Series: Unleashing the Best from the Worst. Episode 5.

Hello, welcome to episode number 5. I've been gone for a couple of days, took a quick break, but I'm back. Appreciate y'all hanging in with me. So this is Unleashing the Best from the Worst. So go ahead and subscribe, continue to, uh, follow me here on YouTube as I share the wealth of myself, where I come from, and how I've been very successful, um, starting a business after the obstacles of incarceration and gangs and the involvement that I've been in, in crime. Um, I just want to share a couple of things. I've noticed that Um, some of you made a couple of comments, and, uh, I just want folks to know that again, I don't take lightly this subject of sharing my biography, my history as a former, uh, former gang member. But just bear with me as we get through this, and there's an endgame. There's an endgame to this, and Um, the main thing is, you know, take from it, take these lessons and learn from them, benefit from them in such a way that, um, you avoid the same pitfalls and obstacles that I've had. So let's jump in because I know on our last, uh, conversation, our last episode, we talked about you know, my, my involvement in gangs and how it got real and I became more involved in gang activity and it changed everything because once you start making those decisions to commit crimes, to be involved in criminal activity It's hard to turn back from that. So it's tough, you know, once you, once you, once you cross that line and you realize that, you know, I can't go back. And, and I just want to ask you, especially parents, If you're a parent out there and you have young kids, you have young teenagers, um, growing up— and I'm not saying all public schools are bad— but if you do have children and they're growing up in a public school system, or you have children that are growing up in a community where there might be gang activity. And now it's not just here in America, I mean, it's other countries now have experiencing the same problem of gang activity. I'm using the word gang very loosely. I'm using gang activity and I'm using gangs very loosely. And what I mean by that, I mean that The interpretation of a gang from my generation, from people that were involved in gangs in my generation, was, it was a little bit more detailed and then identified specific types of things such as, you know, the wearing of certain gang colors, uh, gang symbols and signs, a dress code, a language and a lingo and a culture. Right now, today, gangs— and when I say gangs and gang activity, gang culture, it can mean a lot more. It can mean simply 4 or 5 young kids getting together every day and just doing mischievous things, right? Because they decided to do it as a groupthink. Meaning they decided that instead of going to the library and studying for homework, instead of going, um, to do some tutorial work with a tutor, instead of going home and doing your chores and homework, you're deciding to go out and vandalize stores or, you know, 7-Elevens, and you decide, no, we about to, you know, throw rocks or whatever it is that's mischievous. That, to a certain extent, classifies or qualifies as a gang mentality. It's a gang mentality because it's a groupthink to do something that's disruptive. Um, when kids are getting together to do something that is disruptive, um, then that can be a type of gang or group thing. So I just want to be clear when, when I talk about this, this gang mentality, this group think. In my case, as I realized in 1984, '85, that I was more and more involved in gang activity. I concealed it a lot, a great deal, you know. So even though the security guard from the school had came to my house and told my parents that I was involved in gang activity and what that represent and what that meant, I still tried my best to conceal it. And that, I mean, that's something that we do as kids. So when we went to family gatherings, when we attended church events, you know, community events, no one really knew I was involved in gangs other than the people that really knew me intimately, that were around me, you know, all the time. One of my sisters was somewhat aware. My oldest sister was aware that I was involved. In gang activity. She, she was closer to things that was happening in the neighborhood, in the community, because she, she dated someone that was in that lifestyle, that was in that culture, uh, of being in the streets, being in the hood, so to speak. Even though the person that she was involved with wasn't technically— could be considered, uh, a gang member like I was, he was still someone that was involved in criminal activity, selling drugs, selling PCP, things like that. And so that got her a little bit closer to what was happening in the street, word on the street, so to speak. So she was aware that her little brother was involved in gang activity. But when we were all together as a family, when my father would— and my parents would have events at the house, after Sunday dinners, things like that, uh, church folk showing up at our house. No one knew, no one could detect that I was involved in gangs because I was sitting there as a good little boy, good little son, um, concealing that part of who I was. And as I did that, the realization that, you know, hey, I could get away with this. I, I felt like, oh, okay, I could conceal this. Live my double life. When they gone and moved on, I can go out through the back door, uh, change clothes and put on my gang attire and be with the fellas hanging out as I normally do, and nobody would know. And obviously, when you're involved in criminal activity, things are going to happen, things are going to change. You're going to get caught up. There's going to be incidents that's going to happen where the law enforcement is going to be involved. They're going to show up at the doorstep. And that's what began to happen. It started to begin to happen. And now the first incident involved the summer where all of the kids are out of school. You know, it's just a hot summer day, folks running around with their shorts on, riding bicycles. You know, the kids are out, you know how it is in the summer. Music is playing, blaring in the air from radios. Back then it was the boombox. We had the big boomboxes. Everybody had their new boombox that they had and they were playing their music. They were playing the, you know, the songs of the day and it was summer and we were at the parks. And one of our parks, well, you know, two of our parks in our community were known gang locations, hangouts, and certain parts of the park, the way gangs typically are, we isolate or designate certain areas within a bigger park where the gangs are concentrated. Sometimes it's near a restroom area, are benches, some park benches with shade, or a tree, a tree under a tree that has a bench with shade. So that's typically what gangs do. We find an area where