My Shocking & Inhumane Treatment at the Hands of the NYPD | Jonathon Wohl
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To find your next pair of glasses, sunglasses, or contact lenses, or to find the Warby Parker store nearest you, head over to warbyparker.com. That's warbyparker.com. Jonathan, welcome to Locked In, man. Thank you for having me. Of course, man. You came from New York City today? Well, Jersey.

Jersey, okay. It's kind of the same distance, not bad. A little less traffic coming out of there today. Thanks so much for coming, man. You have a very interesting story. Yeah, I do. From what I've seen on the Cliff Notes, and we're excited to have you here today. Well, again, thank you for having me. I do appreciate it. Of course. Did you grow up in New Jersey or New York? No, I grew up a little bit of everywhere, but mainly New York City, yeah. Okay, where in New York City?

At first, I grew up in the Bronx a little bit, but I was raised mostly in Jamaica, Queens. Who'd you grow up with?

I grew up with a foster mother and my foster father. I was in foster care since I was born. So I grew up amongst a lot of different foster homes. Did you ever know your real parents? I met my birth mother when I was 33, so a few years ago. I never met my birth father.

Did you have any siblings? Yes. So I have two brothers that grew up in the foster care, not program, but that grew up in foster care with me that went to the different homes when I did. And they were your actual blood brothers? Correct. Yes. Did you ever find out why you got put into foster care? Yeah. So...

I found out when I met my mother that my mother was a crackhead and a prostitute and my father was her pimp. And I don't say that to like put a label on, you know, those type of labels. But I say that, you know, because that's the reality of, you know, the situation. So when I was born, I was actually sent, you know, directly to the foster care agency in New York City.

Um, and I was there, you know, for, for a while. How'd that make you feel when you found out about that situation? Um, I was older, so I think, uh, I got through a lot of what I was looking for, but, um,

it's still, you know, it's still, it's a wanting of, it's a longing of wanting to know more and not being able to get all the information that you want, you know, but it was, it was okay. Were you told by your foster parents that you were a foster child? No. So, I,

I guess you just realize it as, you know, it goes, as life goes on, you realize that these aren't. And then they take you back and forth between when you're still a foster child. They take you between events at the foster care agency and different doctors meetings and different things. So, so, you know,

that your foster parents aren't your real parents when you're younger. Did you have a good foster family? Did they have good jobs? What was the environment like? No. So, like I said, I was born in...

The foster care agency basically raised me. By the time I was three, I've been to three different foster homes. I'm knowing this now. I didn't really remember this back then. I'm knowing this now because I was able to get a lot of my paperwork from the foster care agency that detailed some of these things. But...

When I was three, I was in three different foster homes and they were all abusive, you know, physical abuse, you know, mental abuse, things like that. I don't remember anything sexually. It was just mainly mostly physical. What kind of abuse was taking place? Um...

My brothers could know more than me because I think my mind kind of, the way my mind works, it blocks out a lot of it. But there was a situation where my foster mother in this one house, I wouldn't stop crying. We were on our way to church or something like that. And she like swung me into a, you know, the garbage, you know how they pick up the garbage, the trash.

I always forget the name of these things. The dumpster. You know how when they come to pick out the garbage, do you have the handles at the end? So while we were walking to church, I guess as a baby, I kept crying and she like swung me and my face hit the handle of that dumpster and it turned and it made the whole, I don't remember if it was like the left or the right side of my face, but it made the whole thing black and blue. And when I went to church,

The agency for my annual checkup or whatever it was, my foster mother at the time told them that I fell in the park. And that's what they accepted. Oh, wow. Yeah. Another time was, I guess, I don't remember exactly what started the whole argument, but, you know, I'm a kid. And we get back home and...

I remember my foster mother yelling at me. And the next thing you know, she grabs an umbrella and, you know, the bottom of the umbrellas, it has like that little metal piece. She starts to beat me in the head with it. And when she does that, like I just remember like blood coming down my face and then me just like passing out.

You remember GoldenEye? You ever played GoldenEye, right? Of course, yeah. The original one. Yeah, so you remember at the end of GoldenEye when you get shot or when the blood comes out on the screen? That's exactly kind of how it felt at the moment. But I woke up to...

her rubbing like some tiger balm on my head. I still have the marks on my head, but I woke up to her rubbing tiger balm in my head and telling me, you know, what happens in this house stays in this house. And that made me really scared to tell anybody about, you know, the abuse that was happening to not just me, but my brothers as well, you know, so. Did you just start to develop like hate towards your foster parents or your feelings at that time period? No, I don't...

I thought it was something that was supposed to happen. Abuse, when you're a kid, you have no control over it, you know? So when it's happening to you, you're thinking, you know, these are the adults, so they know better than I do, you know? So I went through life for a little while thinking, you know, this was supposed to be happening because I did something wrong, you know? So it wasn't hate. It was...

It was more of whenever I went to a new house, it was more of, you know, the usual, you know, because every house that I like I said, every house that I that I went to, it was it was abuse. And it was always it was always for something minor like us not. I mean, it's not minor, but us not having something to eat, not getting enough to eat or or, you know, the parent foster parents being abused.

really angry about something and taking it out on, on, on the kids that are not biologically theirs, you know? So it's easier to, uh, to hit a kid that's not yours than to hit a kid that came from you, you know? So it wasn't hate, but, um, I was, um, I was a little, um, I would act out, you know, I would act out too. And I guess that was what, um, uh, replaced the hate for me.

Were your foster parents well off financially or did they struggle for money? So the first few homes I went to were all in the process. So I was like I said, I was raised a little bit of everywhere. I was Brooklyn, the Bronx. The first few families, they were they weren't financially stable at all. With foster care, I guess the.

the city or the agency pays you to, you know, to have that child or whatever. Um, now it was me and my two brothers. So, um, those are three people, three human being kids that, you know, you're being paid to, um, to take care of. And, um,

So I guess most of the families were doing it, I believe were doing it for the money. But the family I was adopted into, they were a little bit more financially well off than the rest of the families before. What kind of kid would you describe yourself as? I couldn't sit still. I couldn't sit still. I couldn't pay attention.

From reading, like, the notes from when I was, like, three, four, five years old, I was... I was evaluated... I was psychologically evaluated. They did my IQ test. My IQ turned out to... At four years old, I think my IQ, it said, was 59. So they labeled me a mentally retarded or a mental retardation. You know, so I was very...

I couldn't pay attention for nothing. Like if a teacher in school, if a teacher was talking to me, I would, you know, I could hear her talking, but I'm thinking about something else or I'm looking or paying attention to something else. So it was very hard for me to listen or pay attention as I was growing up. Were you going to school regularly, attending school, even though you were hopping around family-wise? Yes. So when...

In the Bronx, I went to, if I remember correctly, it was like PS100 or something like that. I think the school was like across the street from the projects or something where I was living. But they put me in special education as soon as I got to pre-K. I guess my IQ level was so low that, you know, and me not being able to pay attention, they put me into pre-K. And yeah.

In most schools that I went to, it wasn't like I wanted to be the class clown, but I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be heard. I felt like, you know, I couldn't do the work to the best of my ability, but I could make someone laugh. I could, you know, make someone's day better. That's, you know, that's how I was growing up. So that was that. And did you end up going to a public high school? Yes. So...

When I was seven years old, I came out to Queens and the family that the foster agency put me with, my foster father was Jewish and my foster mother was black.

Next to them lived my grandmother, which is my foster mother's mother. Next to them lived my uncle. And then next to them lived my cousin. So we had like a quarter of the block, right? And next to them were neighbors that were really cool and things like that. So we had like a quarter of the block. When I started going to school...

They like I said, I was I was put in special ed in in public school as well. They actually took me out of special ed because they said I didn't a teacher took me out of public school and said I didn't need to be there. The reason for that was because.

Like I said, I used to get in trouble a lot as a kid. I used to steal a lot. And the reason for that is the money that I used to steal from my foster parents and stuff like that, I used to spend it on snacks like candy. And I have a big candy thing now, like candy and snacks. And so I grew up in every family thinking that I needed to steal in order to get the snacks that I wanted and things like that. So...

What my foster mother did was one day I was caught stealing, but I wasn't stealing for snacks. In the community that we lived in, it was a gang community, you know, it was Crips in that community.

I had a friend that lived down the block from my house where I lived and these gang members knew him. So they came to my house one morning and they told me that if I didn't give them, it was two of them, if I didn't give them $100 a week that they were going to kill me and my friend down the block.

So me at this, you know, at this time, I'm, you know, I'm young, so I'm afraid. I never, you know, I don't know what gangs or whatever. So I start to steal from my foster parents and I start to give it to the, you know, to the gang bangers that would show up at my house. They would knock on the window, you know, so this happened for like three weeks straight.

The reason it stopped was because one day I waited for my foster parents to leave the house and they kept the money in their room so I would run inside their room and I would go steal the money. Now this one day I heard, I thought I heard like a noise like them coming back from wherever they was at or something. So I grabbed, you know, whatever money I grabbed and then I left.

When I left, I realized that instead of $200 that I usually take to give to the guys, I took 300. So now I'm young, I'm probably like nine, 10, I don't remember, but I have this extra $100 with me and I don't know what to, you know, I never had this much money.

So what I do is I go to school the next day, I think it was, and I go to the store. When I go to the store, I hand the guy behind the counter $100 and I tell him that I want all candy,

all candy, you know? So he's looking at me like I'm crazy, but I'm telling him I want candy. I want candy. So he's, he gives me this big brown paper bag and he starts filling it. It probably wasn't a hundred dollars in candy. Cause back then candy was like five, the sweetest fish and the peanut chews. They were like 5 cents here and there. So he just gave me like this big brown bag of candy and, and, um, I brought it to school.

Now this is public school and in public school we used to play a game called seven up where you put your head down. So while playing seven up I have this bag of candy next to me and when everybody puts their head down I'm going inside the bag and I'm taking a candy and I'm opening it. But you could hear the rappers and stuff like that so kids are looking up to see what I'm doing. So now I'm passing out the candy to different kids.

The teacher catches this and the teacher takes the whole bag of candy, asks me where I got it from. I don't say anything. They call my foster mother and father. They were pissed off. I finally told, I didn't tell them to this day. They don't know that I was stealing the money. But I told them that I did steal the money from them. And what they decided to do was,

Remember I told you my grandmother lived next door. They took me out of the house that we all were living in and they put me next door with my grandmother. And at the time it was no one living there but my grandmother and her caretaker. So I was on the second floor. They put me in the room. It was a small room. It was like a little TV in there with the, you know, the dial that spin. It was that TV, but they ended up taking the TV away.

They put a lock outside the door and I couldn't leave the room unless someone came and unlocked the door and brought me out. Whenever breakfast, lunch, and dinner was being served, my brothers would come across the street with the food and they'll unlock the door and they'll give it to me and then they'll lock it again.

