smoke man like all right, huh? And were people like really smoking blunts in there? Like whole ass swisher sweet blunts. Man, you had a guy named, you had a guy. Those reek of weed. Like that seemed so sketchy. You had a guy named, uh, 380.

Was it 380? That was his nickname. He was gangster disciple. And he actually got a, uh, a PlayStation in. They were playing PlayStation and stuff in there, man, where I was at. Look out. And where would you smoke a blunt? Like on the yard?

Smoking in the unit. And just blow it in the toilet? What they're going to do? Come shake us down? That's all they can do. Yep. One night, man, look, I had a cell phone out. I had bottles of liquor out.

Like Crown. Like Apple Crown. Like come straight to the liquor store and get it. Apple Crown. I had two pounds of tobacco out, right, and messed around and got drunk and passed out. Here come a lieutenant slapping me in my face. I said, oh, man, she's like, if you don't put this stuff up,

I was like, man. You're like, get in here, baby. Yeah, like, I can't do them but respect it though, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, so. Damn, that was the lick. And tell us about, first of all, the weed, like, how is that sold out? How is that sold out? Like, is it sold in sticks or caps?

Like, and how much did that sell? So what they'll do, they get a Coke bottle top. They put weed in it. That's a quarter. $25. So just imagine you do a whole panel like that. God damn. It's like a fucking 200% markup.

Yep. And it's like... More than that, probably. I think I may maybe... I think like right at almost 1500 off an ounce. One ounce. So there's 36 ounces in a pound. Do the math.

You just made kilo money. Cocaine kilo money with one pound a weed. Well, I'm not going to say, you know, all that was the profit. Because sometimes, you know, you got homeboys. Yeah, you go look out for them. You know what I'm saying? You know, like, huh, sometimes, you know, you front it. Yeah.

You know, that was my thing. I'm affronted to you because I'd rather get a portion of my money back than to lose it all from a shakedown. Somebody telling on me. You know what I'm saying? Plus, you got to know who you credit in it too. You know, some people might only get $100 a month before the month get here. That $100 is gone. You know, you can only get into it four ways.

Here it is. You might be the sixth person. How are you going to get your money? So I compromise with you. But you're getting it so cheap and it sells for so much, it doesn't matter. Yeah. You got a lot of wiggle room. Yeah.

And then there was even the time I even owed somebody like $700 on bottles of liquor. They didn't went home. Parole went home. We wasn't even in the same unit. And I found out they made parole and went home. Just so happened they had the same. I reached out to them on Messenger on Facebook. And every time I got money, I was like, hey, man, what you want me to do with this money, man?

You know, I still owe you $700, right? You know what I say? He's like, man, I said, no, I owe you. I'm going to pay you. Because you're out there don't mean nothing. Yep. And I make sure when I left the prison system, bro, I ain't owe nobody. Your business was good.

Yeah. And I still paid him, even when I was still locked up, he paroled home. I still paid him his $700 because I owe that. Tell us about the liquor racket. How is the liquor sold and how much did it sell for? Man, that's crazy because, like, you can get the 16-ounce water bottles, right? And fill it up with the bottom shelf, ever clear. Ever clear is like $2.35, right?

Just fill it up and tape the top up of the water bottle. That's $100. Oh, my God. And you only pay that even $2.50. sense for it. You know what I'm saying? And then the lowest they will go is 75. Either way it goes, it's still a profit. Wow. So there were guys, if you have money in there, you could just stay fucked up if you want it. Oh man, I know for like from 2016 to the time I got, well, because in 2021, they put me on long term segregation. Yeah, I was in a hole until I got out. I was in

Parshman in lockdown. Yeah, they put me on long term because I was a high-risk inmate until it was time for me to go home. And so from 16 to parts of 2021, yeah, man, we would drink a liquor every weekend. We'll always find a reason to celebrate. Yeah, yeah. You know, we made our own holidays sometimes, man. You know, it was crazy.

