June 2, 2025 • 46 mins
Dennis A. Woodbine’s life was stolen by the system—but he didn’t let that define him. In 1997, Dennis was wrongfully convicted of a murder he did not commit. He spent 22 years inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility, fighting not only for his freedom, but for his identity, his purpose, and ultimately, his peace. In 2019, after more than two decades behind bars, Dennis was granted executive clemency by the Governor of New York. He walked out of prison a free man—but his work was just beginning.
Instead of choosing bitterness, Dennis chose service. He returned to his community in Poughkeepsie, NY and created something powerful: the Finish Strong Wellness Center, Inc. A free after-school program that gives local youth what the system too often fails to provide—support, structure, and a safe place to grow. For many of these young people, Dennis is more than a mentor—he’s proof that redemption is real and that your circumstances don’t have to define your future.
Since his release, Dennis has committed himself to community work, youth advocacy, and family. He’s not just healing from what was taken—he’s building something lasting, brick by brick. His journey is about turning pain into purpose and injustice into impact. In this powerful episode of Dog in the Yard, Dennis sits down with us to talk about what it feels like to carry the weight of a wrongful conviction, the process of rebuilding your life from the ground up, and what it truly means to finish strong.
This is more than just a redemption story—this is a blueprint for how to survive, evolve, and serve. Whether you’ve experienced the system firsthand or you just believe in the power of second chances, Dennis’s story will stay with you long after the credits roll. Tap in. Listen. Learn. Be moved.
Instead of choosing bitterness, Dennis chose service. He returned to his community in Poughkeepsie, NY and created something powerful: the Finish Strong Wellness Center, Inc. A free after-school program that gives local youth what the system too often fails to provide—support, structure, and a safe place to grow. For many of these young people, Dennis is more than a mentor—he’s proof that redemption is real and that your circumstances don’t have to define your future.
Since his release, Dennis has committed himself to community work, youth advocacy, and family. He’s not just healing from what was taken—he’s building something lasting, brick by brick. His journey is about turning pain into purpose and injustice into impact. In this powerful episode of Dog in the Yard, Dennis sits down with us to talk about what it feels like to carry the weight of a wrongful conviction, the process of rebuilding your life from the ground up, and what it truly means to finish strong.
This is more than just a redemption story—this is a blueprint for how to survive, evolve, and serve. Whether you’ve experienced the system firsthand or you just believe in the power of second chances, Dennis’s story will stay with you long after the credits roll. Tap in. Listen. Learn. Be moved.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Himself.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That'll be.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Hope a South darks A over your mouth, reguless clear.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
That's right? What up?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
You already knows your boy pistol pete. Welcome back to
the dog in the yall today we got Dennis in
the Dennis served twenty two years. He was given an
executive clearcy from the Governor's office twenty nineteen. Uh, he
was released from Saint Saint. And with that being said,
let's get right to it. Man, you already knows your
(01:50):
boy pistol p dog in the yall?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Yo?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
What up?
Speaker 4 (01:55):
What up?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
You already knows your boy pistol p Welcome back to
the dog in the yard today. We got Dennis in
the building. What's up, Dennis?
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Good brother?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
How's everything?
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Man? Everything's good? Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You already know, man, where you from.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
From Brooklyn originally? But right now I'm living in Poughkeepsie. Okay,
that's where I came home to.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, that's definitely a change from Brooklyn to Poughkeepsie.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Right, especially after twenty two years.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, yeah, well you probably need that anyway. You don't
need to be back at Brooklyn, even though Brooklyn changed.
It's really nice now. A lot of places, you know,
so kn's really knocked Brooklyn neither. So dinner's are tell
me a little bit about you man, you know, you know, background,
a little bit about you run down, just briefly about
your upbringing, where you was raised and you know, and
(02:40):
what led you to, you know, to start getting yourself
in trouble.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
So I'm from the Prospect Prospect Heights, Sesson of Brooklyn.
That's where the Balky censor is at. That's where I
grew up. I grew up in the eighties, late eighties,
early nineties, so as you know, that's considered like the
crack era. So the streets of Brooklyn was really rough.
I think the murder rate around that time was like
probably two thousand a year, nineteen something. It was high
(03:06):
and it was bad. And as a shorty growing up
in Brooklyn, I faced a lot of challenges named le violence.
It was hard to walk down the street and not
be challenged and tested in some way. You know, where
I'm from, they used to play the knockout game, where
you know, you might be walking down the street minding
your business. It might be a crew or a gang
(03:28):
and one of them might walk up to you and
just see if they can knock you out with one punch.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Those just kind of adolescent games that was playing.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Yeah, it wasn't me playing it. It was me. I'm
gonna keep it one hundred. A lot of that was
targeted at me. I was a young kid, I was innocent,
wasn't into the streets, and you know, that was me
growing up and losing my innocence. You know. It started
off with me being targeted and me being bullied, and
then me taking what was done to me, internalizing it
(03:57):
and then doing it to other people. But at that time,
it wasn't me playing a game with nobody else. It
was me growing up the hallway.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Okay, yeah, you was actually doing the right thing and
people was actually bullying you and and ship like that,
and then that turned you into I guess a bully
as well.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Yeah, there was a lot of stuff. The schools that
I went to was like Rykers Island, you know what
I mean. Like eventually when I was get locked up,
I would experience something with like we may be in
the Brooklyn House of Detention. Then one day you're told
you're going to Rikers Island.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Okay, But then as far as your upbringing.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Yeah, I was just trying to make your comparison. So
when I was incarcerated, those were the experiences that I had,
was like, you're getting transferred to this jail or this prison.
But when I was young, when I was a shorty
growing up, it's we in the sixth grade and okay,
now you're you're finding out what school you're getting sentto,
or you're going to sixty five. And it was the
same experience that I would later experience inside where oh
(04:55):
you're going to sixty five and anybody get quiet and
kids start crying because of what they're going to, or
you're going to two sixty five that's between four Green
and Farragut. You're gonna have some problems. You better know
how to fight.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I got.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So that was the process that I went to. But
I told you was so that was when I was
in the sixth grade, maybe ten or eleven, when I
had those experiences.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You was real, Jit, I mean to be going through
that like at an early age and all that you
did you complain to your moms, your parents.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, So unfortunately my dad, he left my moms with
three kids to raise on her own. You know, my
dad unfortunately thought it was okay to make a lot
of kids and not necessarily stick around and support them
and my moms that weighed on her. So, like you
asked a good question, did I tell her? Yeah, But
(05:44):
a lot of times she was busy dealing with the
financial struggles of having three kids without a man to
help her raise us.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
She couldn't she could really take take too much of
her time to worry about what you was really going
through because she was worrying about survival facts.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
I get it, and I didn't understand it at the time.
I now know that it was like the depression that
my mom's a struggling yeah, you know, but I saw
that as my mom doesn't love me.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know, you know, we don't know us as kids,
you know, especially back in the days because I'm from
that era as well, and you know, and I could
I could relate my moms, she could really get a
hold of be there for me all all the time,
like the way I really probably expected her, or you know,
because there was all there was. There was also dealing
(06:28):
with their mental health as well. A lot of our parents,
a lot of people that we know from you know,
they have they was dealing with mental health and back
in the days, it wasn't like one of those that
we fleety and we talk about like we talk about
now we talk about health, know, like oh yo, get
go get some Go get some therapy, go get some
you know. And now it's all our open where we
not no longer ashamed to more or less go to
(06:50):
get counseling and get help and all that. Back in
the days, you know, it wasn't none of that, and
then if it did, it was always the help was
always there. But the lack of education with parents, you know,
and to say, you know, I'm gonna go get that
kind of help, that was it. They never moved like that,
you know what I mean. So that kind of like,
you know, because that goes for a lot of us.
You know, my mom's, my dad, you know, the people
(07:12):
struggle with mental health, you know what I'm saying, And
and that that takes a tone on us as well,
you know what I'm saying. So we we have our
own issues that we deal with as kids and all
that growing up and you know, sod the bullying, I mean,
like how long would I mean, like how that how
how it used to happen? He used to go to
school and like you used to get bully on it
(07:32):
picked on you, Like what was what was like?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, So like when I went to my first junior
high school, there was a game that was there at
that time, Receptor cons and I remember one kid came
into the bathroom and he pulled out a machete out
his parents and told me, you know, he's basically trying
to shake me down or put pressure on me. And
then I got a safety transfer. I told my grandmother.
(07:55):
They did something about it, and I got transferred out
of one thirteen and I went to that school that
I was speaking about.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Earlier, to a worser school.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
I went to a worster school. I went to the
school that was between those two projects.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
But let me ask you what they wanted from you?
I got that like when he pressed you with it,
and what he wanted, like what was it? What was
their goal?
Speaker 4 (08:14):
You know? So around that time, like I was lost,
and I was stealing money from my house, taking money
from my grandma's and I was trying to my friends
and then well they got out to the wrong set
of guds and it was like, oh, you got money. Oh,
and they ran down on me for that. But like
I said, I was twelve thirteen going through this, and
it was real, like a machete being pulled out on
(08:35):
you in the bathroom in school, like you know, that
was some serious stuff. But then I went to two
sixty five and that's the first time that I seen
somebody get slighted open.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
In two sixty five, I remember, I'm sitting there in
class and the kid comes in and he sits down
and then he has like a half moon and dudes
just did it to him for the sake of doing it,
Like he ain't do nothing to nobody. Was just they
just picked up her.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
He just picked to her. Wow. So you was really like,
what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
I really got to watch myself in this spot and
how long you stayed in that school and all that.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
I was able to complete it. I also went through
some changes. My uncle came to live with me, and
my uncle was different. You know. My uncle was the
one who taught me how to handle myself. He would
one if anybody put their hands on me, there was
a retaliation. My uncle taught me that every man needs
a family outside of his family to help him deal
with the streets. And my uncle had a family. He
(09:30):
had a crew and they carry guns, and if I
got jumped on anything, my uncle would come get me,
get his peoples and we would go back.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, at least you had to back up from your
uncle because you didn't have your dad here. At least
you had your uncle there, you know what I mean
to to, you know, to keep you going and teach
you things that you, Bobby didn't even know, or give
you that support that you didn't have.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, it was a it was a blessing in the
curse in different ways. One, Yeah, he was a person
that he was there. He took me places, he taught me,
He had me reading books, took me to the mosque
and the Harlem, made sure I acknowledge yourself. Always was
there to talk to me, you know, always available emotionally
and physically. But at the same time, my uncle was
into the streets, and I saw that. I would go
(10:11):
into the room and I would see the guns, you know,
I would hear them plotting on making certain moves, and
I was again exposed.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
With Yeah, as a kid, everything model.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So I'm saying, this is what this is, what.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
A man is, this was this is what I is,
what I want to be.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
My uncle was a gangster and I wanted to be
like him. You know, he was a family man, he
was a good man, but he was also a gainster.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah he was outside. I'll get you. So what what what? Uh?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
At what point did you started getting yourself? You know
that you went from being the victim in regardless of
getting bullied on that and you reversed that.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
And yeah, around that time, I started to hang out
with the wrong crowd. First it started off l like,
smoking weed, drinking, cutting class, going they parties. But then
you know, now you start playing with guns. You know,
my friend got a gun and I'm like, let me
see that. And I'm like, and I'm not going to
(11:11):
put this all off on hip hop. I love hip hop,
but there was a time when I listened to hip
hop and it gave me a lot of positive imagery
and it was conscious and stuff. But also around that
time when I was coming of age, there was a
lot of you know, throw your guns in the air
and all this other stuff and motivated me in a
different way. So you I can get respect with this.