Uh, summers I was in there, you know, uh, but that was my punishment for, you know, whatever. And that became a constant punishment to whatever, whatever bad thing I was doing at the time. Um, so that allowed me to be able to teach myself how to read and write. My grandmother's house at the time, she had a bookshelf when you enter the door. Uh, this bookshelf had a whole bunch of encyclopedias. It had dictionaries. It had, um,

Poet different poets. I've read at Edgar Allan Poe the Telltale Heart I've read I've Romeo and Juliet I've read poetry was like my thing and she just had so many books, you know and and and

With the dictionary and with the different books I was reading, anytime I got to a word where I didn't understand the meaning of it, I was able to go to the dictionary looking up and in my mind like, okay, so this is how that word fits. So in my mind, I'm able to read something and visually understand.

see it in my head and play it in my head. So reading was always a big thing for me. I was always able to read, I believe, really good. So whenever I got to middle school and things like that, my behavior would put me in a special ed. They would say I had behavior problems like that. But once the teacher sat me down and talked to me one-on-one and we reviewed things one-on-one, they noticed that I wasn't as...

It was just a behavior problem. It wasn't an intelligence kind of problem. So school wasn't really, even up until high school, I was never really a school person. I was always, like I said, acting out.

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Do you have dreams, aspirations for the future after school? What were your plans? Yeah, young, you know, being young, I always wanted to do whatever made the most money. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a firefighter at once. I wanted to be a police or FBI agent, a CIA, anything that I seen made a lot of money. That's what I wanted to do.

Living in the neighborhood that I live in, a lot of those options aren't there for people like us. In our neighborhoods, we do things that we think is fun at the time. We hang out with different friends and we think...

At the time that all these things are fun to do and there's no consequences to these actions that we do them blindly and stupidly. A perfect example, when I was younger, remember I tell you about that friend that lived down the block. He was really my only he was like my best friend because I didn't have a lot of friends growing up.

But he knew all the gang members and stuff. So one day we were walking down the street and one of these gang members, they wanted to, they stopped us. He used to own this van where you could slide the, it wasn't a minivan, but you know, remember those vans? Was it called like an Astro van? Remember the Jay and Silent Bob van that they slide, it slides back and it's like a whole thing.

Scooby Doo kind of in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my, so he had. Like a Volkswagen. Yeah, yeah, like something like that. So he had one of those vans. I remember me and my friend stopped, he stopped us and he's like, listen, you guys, you guys want to, you guys want to join the gang? To be down, I'm about to go to Brooklyn and I'm about to put in some work. And my friend, he was quiet. He didn't say nothing. But, you know, something just told me like, like to tell him like, nah, I'm good. Like, I'm going to be about to go home.

So, you know, me and my friend went home. Next thing you know, I hear that the guy that stopped us, he went to Brooklyn and he started shooting at random blood individuals that was on the corner in Brooklyn. And, you know, he was caught. And all these years later, he's in prison for life and he turned Muslim. And now he's telling other people what not to do. You know, but in the areas that we live in,

a situation that sudden just, you know, it could change your whole life. Because if I would have said, listen, let's go, let's, let's, let's go. Um, it would have been three lives. I would have been in prison for life instead of, instead of one, you know what I'm saying? So, uh, uh, in our neighborhoods, we turn to things that make the time go by faster, um, uh, than focusing on, um,

what's, you know, something like school or bettering ourselves when we're at an age that young, you know, when I, I don't think our minds are focused enough to

you know, look at the future that much ahead, if you get what I mean. Yeah. Were you interested in the gang life at all? Because you grew up in that area, you had friends in it. Did that interest you? Did drugs, did, you know, alcohol, any of that? No, no. And did you think you had any criminal behavior to you? No, I think for the most part, I grew up knowing what it felt like to, you know, to, to,

take advantage of someone that, that didn't deserve it. You know, you get what I'm saying? So in the gang life, I always knew that at some point there's going to be a time where you don't want to do something that, that, you know, you're forced to do or, you know, something like that. So it was never, you know, it didn't, it didn't intrigue me at all to join anything where, you know, I knew down the line, I only ended up in prison or death or,

So no. What happens after high school? Take us through that. So right before, so during, I would say during high school, me and my friend from down the block,

He we go out one day and and uh, we we start to burglarize houses Now, uh, we do this with the intent of we're stealing like little bullshit We're stealing clothes at that time cell phones cell phones were like a big thing. So we're stealing cell phones and um, He's able to resell it. So, uh

We're going into, you know, three, four houses. And on this particular day, we get caught. We get caught. I don't remember if someone's seen us, like, going into the house. I don't remember. But I just know that we ended up running out of the house. And an officer stopped us a couple of blocks from the house. And he asked us, like, oh, we're...

what do you say? We're investigating the burglary. Do you guys know anything about it? And I'm just nervous as shit. Cause I know I was in it, but I'm like, no, no, I don't know nothing about it. So they let us go. It was like, okay, okay. You know, you're good to go.

We get all the way to my block. Like I told you, my friend lives on the same block. So he goes, uh, he, we're walking down the block and I see police lights and, and my, my, my father out there with the cops. So as I'm walking towards him, he's like, what did you do? What did you do? So obvious, not obviously, but, um, it turns out that I left my ID inside the house when I was running out of the house. So, uh,

that's how the police came back to my, to my house. They locked up me and my friend cause we're both together. So they locked us up. They locked both of us up. They take us to the precinct and you know, they do the usual. Listen, uh, if you tell us, um, any other crimes that you committed, uh, you'll get less time. We'll work with the DA, you know, all that bullshit. At that time, I'm young. Uh,

I don't know what's going on. And I'm, I don't know that police are allowed to lie to you. So everything that they're telling me, I'm like, Oh, you know, uh, okay. So me and my friend are now in a, uh,

In a room and we're telling them like, listen, we hit this house yesterday. Last week we hit the other house. So we tell them about the three houses that we that we burglarized. And, you know, we told we told me only to close and stuff. But since we didn't take a lot, they only charged us with, you know, it wasn't like a felony burglary or it wasn't a high felony burglary. It was something like a felony or something, something like that.

So now they're buying us food and pizzas while we're telling them, oh, yeah, we did this and we did that. They ended up charging us for whatever house we burglarized. And we end up going to Rikers Island. When we go to Rikers, my...

My friend now, he gets bailed out. Within the first couple of days, he gets bailed out. My family, I'm a foster kid. They don't care. So I called to see if I could get out, but it wasn't happening.

Um, my foster mother and father, they came to visit me. Um, one time they came up there to visit me, but I think with the whole visiting process, they didn't want to deal with that shit again. So, uh, my foster father, he, he, um, he would send me money every two weeks, every three weeks for commissary. Um, I didn't really need, um, too much money because I wasn't calling anyone to, you know, it was just commissary most of the time when I, so, um,

When I got to Rikers Island, this is back in 2003, 2004, when I was a juvenile, I want to say.

You were allowed to wear your sneakers and whatever you had on as long as it wasn't a gang color. As long as it wasn't red and blue, you were allowed to go in and you didn't have to change into jail uniform and stuff like that. So when I arrived, I was wearing a gray academics sweatsuit with some white Air Force Ones.

And when you go to jail wearing that, you know, that people look at you and now, you know, I have people coming to me and saying, listen, we want your sweatsuit that you got on. We want your sneakers. And, you know, they do the pin number thing. You know, you have to give us your pin number and all that stuff. So.

I'm thinking to myself, I'm not giving up my, I'm not giving anything, you know what I'm saying? So it was like a leader of the house at that time. The house that I'm in is called The Sprungs. It's like a, it's outside of the actual Rikers Island jail. It's not, it's inside the jail, but it's outside on like a yard. And it's like tents, big ass fucking tents. And it holds like 49 people.

But there's only a certain group of people that they call the team that, you know, that handles the phones, that's in charge of everything. So now when I get in there, I don't know anything that's going on, but they're telling me I have to do give them all these things. So I'm telling them, no, I'm not doing it. They go to the to the correction office, the CEO that was in charge at the time. He was our daily CEO. He, you know, every day he would come in.

His name was Mercado, some fat Spanish dude. They went to him and said, "Listen, he's not listening. He's not with the program." So, you know, Mercado, you know, he calls me to the front of the area. Mind you, there's 48, 49 people behind me. Everything's quiet. They're just staring because he yells my name. So I walked to the front and he's like, "Oh, I heard you're not listening to my guys."

And I'm like, you know, I'm confused. Like, I don't know what's going on with it or whatever. He ends up slapping me like open fist. This is a chubby guy. So his hands are chubby. His fingers are chubby. He ends up slapping me. I feel the ring in my ear and I get mad. Like you could see me getting mad. I'm boiling up my fist. So he says, you getting mad? And then he slaps me again. But on the other side.

So now I'm just standing there. I'm pissed off. But I know I can't do anything because I'm not stupid enough to do something to a correction officer because I know how that ends. So I don't say anything. He tells me to go back to my bed.

So now a few minutes past the leader, I guess he comes to me and says, listen, you don't want to you don't want to go by with the program. You're going to have to fight, you know, the team. And at the time, it was like five or six of them.

So I'm like, all right, like I'll fight you guys. So we went in the bathroom. We got in the shower area and these guys lined up like it was it was so crazy. Like they all, you know, it was a few. It couldn't be everybody in the bathroom because it would have, you know, set off a long. But it was like like 10 people in a bathroom. And I'm fighting these guys one by one. And it got to like the third, fourth guy. And, you know,

Uh, my hand is split open. Uh, his blood, you know, his blood on my hands is everywhere. So, uh, one of the guys is like, all right, that's it. We're gonna, we're gonna, um, we're gonna fight again tomorrow. So tomorrow, you know, the next day comes and now, uh,

I wake up and my hand is puffy. Like, it's... You can't even... Like, I'm pressing it. The skin is messed up. So now what I have to do is I have to tie a rag around my hand to continue fighting. You could get anything into the jails at this time. And back then, one of my...

One of the people that was there gave me like a crip flag. So I had to wrap that around my hand and and and continue fighting the rest of the guys. And once I did that, they realized that not only and I realized that not only I'm able to fight.

Um, but, uh, they respected me for not, um, you know, giving up, giving them what they wanted to, um, what they wanted to get. So, uh, uh, everything was, um, from, from that moment on, everything was, was, was okay. Why did you want to burglarize houses when you were saying that, you know, you weren't into that crime life and you knew that was wrong and you want to go to a different route?

it was for fun. Um, it was, it was, it was, it was that young, you know, our minds aren't formed, uh, all the way yet. We're still kids. So we're doing anything that, uh, that'd get us in, you know, um, if, uh, if, if your kid and your friends, like, like you mentioned, uh, you, um, uh, uh,

You took some stock, you took some foam and you foam the cars, right? Even though, you know, you wasn't supposed to be doing that. You were having fun. And this is something that you, you know, as kids, you know, whatever. So that's, that's what it was. It was just at the time, I didn't know that I could die from burglarizing someone's house. I didn't know that, you know, and I wasn't,

I didn't realize it was just me having something to do when there was nothing to do. And I didn't think it was anything wrong. For the most part, we was going in and we would spend not even 10 minutes in there. We would go in because it's a scary fucking thing because we never knew if someone was home, anything like that. So we went in and whatever we saw, we took, clothes, and then we was out of there.