And then we had one way of bringing it in, which somebody told on this right here. So it don't matter if I talk about it because it's already been exposed. So when we had a partner of ours named Memphis, he worked on maintenance. and he was 72 years old. He did almost like 52 years, and he died. The second week I was out, I got out. He died. And he was from Memphis, Tennessee,

and he got locked up for killing the state trooper. And he already did like 52 years. So it was way back then, you know, and he killed the state trooper. So he had access. to a truck he can drive around you know what I'm saying and he the only thing he wanted to do is smoke his little skeeter leg he little joint it was more paper than it was weed but that's what he wanted to do that's what he chose to do and drink a little liquor but it was more water than it was liquor you know

I'm saying but he enjoyed itself it ain't like he didn't have it because we gave him access to it whenever you want it you can have it because before we we started paying the guards, this is how we actually start getting the money. Right? They have the spare tire. They take the tire off the rim and put everything inside the tire, and then put the tire back on the rim. And these are the maintenance trucks for the prison. And then all we had to do is just say, hey, we have a leak or a flood with the toilet.

he'll come over there, fix the toilet, and drop the contraband off. Wow. And we'll put it in the AC unit that only we had a key to, right? We'll open the door up because it was a clean room where you put water in the mop bucket

to clean the floor of the zone up with. We'll pull that door open so you can't see it's going in this door because there's a camera right there. Right. So the door, when we open it, we just have somebody like they getting water putting in a mob bucket. Like they're about to clean up just to shield that camera while we go in the AC unit

and we take the screws off the AC unit and we got duffel bags right there, garbage bags. You know what I'm saying? We just grab out what we need. You know, we had one of them drill with turn it real fast. Put it back on. Put it back on. Go out, lock the door. And that was the stash spot.

That was the stash spot. They went on our own people, man, told on it. Oh, my God. So how did, so this guy's got access, he's driving around the prison in this truck. How do they, how do you get the bags into the prison to put them in the tires? So they'll work with the supervisors. The supervisors would take the truck home, right? The supervisors would get paid to look the other way, while they get to,

get the spare tire the truck stays at the supervisor's house you just go pick up the spare so you can have time to do you don't want to do it here yeah right make sure everything is is good put the tire back on the on the rim put it back in the in the truck and when you go to work that morning they're not looking for it because they don't know about it they only look for area that they know about somebody that You know, and then, man, we did this man for a while. We did it for a while. It's unbelievable.

And then we were getting bags in. The next year you know, man, K-9 started sniffing around, the K-9 unit. And they started sniffing around one night around the AC unit. They kept trying to get in, but it was locked. We'll lock it. And we know certain times of the day we'll go in there and get out what we need. and put it in the ceiling. We can push the ceiling up

and we'll put stuff there. So we lose it, we lose it, but we don't lose everything. We just get out where we're going to have, what we're going to drink on, smoke on, you know. Hustle? Yeah, you know, give out to everybody on the zone. You know what I'm saying?

And K-9 come in, walking around, they're sniffing, they checking all the rooms, they pat-searching us. That was the only other thing I hated. about prison, bro. The humiliation, the strip searches, bend over cough. Like, man. I never got used to it while I was in there.

You never can't get used to, bro. And then they leave. They come back a couple of days later. Now they want to get inside the AC unit. Then we even heard them on the phone one day saying, we're at in the AC unit. Like they were talking to an inmate. And we were trying to see, man, who was all not on his own with us.

But everybody was on his own with us, and we couldn't figure out who it was. Who's telling? Yeah. Come to find out, it was one of our own people. He was putting stuff in there. Then for some reason, he started taking it out, moving it, putting it somewhere else. And we just later on, we just kind of put two and two together, like, had to be. be him, but we couldn't prove it.

Right. But nobody got knocked. Yeah. Oh, they went in and took everything, got everything. But they didn't get you guys. Yeah. Oh, no, not us, but they got the contraband. They got the contraband. Yeah, right, right.

They got the contraband. Because I put my phone right here in this area and normally I put the plate where the filters for the ACU when it goes. I put my phone, like I lift the filters up and there's a spot. I could put my phone in, right?

And normally when I do that, I put the plate, the steel plate over it and tighten the screws up, right? You'll have to take all the filters out to actually see my phone. That night, I didn't do it. I said, I'm going to put my phone here real quick. I'm going to go jump in the shower.

I'm going to come back out. I'm going to grab my phone, right? Because at this time, I was still doing my classes. Right. Taking online classes, yeah. Yeah, man, as soon as I get in the shower and come out, K-9, everybody hit the floor. I'm like, fuck.

I should have put, and they were going in that AC unit and they found my phone. They took the filters out, everything. Sent you to the hole? Huh? What do they do? They send you the home? Because they don't know who phone that belongs to,

you know what I'm saying? They don't know. As long as they don't catch nobody in that room, you know what I'm saying? And I was like, man, damn. It just so happened, had a backup. Because we, in these, they had like a little chemical room where all the chemicals were stored.

And there was a brick wall, like cinder blocks. And up top, it had a drop down, right? So I used that same method with the fishnet laundry bag and the string with the hook. I use that same method. And I dropped some stuff down there as a backup. Man, so you were really, you had your run of the zone. You had it on lock for a minute there.