(11:33):
I can get respect by being violent, by picking up
a gun, by moving a certain way. I could make
the same dudes that used to jump on me, fear me,
and I started to go that race I started and
then you know, the bad thing is when it works,
when you do it, and then people start talking about you,
and it was like, yo, you heard what.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
You just keep going further.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
You start going further.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, that's what happens.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
You don't got nobody really holding you down. You're feeling yourself.
You're like, what, No, I'm in control of the shit.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You know what I'm saying. And you was, what seventeen, Nah,
that's younger than that. When I started, maybe fifteen. When
I turned sixteen, I started hustling for a neighborhood drug dealer, okay,
And that's where everything just went wrong. My uncle had
got into some stuff and there was a hit out
on him, so he had to go down south. So
(12:25):
now there's no man in the house to keep me
in check, even though I was already dabbling. Now really
out there now.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Cause he's not yeah, cause he at least he's your uncle. Yeah,
he does what he does, but he'll keep you in check.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Yeah. So this dude that I was hustling for gave
me a proposition one day. He was like, cause I
was still living at home and I was still going
to school, but I was hustling for him. He was like,
you gotta stop that. You gotta make a choice. Either
you're gonna stay at home or you gonna go to school,
or you're gonna work for me. And like an idiot
at sixteen, I made the choice to not only continue
working for him, but I dropped out of school and
(12:56):
I ran away from home. And this dude was one
of those the dudes that really like pray on younger kids,
male and female females.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
He used them for which you know I got.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
He was just he was just one of those guys
that take advantage of of whatever you could care. You know. Yeah,
they got them out there, They got those you know
brothers out there. You know those guys out there that
the take up either that that pray off younger brothers
that you know and send them on missions and put
them under the wing instead of giving them that that
you know enlightened and leave you for dead.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
And once you get jammed up and you locked up,
he ain't coming with bell money.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
He ain't trying to do nothing for so so you
started working with him. And at what point you started
getting in trouble and you got arrested.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
So around that time that I started working for him,
my uncle got murdered.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
The same uncle.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Yeah, my uncle, my father and uncle. I was in
the spot I had moved into this due spot I
was living. I went from a four story brownstone in
Brooklyn to living in the crack spot. I was living
in the spot that I was hustling out of sixteen
And one of my friends come to see me one
day and he was like, your mom sent me. She
said one of your uncles got murdered. If you want
to know which one, you got to come home and
(14:02):
find out.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
And so I went home and then she told me
Tracey got murdered. And then that was it. It was
like a perfect storm everything, me being exposed to the
right wrong type of individual, my uncle being murdered, and
then what was just going on in that environment. It
was like like I said, it was, it was a
really bloody time around there.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
And he just fell into the loop and got lost.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, And because that must have been hard. You know,
your uncle, the one that you loved up, look up
to he passes away. Now you out there in the street,
you hustled for this guy that don't really give a
fuck about you, But you don't really know who you're young,
so you're thinking that it's all great, and then you
get caught up.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So what what year you got caught up and went
to jail?
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Nineteen? I caught my case nineteen. I got into those
guys I used to it. It was nineteen ninety seven, okay,
nineteen ninety and the ninety.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Six, okay, I believe, And you got caught up for what?
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, So one day I get into altercation with these guys.
They were part of a gang in my neighborhood and
they used to mess with me when I was younger.
I'm nineteen now, and like it's different. You know, I'm
not running, I'm not scared. It's like when my uncle
got killed. What it did to me is just made
me not care about life no more. You know, I
didn't think that I was going to live long, and
(15:26):
so that's just how I was moving, doing a lot
of crazy stuff. So these guys bumped into me and
we got into altercation. It was like three of them
and one of me, and like they're approaching me, like, oh,
this is that kid that we used to and you
ain't you know, because they like that yeah, I'm like,
and it's different. Yeah, it's different.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Don't know that you're outside.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, it's different. So one thing led to another. One
of them snatched my chain, I dropped them. The other
two jumped in were getting it on, and then we
break and then I went to go and get my gun.
I was with some females at that time, and they
had told somebody else from my neighborhood what happened. So
when I came out the building, there was a dude
(16:05):
who had just came home. We weren't even cool like that,
but he was like, I'm coming with you, and I
was like, I'm good. He was like I'm coming with you.
I'm like, I'm good. But while I'm going back and
forth with him, I'm realized, these dudes are getting away
and I'm hot. I stay hot, I stay Yeah. So
I was like efort and I allowed him to come.
We went up to the projects and so when we
(16:28):
get there, first of all, he was on a different
type of time. He was like, Yo, let's just give
it to anybody who's out there. I wasn't trying to
just do that to anybody, but again, I was hot.
I wasn't thinking we walk up to the lobby. There's
a bunch of people in there, and I'm like, there
they go. But it wasn't just the dudes that I
had the altercation with. Is a bunch of people in there,
but I'm like, hey, yeah, he don't know who's who.
(16:51):
So even though I wasn't trying to just harm anybody,
I put everybody lives in jeopardy by telling them there
they go. So long story shot, we wound up backing
out on the security, making him open the door, and
then we ran into the stairways. Everybody took off and
by the time I got to the seventh floor, there
was a shot and he came running from behind the corridors,
(17:12):
like I got one. The next day I came out
and I found out the person he cared was my friend.
Oh man, he just happened to be in the lobby.
Those are his people too. He was just happened to
be in the lobby hanging with him. And when we
pulled up, I said, there they go. So he's thinking
everybody and also my friend like he wasn't a slouch.
When the dude went up there, he tried to like
(17:34):
take the gun from him, so it was like a
struggle and he shot him.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
He killed him, He killed him.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I came out the next day, found out what happened.
I went on a run for a minute. He got arrested.
There wasn't enough evidence to charge him, but they held
on to him, and then they arrested me. And then
he was like, we know you wasn't a shoot her,
You know what I mean, tell us what happened. But
I refused. I was into the streets. He ended up
(18:03):
going home and I went to trial and I got
twenty five of life for killing my friend.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
But she wasn't no one that person.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
It doesn't matter, like so, yeah, it doesn't matter. By time,
if I didn't know any better, I would have thought
I shot him. The DA had the DA who had
my case at that time, I didn't know it. She
had a reputation for doing what she did to me.
She would get convictions by any means necessary. She would
put witnesses on the stands that she knew was lying.
The police would.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Get Yeah, it was a lot of that shit going
on back in the days. They do anything to get you,
to reroll you and all to get you locked up. No,
I trust me. I had a lot of brothers that
set up here with me as well, that they've been
through a lot of same similar stories, I mean, including myself.
I went to jails out. I didn't do it either.
Some motherfuckers did what everything they had to do to
get me, you know what I mean. So I get it.
(18:52):
So they came in and she did anything she had
to do, and you went to try and you blew trial.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
And the dudes who I had got it on with
day was cooperating in and like these dudes were supposed
to be gangsters and.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
All they all came through testify.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Only kicked one, but everybody made a statement. But there
was one main dude who they used to point me
out in the lineup, testified the grand jury and then
come to trial and then.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
You need one.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, so you got twenty five years. Yeah, and you
wound up going to Records Island.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
I was in the Brooklyn House of Detention first, then
from there I went to Rykers Island.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Okay, how was that experience that? I mean, what was
going through your mind?
Speaker 4 (19:29):
I mean the rumors that you hear and all the
violence that luckily for me, like there was some really
bad jails on Rikers Island that I could have went to,
but I just happened to not go to I went
to a spot called West Facility, which wasn't like infamous
like the Beacon m or anything like that. But stuff
still goes down.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Like you still had this, there's still jail.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
It's still jail. You still gotta go to court.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
And yeah, same process.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It just it might not be the Beacon of the
Fall building with the names and all, but it's jail.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So so you went through how was your process? How
was what was going through through your mind going over
that bridge? And you know, like what was going through
your mind? You know, you what sixteen nineteen, nineteen eighteen
going on twenty, you know, like going over that bridge
like for a body now you blew trit like what
was going through your mind? Like what was your mother at?
(20:23):
What was what was going on?
Speaker 4 (20:25):
So shout out to my moms and shout out to
my little sister. They would like the two people in
my family was coming up to see me regularly and
they did what they could. And even before that, my
moms did the best that she could, so they I
had family in the beginning that was there for me.
When I went upstate, that was a different story, you know.
But while I was on Rikers Island, I have two
(20:45):
people coming in hard to see me, my moms and
my sister.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, it gets complicated once you go up north, especially
for single moms. You know, you gotta take the bus
the day before to be up there early in the morning.
You know, you got It's just it's not easy, you know.
So but so you got to twenty five, you got
the Rightkors Island.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
How long you was on the island for?
Speaker 4 (21:06):
I did six months and Brooklyn House of Detention and
six months on right Gas Island. I blew trial and
then I got sent up state.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Okay, when you went upstate, where you want.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
To first spot is reception. That's downstate noh State.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
How was that experience?