So it was never a, if we get caught, we might go to jail. It was just a spur of the moment. What are you doing today? Oh, I don't got no money. You want to go get some, you know, try to get some money? And that's what it was. Do you think making decisions like that makes, at that age, makes someone a bad person overall? No, no, no. I think...

I think, and everyone knows this, as kids, like I said, you're doing, you know, you're just doing things that you feel like is fun. You don't, as kids, we don't really know the consequences of our actions yet. We don't know the time that we could get for these kind of crimes that we're committing when we're that young.

What happens next? Do you spend a lot of time in Rikers for that circumstance? Do you take a plea deal? What goes on? So I spend about eight, like eight, nine months in Rikers. What happened was my father, he hired an attorney for me. The attorney was able to get me a year in jail, but I

I forgot exactly how it went, but some of my time didn't count. Even though I spent all that time, the whole time I was in jail, some of that time didn't count towards my plea.

So, um, I, I copped out to what's called the bullet, um, uh, a year in jail. I didn't have to go to prison. I did my whole time in on Rikers. So, um, when I was sentenced, they transferred me to, um, from the sprungs to, uh, C 76, the sentence building, I think that was. Um, and I was, and I was there as adolescent.

It seems very excessive to give someone prison time for a first-time offense for this. Is there more to it? Or did your co-defendants do bigger trouble? Or do you think they discriminated against you? Why do you think it was so harsh? I think it was because it was the amount of houses I broke into. They took that into account.

into consideration. Um, I think it was, I think it was other factors. Maybe I don't really remember. My mind is, you know, it doesn't, I don't really remember, but, um,

I know that, um, I took the plea because, uh, most of the time that I did was in jail anyway. So even, you know, with the rest of the time that I was doing, um, on the plea, it wasn't, it wasn't too bad. And I knew that, you know, I could do the rest of it. So, um, the year, you know, um,

I took the plea because I felt like that was the best case scenario for me. And yeah, that's why I took it, yeah. So when you get out, are you thinking you're never getting into trouble again? You're never going through this experience again? Like, what's your mindset? Yeah, so when I get out, I...

I'm still in the neighborhood with the same friend. So, of course, I don't want to get into any more trouble. But I learned quickly that that wasn't a call that I could make. What happened was I was having a baby. I was pregnant.

I was going on Seventeen and I needed to make money.

I got my G, I also forgot to tell you, I got my GED in jail. So while, you know, all that craziness from, you know, that happens in adolescence that people tell you about, you know, the hot water being thrown on different people and people sneak stealing and all that stuff. So while all that was going on, I was able to get my GED in jail and, you know,

I really did have intentions of coming out and going to school and doing all that stuff. But when I got out, I was, like I said, I was having a baby young.

And I was trying to focus on just working and making a better life for myself. And around that time, it was called a hiring freeze in New York City. There was no one hiring. Because of my last name, I have a Jewish last name. I got it from my adoptive father. That's your current last name now? Correct, yes. It's a wool. You pronounce it like the wool, but it's spelled W-O-H-L. But yeah.

I would get called from these jobs. I would get interviews. But then once I showed, you know, once I was shown up, they would tell me, listen, it's a hiring freeze. We're not hiring right now. That happened, you know, a lot. And then with that happening and me seeing all my friends selling drugs and they're making X amount of money. And I'm just like, listen, you know, that led me into saying, listen, maybe I could sell drugs and get ahead.

And that's what I started to do. When I started to sell drugs, I always knew it wasn't something that I wanted to do. It was no longevity in it. I always knew that I wanted to do it until I found a job. And that's exactly what happened. I was selling drugs until I started working for this glass company called Crystal Windows and Doors in Queens, New York. But while selling drugs...

I went through, it was a lot, it was a lot of bullshit happening. Not only do you have to watch out for the police officers that, you know, every day they make, you know, they ride around and, you know, they're doing what they're doing. You're, you're, you're, you're,

you're trying to watch out for the, you know, other people that are trying to take over that block or, you know, people that don't like you. So, so it's very, it's a very stressful environment. Um, so once I think I was selling drugs for maybe, um, maybe three months, maybe four, I don't even remember, but it wasn't, it wasn't a very long time. Uh, I remember one time, um, I was walking down my block. Uh,

And I wasn't, I didn't, you know, I didn't have drugs or anything on me. But police officers, they seen me and they thought that I was selling drugs at that time. And they hopped out on me and they fucking chased me, like four of them big dudes. They chased me and I was able to run from them. And, you know, I was able to call my friend and he came to pick, I was hiding under a car and he came and he picked me up and, you know,

I got away that day. But a few weeks later, me thinking I got away, I didn't really get away. A few weeks later, the same officers seen me one morning because I lived in the area. So it was bound for them to see me again. They seen me one morning and

And they hopped out on me again. This time I wasn't able to run away. This time they were able to grab me and throw me on the floor. And when they slam me on the floor, the way they slam me, my hands are pinned under my stomach.

So now all you keep hearing is stop resisting. And I keep and I'm yelling because in the middle of them hitting me, I'm trying to tell them that I'm not resisting. You guys are pinning my hands because remember, it's for them. So you got two guys like have my hands under my stomach and you got another two guys punching me in the face and you're doing all this shit. So now I'm trying to tell them as all this is happening, like I'm not resisting. You guys are holding me down.

So they finally get me up. They handcuff me, arrest me. At this time, they broke the orbital bone in my eye. So if you look at my arrest picture, you see my eye is bleeding and, you know, is low and is fucked up.

So, um, at that time, I didn't, I don't know anything about, uh, holding police officers accountable. I don't know anything about that. So I figured just like, uh, I was getting beat up by my, you know, foster, uh, parents. I figured that police were able to do this and, and, you know, I kind of deserved it because I shouldn't have been living that life anyway, even though I wasn't selling drugs at that time in that moment. Um, I felt like, uh,

I kind of deserved it because, you know, I shouldn't have been selling drugs anyway. Like it was karma catching up to you. Exactly, you know? So, um, I left it alone. I was like, you know what? They beat me up. Okay. Um, um, um, um,

I didn't even think about, you know, making any complaints against them. Are these older or younger cops? Older cops. One of the cops I knew because he always—it was a white guy, blonde hair, blue eyes. He always used to drive in our neighborhoods. And at night, he would drive through our neighborhoods, and he would say, what's up, my niggas?

and he would play rap music in the background. And that always stood out to me because these are the type of officers that are in our neighborhoods that treat us like animals and things like that. And then they wonder why we have such hate towards them and things like that. But these were older officers, yes.

And any women or just all male? All male. There was one black. I think it was maybe one black officer, three white officers. I remember the black officer that beat me up. I think we used to call him Superman or something like that. In our neighborhood, he was, you know,

you know, jump out squad kind of unit where they, they, they big and, you know, that type of squad. So, um, this was a, this was, uh, the type of unit that we seen every day in our neighborhoods. And the great rewards hunt is calling and your jackpot journey begins now at DraftKings Casino. Discover huge bonuses today.

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See terms at casino.draftkings.com slash promos ends 4-27-25 at 11-59 p.m. Eastern Time. Does anyone on the end of the officers telling the other officers to stop? What are they saying? No, of course not. I mean... They all have each other's back. Yeah, in a system like that...

If you do try to tell another officer, you know to stop or Try to hold another officer accountable you yourself could be in a line of fire So a lot of people especially a black officers. They don't put themselves in that, you know, line of line of fire So what happens next? So, um now

I get out. They brought you to the police station. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They brought me to the police station. They searched me and I do have drugs on me, but I wasn't selling drugs at that moment. But I do have drugs on me. So they charged me with the I had the drugs that they had on me. They charged me with that. They charged me with resisting arrest to justify the them beating me up.

And he charged me with a bunch of different stuff. But in Queens, there was a judge called Judge Wong. It was a Chinese judge. And the...

the word around not only the, the Rikers Island, but the word around the street is this judge, um, you know, he slays black, you know, individuals that, that have drug offenses. He's one of those no, no nonsense judges. So every, every black individual that's coming into Queens and, and with a drug charge now we're in Rikers Island, like, Oh, you got judge Wong. Oh man. You know? So, so I, uh, I had judge Wong, um,

I managed to get five years probation. The only thing that was on my record, which wasn't on my record, was the burglaries. But since I was a juvenile, it wasn't on my record. It was... I forgot the name that they call it. But employers, they can't see it. Sealed. It was sealed, exactly. So adjudicated, exactly. So...

The judge, Wong, he ended up giving me five years probation for that charge. When I had probation, five years probation is felony probation. When I went to probation, I did maybe four months of probation because the probation officer...

I used to give him, I was working at that time. Remember I told you I had the crystal windows indoors job. And at that job I used to work, um, like 12, 13 hours days, sometimes longer. And, um, I would get my pay stubs and I would give it to my, my probation officer. And he would see that every day I wasn't, you know, I wasn't selling dry. I'm working and stuff like that. So he would come visit me every week. And so, and then it just turned out to, um,

me going to visit him two times a week. And then it just turned out to, oh, you know, you're good on probation. You don't have to, you don't have to do probation anymore. So I'm like, okay, great. In that time, I went from working at the crystal window and glass company to working for a union construction company called Local 79. It's a laborers company. I figured that

I didn't think that when I went to interview for this position, I didn't think I would get it. I just figured, listen, I'm working here. What's the, what's the, you know, I'll just take a shot. Fuck it. And when I went for the interview, I was hired. So by that time I was excited. I, you know, I thought that new things were going to start happening and, and, you know, I, and I haven't, and at that time I wasn't arrested for a good, I think a

a good six years maybe might've passed. So I haven't been, I wasn't arrested for, for a while. What happens after that? So, um, I get into the union. Um, I, you know, I'm, I'm still out of trouble. Um, and how old are you and what year is this? So this was about, uh, 2017, 2018. I joined the, uh, the union. Okay. And you hadn't gotten into trouble in multiple years. No, no trouble. Um,

You're not dealing drugs. No, not dealing drugs, nothing, nothing of that. So I'm taking care of my kids, you know, I'm doing everything that I'm trying to do everything that I'm trying to lead a law abiding life, you know, the best way I know, the best way I know how.

So I get into the union, they put me through an apprenticeship period, which was about, I think, a year, maybe two, I don't really remember right now. But I passed the apprenticeship program and now I'm making $39 an hour. I'm doing high rise buildings around New York City, some of the best high rises in New York City I've worked on. I'm doing schools, public schools, I'm doing different projects in New York City.

