Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 188

“I’m sixty-two now. I have three more years. I sold heroin. A...

“I’m sixty-two now. I have three more years. I sold heroin. A lot of it. I had forty people working for me. If you were to ask me thirty-four years ago what it was going to be like in prison, I couldn’t have imagined. It’s been the same thing every day. Everyone I care about is gone. My mother passed. My father passed. My brother and sister. If I look backwards, I’ll lose my mind. I just try to keep busy and take it one day at a time. I’ve done every self-help program in the system. I’m the lead facilitator for the Men of Influence program. We teach behavioral skills, financial management, and entrepreneurship. In the five years that I’ve been in charge, we’ve graduated 250 people, and only one has come back to prison. I tell them: ‘Don’t let me be your future.’ And if I could say one thing to everyone who reads this interview. I want to apologize for the harm that I caused. If I could go back in time and correct it, I would. But that’s what I’ve been trying to do for the past 34 years. I grew up in the Baltimore projects. Everyone that I knew had nothing. I was trying to improve my life with the information that I had at the time. I grabbed the wrong rope. I’m sorry if I caused generations behind me to go astray. It wasn’t my intention to bring pain to the community. And I really think that when I’m released, I can be an asset to society.”

(Federal Correctional Institution: Cumberland, Maryland)

“I knew a person who worked for an insurance company. I’d give...

“I knew a person who worked for an insurance company. I’d give her some money and then she’d give me all the information I needed to open fake credit lines. I’d create fake drivers licenses and then go into stores and open up lines of credit. You can buy about $10,000 worth of stuff at a time, and then sell it for 70% of face value. I’d also rent cars under their name, change the VIN number, and then sell them with fake titles. You can print a fake title on nice parchment, add a watermark, and nobody looks too close. Then even after I destroyed their credit, I could still use their information. I could print up some fake checks with their name on it and cash them at banks. My checks had magnetic ink and everything. I learned it all on the Internet. I tried to stay emotionally detached. I never learned too much about the people. They were just names to me. Nothing personal. Plus all of them were government employees. So why should I feel guilty? Does the government feel guilty about slavery?”

(Federal Correctional Institution: Cumberland, Maryland)

“I was convicted of distributing a large amount of crack...

“I was convicted of distributing a large amount of crack cocaine. I was offered sixty months to cooperate, but I turned it down. My family is still mad about that. They say I chose the streets over them. But I couldn’t bring someone else down with me, so they gave me five life sentences. I’ve been here twenty years. I’ve seen a lot of these younger kids come back two or three times already. I try to guide them but it’s no use. They only seem interested in finding a better way to do bad. The library is always empty. None of these young guys take advantage of the programs. I encourage them to get their GED’s while they’re here, but they laugh at me. They don’t respect their elders. Crack changed everything. So many of these young men saw their mothers and fathers doing drugs in the street. So many of their parents went to prison. These kids were forced to raise themselves. So they aren’t about to listen to anyone. I did the same thing to my kids. My son got murdered. My daughter had to raise herself because her mom is doing thirteen life sentences. But she’s the exception. She’s got every excuse to be bitter, but she doesn’t even talk about it. She’s got a 4.0 at the University of Virginia right now.”

(Federal Correctional Complex: Allenwood, Pennsylvania)

“It wasn’t really a gang. There aren’t Bloods or Crips in...

“It wasn’t really a gang. There aren’t Bloods or Crips in Puerto Rico. It was a neighborhood thing. There were no colors. There was no initiation. We just grew up together. I had two cousins and two brother-in-laws who were in the organization. There were ranks: watchers, dealers, runners, leaders, enforcers. But the ranks didn’t really get in the way of the relationships. We all played basketball together. We threw block parties for the whole neighborhood. It was like a family. There was only one entrance and one exit to our neighborhood. The houses were all close together. There were no lawns. On the night it ended, I could hear the doors breaking down all around me. Helicopters were overhead. I kept getting calls saying: ‘They got this person, they got that person, they got your cousin.’ I just sat in the middle of the living room, smoking a cigarette. Suddenly I heard a bunch of footsteps coming up the stairs. I heard the sound of a power saw and sparks started coming off my door. I went to open the door but I got hit with a flashbang, and eight guys rushed in. They got everyone that night. They didn’t even bring us to a jail. They brought us to a basketball stadium.”

(Federal Correctional Complex: Hazelton, West Virginia)

“I was in college when I started. I was going to school and...

“I was in college when I started. I was going to school and working at a print shop. There was a drug point outside of my apartment building. I played basketball with the guy who ran it. He told me: ‘I’ve got one night open, and I’m going to offer it to you first.’ My shift was on Friday, 6pm to 6am. We sold weed, heroin, and crack. I made $500 that first night. I was nineteen. My girlfriend wasn’t sure about it, but I bought her some high heels with the money, and I promised her I’d keep working at the print shop. After a few weeks, Saturday and Sunday opened up too. Then Wednesday. I started making 2k, then 3k, then 5k per week. I went to register for my next semester of college, but the line was too long, so I never went back. I didn’t have to wake up at 7 AM anymore. I could wake up whenever I wanted. The money made me feel powerful. People would stop talking when I began to talk. I could give an old lady $100 to pay her light bill. I could give kids $50 to go to the movies. The guy who first offered me the job had a house, and kids, and cars, and a motorcycle. He’d been working for twenty years with no problem. I thought: ‘Why can’t that be me?’”