Speaker 4 (21:19):
That was crazy? So, you know, intimidation is like that's
the first I guess because the CEOs know they outnumbered.
One of the things that they try to do is
just instilled far from the jump, you know, pick somebody
jump on them in front of you. That type of stuff.
You go through the whole the humanizing process of being
stripped of all your regular clothes that you might have
been able to have on Right Gas Island, them shaving
(21:41):
up for all your fate. You're here, your hair on
your head, putting you in that shower area, and you
got to put the solution on your body to make
sure that you're not coming upstate with lights or anything.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
You know, turn around, stret turn around, spreading your ass,
showing your assholes to the white man. You know, real quick,
let me see your asshole. You know that ship was
the you're in there, like, what the funk going on
the ride?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Man?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
They bullying you, and they really bullying you.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
They pushing you around.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Right, jumping on people with mental health all out. Yeah,
and it ain't just white dudes, like you know Upstate
when it's different places like that's predominantly white. Yeah, it's
white guards jumping on you. But one of the things
that I've seen in my experience is that in prison,
those guards, whether they black or white or Latino, they
jump on you all the same.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, they all stick together. That's one thing about them.
No matter what what what color they are, they all
they're all the same up there. They go hard and
they stick together, and they've been doing it for a
long time, getting you know, with beating us up.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
And all that.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
That's the fact, you.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Know, so, so you went up top where you want to.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
So after Downstate, I went to a spot called green Haven.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Okay, Greenhavn.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah, serious, prison, Yeah, a lot of life is a
lot of backing Fourth Wars spot getting shut down because
somebody got stabbed or cut. When you walk the yard,
you always see the holes in the ground from like
police coming out there and digging up shanks and whatnot.
(23:13):
So and also like for the most part, prison isn't
about rehabilitation. I do think they had programs like that
in there, but I wasn't ready for that. I was
trying to wrap my mind, trying to wrap my mind
around having twenty five years to life. So I was
in the.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yard and you was in the yard, yeah, ball.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
And just trying to escape. And I was still going
to the little library trying to fight my case. But
it was really me going through the process of not
believing that I got all the time because I didn't
think I was going to be convicted. Like from what
I was told, you got to prove murder be on
a reasonable that. I know I didn't kill the victim,
so I didn't think and then my lawyer, I just
I just didn't think this.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Was going to go this fall.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, so now you're sitting around twenty five years from
downstairs where you want to green Behavior.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
When you was in Crea.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
I think maybe about two years and then then when
you from there, I went to a spot called Upstate. Okay, yeah,
it's a box, a special housing using special housing unit.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, so you went to the box.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Oh so you got yourself caught.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Up in Yeah. So what was going on in Greenhaven
at the time. People were the guys that were in
there were trying to protest their conditions, like how much
we were getting paid to work in industry and stuff
like that. Okay, Like it was stuff like where you
go to the mess hall, everybody was expected to wear
their greens. You shouldn't wear no weather color, your colorful
hoodies and none that. I didn't know. So one day
(24:40):
I went to the mess hall with my hoodie on,
and the old timer came to me. It was like,
what you're doing? And I was like, what do you mean.
He's like, just wear your greens when you go to
the mess hall. It was the process of them rebelling
against the conditions. So I wrote my mom's a letter
like yo this is what's going on. I need you
to send me money because I need to stack up
on commissary. Everything's about to get shut down. And I
(25:00):
had a cell search and the guard came across the letter,
and that jammed me up because you know it.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Was you was you was more or less preparing prepaying
for the They think that you will involved with the
whole shutdown ship.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
But there was some stuff in there, like when he
told me what was going on, it was like I
wasn't supportive it. So the the language in my letter
was also in support of it. So that's what got
me jammed up. It wasn't just me telling my mom,
got what happened. It was you know this is right,
you know this is what this is what we're moving for.
And so so they like, yeah, they do that. So
you went to the box. Yeah, three months hit upstate
(25:34):
and then I came out and went to Clinton.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Ship.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
So I was that getting out of Clinton and going
out to the yard first day, all them courts and
that whole ship. How was that.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Clinton was just as serious as Greenhavn, if not more serious.
Gang Wars the back in the back and fourth ship
going on in the yard, having hit the ground when
ship pop off.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
You see a lot of stuff up there, you know,
you see a lot of shit you see. Well, one
of the worst things you see it was in jail.
Well you just see you've seen somebody got the stomach
out something. Right, No, that wasn't mean you said to
somebody else got ah, Well you was when you first started,
or there was in the street I think.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
Yeah, I was talking about when I was in my
junior high school.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that was.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
That was a lot of that. People walking around with
buff fifties, just even if you don't see it, if
you even if you're just hearing it. There's been times
when I've been in my cell or I was in
my cell and the guards is jumping on somebody a
few cells away and they're just like damn, they're beating
the life out this person. And person might be handcuffed
and defense is just like Robert Brooks. A lot of
(26:47):
that I've seen. Sometimes you might be walking from the
mess hole and CEO's got somebody against the wall and
they got him handcuffed, but then they abuse in the
situation he's already handcuffed, he can't do anything, but then
they're lifting his arm up behind his back.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We've been doing what they've been doing with it, Brooks.
They've been doing that forever. You know, my piece, Robert Brooks.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
And it's a young CEO and you like so and
stuff like that. Bo is for me go back because
you also want to do something. He was like you
seeing that and you're like.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Like, what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Man? Your man? Like you're not also jumping out the
window for somebody who you don't know, because that person
might end up telling on you, you know, like I
didn't ask you to come to my rescue.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, yeah it it'd be tough situations, but you have
you there witnesses.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
How on you?
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Was there probably another two years, maybe two and a half,
and then from there I transferred down to.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
No.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I went to the box.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
From there, Okay to.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Southport, Okay, Southport okayth was tough too. The whole jail
was the box.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Right yeah, two thousand hm one maybe okay, Yeah, I
forget you know, I gotta go over it.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I get it now.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I get it because I'd be like that till it
was in two thousand.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Yeah. But a friend of mine got into an incident.
I was holding him down. Somebody tried to jump in.
I jumped in and I ended up getting sixteen months
for it.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Sixteen months side pork.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
I did twelve, you know, they gave me sixteen. But
you get some time off of good behavior. So okay, yeah,
I did a year.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I was in south Port two and uh, I would
through hell with. South Port was a tough, tough spot.
I used to be beef with the police. Shout like
that the CEOs you a real you know, same regular ship,
you know. And I was there in ninety ship. I
(28:53):
was there in ninety one. I ain't aninety one. So
it was a tough, tough, tough tough So you stay
the twelve months Sutheport and then you came out.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Yeah, and went to Great Metal, Comstock comstar Ship.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
That's another tough one. He was over there with German
and Herbert.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Yeah, they were still there, I think so those names
sound familiar, Ye, Germany and Herbert.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
This is a two police They they also killed some people.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
There and all that got away with it and all that.
When I was there, they used to fuck around. They
used to fuck with me too. But how you caught
it up Comstock as a fu is a very tough joint.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
And how long you was there.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Maybe for most spots, I'll stayed like two years before
something happened.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
For I happened and you bounced the where else and
all that.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
And that was the first spot that I actually transferred
out of.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Like I had a girl that's a legit trafeh like
the box.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I wanted to you put the traffer.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
I had a girlfriend who was coming to see me,
but you know that it's like they got to spend
the night at these places, take the bus eight hours up.
I wanted to make the visits more convenient for us,
so I asked for a transfer. And that's how I
ended up in Sing Sing.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Okay, yeah shit, since you was like, shit, I'm home.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Compared to all that cops stopped Clinton behaving, all that
shit is lockdown, Sing Sing is a little bit, you know.
So how was that?
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Basically that's where I was able to change my life
around that. You know, there was slight sparks or slight
start starts when I was upstate, like in Clinton, I
started to get into the study and stuff like that,
and I was moving with a group of guys that
was really into like you know, studying and being conscious.
But as soon as they left, I fell off and
end up going to the box with sing sing. They
(30:46):
just had more and it was also it was a
good time for me to be there because I was
probably also ready for change, right you know.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, you was ready. You was ready. You was like,
okay here and you want to stay sing sing?
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Yeah, So when I got to sing sing there was
a old time of His name was Gregory Frederick's. He
had mad college degrees. He had like a socialists bass
and master's degree. And the first thing he did he
gave me a book called The Prisoner's Wife, and then
he enrolled me in a basic parenting course and then
(31:19):
you know, and then a pre college program and then
he would just talk to me. But that was the beginning,
you know, me taking advantage of that stuff and just
realizing like, because most prisons upstate they're not designed to rehabilitates.
You gotta you get either a job in the industry
industry sweatshop or the mess hall, and you're basically trying
(31:40):
to survive or you're doing some other stuff to survive
and support yourself and sing sing. They had college programs.
They had art programs rehabilitation due to ours, they had
a lot of volunteers coming in upstate. You ain't got
your people coming in like that, not as.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
A volunteer, because it's too far away.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
The superintendent, his name was Brian Fisher. He believed in rehabilitation,
so he allowed a lot of stuff to go on there.
And you know, I was one of those guys that
was smart enough to take advantage. I used to go
down to the chapel and they used to put the
plays on rehabilitation through the arts was a theater program.
They just created the movie Singsing. I used to go
down there and I used I was bugging because it
(32:19):
was like dudes that I was locked up with on
stage performing with actresses, and I'm like, Yo, this is dope.
I got to be a part of this, you know.
And again that's like really what changed my life around.
I got involved with RTA, started doing the plays I
used to rap when I was young. I rediscovered that
I still was nice with my words and stuff. Started
writing my own stuff, poetry, talking about gun violence to
(32:42):
things that I experienced in my community. People would be like, Yo,
that shit is dope. You want to perform that right,
And I was like, no, He's like, yo, we need
to people need to hear that shit perform. And then
I started to do that and then the response that
I got, like yo, shit was powerful. And then from RTA,
I got involved in it. So when I went to prison,
(33:03):
I was a ninth grade drop out of a sixth
grade education. Inside, I was able to get my ged,
my associate's degree, my master's degree, and I was halfway
through completing my master's degree before I received executive clemency.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Hmmm.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
You know, but I was one of those guys that
was smart enough to eventually take advantage of.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
What you did your thing. You got focused, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Got focused, and you know I saw this one day,
I'm coming left, right, one day, I'm coming home.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
One. Did you come home because they read your pass?