Um, so now it's a tough time in the world because this is, uh, at this time, George Floyd incident happens. A lot of racial incidents are happening, but, uh, the George Floyd incident, like, like really broke into mainstream, you know, uh,

So everyone knows, well, everyone who works in the construction field knows that construction is inherently racist anyway. Every construction site you go on, you go to the bathrooms, you know, the supers have to spray all the graffiti and stuff that's there because it's racist graffiti. Things that say hang niggers or, you know, blacks must die or, you know, things like that. So now I'm working on this site.

And I have a my hard hat has Black Lives Matter stickers around it. And I do that because I want people to know that I'm not an apologist for my people. I know I know what black people have gone through. I know what we continue to go through. And like I said, I'm not an apologist. So.

My thing is, if you see my Black Lives Matter heart stickers, if you don't like me, you know...

It's best for you to you know, that's that's telling you I don't want to talk to him or I don't want to be around He believes something different from what I believe and and I'm okay with that because I don't like being around people anyway So one day, um, i'm working. Um And one of my friends come over to me, uh, one people I work with and he says oh someone puts something racist inside the bathroom so

I say, okay, and I go look at it. And when I go to look, and this is on my floor. Now, everybody that's on my floor has been working here for, I would say I was there for like a year and a half already. So everybody on that floor has been working here for a year and a half. So I know mostly all of these people. So when I go to see it, it says hang niggers. So I take a video of it. And I know from past experiences,

From past times where I reported, you know racism or things that I've seen that were racist. Nothing is ever really done about it so I took a video and I go to I go to one of the supervisors. They're all like huddled in a group So I go to them and I say the words hang niggers are in the bathroom I would like for something to be done about that. Um, I

they tell me, okay, something's going to be done. I come back the next morning. Nothing's at the end of the day. I told them like around three, four o'clock the next morning when I come in at eight in the morning is still there. Um, so I tell them again, uh, and they finally, someone comes to, uh, to, to clean it up.

A few weeks, I would say maybe a few weeks to a few months later, I have a white coworker and this white coworker, he has he has the same stickers that I have on my hard hat. But he has the Second Amendment and Make America Great Again. And he has these type of stickers. We work together, but we work.

We're not we're not enemies. Well, you know, we don't talk to each other every single day But my job as a laborer and his job as a bricklayer It requires us to work closely closely together, you know, I have to get him his materials I have that you know different things. So now um We're doing a whole wall and there's like four or five brick layers and there's maybe two laborers

I go to the bathroom. I stopped for a second to go to the bathroom. When I come back, one of the bricklayers is saying, JB, this guy is over here saying nigga. So I'm like, what you mean? He was like, so apparently he was singing a song, a Biggie Smalls song, and he starts saying the word nigga while singing a song. The word nigga to me is...

it's a different type of emotion for me because I know what the word means. I know what it entails. I know the history of being black in this world. So, like I said, I'm not an apologist. Me and people in my community use it as a term of endearment. What's up, my nigga? Where you going, my nigga? What you doing today, my nigga? But when...

Um, other people use it that are not supposed to be using it because of the history of this country. Um, you know, it's a different kind of emotion. So while, while, uh, we're on the line, uh, the guy is singing a song and then the chorus comes back again and then he says, nigga. So I pull him to the side so I don't make a scene. So I pull him to the side. I say, listen, I'm not comfortable with you saying that.

And, you know, he scrunches up his face. What you mean? I'm not comfortable with you saying that. Now, the person I'm telling this to, he's a stocky white guy. He he he goes to these raves.

You know those raves where they're punching and what's it called? Mosh pits. Mosh pits. So he used to come in to work with black eyes and bruises and everything. So he also used to come in to work and remember I told you he has the Second Amendment stickers and stuff. So he used to show employees pictures of guns, all the guns that he has laid out on his bed and stuff like that.

And he used to come to work with hunting knives in his bag and used to show us, you know, so this is the person that I'm telling. I don't I don't feel comfortable with you saying that. So now he's angry, whatever. And he says, OK, whatever. So he gets back on the line and he, you know, he starts going back to work. But now he's telling, you know, his his his co-workers, oh, he this guy is sensitive and, you know, he's angry. So now I make a report.

Because I made a report the first time when when the hang niggers was in the bathroom. So now this is a second. So now I make a report about him saying the N word. They document their report. And because I have like a history dealing with the union of me making a report and getting backlash from it, I leave it alone. I say, listen, I made the report. Good. You know, let's move on from here. OK.

A couple of weeks later, the same white guy hands me a hard hat sticker. He has a bunch of stickers in his left hand, I believe. I would say like 50 or 60. But he has one sticker in his other hand. I believe it was his right hand. And early in the morning, he comes to me and he says, hey, JB, you want a sticker?

So I look at the sticker and the sticker is a picture of a monkey. And it says, not my monkey, not my circus or not my circus, not my monkey. It's something like that. I took it that as being a reenactment.

racially motivated thing because he could have gave me the whole thing of stickers and say, listen, you want a sticker? You could shoot. No, no, he didn't do that. He gave me the one monkey sticker that, you know, that said that. So now I'm grappling with, do I make a report? Because if I know if I make a report, it might come back on me. And now I'm facing backlash from it. You know, so I say, you know what, just so it could be documented, let me make the report.

I make the report again. Now this is the second report on this guy. So now the company is saying, um, uh, they pull, they, they, they pull me into the whatever. And they're saying, listen, um, uh,

We're going to fire this guy. Today is going to be his last day. But we want a meeting with you just to find out all the extras of what happened, whatever. And then they set a meeting for the next day. I say, okay. The next day comes. Now, remember, this is the guy that they said that they were going to fire. And I told you that he goes to mosh pits. He has weapons. He's shown weapons. And at this particular location,

Um, it's, it's ironic that someone came back in the past, a couple of years prior, someone came back to that same site and they shot dead the foreman of that site.

This is that same location. So with all that, that I'm dealing with, um, I come back next, the next day for the meeting, the prior day, um, I explained to them, listen, I don't, I'm, I'm in fear for my life. I don't feel safe. There's only one way in and one way out to this job site. So if you're going to fire the guy, um, uh, let me know. They said, yes, they're going to fire him and he will not be back. He will not be here tomorrow. He will not be at the meeting. I say, okay.

So tomorrow, you know, the next day comes, I go to the meeting. The guy is there. The guy is sitting outside of the construction site staring at me. I'm talking about staring a hole through my face and I'm staring at him because I'm like, I'm frozen. Like he's not supposed to right then and there. He could have killed me right then and there. But, you know, when you when they don't care about the, you know, the reports that you make, but.

So fast forward. Now I'm complaining about, you know, him being here, my life being in danger, whatever, whatever. So they tell me, if you feel like your life is in danger, quit.

Um, so mind you, I'm making $39 an hour. I'm making a lot of money a year. You get what I'm saying? So, so now I'm in this, in this, in this situation where if I, you know, I could stay here and this guy can come back and I told you it's one way, one way in, one way out. I can stay here and any day this guy can come back, come back and kill me because I just got him fired. Um, uh, or, um, uh, I have to quit.

So now I talk to the company. I'm talking to my union. I'm like, listen, I didn't do anything wrong. Something was done to me. You know, I reported it multiple times. Can you at least put me at a different location? They weren't willing to let me. Mind you, these are multimillion dollar construction companies. My union, multimillion dollar, billion. You get what I'm saying? So they weren't willing to move me to another construction site. They said, listen, basically, if you don't like it, quit.

I have kids. I was afraid for my life. I quit. So when I did that, I waited a couple of months because I went to my union and they was telling me, oh, don't worry, we'll have something for you. I think two, three months ago by this is 2022 now. Three months go by to September of 2022. I go September 21st of 2022. I go to the I go to my union hall that's located in Manhattan.

And I explained to them that I want to speak to someone because I haven't been working. I reported racism and discrimination. Next thing you know, I won't, you know, I'm not making no money. You know, my bills are backed up, everything I'm trying to, I've been trying to email and talk with them. They've been ignoring me. I had one meeting with the union where they told me they were going to investigate the matter. And then they, I was getting calls from the union asking me why I was posting curse words and stuff on my Facebook page.

So they were investigating me when I asked them to investigate the issues of racism and discrimination. So now when I go to the union, I asked to speak with the union, the union president, Mike Prohaska. They tell me he's in a meeting and they don't know, you know, he might be in there for an hour or two. I might have to wait. I say, no problem.

I'm willing to wait, but I'm not working anyway. You know, and I spent all this money coming from Jersey to Manhattan every, you know, to come talk. So I stayed there. So I got there around 10 in the morning. I stayed there till I stayed there till about 11 in the morning. I went back and I asked them what's going on. It was like, oh, we don't know when he's going to be out, but he'll be out sometime today. I say, OK. And I stood there.

So from 11, so from 10 in the morning all the way to 4 p.m. at the end of the day, they had me sitting there. No one came out to talk to me. No one, nothing. While I was there, I had a calendar and I was mapping out all the different massacres throughout history. I was on the Tulsa race massacre when my phone died.

And that's when I decided, oh, you know what? I'm going to go home. Before I left the building, I told them, listen, you guys had me here all day. I was, you know, I wanted to speak with someone. You guys just kept me here. I said, tomorrow when I come back, I'm not going to be as quiet. And he was like, okay, okay, whatever. The next day I came back. When I came back, I had like a little shower speaker that my ex-girlfriend used to have, that, you know, she used to use for the shower.

So I put the when I came back the next day, I put the speaker in the hallway of the of the building. There's areas where you can sit and stuff. So I put the speaker on the table. I sat down and I started listening to not rap music, not nothing that I started listening to a professor called Eddie S. Glaude.

He's a Princeton professor that teaches about black history. So I started listening to that, but it's on a higher level. It's not as quiet. Other people can hear what I'm listening to. So now...

Um, they're, they're coming out telling me if, uh, if I don't leave, um, they're going to have me arrested and I'm telling them like, listen, I'm, I'm, I, you know, I'm here for a reason. Like I, it's been months. I haven't been working. I still have bills. I have kids. I'm trying to take care of this, this issue.

And they're just they're just ignoring me that, you know, whatever. And then they tell me, if you don't leave, we're going to have you arrested. And in my mind, I'm like, how can you have me arrested? I'm here on business. I'm a union member. I pay union dues up until the day up until the day I was arrested. I was an active union member. So if I'm paying union dues and doing all of this, what's the point if you're not even willing to talk to me when an issue arises? So they call the police on me.

Um, uh, they call the police on me for trespassing. The police come and, you know, the police do what they always do. They, uh, oh, uh, they angry and they, they want to hang you up and throw you against the wall and, and, you know, put the handcuffs on you really tight. And, you know, uh, so they do all that.

Mind you, I'm the type of person, I'm black in America. So I know that whenever there's a, whenever I don't feel, whenever I'm in a situation where I don't feel comfortable and I feel like I have to protect myself, I automatically start to record on my phone. So being that person,

Um, the day prior, the union wasn't trying to help me. I knew that this day that they wasn't going to try to help me and they were going to lie on me, you know, things like that. So I, my phone was recording as I walked into the union hall. So while I'm getting arrested, my phone is still recording. So, uh, they arrest me. They do all this as they take me to the precinct. When they take me to the precinct, they throw me in this, this, this module, this is still in the middle of COVID.