(Federal Correctional Complex: Hazelton, West Virginia)

“I’ve organized a lot of programs in prison. One of the...

“I’ve organized a lot of programs in prison. One of the classes I started is called Creative Parenting. It’s the most popular class here. The waiting list is really long. I don’t have any kids myself, but I noticed that most guys are really soft for their kids. So that gave me an idea. Mainly we just make stuff and send it to the kids. We’ll do coloring projects where the father will color half the picture, and the kid will color the second half. We write bedtime stories. Most of the guys write about sports, but we make sure that every story has a moral. Sometimes we’ll take funny photos and send them to the kids. One guy’s daughter was really into My Little Pony. He was a tough guy. He was in a gang and everything, but he put his hair into pigtails and pretended to be a horse. We did another class where we made cards for kids with cancer. I had my family set it up with a hospital. We made about 200 cards. They didn’t want us to write ‘I hope you feel better,’ because that reminds the kids of what they’re going through. So we tried to keep it focused on Christmas. There were 150 guys in my unit, and 60 signed up for that program. A lot of the guys had to wait outside because the room was too small.”

(Federal Correctional Complex: Hazelton, West Virginia)

“My dad couldn’t handle me. My mother was an alcoholic so he...

“My dad couldn’t handle me. My mother was an alcoholic so he raised us on his own. I burned our house to the ground when I was four years old. I didn’t like my brother’s stuffed animal, so I set it on fire. The next year I punched my dad in the face. I threw a desk at my teacher in fifth grade. I ran away when I was twelve. My dad tried everything. He took me to psychologists. They diagnosed me with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, so they put me on medication. But it didn’t help much. Nobody could control me. They’d actually have to hold me down when I went into a rage. Dad could never get a point across because if he raised his voice, I’d explode. He’d try to give me incentives. He’d say things like: ‘If you do good in school, I’ll bring you to a ball game.’ He’d follow the school bus to make sure I didn’t skip, but then I’d just run out the back exit. Neither of my brothers ever got in trouble. It was just me. I’ve gotten multiple assault charges. I fight. That’s what I do. I feel like my head is going to burst and I see stars and I snap. My dad comes to visit about once a month, and we talk things over, just like we’re doing now. And he asks me all the time, ‘What else could I have done?’ I tell him: ‘Nothing. You did everything you could.’”

(Federal Correctional Complex: Hazelton, West Virginia)

“I was a good student. I did football, karate, basketball, all...

“I was a good student. I did football, karate, basketball, all sorts of activities. I never skipped school. I first sold drugs when I was twelve or thirteen. It wasn’t a full time thing. Just whenever I needed money. My mom was raising four of us in a one-bedroom apartment, so we didn’t have money for clothes. I just needed enough to keep people from focusing on me. Just enough to keep moving. But as I got older, it cost more and more to stay up. Girls came into the picture. I wanted to impress them. I started dealing more and more, and all the other activities faded out of my life. I tried to study nursing after high school. I paid my tuition with drug money. But I lost focus after two years and fell back on drug dealing. I thought I could be double-minded. But it’s not possible. You can’t do good and bad at the same time. The bad always wins. There’s no such thing as Robin Hood. Nobody wants to hear that you’re dealing drugs to feed your family. Prosecutor doesn’t want to hear that. Society doesn’t want to hear that. The system doesn’t want to hear that. There’s a verse in the Book of Ezekiel, I forget which one, but it talks about this. It says something like: ‘If you do all good, and one bad, the good will not be mentioned.’”

(Federal Correctional Institution: Cumberland, Maryland)

“I got caught up in a little something. I’ve got twenty days...

“I got caught up in a little something. I’ve got twenty days left. Nobody knows I’m here. I’ve got somebody updating my Facebook page for me. All my friends think I’m in Hawaii right now.”

(Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York)

“I was alone with four kids. My mother was sick. I was making...

“I was alone with four kids. My mother was sick. I was making $500 a week working at a restaurant in Harlem. This Colombian woman told me she could help. She said, ‘We need honest people like you.’ I really needed the money. They gave me a job as a transporter. I drove cocaine from Manhattan to Massachusetts. They gave me some extra to sell at the restaurant. I only had a few clients. I did it for two years. I never did any drugs myself. Then I was set up in a sting by the same woman who got me started. I knew I’d done wrong but I’d never been in trouble before. I thought I would do a little time in jail. The detectives told me: ‘You’re a leader. You’re this. You’re that.’ The lawyer told me to sign these papers. I didn’t understand what to do. They told me I didn’t have a chance at trial. They told me they were helping me. I was given 25 years.”

(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)