Speaker 2 (33:30):
No? I mean, I know it gets tough in the beginning,
like damn twenty five years, but that shit all goes.
Believe me, it's a lorship path.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
And then so you came home one.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
And I got clemency in twenty eighteen, and I came
home in the beginning of the twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
You got clemency for what governor.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
So clemency just means mercy. It's a certain power that
the governor has to commute your sentence to lighten it.
My bid was twenty five years to life, meaning that
I would do twenty five years and after that see
a parole and they can even let me go and
hit me with another two years. Clemency just shortened my bids.
So I was at twenty two years when he granted that.
I came home after twenty two years, and I was
(34:07):
on post release supervision for the remainder of the three okay,
and I successfully completed.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
That and.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Here for six years now, God blessed man, Thank you.
So So you came home won twenty nineteen, beginning of
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
And what you been doing?
Speaker 4 (34:25):
First? When I came home, I was working for Exodus.
Exodus Transitional Community is an organization that was started by
somebody who's formerly incoscerated. His name is Julio Medina, and
what they do is help people make the transition from
inside to outside. I was a case manager for him
for about a year and a half. About two years
I came home. He Julio is the one who helped
(34:46):
me get clemency. My ex wife used to work for him,
and she used to go to work every day crying
and talking about me. And he's like, yo, well, I'm
part of this board and I know some lawyers, and
the governor's pushing his clemency thing. I'm gonna get him
lawyer and I'm gonna advocate for him. He helped get
me home. He got me the lawyers, and then he
also advocated. Yes, he got me home, and then when
I got home, he had a job waiting for me.
(35:07):
I came in as a junior case manager. Six months later,
I was promoted to senior case manager. And I did
that for about two years, but then I broke away
and I started my own organization, Finished Strong Wellness Center.
It's a free after school program for youth. So the
things that I talked about earlier is called trauma. You know,
for us, the way we grew up, it was normal
for us, but it's trauma. It was traumatic. It's called
(35:31):
ace's average childhood experiences growing up, being neglected, abused, experience
exposed to violence, and those things like could fuck up
the trajectory of your life, could cause you to have
mental health issues. It can shorten your life span.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
So, and I learned about that through my ex. My
ex wife is the one when I was inside, she
used to send me books and I learned about because
I was like, wow, you know, one of the best
books that she sent me is Lost Boys, How our
sons turned violent and how we can save them, you know,
because I had to go through a process with understanding
myself because in prison they just tell you ain't here
because of you. It's just you, something wrong with you.
But reading and like, nah, I went through some shit. Yeah,
(36:08):
I went through some shit, and yeah you made.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Choice, their choices, Yeah, but you was course of the
drama that you've been through.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
So with that and then me working for Julio, I
appreciated it. But then there was a lot of brothers
coming home that didn't get the help that they needed
when they was inside and they was going back. You know,
if you're going there with a substance abuse problem, you're
not gonna get receive real treatment to addresses. So you're
probably still gonna come home with a substance abuse problem.
You got a mental health problem, You're going to go
inside and your mental health is probably going to be
(36:37):
exasperated worse, you know, you came home, you went in
there violent. If God's is jumping on you and you survinted,
you're surrounded by that back and forth game was how
how why would you change? There's nothing in prison the
way that it is set up now to make people rehabilitate.
So that's why the receiptivism rate is about sixty to
seventy percent. Most people who come home sixty sixty to
(36:59):
seventy percent of the people who come home reoffend within
the next three years because it's not designed to make
you better. When I was in sinc saying we had
those college programs, those art programs, the guards used to
be upset about that shit, like Yo, why y'all got this?
And so we don't come back because the reality is
that ninety percent of us or one day coming home
and nothing changes up here. I'm only gonna be worse
(37:19):
when I do.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
In fact, you don't get in trouble.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
More so me working for Julio and like working with
the men that were coming home and having them go
right back or having them struggle like I Also, this
is during COVID and I'm seeing people, you know, Social
services is closing their doors. Dudes, is going right back.
People on my caseload is dying. I was like, I
want to do something about this, and so I wanted
(37:43):
to create a youth program again to protect those kids
from aces, to give you for safe place where they
could come to and get the support that they need
so that way they don't end up incarcerated, they don't
end up debt. So I created my own youth program
called Finished Strong Wellness Center, and I had no Spinished Strong,
Finished Strong Wellness Center. And yeah, I was doing that
(38:05):
for about four years, and then that led to me
getting another job for another nonprofit and I've just been
doing my thing.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Man, that's what's up man. So you so you active.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
I had a lot of people like those volunteers, those organizations,
the college programs that poured into me. You know that
helped you change my life around. And what I want
to do is just show people that you didn't waste
your time pouring into me when you was building programs,
when you was volunteering your time, when you was pouring
into me because at one point I didn't have family.
I spoke about my moms and my sister being in
(38:40):
the beginning, there was a point where I didn't have family,
and I didn't have visits and I was just in
there going through it, you know. But those programs I
had those people coming in and those people were pawing
in me.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
They kept you motivated, They kept you going. Did we
having them?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Them them carols and all that right, going up up,
going up, all that caros, like that that church they
going there to be having. It's a lot of so
much programs.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
You know for people that go in that from you know,
for me, it.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
Was the arts program and it was the college programs.
Those two things those got your focus and everything else.
Then I started to give back, got kids. You know,
I have a girlfriend and she has a daughter and
considered like a father figure to child.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And you're there.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Yeah, that's what's up.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
And you went home for men.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Yeah, past six years.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, you've been home. You've been home focused. What you
think about prisoner reform.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
It's necessary, it's everything I just spoke about, you know,
but you also got people fighting against it. You know,
you see what happened with Robert Brooks, and that was
upsetting because it's like, why why it takes so long
for them to get charged?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, I mean it shouldn't be a surprise to you,
you know, because you know the system. You know how
foul and how how how fucked up Upstate could be.
How different it is, you know, I mean from being
in our city. You know, in the city, you know,
you get you get beat up, you go through. It's
different up there. It's like they stick together and it's
(40:06):
a whole different It's it's a different coach, it's a
whole different.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Yeah, I'm definitely surprised by it. But when it being
recorded and then it getting out and it being in
the public space and then so now y'all see what
they did and it's no justifying it, and we still wait,
still waiting for them to get arrested. And then like
you know, social media, you got a lot of guards
on social media and trying to defend that shit. It's like, yo,
that ship is how do you defend that? Yeah, like
(40:32):
one God said, he should have he should have not
been resistant. The man was handcuffed.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
He was his handcuffed the whole time.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
And any resistant that he might have put it the
first of all, I don't I don't see any resistance
in that film. But if somebody's trying to choke you.
Your body is naturally gonna try to but it's like yo, but.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
But listen, man, they're gonna try to justify what happened.
Robert Brooks was murdered. You know what I'm saying. And
we all know that.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
We all witness that, the whole world witness that.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And it's about time that that that get exposed because
we've been dealing with that a whole time. It's like
anybody that come home. No, it's like we all know
the secret. You know, you get beat up, and you
know when you go to certain jails, right, you know,
when you go to comstack, if you look certain well
when you get to the off to the basement and
the comstock, they put your head on the wall, on
on on on the wall to have you with your
(41:20):
hands and they spread you know, they abusive, they do
they do all kind of all ship that is just
like it's not humane, you know, they do they do that.
And we used we was used to that. We thought
I was like the norm. That's all this part of
the process. When you go to comstock, or you're going
back to comstock, or you already know what it is,
or you're going back to where oh, yeah, you know
what I'm saying, and so you know, it's it's just
(41:44):
it's a sad it's a sad, sad thing, but it's
finely gonna get it spoke. Hopefully we get things spoken.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
Yeah, hopefully. But being somebody of color, we still gotta
pray for justice because even though they got arrested, we
now gotta hope that they don't get a messed up
jury who sympathizes with them, because I mean, or if
they do get found guilty, if Trump or somebody doesn't
pardon them, you know, like, no.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
I don't got that going down.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I got I got We have to worry about them
getting found guilty because of remember where they're from. So
you know, their cousins is the district attorney, the sister
is the judge, cousins are married to. You know, the vibe,
you know how they keep it up there, They keep
that shit tight. So let's just hope that, you know,
we could get justice. You know, we expect justice, you
(42:31):
know what I mean. And they like, it's a tough
tough man. It's tough man, but.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
I mean it's crazy because they feel justified in doing
that because the people who inside committed a crime, but
you don't look at that as a crime. You don't
look at it as a crime. When you hand them
somebody crazy and then you beat them to death, you
don't think that's that's a crime. It's called murder. It's
a young assault. That fact went to murder. But he
was an inmate. And where they throw that term around
inmates like you ain't what.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It's like for yeah, your life, Yeah, yeah, you don't
deserve No, you ain't got no rights.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
You got your rights in your life.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Man.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Well, they say, well, he did something to go in there. Yeah,
he did something. He was being punished, he was serving
serving his time. He had all these protests and every
they just wanted those guys who did that to him
to do the same thing. For justice to be across
the board. Yes, he did something wrong. He was sent
to prison. That's what should be done for young When
you handcuff somebody behind the back and you beat him
(43:25):
to death, you should get the same justice.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Man.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Listen, man, we just we were gonna expect. Man, We're
gonna definitely keep the audience. You know, we're gonna we're
gonna watch, We're gonna see what happens. Man.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
We definitely need some justice. Man for Robert Brooks man
you know, and his family.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Yeah, for Messiah and everybody else.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That yeah, absolute, yeah, for all of us because we
all went through We all got beat up, pound out
and at one point of the other by the police.
You know what I'm saying. I can speak that for myself.
You know what I'm saying. It was to beat me up,
not my too. Fire in the back. They used to
have me and myself laid up for days. You know
what I'm saying, without eating, I couldn't even get up,
(44:02):
you know.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
So you got spots like gotta cut. That's infamous for
that type of.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Off top, you know what I'm saying. So, but I
want to thank you king men for coming through. Man,
appreciate having you. You know what I'm saying. I encourage
you keep doing the right keep doing greatness. You know,
it seems like you're in the right path. You're looking good.