Um, this, not even, not, not only the precinct, but the cell, everything was filthy. I'm talking, it looked like they haven't cleaned it and they haven't cleaned it in years. There was, there was feces on the, on the toilet seat that they threw me into. Um, uh, there was, uh, garbage and French fries and just everywhere. Um, uh,

I asked them if they could take me to a cleaner cell, if they could clean out the cell. They told me something along the lines of, they told me that they're not a cleaning company or what does this look like or something. I asked them for water because I do pushups and workouts. I was doing pushups in a cell and I started to lose my breath. I asked them for water and stuff. So they bring me a bottle of water

The bottle of water is about that size over there that you have. But the bottle, when he brings me the bottle of water, it's not only open, but it was halfway full.

So that tells me that you're not bringing me a new bottle of water. You're bringing me an old bottle of water that someone drank out of that you refilled. You know, this was done out of my line of sight. So I don't know what you've done with this. So now, like, I'm supposed to be innocent. I'm leading a law abiding life. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to. But since I reported this incident of racism, now I'm being treated, you know, inhuman. You know, so now I'm just like, oh, my God, what's going on? So.

Um, they, they, uh, they, they, they, they released me with a desk appearance ticket. I was in the cell for about 15 hours. They released me with a desk appearance ticket.

When I was released with the desk appearance ticket, they gave me all my property back. Now, the thing with my phone is when you hit record, there's a red light that pops up on my phone. And until I turn off that record, the red light just pops up. It's still there. So when they gave me back my phone, I noticed that the red light was still on. So I...

It told me that it recorded the whole time. But in my head, I'm not thinking, oh, it recorded officers' conversations. I'm like, oh, whatever. So I get to my car and then I go home. And then it wasn't till the next day that I decide to listen to the recording. In the recording...

You have the officers and the union president talking like they're best friends. The officers are telling him my background history. They're telling him when I'm being released. They're telling him, you know, information about me that's not supposed to be said.

And not only that, they're talking amongst themselves. And my lawyers are like parsing it out now. And but my I think me and my ex heard it that in the recording, one of the officers is saying they see my my Black Lives Matter hard hat because I was arrested with it. So they say things they start saying things like if this was back in the day, they take me out back and shoot.

And it kind of trails off. But this is what I, you know, this is what I what I believe I heard with my with my ex. Also, they saying a whole bunch of other racist and derogatory things, not only because of the color of my skin, but because I believe because they seen Black Lives Matter on my hard hat.

And I would just like to address that really quickly. I wear Black Lives Matter not for the organization that's out there. I wear it because it's I wear it and I have it everywhere because it's a statement statement.

I'm not saying that I'm in a group and this is a gang and we're against a certain people. No, I'm saying that me being a black man in America, I know what it feels like to be treated differently because of the color of your skin. So that's why me, I wear Black Lives Matter. That's to tell everyone that, yes,

Black lives do matter, has nothing to do or with politics or or any. It means that we're being treated differently because of the color of our skin. So after hearing all of these things that the officers were saying and, you know, he was he was talking bad about me to fellow officers. But then when he was talking good about me to his boss. So it's that it's that that that.

What's the word I'm looking for? It's like a school playground where when you're with all your friends, you're talking bad about the next, but when the teacher comes, you're like, oh, I didn't say that. Oh, you get what I'm saying? So all that happened.

So now I get the recording and my mind is like, it's like racing now because because I'm like, what is going on? So now I go back to the precinct and I'm telling them, like, listen, I didn't do anything wrong, but I caught your officer saying racist and disgusting things. So now I'm on the I'm on the radar of the precinct now.

So a month goes by and now it's October 10th of 2022. This is a month from when I got arrested the first time for trespassing.

I go to court that whole time. I go to court for the trespassing from the first arrest. They dismiss it. So I take that dismissal paperwork and I go back to my union hall now because now now I'm like, OK, now the law is telling me I didn't. Now the law is telling you I didn't do anything wrong. I take that paperwork. I go back to you. I'm like, listen, I want to speak to the president.

um, about, you know, this racist incident. They know why I'm there, you know, but they're just refusing to speak to me. Like I did something wrong. So now I go, I take that paper. I go back to the union hall. They call the police on me again for trespassing. The same police, uh, precinct come, uh, they, they, they come again. They throw me against the wall. They, they treat me inhumane again. And, and, you know, they locked me up again. Now this time when they locked me up, uh,

They give me, so they put me in a cell. Cells are still dirty. I don't think, you know, even when you talk about the conditions, they don't care. They don't change their business. But what happened was I was able, this time when I was asking for a bottle of water, they actually went and bought a bottle of water, you know, and they gave me a fresh bottle. So I know what happened last time wasn't supposed, you get what I'm saying? So now the second time, even though I'm being treated a little bit better than the first time, I'm still arrested, uh, uh, uh,

you know, unjustly. I'm still going through this system. And even the second time I was arrested, I was still in a cell for 13, 14 hours. So now I'm in a total, for these two arrests total, I'm in a cell for over 24 hours. I didn't do anything wrong. And I'm just like, what is going on?

So now I wait for that to finish. So while going to court for that, the judge issues a limited order of protection saying that I can go back to the union hall. I just can't. I can only go there to conduct business, picking up checks, you know, doing union business. Okay. Okay.

I wait. So I never I don't go back to the union. I'm like, you know what? Whatever. So I wait till the case is over. The case gets dismissed in January of 2023. So from October 1st, from October 10th to January 2023, the case, the case was gets dismissed. When the case was dismissed in January 2023, the order of protection is automatically dismissed. It's vacated.

Now, I get this paperwork that says that the order protection is vacated in... If you've heard that sound from Babbel before, I bet you do. Babbel is the science-backed language learning app that actually works. With quick 10-minute lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts, Babbel gets you on your way to speaking a new language in just a few weeks. With over 16 million subscriptions sold and a 20-day money-back guarantee, just start speaking another language with Babbel. Right now, up to 55% off your Babbel subscription at

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The case is dismissed. So I have no case. There's nothing. I didn't do anything wrong. So now February 14th, I go to.

the precinct that locked me up those two times. And there's a law in New York City saying that a person cannot weaponize the NYPD for their own use. Basically, if you know that he's not breaking the law, you can't keep calling the police on him to have him arrested. You're weaponizing the police.

This union, they knew I wasn't doing anything wrong and they called the police on me twice already. So now I'm at the courthouse, I'm at the precinct, 14th precinct, Midtown South in Manhattan. And I'm telling them I want accountability, not only for the multiple arrests, but for the multiple officers that were saying disgusting and racist things.

They tell me that they can't, they can't, even though I had the audio evidence and all that, they can't arrest those officers. I just have to make a report. And in my mind, I know how me and my people get treated in my neighborhood. So it's kind of baffling to me. If a white person was to even, was to make a report on me and say that he looked at me wrong or I walked past him and I stepped on his foot,

Police would arrest me for assault or simple assault, whatever it's called. They would arrest me and let the courts figure it out. But when you're making these complaints against court officers or any type of government officials, they want to conduct an investigation. It takes seven years. And at the end of this, you know, so all that stuff is supposed to. So now.

I'm angry because nothing is being done. I go outside of the precinct and I have a bullhorn in my hand. So now I'm outside of the precinct and I'm yelling through the bullhorn. I'm telling people the officers names that were saying racist things. And I'm yelling out their badge numbers. And I'm saying how this precinct isn't enforcing the laws like they're supposed to. The officers come out the precinct and they arrest me.

When they arrested me, I have this thing where I like to think of things ahead of time before they happen. So as I'm being arrested, the only thing that I could like...

keep thinking about is yo they're gonna they're gonna plant charges on me they're gonna say I did things that I didn't do I know that me yelling out here through saying that you know these officers committed crimes against me that's not against the law I'm not I'm not you know breaking any laws but they arrested me um and when they arrested me I asked uh uh uh when they arrested me uh it was it was a different officer than um the officer that um

Ended up processing me So when I was first arrested An officer threw me in a cell He told me things like shut the fuck up He left so when they put you in a cell They're supposed to take your handcuffs off and you know Process you this officer left my Handcuffs on they were tight Like really tight it always happens but I'm telling him I can't feel My fucking wrist blah blah blah and he's Like oh basically if you don't shut up we're gonna leave The handcuffs on they left their handcuffs on me I don't know maybe for like an hour I don't know But

then a different officer comes and he says, oh, where's your property? Now I'm getting a little angry because I'm arrested. I'm still in handcuffs and I'm in a cell. Why are you coming to me asking me where's my property? So now this is a whole, so I'm asking him, why are you asking? You're not my arresting officer. He says, oh, now I'm your arresting officer.

First thing that clicks into my mind is, oh, they're going to try to set me up. So I tell them and I think this is going to come come out on the body cam. I tell them, please don't charge me with any false crimes. You know, it happens all the time to us. Don't please don't do it to me. And he's like, oh, don't worry. I'm not that type of person, whatever, whatever.

I get, um, I get, uh, they, they process me. I go through central booking. I, you know, uh, I go in, uh, I go to, like I said, central booking and I, and I get in front of my lawyer. Now my lawyer is asking me about the charges that I have against me. The top charge that I have against me is, um,

is not contempt of court is breaking the order of protection. In New York City, if a judge gives you an order of protection and you break that order of protection, it's mandatory jail time. And

I believe that when so let me get back. So so when the lawyer was telling me why did I break the order of protection and I'm like, I don't have an order. What are you talking about? And he brings up the order of protection I have against the union. So now I'm confused because I'm like, I was never at the union hall. I got arrested at the precinct.

So now the lawyer said that they that they charged me with they falsely charged me with breaking the order of protection, which they did it purposely so I can get that mandatory jail time and I can go to jail. I think it's like six months if you break an order of protection the first time. So, you know, the lawyer was saying that, you know, they were he think that they purposely did that, along with some other charges, you know, some other bullshit charges.

So now I'm like, I'm angry. I'm fed up. All this is happening to me. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? So now the judge at arraignment asks the district attorney. She looks at the paperwork and she's asking the district attorney what's going on. Mind you, this is my arraignment judge. When you get to arraignment and when you get to when you get when you actually go to court is two different judges.

But the arraignment judge is asking the district attorney what's going on. I need answers, blah, blah, blah. And the district attorney is like, listen, we don't know what's going on, whatever. So the judge looks at me and says, Mr. Wall, don't worry about it. By our next court date, we will have this figured out. So I feel a little better. I'm thinking, OK, you know, someone is looking at the page. Someone is paying attention. My next court. That was October 10th. That was arrested in law. My next court date was March 1st.

No, no, I'm sorry. I had, I had, I had a court date prior. I had one court date prior to March 1st. The one court date prior to March 1st, they were offering me, um,

three, I think maybe three years probation and a year, I don't know, but it was something that they were offering me that just sounded wild. And my lawyer was kind of angry because, you know, I didn't do anything wrong and these were false charges. So my lawyer expressed that to the judge and then we were supposed to come back March 1st. Okay. So now I come back March 1st. When I come back March 1st, I have the paperwork that says the...