It's amazing what enough time can do to the human mind. Like, it's ingenious. It's about survival. Right. And it was crazy because on my way up here, me and my guy, we were listening to Matthew Cox. What the guy named? Hold on, take that out. We don't like to promote Matthew here on this show.

Oh. I'm just fucking rude. He's a good friend of why. Okay, so we will listen to an episode that he was doing with one of the Mexican mafia members, Boxer, right? And how, I was saying how. No, that's me, bro. That was you?

Yeah, he doesn't, Matthew doesn't know shit about boxer. Renee, Boxer? That's my dude. Yeah, okay, okay, okay, all right. So, Luke. You were listening to the Connect, as you should have then. Right, because he had to blur his face out. Yeah, that was me.

Okay, my bad. That's all good. Right, right. So, uh, and I was like telling him, I was like, man, like, for a guy that don't have no education, spend most of his life in prison, a real live killer. Yeah. Right. I said, man, you listen to how he talks.

Incredible. Right? And I'm like, bro, just think if he used that way of thinking, like, that man can run a Fortune 500 company. You know what I'm saying? Like, but we so caught up and so deep into the life where ain't no such thing as running a Fortune 500. He's like, you're so caught up in this way of life now, man, so this is all you know. You know what I'm saying? And sometimes, and it goes back to even the contraband, like, you'll find ways to survive.

But then when you get out here in the free world, you catch you. yourself struggling. Right. You know what I'm saying? And I'll be like, I can't, for some reason, I can't even like understand that. I've talked to so many guys who just were geniuses with their hustle, their drug trafficking, in prison, running the units. And you're right.

It seems like when they come out in the free world, they can't channel that survival instinct and that that optimism to like take that chance, you know? Because what you were doing takes brains and it takes balls and it takes just the will to go do it. And, you know, we, I guess could we be so dedicated in ways to manipulate and beat the system, right? That we be so gun-ho on that. But then when we out here, we like,

I just work in 9 to 5. I just try to survive like that. You know, but then you can use different means to actually not have to struggle. You know, it's like the game changes now. But because you don't know that game, you only know this game, and it's kind of hard for you to play.

But it still comes down to your will. Like, trust me, I've been around a lot of successful people that are not brilliant at all. at all. Right. And but they're so, their mind is so focused and they're just consistently working at it that they make it happen. It's all about if you want it bad enough. And so, yeah, that's, that's really what I think.

It's adapting. Humans will adapt to everything. So you adapted to this horrible prison environment and made a way for yourself. You can adapt to society. And what's crazy is because when I first got out, man, I ain't know what I was going to do. You know, I was like, man, what I'm going to do with my life? Right. And especially, man, you spent half your life incarcerated.

You know, like, man, it was going to give you a chance. You know, because, man, this thing, man, I had to learn. And it was sad because, like, it would irk me knowing the fact that, that I didn't know how to operate a washing machine because of the technology. I could operate a phone because we had them, right? It was hard for me to operate a car. It just felt awkward.

Just dealing with people. Like, you know, the rudeness, the mannerisms. And it was like, like, I didn't know really how to adjust at first, right? And my girl just kept saying, like, no one is after you. You know, you're not in there no more. You know, you're going to have to figure it out. You know, she was like, talk about it.

For what? I ain't talked to nobody in all these years. Why I'm going to talk about it now, right? And in Sloat, like, man, I missed that on opportunities on blessings, right? because I still was holding on to a prison mentality, right? Something don't go my way or you look at me for too long or I feel like you being slick out the mouth, then I react, I respond or I say something that would jeopardize my job.

Man, I had a good job as a supervisor at a resort, at a hotel resort. When you got out of prison? Yes. Wow. And I was given a chance. and I was a supervisor hourly. I was getting paid by the hour as a supervisor. I still had that prison mentality.

And I jacked myself out of it. You know, I got into it. I actually stepped into a meeting where all the big heads at, the CEOs, the president, food and beverage directors, stuff like that, and confronted my doctor. director in front of them, you know, like on some strong stuff, you know, like, man, you know.

Like you did with the guard. Yeah, you know. You better bring that shit in. And the next day, I had to go to HR and, you know, they fired me. You know what I'm saying? But it was a learning experience because I did that. And even right now today, you know, I blame myself because I'm like, man, I didn't have to be that way. I was in a good place.

I'm in a good place now. You see what I'm saying? I'm in environmental health and safety. On the 29th, I've been at this job now going on two years, right? I learned a lot because of my partner dealing with OSHA. And on the 29th, I'll be getting my OSHA 5-11. It's a certification. I pay like $650 for it.