You know what I'm saying. Just know that you're gonna
always come up here. Anything you want to share, you
know how anything you want to share with the audience,
you know, with the youth or anybody out there watching us.
(44:29):
You know, you want to welcome to you know, share
that and you know where to find you anything. You know,
anybody going through some changes they need they might need
some help. Whatever, anything you got, you enlighten anybody with
out there. You're more than welcome. Man, this is this
is our platform, this is what is designed for so
we could get ours all because you know, when you're
in jail, you don't have a voice.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
You know what I'm saying, So this is your boy youth.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
The only thing I want to say is man, take
advantage of opportunities. Man, and be yourself. Those are two
things that I didn't do prior to going inside. Wasn't
secure and be on myself, and I didn't take advantage
of opportunities. When I was inside, I learned how to
be myself and say, funk whatever people think about me,
I'm gonna do me. I'm gonna instead of going out
to the yard every day doing bullshit, I'm gonna go
to this college program. I'm gonna be me.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
I'm gonna take advantage of these opportunities. And that shit
worked out for me.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
That's right. Of course they did well. With that being said, Man,
you already know is your boy pistol pet dog in
the yard. You know what is your boy pistol p
walking back to the dog in the yard. First and Allard,
I want to thank Dennis uh for the work you're
doing up there in Poughkeepsie with your program. As we
(45:41):
all know, h Dennis is the father of Finishing Strong
Awareness Center and he's up there and Poughkeepsie doing grateless
and I appreciate that. You know, you can always count
a dog in the yard for those brothers out there.
The youth police too dead, you know what I mean.
Just know that it's real. Jail is real, and you
already know. With that being said, Dennis, we love your here.
(46:01):
You already know, come back anytime you want. Boy past
pete dog of the y'all.
Speaker 5 (46:10):
Thank you, kallu sling.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
We're alive, shelf shining, were alive itself shining the gosh
Himself.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That'll be.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Hope a South darks A over your mouth, reguless clear.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
That's right? What up?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
You already knows your boy pistol pete. Welcome back to
the dog in the yall today we got Dennis in
the Dennis served twenty two years. He was given an
executive clearcy from the Governor's office twenty nineteen. Uh, he
was released from Saint Saint. And with that being said,
let's get right to it. Man, you already knows your
(01:50):
boy pistol p dog in the yall?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Yo?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
What up?
Speaker 4 (01:55):
What up?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
You already knows your boy pistol p Welcome back to
the dog in the yard today. We got Dennis in
the building. What's up, Dennis?
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Good brother?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
How's everything?
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Man? Everything's good? Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You already know, man, where you from.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
From Brooklyn originally? But right now I'm living in Poughkeepsie. Okay,
that's where I came home to.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, that's definitely a change from Brooklyn to Poughkeepsie.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Right, especially after twenty two years.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, yeah, well you probably need that anyway. You don't
need to be back at Brooklyn, even though Brooklyn changed.
It's really nice now. A lot of places, you know,
so kn's really knocked Brooklyn neither. So dinner's are tell
me a little bit about you man, you know, you know, background,
a little bit about you run down, just briefly about
your upbringing, where you was raised and you know, and
(02:40):
what led you to, you know, to start getting yourself
in trouble.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
So I'm from the Prospect Prospect Heights, Sesson of Brooklyn.
That's where the Balky censor is at. That's where I
grew up. I grew up in the eighties, late eighties,
early nineties, so as you know, that's considered like the
crack era. So the streets of Brooklyn was really rough.
I think the murder rate around that time was like
probably two thousand a year, nineteen something. It was high
(03:06):
and it was bad. And as a shorty growing up
in Brooklyn, I faced a lot of challenges named le violence.
It was hard to walk down the street and not
be challenged and tested in some way. You know, where
I'm from, they used to play the knockout game, where
you know, you might be walking down the street minding
your business. It might be a crew or a gang
(03:28):
and one of them might walk up to you and
just see if they can knock you out with one punch.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Those just kind of adolescent games that was playing.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Yeah, it wasn't me playing it. It was me. I'm
gonna keep it one hundred. A lot of that was
targeted at me. I was a young kid, I was innocent,
wasn't into the streets, and you know, that was me
growing up and losing my innocence. You know. It started
off with me being targeted and me being bullied, and
then me taking what was done to me, internalizing it
(03:57):
and then doing it to other people. But at that time,
it wasn't me playing a game with nobody else. It
was me growing up the hallway.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Okay, yeah, you was actually doing the right thing and
people was actually bullying you and and ship like that,
and then that turned you into I guess a bully
as well.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
Yeah, there was a lot of stuff. The schools that
I went to was like Rykers Island, you know what
I mean. Like eventually when I was get locked up,
I would experience something with like we may be in
the Brooklyn House of Detention. Then one day you're told
you're going to Rikers Island.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Okay, But then as far as your upbringing.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Yeah, I was just trying to make your comparison. So
when I was incarcerated, those were the experiences that I had,
was like, you're getting transferred to this jail or this prison.
But when I was young, when I was a shorty
growing up, it's we in the sixth grade and okay,
now you're you're finding out what school you're getting sentto,
or you're going to sixty five. And it was the
same experience that I would later experience inside where oh
(04:55):
you're going to sixty five and anybody get quiet and
kids start crying because of what they're going to, or
you're going to two sixty five that's between four Green
and Farragut. You're gonna have some problems. You better know
how to fight.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I got.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So that was the process that I went to. But
I told you was so that was when I was
in the sixth grade, maybe ten or eleven, when I
had those experiences.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You was real, Jit, I mean to be going through
that like at an early age and all that you
did you complain to your moms, your parents.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, So unfortunately my dad, he left my moms with
three kids to raise on her own. You know, my
dad unfortunately thought it was okay to make a lot
of kids and not necessarily stick around and support them
and my moms that weighed on her. So, like you
asked a good question, did I tell her? Yeah, But
(05:44):
a lot of times she was busy dealing with the
financial struggles of having three kids without a man to
help her raise us.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
She couldn't she could really take take too much of
her time to worry about what you was really going
through because she was worrying about survival facts.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
I get it, and I didn't understand it at the time.
I now know that it was like the depression that
my mom's a struggling yeah, you know, but I saw
that as my mom doesn't love me.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know, you know, we don't know us as kids,
you know, especially back in the days because I'm from
that era as well, and you know, and I could
I could relate my moms, she could really get a
hold of be there for me all all the time,
like the way I really probably expected her, or you know,
because there was all there was. There was also dealing
(06:28):
with their mental health as well. A lot of our parents,
a lot of people that we know from you know,
they have they was dealing with mental health and back
in the days, it wasn't like one of those that
we fleety and we talk about like we talk about
now we talk about health, know, like oh yo, get
go get some Go get some therapy, go get some
you know. And now it's all our open where we
not no longer ashamed to more or less go to
(06:50):
get counseling and get help and all that. Back in
the days, you know, it wasn't none of that, and
then if it did, it was always the help was
always there. But the lack of education with parents, you know,
and to say, you know, I'm gonna go get that
kind of help, that was it. They never moved like that,
you know what I mean. So that kind of like,
you know, because that goes for a lot of us.
You know, my mom's, my dad, you know, the people
(07:12):
struggle with mental health, you know what I'm saying, And
and that that takes a tone on us as well,
you know what I'm saying. So we we have our
own issues that we deal with as kids and all
that growing up and you know, sod the bullying, I mean,
like how long would I mean, like how that how
how it used to happen? He used to go to
school and like you used to get bully on it
(07:32):
picked on you, Like what was what was like?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, So like when I went to my first junior
high school, there was a game that was there at
that time, Receptor cons and I remember one kid came
into the bathroom and he pulled out a machete out
his parents and told me, you know, he's basically trying
to shake me down or put pressure on me. And
then I got a safety transfer. I told my grandmother.
(07:55):
They did something about it, and I got transferred out
of one thirteen and I went to that school that
I was speaking about.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Earlier, to a worser school.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
I went to a worster school. I went to the
school that was between those two projects.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
But let me ask you what they wanted from you?
I got that like when he pressed you with it,
and what he wanted, like what was it? What was
their goal?
Speaker 4 (08:14):
You know? So around that time, like I was lost,
and I was stealing money from my house, taking money
from my grandma's and I was trying to my friends
and then well they got out to the wrong set
of guds and it was like, oh, you got money. Oh,
and they ran down on me for that. But like
I said, I was twelve thirteen going through this, and
it was real, like a machete being pulled out on
(08:35):
you in the bathroom in school, like you know, that
was some serious stuff. But then I went to two
sixty five and that's the first time that I seen
somebody get slighted open.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
In two sixty five, I remember, I'm sitting there in
class and the kid comes in and he sits down
and then he has like a half moon and dudes
just did it to him for the sake of doing it,
Like he ain't do nothing to nobody. Was just they
just picked up her.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
He just picked to her. Wow. So you was really like,
what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
I really got to watch myself in this spot and
how long you stayed in that school and all that.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
I was able to complete it. I also went through
some changes. My uncle came to live with me, and
my uncle was different. You know. My uncle was the
one who taught me how to handle myself. He would
one if anybody put their hands on me, there was
a retaliation. My uncle taught me that every man needs
a family outside of his family to help him deal
with the streets. And my uncle had a family. He
(09:30):
had a crew and they carry guns, and if I
got jumped on anything, my uncle would come get me,
get his peoples and we would go back.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Well, at least you had to back up from your
uncle because you didn't have your dad here. At least
you had your uncle there, you know what I mean
to to, you know, to keep you going and teach
you things that you, Bobby didn't even know, or give
you that support that you didn't have.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, it was a it was a blessing in the
curse in different ways. One, Yeah, he was a person
that he was there. He took me places, he taught me,
He had me reading books, took me to the mosque
and the Harlem, made sure I acknowledge yourself. Always was
there to talk to me, you know, always available emotionally
and physically. But at the same time, my uncle was
into the streets, and I saw that. I would go
(10:11):
into the room and I would see the guns, you know,
I would hear them plotting on making certain moves, and
I was again exposed.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
With Yeah, as a kid, everything model.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So I'm saying, this is what this is, what.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
A man is, this was this is what I is,
what I want to be.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
My uncle was a gangster and I wanted to be
like him. You know, he was a family man, he
was a good man, but he was also a gainster.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah he was outside. I'll get you. So what what what? Uh?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
At what point did you started getting yourself? You know
that you went from being the victim in regardless of
getting bullied on that and you reversed that.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
And yeah, around that time, I started to hang out
with the wrong crowd. First it started off l like,
smoking weed, drinking, cutting class, going they parties. But then
you know, now you start playing with guns. You know,
my friend got a gun and I'm like, let me
see that. And I'm like, and I'm not going to
(11:11):
put this all off on hip hop. I love hip hop,
but there was a time when I listened to hip
hop and it gave me a lot of positive imagery
and it was conscious and stuff. But also around that
time when I was coming of age, there was a
lot of you know, throw your guns in the air
and all this other stuff and motivated me in a
different way. So you I can get respect with this.