Order of protection was vacated in January of 2023. I was locked up in, in, on February 14th of 2023. So I have the paperwork that states it. I give it to my lawyer. Um, I get called in front of the judge. So now, um,

The DA is they have the same plea deal that they had my last court date. And and my lawyer, you know, he tells me, oh, they have the same thing. So I'm like mad. I'm like, what do you mean? They promised me that this would be fixed. So now the judge is talking about dates in like three months from now to come back. And and now I'm just standing there and everything is running through my head like, you know, this is crazy.

So now I'm telling the judge, like I'm being set up by the NYPD. I didn't do anything wrong. All of this originates from a complaint about racism and discrimination. And the judge is telling me, listen, I hear you. I hear you. But this this won't be settled today. You have to come back.

And at that point i'm fed up at that point Um, I put my hands behind behind my back and i'm like listen If you have to put me in jail until you guys figure this out then put me in jail because um, uh Me being out of jail and me going through everything i'm going through. I feel like i'm in jail anyway, because uh every every Couple of weeks every month. I have to come back and I have to go through this knowing that i'm innocent so

I put my hands behind my and I'm telling them like, listen, if you have to put me in jail until you figure it out, put me in jail.

Um, there's court officers and there's about three or maybe four quarters officers, you know, already inside the court inside. So they, they're standing behind me as I'm, I'm calling the DA all kinds of racist because I'm like, listen, you, you guys are the district cause you know, you know, I didn't do anything. It's plain to see on paper. I can read. I know what words mean. So I'm saying you guys are racist. You, you guys are doing this to my community all the time, whatever. So these officers now, uh, get behind me and they handcuff me.

They handcuffed me behind my back. There's cameras in the courtroom that can see I'm being handcuffed. So they handcuffed me. They take me out. They took me through the double doors into the hallway. By the time I get into the hallway, there's about 10 more correction officers running down to me. When by the time they get to me, they all grab me. I'm talking. They grab my arms. They grab them. They just fucking all grab. They all want a piece of me.

So now as they're dragging me to the elevator, I'm screaming, help, help, because they're about to beat my ass. Now, the reason I'm saying that is because the way that they're grabbing me, I can feel their fingers digging into my skin. So...

Like I can feel it. So I'm yelling like, yo, they're about to beat my ass. One of the officers says, yeah, we are about to beat your ass. His boss, someone, a white shirt officer says, he shushes him. He says, shh, we're at the elevators. This is all going on. The elevator doors open.

They put me inside the elevator. They bring me to the right side of the elevator, and we're all standing up. They push me into the corner. One officer has the back of my head inside the corner. The other officers are, mind you, my hands are still behind my back. They're still holding my arms. They have me into the corner. The door closes. As soon as that door closes, they start to brutalize. I'm talking about they're punching me, kicking me everywhere.

While someone has my head this way, there's an officer punching me in my face from this side.

So I'm using the force of my head to turn because this officer still tries. So I turn and I see that there's a black ball head officer punching me in my face as I'm trying to turn to see who it is. And then once I seem to once I turn to see who it is now, he starts to take my face and grind it against the elevator wall so I can turn back into the corner.

Um, so now the elevator's door, the elevator door is open. I'm still handcuffed. They drag me out of the elevator. Um, they bring me to a, to a room, which I know now is, uh, the, their locker room.

They throw me on the floor. It was like a stone floor, cold stone floor. And they put shackles around my ankles and they continue to beat the shit out of it. They tortured me. And I say torture because not only was I still handcuffed behind my back, but now I'm shackled at my ankles like a slave. I can't defend myself.

I can't, uh, I can't do anything. I can't move. The only thing I could do is this to try, you know, and, and while they're punching me, they're kicking me, they're stomping on me. Uh, they're yelling. I was wearing a black lives matter t-shirt at my court date, every court date I wear, you know, black lives matter or something. Uh, and I was wearing a black lives matter that day. Um,

And because of that, you know, partially, you know, they were saying to fuck black lives, you know, different while they was beating the shit out of him.

So now they stop because a white shirt, his name was Allen. I guess he's the top cop inside the inside the courthouse. This was a Manhattan criminal court on 100 Center Street in Manhattan. So now this cop comes out of a room and he's he starts saying, easy, easy. He's telling his officers, relax, basically. Right. So now they all start. Stop fucking me up.

Now he's telling me to shut the fuck up because now I'm yelling for help. I'm yelling at the top of my lungs for help. This is around 1030, 11 o'clock.

On a work day Inside of a courthouse A busy work day So I'm yelling There's no way You can't tell me Other people didn't hear me So while I'm yelling At the top of my Top of my lungs for help He tells me You know Shut the fuck up Or you know Things like that If you don't shut the fuck up You know He just starts talking shit

Um, and then he, he orders his officers to take me off the ground to pick me up. Uh, cause he tells me to get up and I, and I'm unable to get up. He, so he orders his officers to pick me up off the ground and put me on a bench. Uh, in jail, they have this bench that's like three feet off the ground, but it's, uh, it's, it's connected to the wall. Uh, so, so they pick me up by, by my handcuffs. Um, they, they, they, they,

They bend my arms back so, so much that I feel the pop in my right arm. So I'm telling them. So now my screams of help.

Are turning into screams of anger. Now I'm telling them you broke my fucking arm because that's what, you know, that's what it felt like. But they didn't care. They're still beating me into the bench after they picked me while they're picking me up. They're beating, they're punching me and kick or everything. Now they beat me into this bench and they're...

They take another set of handcuffs to hook to the bench that hooks to my handcuffs. Now, my hands are black and blue. You can see the marks. I can't move. My arm is fucked up. But this white shirt is telling me if I don't shut the fuck up, he's not going to call an ambulance.

They set me there for I don't I lose track of time all the time. So I don't know how long I was there, but they didn't call an ambulance for me right away. They kept me there for I don't know. My shirt was ripped in half. I had bruises. They cleaned me up before the ambulance came while they was trying to put on my shoe. One officer said that he was having trouble putting on my shoe because it's tied up to the top.

So he told me that if I, if I don't help him to put on my shoe, he was going to stuff it down my fucking throat. Um, uh,

They took me to the hospital where the hospital are only the hospital is is limited in what they can do. I didn't have insurance because I was fired by my union while all this happened. While I was going back and forth to court because the union said I wasn't paying my my my union dues. They they they fired me.

So now I'm fired from the union. I didn't have any insurance. When I went to the hospital, they said, I'm telling them like my whole body. I can't feel my whole body. My arm is fucked up, whatever, whatever. And they telling me, oh, we're limited on a test. We don't have the machines to do the test, whatever, whatever. But they said, oh, we'll give you a Tylenol or ibuprofen and whatever. And we will let you go.

So that's what they did. They, uh, um, they brought me back the officers, the same ones who beat me up. They brought me, they went with the EMS to the hospital. They brought me back to the precinct, uh, after they brought me to the hospital. I mean, not the prison to the courthouse. When they brought me to the courthouse, they charged me with two, um, uh, felonies of assault, uh, D felonies for assault. Um,

One D felony is a maximum of seven years assault on a on an officer with a minimum of two years. So and they charged me with it twice. So just for those two felonies, I was facing 14 years with a minimum of four years, meaning that even if the judge felt bad for me and wanted to give me something less, he couldn't. The minimum he could give me was those four years.

So along with those two assault charges, they charged me with contempt of court, obstruction and, you know, another I think it was four charges in total, maybe. But altogether, I was facing around 20 years in prison. And when I got in front of the arraignment judge for after they assaulted me, the arraignment judge read the complaint.

And in the complaint, the officer stated that the reason why I looked the way I did, because remember, I was all disheveled. I was fucked up. The reason why I looked the way I did was because in the middle of them, they said that I was resisting arrest. They said that I was squirming and I kicked an officer and it caused redness everywhere.

Uh, and that, and that was enough to chart for them to, uh, uh, not only beat the shit out of me, but, uh, charge me with assault, you know? Um, so from there, um, I'm going all over the place to tell, you know, to try to tell my story, to tell people that, you know, um, uh, I was, I was, I was tortured inside of a New York city courthouse. Um, and, and,

Everywhere I went, it was people weren't trying to hear the story because I didn't have a broken bone. It didn't matter that I was treated less than an animal. And I was, you know, the officers that beat on me, you know, these are the same people who wouldn't, you know, kill.

do that to dogs, to cats, you know, but it seemed like it was amusing them. It made them happy to continue to beat on me without me being able to defend myself.

But nobody wanted to hear this story. I made it. I went to the office of Inspector General. The first person who was the investigator, his name was Ethan Beckett. He promised me that they were going to do a thorough investigation. I told him many times that no matter what reason they had for beating me up, I was handcuffed in the courtroom.

Um, uh, there's no way around it. It's not like I left the courtroom, they took the handcuffs off and I start. No. Uh, if you, if you see that I'm on camera, I'm handcuffed. Uh, there's no, there's nothing I can do to hurt anyone, no matter what lies they try to say. But anyway, um, I, I made the, uh, I told Ethan Beckett what happened, you know, um,

and, and, you know, they said they would do an investigation. I was calling for months. They all were still doing, you know, whatever, whatever. Um, I, I randomly called in, um, August of 2024 to find out the status of the investigation. No one called me nothing. I just randomly called. They told me that, uh, Ethan Beckett wasn't the investigator anymore. And they told me that, um, uh,

Someone named Carol Ham took charge of the investigation and she found that my investigation was unsubstantiated. Carol Ham is the deputy, not investigator, the deputy inspector general of the office of that. So.

When she told me that, she told me this herself over the phone. Oh, we found the investigation to be unsubstantiated. And all I could do was just, I froze for a minute and all I could do was like hang up the phone because...

I'm thinking, like I said, I'm handcuffed. I'm handcuffed. I didn't commit any crimes. You know, I'm here because I made a report. And I feel like I live in an upside down world or I live in, you know, in a world other than the world that, you know, I'm being told that we live in. So now I'm left alone.

Back at square one. I don't know what to do. The lawyers that I'm speaking to, like I said, they're telling me that they don't think they don't want to take the case because they don't feel like they can win because it happened inside of a courtroom. They don't feel like other judges would would go against court officers or other, you know, so.

is destined for me and people like me to fail. When you make these, I watched the interview where you said a correction officer sexually assaulted you. You know, something...

you, you went, you, you went past him and he knowingly was like, uh, yeah, you know, so, uh, he had his pelvic, his groin area out so you could rub past him. Right now, now say that if he, if he wanted to do to you what he was thinking of doing, what you thought he was thinking of doing to you, right? If he was, uh, six, if he successively did that to you, uh, uh,

That would that would take something out of you, correct? Yeah, that would take something out. And I know and I knew you wanted accountability because you said that even after you got out, you reported that officer and, you know, they told you something. He came back or something like that. They covered it up. They covered it up. But but you know that. And that was just for something that that happened that wasn't on the level of what could have happened. Right. But just imagine if it was on the level that could have happened.