They're not cheap. You know, I kind of found my niche. And I have another certification coming up on the 15th. I'm going to be taking that one before the one on the 29th. And so I got a lot of stuff lined up, you know, to be certified. I have no doubt that you're going to do great things. I mean, look at you, if you're able to manage a mini Mississippi prison empire, dude, you're going to be able to supervise and manage other people.

Yeah, and not only that, but it's a work in progress, you know, because I have to work on me first. And I came a long way, man, like, you know, my attitude, you know, just being able to adapt, being able to process, you know, people, you know, because my thing was people, you know, I don't trust people. You know, but at some point in life, you know, you have to. You have to learn to, you know, you'll know, because all the things you've been through in life, you'll know who's for you and who's not. You know, I accomplish publishing my book. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

And it was crazy because my friend, he's a senior vice president at Tyler Perry Studios now. He used to be my school teacher back in high school. Right. I graduated in 93. So as Compton High, dude. Yeah, many, many moons are good. Shout out, dude. Yeah, tarbades, man. It's not even the same no more. You know, because Dr. Dre donated like $10 million. Yeah, it looks like a college campus now probably. Yeah, it's nice, man. It's nice. Because then, back then, it looked like a correctional institution. You know what I'm saying? And he was my schoolteacher as well as my mentor, I can say, because I'm I used to go to him and talk to him, he would give me advice. Even then, he will always tell me, man, like, man, write a book. Your life is interesting, man.

You can write, you know. I'm sure somebody else's life is way more, you know, interesting to mine. And then so 2003, I was locked up in a hole, and I still stayed in touch with him, right? And he sent me this book on how to write movie scripts. I was like, man, I don't know. I don't write no movie script. I just kept the book and just read it. To put forward to 2018.

Got the cell phone, smart phone. I go on YouTube and I was looking how to write movie scripts, examples. And I saw this guy with the exact same book. And I just started looking at it, going over it, trying to process it in my head. looked at, I don't know how many times before I actually started writing. I started writing, wrote a couple pages. I threw it all the way. I said, I don't even know what to write, right?

I said, I don't know what to write. So, because I grew up on rosecrans, I said, you know what? I mean, it's going to be inspired by true events, right? All the events that I went on growing up, I'm a based, a fictitious story, have a plot around the, events, right? Come up with these characters. Some of the characters are real, but I change names around, you know, some of the main characters, some of them, one of them is me.

Maybe in one event is me, but some of the other events, it's not me. You know what I'm saying? So I started writing. And because of him, you know, he inspired me to write. this because of him I was able to write my book and it's inspired by true events and it's title rosecrans so can people find that where can people find oh amazon okay barns and nobles books a million we'll put a link to that in the description of the episode yeah uh my social uh you know my social media yeah uh instagram ticot all that man so it is you know i got a uh i actually

wrote a part two i finished part two to uh to rose crans it's called a crash unit and this probably be uh inspired by true events it's a mixture of the same storyline from part one but i begin then to more depth of like the rampart scandal the crash unit uh uh tupac murder uh stuff like that you know kind of leading up to those events, you know, just to, you know, get something to the readers, you know. I think right about what we talked about today, man, the Mississippi prison hell that you survived, I've never heard a story like it, man, so I really appreciate you coming on today, bro. Yeah, I appreciate it too. That was something special.

I wish you the best. I'm sorry that that happened to you. Like, you were heading down the wrong path. You were probably going to catch a case at some point, but. I'm sorry that you had to do time like that for something that you didn't do. I mean, you know, I'm a firm believer in this, you know, that God is the best of planners. You know, whatever it is that God wanted me to learn, that it was meant for me to learn. Because you have two types of people in the world.

You have two types of lessons, a taught lesson and a bought lesson. You know, I can keep telling you all day, don't do this, don't do that. That's a taught lesson. but then you have a bought lesson where you bump your head a few times, your head are going to start hurting. Right? So whatever the reason was, you know, I pay with my freedom, but maybe this second time around will be greater for me because now I'm more mature. You know, I appreciate more in life now than I did then. For sure.

You know, and even being able to do these type of interviews on these podcasts, it blows my mind. mind because I'd be like, why me? You know, when this guy, his story is way more, you know, fascinating than mine, you know what I'm saying? But at the end of the day, I'm like, it's God's plan, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, I just keep, just leave it at that. That's it, man. And just keep it moving and still try to do great things. You will, and you are. And I appreciate that, man. You got it, man. All right, you guys, go check him out. Diaz. This was a pleasure. It was a treat. It was a treat. It was a nice. honest too, man. All right, you guys. Hell yeah. We'll see you next time. Take care.