(11:33):
I can get respect by being violent, by picking up
a gun, by moving a certain way. I could make
the same dudes that used to jump on me, fear me,
and I started to go that race I started and
then you know, the bad thing is when it works,
when you do it, and then people start talking about you,
and it was like, yo, you heard what.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
You just keep going further.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
You start going further.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, that's what happens.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
You don't got nobody really holding you down. You're feeling yourself.
You're like, what, No, I'm in control of the shit.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You know what I'm saying. And you was, what seventeen, Nah,
that's younger than that. When I started, maybe fifteen. When
I turned sixteen, I started hustling for a neighborhood drug dealer, okay,
And that's where everything just went wrong. My uncle had
got into some stuff and there was a hit out
on him, so he had to go down south. So
(12:25):
now there's no man in the house to keep me
in check, even though I was already dabbling. Now really
out there now.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Cause he's not yeah, cause he at least he's your uncle. Yeah,
he does what he does, but he'll keep you in check.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Yeah. So this dude that I was hustling for gave
me a proposition one day. He was like, cause I
was still living at home and I was still going
to school, but I was hustling for him. He was like,
you gotta stop that. You gotta make a choice. Either
you're gonna stay at home or you gonna go to school,
or you're gonna work for me. And like an idiot
at sixteen, I made the choice to not only continue
working for him, but I dropped out of school and
(12:56):
I ran away from home. And this dude was one
of those the dudes that really like pray on younger kids,
male and female females.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
He used them for which you know I got.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
He was just he was just one of those guys
that take advantage of of whatever you could care. You know. Yeah,
they got them out there, They got those you know
brothers out there. You know those guys out there that
the take up either that that pray off younger brothers
that you know and send them on missions and put
them under the wing instead of giving them that that
you know enlightened and leave you for dead.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
And once you get jammed up and you locked up,
he ain't coming with bell money.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
He ain't trying to do nothing for so so you
started working with him. And at what point you started
getting in trouble and you got arrested.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
So around that time that I started working for him,
my uncle got murdered.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
The same uncle.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Yeah, my uncle, my father and uncle. I was in
the spot I had moved into this due spot I
was living. I went from a four story brownstone in
Brooklyn to living in the crack spot. I was living
in the spot that I was hustling out of sixteen
And one of my friends come to see me one
day and he was like, your mom sent me. She
said one of your uncles got murdered. If you want
to know which one, you got to come home and
(14:02):
find out.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
And so I went home and then she told me
Tracey got murdered. And then that was it. It was
like a perfect storm everything, me being exposed to the
right wrong type of individual, my uncle being murdered, and
then what was just going on in that environment. It
was like like I said, it was, it was a
really bloody time around there.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
And he just fell into the loop and got lost.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, And because that must have been hard. You know,
your uncle, the one that you loved up, look up
to he passes away. Now you out there in the street,
you hustled for this guy that don't really give a
fuck about you, But you don't really know who you're young,
so you're thinking that it's all great, and then you
get caught up.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So what what year you got caught up and went
to jail?
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Nineteen? I caught my case nineteen. I got into those
guys I used to it. It was nineteen ninety seven, okay,
nineteen ninety and the ninety.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Six, okay, I believe, And you got caught up for what?
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, So one day I get into altercation with these guys.
They were part of a gang in my neighborhood and
they used to mess with me when I was younger.
I'm nineteen now, and like it's different. You know, I'm
not running, I'm not scared. It's like when my uncle
got killed. What it did to me is just made
me not care about life no more. You know, I
didn't think that I was going to live long, and
(15:26):
so that's just how I was moving, doing a lot
of crazy stuff. So these guys bumped into me and
we got into altercation. It was like three of them
and one of me, and like they're approaching me, like, oh,
this is that kid that we used to and you
ain't you know, because they like that yeah, I'm like,
and it's different. Yeah, it's different.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Don't know that you're outside.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, it's different. So one thing led to another. One
of them snatched my chain, I dropped them. The other
two jumped in were getting it on, and then we
break and then I went to go and get my gun.
I was with some females at that time, and they
had told somebody else from my neighborhood what happened. So
when I came out the building, there was a dude
(16:05):
who had just came home. We weren't even cool like that,
but he was like, I'm coming with you, and I
was like, I'm good. He was like I'm coming with you.
I'm like, I'm good. But while I'm going back and
forth with him, I'm realized, these dudes are getting away
and I'm hot. I stay hot, I stay Yeah. So
I was like efort and I allowed him to come.
We went up to the projects and so when we
(16:28):
get there, first of all, he was on a different
type of time. He was like, Yo, let's just give
it to anybody who's out there. I wasn't trying to
just do that to anybody, but again, I was hot.
I wasn't thinking we walk up to the lobby. There's
a bunch of people in there, and I'm like, there
they go. But it wasn't just the dudes that I
had the altercation with. Is a bunch of people in there,
but I'm like, hey, yeah, he don't know who's who.
(16:51):
So even though I wasn't trying to just harm anybody,
I put everybody lives in jeopardy by telling them there
they go. So long story shot, we wound up backing
out on the security, making him open the door, and
then we ran into the stairways. Everybody took off and
by the time I got to the seventh floor, there
was a shot and he came running from behind the corridors,
(17:12):
like I got one. The next day I came out
and I found out the person he cared was my friend.
Oh man, he just happened to be in the lobby.
Those are his people too. He was just happened to
be in the lobby hanging with him. And when we
pulled up, I said, there they go. So he's thinking
everybody and also my friend like he wasn't a slouch.
When the dude went up there, he tried to like
(17:34):
take the gun from him, so it was like a
struggle and he shot him.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
He killed him, He killed him.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I came out the next day, found out what happened.
I went on a run for a minute. He got arrested.
There wasn't enough evidence to charge him, but they held
on to him, and then they arrested me. And then
he was like, we know you wasn't a shoot her,
You know what I mean, tell us what happened. But
I refused. I was into the streets. He ended up
(18:03):
going home and I went to trial and I got
twenty five of life for killing my friend.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
But she wasn't no one that person.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
It doesn't matter, like so, yeah, it doesn't matter. By time,
if I didn't know any better, I would have thought
I shot him. The DA had the DA who had
my case at that time, I didn't know it. She
had a reputation for doing what she did to me.
She would get convictions by any means necessary. She would
put witnesses on the stands that she knew was lying.
The police would.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Get Yeah, it was a lot of that shit going
on back in the days. They do anything to get you,
to reroll you and all to get you locked up. No,
I trust me. I had a lot of brothers that
set up here with me as well, that they've been
through a lot of same similar stories, I mean, including myself.
I went to jails out. I didn't do it either.
Some motherfuckers did what everything they had to do to
get me, you know what I mean. So I get it.
(18:52):
So they came in and she did anything she had
to do, and you went to try and you blew trial.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
And the dudes who I had got it on with
day was cooperating in and like these dudes were supposed
to be gangsters and.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
All they all came through testify.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Only kicked one, but everybody made a statement. But there
was one main dude who they used to point me
out in the lineup, testified the grand jury and then
come to trial and then.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
You need one.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, so you got twenty five years. Yeah, and you
wound up going to Records Island.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
I was in the Brooklyn House of Detention first, then
from there I went to Rykers Island.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Okay, how was that experience that? I mean, what was
going through your mind?
Speaker 4 (19:29):
I mean the rumors that you hear and all the
violence that luckily for me, like there was some really
bad jails on Rikers Island that I could have went to,
but I just happened to not go to I went
to a spot called West Facility, which wasn't like infamous
like the Beacon m or anything like that. But stuff
still goes down.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Like you still had this, there's still jail.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
It's still jail. You still gotta go to court.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
And yeah, same process.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It just it might not be the Beacon of the
Fall building with the names and all, but it's jail.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So so you went through how was your process? How
was what was going through through your mind going over
that bridge? And you know, like what was going through
your mind? You know, you what sixteen nineteen, nineteen eighteen
going on twenty, you know, like going over that bridge
like for a body now you blew trit like what
was going through your mind? Like what was your mother at?
(20:23):
What was what was going on?
Speaker 4 (20:25):
So shout out to my moms and shout out to
my little sister. They would like the two people in
my family was coming up to see me regularly and
they did what they could. And even before that, my
moms did the best that she could, so they I
had family in the beginning that was there for me.
When I went upstate, that was a different story, you know.
But while I was on Rikers Island, I have two
(20:45):
people coming in hard to see me, my moms and
my sister.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, it gets complicated once you go up north, especially
for single moms. You know, you gotta take the bus
the day before to be up there early in the morning.
You know, you got It's just it's not easy, you know.
So but so you got to twenty five, you got
the Rightkors Island.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
How long you was on the island for?
Speaker 4 (21:06):
I did six months and Brooklyn House of Detention and
six months on right Gas Island. I blew trial and
then I got sent up state.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Okay, when you went upstate, where you want.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
To first spot is reception. That's downstate noh State.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
How was that experience?
Speaker 4 (21:19):
That was crazy? So, you know, intimidation is like that's
the first I guess because the CEOs know they outnumbered.
One of the things that they try to do is
just instilled far from the jump, you know, pick somebody
jump on them in front of you. That type of stuff.