And that officer did that to you and you reported it and they covered it up. How would you feel? Like, yeah, how you feel? Right. Exactly. So, so now, um, you, you're going through lawyers, you're going through anybody that you feel I can help you. And they're all telling you, uh, you know, since, since you didn't have any broken bones and mind you, uh,

I didn't have any broken bones, but I was sore for five months. My tongue was black and blue. I had, I think I sent you the pictures, but I had black and blue on my body. My nose was fucked up. You get what I'm saying? So they took something from me that I can never get back. And I say I can never get it back because...

As I was going to court for these officers beating me up, the same officers were rearresting me while I was going to court.

So they would arrest me for they would come up to me and and say something that would trigger me because after all this happened, I have PTSD. And I think it's called CPTSD where things that things that are continually happening continue to happen. And so I was being rearrested while I was going to court for them beating me up.

So when you're stuck in a situation like that and you have nothing else, when you cannot do anything else because these are police officers, what are you left with to do? What can you do? I never told anybody this, but on March 1st of 2023, I feel like that they killed me.

I haven't been able to, um, speak to my family since I haven't been able to, uh, be able to speak to my, to my kids because, uh, they took something from me that I can't get back. You get what I'm saying? Uh, uh,

I had to look at these officers every time I went to court for six months because it ended up being dismissed entirely. All the charges with them assaulting me and obstruction, all of that was dismissed, a speedy trial, six months, right? But in those six months, I was arrested about four or five times.

So it went from me not being arrested in 10 to 15 years to me leading a law abiding life, me, you know, taking care of my family, doing whatever, trying to do whatever I have to do. And by me making this report on on about racism and me making these reports on police officers, it turned into them killing me.

You get what I'm saying? It turned into them not it turned into me not being able to live my life and I don't do anything. There's this there's there's nothing that that that excites me anymore. I can barely go outside. I haven't worked since since I can't be around people. You know, my mind is racing fast.

It happened March 1st, 2023, but it feels like it happened yesterday. My mind races every single day. I can't concentrate. Even when coming for this interview, I think we booked it, you know, two months ago. But from then until now, I couldn't think of, you know, of things to say or anything like that. Even, you know, until I got here because I can't think. I can't do anything that I used to do.

And that's death. And I'm here because it doesn't only happen to me. It happens to my community. When people, black people, we do things out of necessity. We sell drugs out of necessity. If we don't, out of survival, if we don't do these things, we're dead anyway. If we decide, listen, we're not going to sell drugs. We're going to try to get a job. The truth is,

Come on. We know that is set up against us. There's no jobs hiring us. You see what they're doing with DEI now, even though white women make up most of DEI positions, black people only make up, I think, 4% of DEI positions. They want to focus on DEI and everything else but what's happening to the black community. I can't stand when I look

And our own people are saying things like black people aren't working hard enough. I worked hard all of my life.

All of my life. I used to work at Subway's when I was younger. I used to work at, you know, the sandwich shop. I used to work from seven to three in the morning. And then those Subway's, I mean, seven at night. I mean, seven in the morning to three in the afternoon. And then the Subway shop that I worked at, the one who owned it, she owned a sister Subway. So she had two franchises.

So from 4 p.m. because it took me an hour to get to the from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. I was working at the other subways. And then the manager would would call me for the hour because I was working both jobs.

Before that, like I said, I was working at glass windows and doors. I used to do construction. I've worked so hard in my life to take care of my family because I wasn't raised with a family. I didn't really have goals of being rich and having 10 cars. The car...

I always had dreams of having that big family table at Christmas or Thanksgiving and having everybody around that table. You get what I'm saying? And I can't have that anymore.

You know what I'm saying? Because because of because of something that I reported, the people in my neighborhood, the people that look like men that look like me, they can't have that anymore because of the way police treat us and and the illegalities that police do.

do in order to make these arrests. Most of these arrests that happen in black communities are illegal arrests. And now that I'm learning more about the law, I'm realizing that

it's, it's not black people are committing crimes. And that's why this world is in a state that it's in. The world is in a state that it's in because in order for America to run, it has to have an underclass. Um, and that underclass for 500 years have been black people. Um, in order to, in order to, um,

In order for everyone to get paid, there has to be a certain class of people being exploited. That certain class of people have always been black people. And I say that because if I get arrested, I don't have the money to hire a lawyer and fight all these charges. Most people in the black community don't, right? So...

So now anything, anything that that that's being offered to me, I don't want to be in jail. So now I'm saying, listen, I'll take it. Even even if they're saying, oh, listen, you stole a piece of candy from this store. We'll give you a year of probation, even though I might have not stolen that. My friend could have stolen. I was there, whatever. I don't want to be in jail. So you know what? I don't have to be in jail. OK, I'll take that right now.

So now most of us are getting arrested 10, 15 times. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to be in the Constitution. You know, we have a right against search and seizure, right? That don't happen in black neighborhoods. They stop us every single, to this day, they stop us, throw us against walls, search us. What do you have in your pocket? It looks like a gun. Let me search you. And when that happens to you every day,

I'm 37. That's happened to me at least 30, 40, 50 times. You get to a point where now when police is stopping you and they're telling you, what do you have? You're angry. You're saying, listen, I've been stopped enough.

Please leave me alone. And that's the point. That's the point where black people are now. We're angry. We're being stopped. We're illegally. Even though they're telling us that we have these laws that protect us, these laws don't protect us. They only protect the officers and the business owners who are who are who are calling the police on us. Right. So.

So now if we get arrested, I can't pay for my bills. I can't pay for my lawyer. I can't I can't pay for anything. But you know who's paying for the prosecution? The taxpayers, me.

You know who's paying for the district attorney? The taxpayers. Me. You know who's paying for the prosecutor? Me. You know who's paying for the judge? Me. So not only are we getting arrested and we're having to pay for that arrest. Every time we get arrested, we have to pay for whether we're innocent, whether we're guilty, whatever. We're paying for that. So now...

What incentive does a police officer or a district attorney or a judge have to say, you know what, you know what, let's not side with the cops on this one. Let's let's side with, you know, the people that's being oppressed. They can never do that. You know why?

If a judge says, you know what, if she has 10 cases and, and, and, and nine of those cases, she says, uh, you know, uh, uh, black people were in the right officers are in the wrong. You know what the officers would do? You know what the PBA would do? They would say, you know what, that judge is this and that, uh, that the system is this and that. And if a, if a

officers, if an officer's union decides to stop protecting a judge, to stop protecting a councilman or anything like that, what is that judge going to do? What is that council member going to do? How are they going to how are they going to get protection? Right.

And that's what scares society. They're scared that if they actually look into what's being said and debunk everything that's being said about black people, that we're lazy, that we're criminals, that we don't want to work. We want everything handed. That's a lie. That's a lie. And a black community knows that. We have to work two times harder, three times, four times harder to get half as much as white people.

And, you know, it's happened for 500 years, for 500. People want to say black people are lazy. What are you talking about? We worked as slaves, right?

For five. We're still slaves because even though even, you know, we don't have money to defend us from these evils, but we're still being arrested because it's profitable for the system. If black people stop being arrested unjustly, police officers wouldn't get paid.

All those all those government officials wouldn't get paid. Everybody gets paid off of the backs of black people. And it still happens to today. And I think it's disgusting. And and and and I'm and I tried to figure out a way to get around that. But when when you're speaking about capitalism, when you're speaking about profitability, when you're speaking about the the the.

The paychecks of human beings, they don't care that you got your ass beat unjustly. They don't care that you're not a man anymore, that these officers took that from you. I can't go to my kids and protect them because I can't protect myself. Right now, a gang of police officers could come in here and knock everything over and say you were selling drugs. They don't have to have the proof.

But right now they can say you are selling drugs. They can, they can take you out of this area. You, you could go to court and you can fight for it. You have money. What about the people that, that don't have money that they have to go with? And then years pass by before, uh,

A judge or a court is able to say, listen, oh, you know what? Maybe what happened to this person wasn't supposed to. Look at all the weed shops that the police ran up into. And now years, a year later, oh, all those stops were under. You wasn't supposed to do it. You wasn't supposed to run in. What does that do for me a year later? What do that? What does that do for the black business owners a year later?

You get what I'm saying? So everything is everything. They want us to suffer in silence. They want black people to to to to suffer from all this pain, all this trauma that that's being inflicted on us. But then when we lash out, when we turn when we when we're angry, we turn into the we turn into the angry black person that that wants to that wants to fucking that wants to cause harm.

And my thing is, you know, black people don't want to cause harm. We want to we want to we want the same rights that everyone else has. We want the ability to be able to take care of families without officers having a what is it? What is it? What is it when officers when they have to keep making arrests to a quota?

We want to be able to live with, with those black communities. Uh, uh, black people want to be able to live where we don't have to worry about a quota where, where we are being stopped, uh, illegally, uh, for having a, uh, air freshener in my neighborhood. I'm 37. They used to stop us for having an air freshener in our windows. They used to call it a obstruction, right? They're telling us we can't see our, but mind you, um,

Police officers break the law every day and it's okay. Police officer rides around with tents on their private and public vehicles all around and it's okay. They ride around with stuff that covers their license plate so they don't have to get tickets.

All of them do it. But because they're police officers, they get away with it. The police officers' families who, you know, who get stopped, they have PBA cards. They have they get to say, oh, I have an uncle who's in. Oh, OK, you can go even though you was doing 95 and a 35. You're allowed to go. Black people don't do that. They see they see a busted taillight.

They're pulling us out of our car. They're berating us and treating us inhumane because we're black, you know, and it comes. This is 2025. How long can this model actually continue? How long can you keep lying to a race of people and acting like it's all our fault that this world is the way it is? And it's not. It's our fault that this world was as prosperous as it is.

We worked for free for 500 years for free, not for low pay for free from sunup to sundown. I know my history. I know. Listen, I know the type of people, the type of white people that say nigger in my face and that smirk that that they have when they say nigger with the E.R. And and, you know, and I know how that feels, right?

So now you might see something that says Black Lives Matter. All of a sudden, you're thinking of me as a bad person. No.

Black people, black people need to need to do something other than vote for for since since the day they did since since they since they assassinated Malcolm X, assassinated Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton. The list goes on and on.

They've been telling us what was Martin Luther King saying? Listen, he believed that if we if we were around white people and and we we would, you know, they would eventually look at us as people. Right.

Malcolm X said that it doesn't matter if we around white people. They would never look at us as equal. It's been 60 years, 65 years since they assassinated Malcolm X and we've been nowhere. There's no law that you can point to right now that says black people have rights.