there's things where we can hide things, like a trash can, for example, nearby where we can stash drugs underneath the big brown yellow trash cans. Or, you know, grass patch that near a, a sprinkler, a hole where we can hide drugs or weapons. This is the mentality. So we're at this park, and it was one of those locations. In this case, it was near a swimming pool, the backside of a swimming pool. You had the front side and the back side. The front side was where the people from the public entered. The backside was like a back gate, and there was a bench, a park bench, a trash can, a tree, and a brick wall where you can— if the police come, you can hop over that wall and take off running through the park, or through the school actually, which was a school at the time, Mark Twain Elementary, and another, uh, school, Seven Day Adventist School, on the opposite side. So there was places you can kind of escape if the, if the squad car were to come from, because they can only come in from that one side, and we could get away if, if that happened. And this particular case was a lifeguard was there, you know, African-American lifeguard, and it was kind of saying things that were being said that this lifeguard was, you know, messing around with, with the young kids, with girls. And these lifeguards, you know, they were at least— they were over 20, 30 years old lifeguards. We talking about older gentlemen, a couple of ladies, um, but it was mostly male lifeguards at this park. And this particular lifeguard, I know he had to at least be in his early 40s, late 30s. Um, the girl that I guess he was messing around with, um, was our age. And at the time, I believe I was, you know, just getting into high school, you know, 9th, 10th grade. Um, I was just getting into high school, and, and we noticed— we were sitting there doing our illegal activity, drinking Alcohol, drinking 40 ounces, um, Old English malt liquor. You know, they give communities, you know, like ours, you know, the, the, the, the cheap alcohol in the liquor store. So we, you know, gang members, especially South Central LA, were known for drinking Old English 800. That was the name of the, the beer. It was a malt liquor. And we sitting there drinking this malt liquor in the park. And, you know, I had a little .22 pistol, a Derringer. It was like a Derringer gun, little two-shot gun in my pocket because they were easy to throw, stash. One of my friends stole it from their grandfather's chest or something. We had all kind of ways we came up with weapons. And I happen to have the weapon. They gave it to me. Um, so as we sitting there, we're looking at the— in the pool area, and we see this lifeguard talking to this girl. And we had a conscience as gang members. If we saw something that wasn't right, it wasn't right. Even as a gang member, we, we, you know, we consider ourselves almost like enforcers too. So we didn't like child molesters. We didn't like, you know, pedophiles or rapists. You know, we had mentalities that we, we consider ourselves almost like defenders of the community to a certain extent. And as I'm looking and we're looking now, he looked at us and, and made a comment like, what are you guys looking at? Like, what y'all looking at? Got smart with us and said, what are you looking at? And we immediately responded and started calling him names, calling him a pedophile. Like, what are you doing? Why are you talking to that young girl? She's my age. You know, it went on and on. And he's between the gate and we're on the outside of the gate. So I guess, I don't know if that was one of the reasons he felt tough or brave. But he knew he was talking to young kids. We were kids, right? So he actually tried to get tough with us and, and came outside the gate, actually came outside the gate. And as we were approaching him, I guess to attack him, I recalled that I had the gun in my pocket. So my first reaction when he came out of the gate was to point this gun at him, and he took off running, protecting his head as though I was going to shoot him in the head. I mean, it was pretty— a bizarre scene at a park, a pool. Mind you, we got children in the pool. There's children in the pool. So that scene didn't— there was an ugly scene. And I'm not proud of that, you know, even though I was a juvenile at the time. These are the things that occur on any given day. And it happened. And once that happened and we realized, you know, I drew my weapon, someone— we heard people saying, "Call the police." And so we scattered, all of us. Everybody scattered in different directions. And as I mentioned before, the wall where you jump over and you get to the school and you run through the school, that was my move, actually hopping over the wall, making my way through the school, the elementary school. And once I got to the opposite side of the school, back into the community, that's my community and my street, a street that actually leads to my home, back to my home. And by the time I got there, the law enforcement was already swarming the area, and they noticed me and they pulled me over, and I still had the weapon in my pocket, and I was arrested that day. Now, by that time, because the police had been swarming the area, the neighbors were out, you know. So the neighbors, the parents that knew they had children out in the street They were out looking for their kids. And I was one of those kids that my father and mother was looking for. And my father had his robe on, turning the corner with his house shoes on, slippers, walking around the corner as law enforcement handcuffing me and putting me in a squad car. Um, by the time I was placed in a squad car, my father was coming to the window and, and, and I noticed the officers allowed my father to come talk to me at the car. And, and as he shook his head and looked at me, he just realized that, you know, I've gone down a really bad path. And that path led to— that was, that was the gateway. That, that incident was the gateway to my life really taking a tragic turn and, and really tragic turn of law enforcement contact, drugs, uh, violence, uh, gang shootings. It was all downhill. And this is another chapter of my life that I, I decided I wanted to share with you all today. But as I, as I, as I conclude on this episode, I just want to You ought to know and understand that. Don't take this stuff lightly. You know, if your children are being disobedient now to you as parent, or you a youngster that's listening to me and you might be influenced right now by someone in your life that you're close to— it can be a cousin, a best friend, someone down the street— remember, you have a choice. You have a choice to say, you know what, I don't want my life to end up like that, so I'm going to choose to be safe. Peace. Don't forget to scribe— subscribe, subscribe, subscribe— and follow my next episode on Unleashing the Best from the Worst. Peace.