You go through the whole the humanizing process of being
stripped of all your regular clothes that you might have
been able to have on Right Gas Island, them shaving
(21:41):
up for all your fate. You're here, your hair on
your head, putting you in that shower area, and you
got to put the solution on your body to make
sure that you're not coming upstate with lights or anything.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
You know, turn around, stret turn around, spreading your ass,
showing your assholes to the white man. You know, real quick,
let me see your asshole. You know that ship was
the you're in there, like, what the funk going on
the ride?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Man?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
They bullying you, and they really bullying you.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
They pushing you around.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Right, jumping on people with mental health all out. Yeah,
and it ain't just white dudes, like you know Upstate
when it's different places like that's predominantly white. Yeah, it's
white guards jumping on you. But one of the things
that I've seen in my experience is that in prison,
those guards, whether they black or white or Latino, they
jump on you all the same.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, they all stick together. That's one thing about them.
No matter what what what color they are, they all
they're all the same up there. They go hard and
they stick together, and they've been doing it for a
long time, getting you know, with beating us up.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
And all that.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
That's the fact, you.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Know, so, so you went up top where you want to.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
So after Downstate, I went to a spot called green Haven.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Okay, Greenhavn.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah, serious, prison, Yeah, a lot of life is a
lot of backing Fourth Wars spot getting shut down because
somebody got stabbed or cut. When you walk the yard,
you always see the holes in the ground from like
police coming out there and digging up shanks and whatnot.
(23:13):
So and also like for the most part, prison isn't
about rehabilitation. I do think they had programs like that
in there, but I wasn't ready for that. I was
trying to wrap my mind, trying to wrap my mind
around having twenty five years to life. So I was
in the.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yard and you was in the yard, yeah, ball.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
And just trying to escape. And I was still going
to the little library trying to fight my case. But
it was really me going through the process of not
believing that I got all the time because I didn't
think I was going to be convicted. Like from what
I was told, you got to prove murder be on
a reasonable that. I know I didn't kill the victim,
so I didn't think and then my lawyer, I just
I just didn't think this.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Was going to go this fall.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, so now you're sitting around twenty five years from
downstairs where you want to green Behavior.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
When you was in Crea.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
I think maybe about two years and then then when
you from there, I went to a spot called Upstate. Okay, yeah,
it's a box, a special housing using special housing unit.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, so you went to the box.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Oh so you got yourself caught.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Up in Yeah. So what was going on in Greenhaven
at the time. People were the guys that were in
there were trying to protest their conditions, like how much
we were getting paid to work in industry and stuff
like that. Okay, Like it was stuff like where you
go to the mess hall, everybody was expected to wear
their greens. You shouldn't wear no weather color, your colorful
hoodies and none that. I didn't know. So one day
(24:40):
I went to the mess hall with my hoodie on,
and the old timer came to me. It was like,
what you're doing? And I was like, what do you mean.
He's like, just wear your greens when you go to
the mess hall. It was the process of them rebelling
against the conditions. So I wrote my mom's a letter
like yo this is what's going on. I need you
to send me money because I need to stack up
on commissary. Everything's about to get shut down. And I
(25:00):
had a cell search and the guard came across the letter,
and that jammed me up because you know it.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Was you was you was more or less preparing prepaying
for the They think that you will involved with the
whole shutdown ship.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
But there was some stuff in there, like when he
told me what was going on, it was like I
wasn't supportive it. So the the language in my letter
was also in support of it. So that's what got
me jammed up. It wasn't just me telling my mom,
got what happened. It was you know this is right,
you know this is what this is what we're moving for.
And so so they like, yeah, they do that. So
you went to the box. Yeah, three months hit upstate
(25:34):
and then I came out and went to Clinton.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Ship.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
So I was that getting out of Clinton and going
out to the yard first day, all them courts and
that whole ship. How was that.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Clinton was just as serious as Greenhavn, if not more serious.
Gang Wars the back in the back and fourth ship
going on in the yard, having hit the ground when
ship pop off.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
You see a lot of stuff up there, you know,
you see a lot of shit you see. Well, one
of the worst things you see it was in jail.
Well you just see you've seen somebody got the stomach
out something. Right, No, that wasn't mean you said to
somebody else got ah, Well you was when you first started,
or there was in the street I think.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
Yeah, I was talking about when I was in my
junior high school.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that was.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
That was a lot of that. People walking around with
buff fifties, just even if you don't see it, if
you even if you're just hearing it. There's been times
when I've been in my cell or I was in
my cell and the guards is jumping on somebody a
few cells away and they're just like damn, they're beating
the life out this person. And person might be handcuffed
and defense is just like Robert Brooks. A lot of
(26:47):
that I've seen. Sometimes you might be walking from the
mess hole and CEO's got somebody against the wall and
they got him handcuffed, but then they abuse in the
situation he's already handcuffed, he can't do anything, but then
they're lifting his arm up behind his back.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We've been doing what they've been doing with it, Brooks.
They've been doing that forever. You know, my piece, Robert Brooks.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
And it's a young CEO and you like so and
stuff like that. Bo is for me go back because
you also want to do something. He was like you
seeing that and you're like.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Like, what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Man? Your man? Like you're not also jumping out the
window for somebody who you don't know, because that person
might end up telling on you, you know, like I
didn't ask you to come to my rescue.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, yeah it it'd be tough situations, but you have
you there witnesses.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
How on you?
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Was there probably another two years, maybe two and a half,
and then from there I transferred down to.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
No.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I went to the box.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
From there, Okay to.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Southport, Okay, Southport okayth was tough too. The whole jail
was the box.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Right yeah, two thousand hm one maybe okay, Yeah, I
forget you know, I gotta go over it.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I get it now.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I get it because I'd be like that till it
was in two thousand.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Yeah. But a friend of mine got into an incident.
I was holding him down. Somebody tried to jump in.
I jumped in and I ended up getting sixteen months
for it.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Sixteen months side pork.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
I did twelve, you know, they gave me sixteen. But
you get some time off of good behavior. So okay, yeah,
I did a year.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
I was in south Port two and uh, I would
through hell with. South Port was a tough, tough spot.
I used to be beef with the police. Shout like
that the CEOs you a real you know, same regular ship,
you know. And I was there in ninety ship. I
(28:53):
was there in ninety one. I ain't aninety one. So
it was a tough, tough, tough tough So you stay
the twelve months Sutheport and then you came out.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Yeah, and went to Great Metal, Comstock comstar Ship.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
That's another tough one. He was over there with German
and Herbert.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Yeah, they were still there, I think so those names
sound familiar, Ye, Germany and Herbert.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
This is a two police They they also killed some people.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
There and all that got away with it and all that.
When I was there, they used to fuck around. They
used to fuck with me too. But how you caught
it up Comstock as a fu is a very tough joint.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
And how long you was there.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Maybe for most spots, I'll stayed like two years before
something happened.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
For I happened and you bounced the where else and
all that.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
And that was the first spot that I actually transferred
out of.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Like I had a girl that's a legit trafeh like
the box.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I wanted to you put the traffer.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
I had a girlfriend who was coming to see me,
but you know that it's like they got to spend
the night at these places, take the bus eight hours up.
I wanted to make the visits more convenient for us,
so I asked for a transfer. And that's how I
ended up in Sing Sing.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Okay, yeah shit, since you was like, shit, I'm home.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Compared to all that cops stopped Clinton behaving, all that
shit is lockdown, Sing Sing is a little bit, you know.
So how was that?
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Basically that's where I was able to change my life
around that. You know, there was slight sparks or slight
start starts when I was upstate, like in Clinton, I
started to get into the study and stuff like that,
and I was moving with a group of guys that
was really into like you know, studying and being conscious.
But as soon as they left, I fell off and
end up going to the box with sing sing. They
(30:46):
just had more and it was also it was a
good time for me to be there because I was
probably also ready for change, right you know.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Yeah, you was ready. You was ready. You was like,
okay here and you want to stay sing sing?
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Yeah, So when I got to sing sing there was
a old time of His name was Gregory Frederick's. He
had mad college degrees. He had like a socialists bass
and master's degree. And the first thing he did he
gave me a book called The Prisoner's Wife, and then
he enrolled me in a basic parenting course and then
(31:19):
you know, and then a pre college program and then
he would just talk to me. But that was the beginning,
you know, me taking advantage of that stuff and just
realizing like, because most prisons upstate they're not designed to rehabilitates.
You gotta you get either a job in the industry
industry sweatshop or the mess hall, and you're basically trying
(31:40):
to survive or you're doing some other stuff to survive
and support yourself and sing sing. They had college programs.
They had art programs rehabilitation due to ours, they had
a lot of volunteers coming in upstate. You ain't got
your people coming in like that, not as.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
A volunteer, because it's too far away.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
The superintendent, his name was Brian Fisher. He believed in rehabilitation,
so he allowed a lot of stuff to go on there.
And you know, I was one of those guys that
was smart enough to take advantage. I used to go
down to the chapel and they used to put the
plays on rehabilitation through the arts was a theater program.
They just created the movie Singsing. I used to go
down there and I used I was bugging because it
(32:19):
was like dudes that I was locked up with on
stage performing with actresses, and I'm like, Yo, this is dope.
I got to be a part of this, you know.
And again that's like really what changed my life around.
I got involved with RTA, started doing the plays I
used to rap when I was young. I rediscovered that
I still was nice with my words and stuff. Started
writing my own stuff, poetry, talking about gun violence to
(32:42):
things that I experienced in my community. People would be like, Yo,
that shit is dope. You want to perform that right,
And I was like, no, He's like, yo, we need
to people need to hear that shit perform. And then
I started to do that and then the response that
I got, like yo, shit was powerful. And then from RTA,
I got involved in it. So when I went to prison,
(33:03):
I was a ninth grade drop out of a sixth
grade education. Inside, I was able to get my ged,
my associate's degree, my master's degree, and I was halfway
through completing my master's degree before I received executive clemency.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Hmmm.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
You know, but I was one of those guys that
was smart enough to eventually take advantage of.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
What you did your thing. You got focused, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Got focused, and you know I saw this one day,
I'm coming left, right, one day, I'm coming home.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
One. Did you come home because they read your pass?