All these laws that they're saying are coming around, a president is able to flip that law at the stroke of a pen. Congress is able to change the law depending on if the president at the current time is Republican or Democrat. What does that say for black people? If we keep voting, we're never going to get these—we're never going to—

The system's unfair, brother. I keep going into it. It's unfair. You know, it's corrupt. It's unjust. You know, I'm sorry that happened to you and your experience. And that's why it's important to have these conversations. Of course. But I have a question. If your back's against the wall, right? And...

America tells you, listen, if someone does something to you, you know, justice is you calling the police and the police, you know, handling it. And, you know, but if you're if you're backed into a corner where it's the police who are the ones who are doing this to you and there's there's nothing you can do about that, then what are you supposed to do?

Your options are limited, but that's why it's important to have these conversations and share it. But that's what I'm saying. You say your options are limited, but what options are those, even the limited ones? If you're saying that this police officer did this and all of them are working with police officers, the judges side with police officers 98% of the time.

So if the judges and the district attorney and the officer, if they're all working together in conjunction with each other, just so this hamster wheel of oppression and exploitation of a race can continue, then what are black people supposed to do to lift themselves from this oppression?

The people that America is telling us to go to, they're the ones doing it to us. Back during slavery, it wasn't only the KKK that was hanging us. It was police officers.

It was police officers and firefighters that used to hose down innocent black people that wanted civil rights. Those people that marched with Martin Luther King, it was police officers beating them up. It was firefighters hosing down those women and children. We live in a world where they're trying to tell us that...

Nothing is going on. Nothing is wrong. And we should be mad at trans people. We should be mad at gay people. We should be mad at black people. We should be mad at everybody else but the government that's doing this to us.

And it's crazy because on January 6th, what did white people do when they when they thought that the president was that he was he was being treated unfairly? They went to January. They went to the Capitol and they ransacked the Capitol. Everyone in the world knows that that was a group of black people. They all would have been dead. They would have been shot dead because in America, a black life they believe is not is not worth a white life.

If those were black people with that cap, every one of them would have got 30, 40, 50 years. You think we would have been parted? But when it's white people doing it, it's okay. When white people, policemen died on January 6th.

But that's that's OK. You know what? You know what these these racists want to bring up? They want to bring up George Floyd and these precincts that were being burned. They don't do that. They don't do they don't research. If they was to research, they'll know that a group called the Bugaloo Boys were setting fires to precincts in that area. That's a white racist group.

They were trying to start the violence, but no one wants to see that. They look at black people and they look at us as less than animals. That's why every day you look at the TV, it's okay when we're being beaten. Look what happened to the man at Marcy Correctional Facility. He was handcuffed. He was a shackle, but they beat him to death.

Those officers aren't charged yet. But right now, if I get up and I was to and I was to and I won't do this, but if I was to put my hands on you, they would arrest me. They would charge me. I mean, but that if you are white, that would happen, too. But if I if you were white and you were sitting there and you attacked me and I called the cops, they're arresting you. But this is what I'm saying. If if I was a cop, if I was sitting here as a cop and I put your hands and I put my hands on you, they wouldn't arrest me.

I mean, if it's on video, you attacking me, what are they going to do? It's on video that, see what you said? It's on video that they beat up, that they killed the inmate in Marcy Correctional. But that's also still playing out. It's not like, it would be different though if the prosecutor got on screen today and said, hey, we're not pressing charges. That has not happened.

You see, you said it's still playing out. This happened months ago. Yeah, but the footage just got exposed. Like we have to wait for the system. At the same time, look at the cop that killed the woman, the white cop that killed the woman on screen. They arrested him. They handled that. The only reason you're seeing it now is because there was there was video footage and someone and someone was able to get that. When I was beat up, that happened two years ago. That happened two years ago. I was handcuffed. Yeah.

And they beat, they tortured me. You didn't hear about it yet. Nobody heard about it yet. Why is that? Because they're trying to sweep it under the rug. How can you sweep something like that under the rug? That's what they do. But also not all cops are bad. There's been some plenty of good cops that have come on the show that would advocate on your behalf. And that's, and that's another thing that, that's another thing that, that, that I find offensive when these, when these cops go on these, these, these cops that,

that do things to inmates, these ex-correction officers that do things to inmates, these cops that did all their bad back in the day and now they come on podcast saying, yeah, I did this. You have to realize the people they're doing it to is my people.

I have to look at the TV every day and see, oh, a black man, a black woman, mostly black men, are being released from prison because the charges against them were made up. We go through that every single day. So how can people keep telling us, you have to wait, you have to wait for justice. Justice for white people and justice for black people are different. We go through this trauma every single day.

Oh, I see. You know, we see it with white people, even when you yell at them sometimes, you know, they break down, they start crying and, you know, and they're not used to even people yelling at them. You know what these police officers do to black bodies every day? You know what they do to us every day? How can I tell my how can I call myself a father if I can't protect my kids?

How can I call myself a man if I can't protect my neighbors and my what are their gangs for? What are their the Crips and what are their why do black men exist in this world? If we're not fighting for our own freedom because this is not freedom. This isn't freedom.

They make laws to keep us down just because they showcase one black people, one black person here going to this university and this black person is the head of some army. That doesn't mean anything. Right now, our country is killing innocent men, women and children in the Middle East. Innocent men, women and children.

So you think they care about it? That's why we resonate so much with the Palestinians. What's happening to Palestinians is the same thing that happens to black people in America. We live in an open air prison. The same things that white people are allowed to get away with. And when you commit crimes, you have family members that are officers and you have PBA cars and you get away with these crimes. Black people don't get away with any crimes. The crimes that we commit and the crimes that we don't commit.

So now if we die, if I was to die today before doing this podcast, you know what the media would have presented me as? Oh, he's been locked up three, four or five times. He's a criminal. They don't know that the police, you know, that they do this every single day. If I have a right now, weed is legal, right? Weed is legal, right?

In my time, they were they was killing us for having weed. If I have a bag of weed in my in my pocket back in the day and I was walking, even though it was illegal for them to grab me, throw me up against the wall, go through my pockets. That don't matter.

They're cops. So it's their word against ours. So now we're sitting in court. We don't have no, we have a public defender. Now we're sitting in court telling the judge, we didn't do anything, you know, we didn't do anything wrong. We were just trying to live on. Oh, the cop is saying, oh yeah, he was found with all this. We did this. And even though they know it wasn't illegal, they violated our fourth amendment rights. They violated all these constitutional rights that black people are supposed to have.

because they need us for this hamster wheel to spin, they're going to continue doing this to us. And until we stand up and forget about tokenism, forget about symbolism, until we forget about all that stuff and we actually defend ourselves from the people that's committing all these crimes against us, I think we as black people are going to stay in the same position.

Right now, if I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, you're good. I think it's important to have these types of conversations, you know, and it's good to get your perspective out there. That's why there's platforms like this now. And that's how you create, you know, change. Ultimately, it's a slow process. The legal system we hear it all the time on the show is not fair. You know, it does discriminate. It is corrupt, you know.

And there are good and bad aspects, mostly bad to the system. And hearing stories like yours and what people like yourself go through are important to changing that. It might not be tomorrow or next month or next year, but over time, the more we get these stories out there, I think it goes a long way. Yeah, but I know, you know, just like you said earlier, there was good cops and bad cops. When you're in a system,

that police officers are in, that the government is in, it doesn't become about good and bad anymore. Black officers join the NYPD with the thoughts of saying, listen, we're going to change what's happening in our community. But

But when you're when you're put into a system where if you say anything against a fellow officer or if you snitch or rat or do anything like that, you know, they're coming after you. That's not it doesn't is not about good and bad anymore.

There's a law. You know why George Floyd was killed in front of our eyes? Because the black people standing around weren't able to do anything. If we see right now an officer breaking the law and killing one of our brothers and sisters, if we go to try to intervene, that's called resisting arrest.

Even though you had nothing to do with the arrest, they can arrest you for trying to interfere. So now they make us scared by trying to save one of our own people from the crimes that police have committed against us. So we can't interfere. We have to let our family members die.

And let the justice system take care of it. And the justice system, you say it's a slow process. It's worse than a slow process. There is no process. You can't keep saying it's a slow process when a majority of a race of people are dying. In a town in New Jersey called Patterson, 70% black people,

You drive around the neighborhood, you look at trash all over the streets. And as an outsider coming in, you looking, these black people are dirty. But what you don't know is in the city of Patterson is so corrupt that they cannot have their garbage picked up. They have like a $2 million debt or something like that. But other people are looking at these neighborhoods and saying black people are dirty.

And that's what we have to deal with. There's no one telling them, oh, no, it's not. We are putting out our garbage the way it's supposed to. If it's not being picked, it's not our fault. But it's the fault of these corrupt officials that are supposed to be taking care of things.

So now that that transforms into capitalism, if we're given all of our taxes, all of our hard earned money to the government and the government is using using them like dropping bombs on innocent people in the Middle East and not taking care of their own citizens. What are we supposed to do?

But your form of justice, white people's form of justice and black people's forms of justice, it has to be different. I think factually throughout history is different. Like I said, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X spoke about two different things.

You know, so it leaves us to say there has to be something else that we have to do. Voting isn't going to help us anymore.

Voting has never helped us. Voting has never helped us. The same things that happened back in the 60s when the Black Panthers was out and those Spanish groups that were being oppressed by the police, the 10-point plan that the Black Panthers had, every single thing that they wrote in that 10-point plan still happens today.

still happens today. They used to have survival programs. Ambulance, white EMS workers used to leave black people to die back in the day. So black people had to create their own ambulance service to get our own kind. We had our own food programs to feed our communities. Do

Do you know that the police would come and raid our office, the offices and knock over all the cereal and the food? Do you know that white people used to sit around campfires and lynch us and take pieces of our skin and eat it and sometimes took it for souvenirs? This is the type of people that you're saying just wait, justice is going to come. When? When?

Do my kids have to wait to get beat, to get tortured? It's happening to it happened to everyone before me. Why do I still have to wait? If it happens to my kids, someone is going to tell them the way if it happens to their kids, someone's going to say, listen, there's good cops in it. No, no, there's not. The system itself is bad. There's only good cops and bad cops to people who are the who the cops are oppressing and exploiting.

It's so easy for white people to call the cops on black people. But if I was to call the cops on white people, they don't even make the arrest. They would tell me to go down to the precinct and I would have to look up the charge myself and I would have to put it in and I would have to send it to the. This happens. So right now, if the government doesn't do anything for black people, why are we paying taxes to the government?

That's taxation without representation. I mean, that's a whole nother conversation. You know, there's a lot of politics to this, you know, but John, I appreciate you coming on the show today, brother. Thank you, man. You know, it was a very inspiring episode. I'm glad you got to get your opinion and your story out there.

And you represent a very large amount of people that are affected by the criminal justice system. Yeah. And I want to thank you for having me. You know, I hope that whatever I said today, it wasn't it wasn't it was it was in general. It wasn't, you know, specifically. This is a safe place for people to come on the show and share their story. And you did that. You did a good job. Thank you. Like I said, a lot of people don't know about what happened. So thank you for having me. Of course, brother. Thank you.