Speaker 2 (33:30):
No? I mean, I know it gets tough in the beginning,
like damn twenty five years, but that shit all goes.
Believe me, it's a lorship path.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
And then so you came home one.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
And I got clemency in twenty eighteen, and I came
home in the beginning of the twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
You got clemency for what governor.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
So clemency just means mercy. It's a certain power that
the governor has to commute your sentence to lighten it.
My bid was twenty five years to life, meaning that
I would do twenty five years and after that see
a parole and they can even let me go and
hit me with another two years. Clemency just shortened my bids.
So I was at twenty two years when he granted that.
I came home after twenty two years, and I was
(34:07):
on post release supervision for the remainder of the three okay,
and I successfully completed.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
That and.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Here for six years now, God blessed man, Thank you.
So So you came home won twenty nineteen, beginning of
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
And what you been doing?
Speaker 4 (34:25):
First? When I came home, I was working for Exodus.
Exodus Transitional Community is an organization that was started by
somebody who's formerly incoscerated. His name is Julio Medina, and
what they do is help people make the transition from
inside to outside. I was a case manager for him
for about a year and a half. About two years
I came home. He Julio is the one who helped
(34:46):
me get clemency. My ex wife used to work for him,
and she used to go to work every day crying
and talking about me. And he's like, yo, well, I'm
part of this board and I know some lawyers, and
the governor's pushing his clemency thing. I'm gonna get him
lawyer and I'm gonna advocate for him. He helped get
me home. He got me the lawyers, and then he
also advocated. Yes, he got me home, and then when
I got home, he had a job waiting for me.
(35:07):
I came in as a junior case manager. Six months later,
I was promoted to senior case manager. And I did
that for about two years, but then I broke away
and I started my own organization, Finished Strong Wellness Center.
It's a free after school program for youth. So the
things that I talked about earlier is called trauma. You know,
for us, the way we grew up, it was normal
for us, but it's trauma. It was traumatic. It's called
(35:31):
ace's average childhood experiences growing up, being neglected, abused, experience
exposed to violence, and those things like could fuck up
the trajectory of your life, could cause you to have
mental health issues. It can shorten your life span.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
So, and I learned about that through my ex. My
ex wife is the one when I was inside, she
used to send me books and I learned about because
I was like, wow, you know, one of the best
books that she sent me is Lost Boys, How our
sons turned violent and how we can save them, you know,
because I had to go through a process with understanding
myself because in prison they just tell you ain't here
because of you. It's just you, something wrong with you.
But reading and like, nah, I went through some shit. Yeah,
(36:08):
I went through some shit, and yeah you made.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Choice, their choices, Yeah, but you was course of the
drama that you've been through.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
So with that and then me working for Julio, I
appreciated it. But then there was a lot of brothers
coming home that didn't get the help that they needed
when they was inside and they was going back. You know,
if you're going there with a substance abuse problem, you're
not gonna get receive real treatment to addresses. So you're
probably still gonna come home with a substance abuse problem.
You got a mental health problem, You're going to go
inside and your mental health is probably going to be
(36:37):
exasperated worse, you know, you came home, you went in
there violent. If God's is jumping on you and you survinted,
you're surrounded by that back and forth game was how
how why would you change? There's nothing in prison the
way that it is set up now to make people rehabilitate.
So that's why the receiptivism rate is about sixty to
seventy percent. Most people who come home sixty sixty to
(36:59):
seventy percent of the people who come home reoffend within
the next three years because it's not designed to make
you better. When I was in sinc saying we had
those college programs, those art programs, the guards used to
be upset about that shit, like Yo, why y'all got this?
And so we don't come back because the reality is
that ninety percent of us or one day coming home
and nothing changes up here. I'm only gonna be worse
(37:19):
when I do.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
In fact, you don't get in trouble.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
More so me working for Julio and like working with
the men that were coming home and having them go
right back or having them struggle like I Also, this
is during COVID and I'm seeing people, you know, Social
services is closing their doors. Dudes, is going right back.
People on my caseload is dying. I was like, I
want to do something about this, and so I wanted
(37:43):
to create a youth program again to protect those kids
from aces, to give you for safe place where they
could come to and get the support that they need
so that way they don't end up incarcerated, they don't
end up debt. So I created my own youth program
called Finished Strong Wellness Center, and I had no Spinished Strong,
Finished Strong Wellness Center. And yeah, I was doing that
(38:05):
for about four years, and then that led to me
getting another job for another nonprofit and I've just been
doing my thing.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Man, that's what's up man. So you so you active.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
I had a lot of people like those volunteers, those organizations,
the college programs that poured into me. You know that
helped you change my life around. And what I want
to do is just show people that you didn't waste
your time pouring into me when you was building programs,
when you was volunteering your time, when you was pouring
into me because at one point I didn't have family.
I spoke about my moms and my sister being in
(38:40):
the beginning, there was a point where I didn't have family,
and I didn't have visits and I was just in
there going through it, you know. But those programs I
had those people coming in and those people were pawing
in me.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
They kept you motivated, They kept you going. Did we
having them?
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Them them carols and all that right, going up up,
going up, all that caros, like that that church they
going there to be having. It's a lot of so
much programs.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
You know for people that go in that from you know,
for me, it.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
Was the arts program and it was the college programs.
Those two things those got your focus and everything else.
Then I started to give back, got kids. You know,
I have a girlfriend and she has a daughter and
considered like a father figure to child.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And you're there.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Yeah, that's what's up.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
And you went home for men.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Yeah, past six years.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, you've been home. You've been home focused. What you
think about prisoner reform.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
It's necessary, it's everything I just spoke about, you know,
but you also got people fighting against it. You know,
you see what happened with Robert Brooks, and that was
upsetting because it's like, why why it takes so long
for them to get charged?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, I mean it shouldn't be a surprise to you,
you know, because you know the system. You know how
foul and how how how fucked up Upstate could be.
How different it is, you know, I mean from being
in our city. You know, in the city, you know,
you get you get beat up, you go through. It's
different up there. It's like they stick together and it's
(40:06):
a whole different It's it's a different coach, it's a
whole different.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Yeah, I'm definitely surprised by it. But when it being
recorded and then it getting out and it being in
the public space and then so now y'all see what
they did and it's no justifying it, and we still wait,
still waiting for them to get arrested. And then like
you know, social media, you got a lot of guards
on social media and trying to defend that shit. It's like, yo,
that ship is how do you defend that? Yeah, like
(40:32):
one God said, he should have he should have not
been resistant. The man was handcuffed.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
He was his handcuffed the whole time.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
And any resistant that he might have put it the
first of all, I don't I don't see any resistance
in that film. But if somebody's trying to choke you.
Your body is naturally gonna try to but it's like yo, but.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
But listen, man, they're gonna try to justify what happened.
Robert Brooks was murdered. You know what I'm saying. And
we all know that.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
We all witness that, the whole world witness that.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And it's about time that that that get exposed because
we've been dealing with that a whole time. It's like
anybody that come home. No, it's like we all know
the secret. You know, you get beat up, and you
know when you go to certain jails, right, you know,
when you go to comstack, if you look certain well
when you get to the off to the basement and
the comstock, they put your head on the wall, on
on on on the wall to have you with your
(41:20):
hands and they spread you know, they abusive, they do
they do all kind of all ship that is just
like it's not humane, you know, they do they do that.
And we used we was used to that. We thought
I was like the norm. That's all this part of
the process. When you go to comstock, or you're going
back to comstock, or you already know what it is,
or you're going back to where oh, yeah, you know
what I'm saying, and so you know, it's it's just
(41:44):
it's a sad it's a sad, sad thing, but it's
finely gonna get it spoke. Hopefully we get things spoken.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
Yeah, hopefully. But being somebody of color, we still gotta
pray for justice because even though they got arrested, we
now gotta hope that they don't get a messed up
jury who sympathizes with them, because I mean, or if
they do get found guilty, if Trump or somebody doesn't
pardon them, you know, like, no.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
I don't got that going down.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I got I got We have to worry about them
getting found guilty because of remember where they're from. So
you know, their cousins is the district attorney, the sister
is the judge, cousins are married to. You know, the vibe,
you know how they keep it up there, They keep
that shit tight. So let's just hope that, you know,
we could get justice. You know, we expect justice, you
(42:31):
know what I mean. And they like, it's a tough
tough man. It's tough man, but.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
I mean it's crazy because they feel justified in doing
that because the people who inside committed a crime, but
you don't look at that as a crime. You don't
look at it as a crime. When you hand them
somebody crazy and then you beat them to death, you
don't think that's that's a crime. It's called murder. It's
a young assault. That fact went to murder. But he
was an inmate. And where they throw that term around
inmates like you ain't what.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It's like for yeah, your life, Yeah, yeah, you don't
deserve No, you ain't got no rights.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
You got your rights in your life.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Man.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Well, they say, well, he did something to go in there. Yeah,
he did something. He was being punished, he was serving
serving his time. He had all these protests and every
they just wanted those guys who did that to him
to do the same thing. For justice to be across
the board. Yes, he did something wrong. He was sent
to prison. That's what should be done for young When
you handcuff somebody behind the back and you beat him
(43:25):
to death, you should get the same justice.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Man.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Listen, man, we just we were gonna expect. Man, We're
gonna definitely keep the audience. You know, we're gonna we're
gonna watch, We're gonna see what happens. Man.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
We definitely need some justice. Man for Robert Brooks man
you know, and his family.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
Yeah, for Messiah and everybody else.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
That yeah, absolute, yeah, for all of us because we
all went through We all got beat up, pound out
and at one point of the other by the police.
You know what I'm saying. I can speak that for myself.
You know what I'm saying. It was to beat me up,
not my too. Fire in the back. They used to
have me and myself laid up for days. You know
what I'm saying, without eating, I couldn't even get up,
(44:02):
you know.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
So you got spots like gotta cut. That's infamous for
that type of.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Off top, you know what I'm saying. So, but I
want to thank you king men for coming through. Man,
appreciate having you. You know what I'm saying. I encourage
you keep doing the right keep doing greatness. You know,
it seems like you're in the right path. You're looking good.
You know what I'm saying. Just know that you're gonna
always come up here. Anything you want to share, you
know how anything you want to share with the audience,
you know, with the youth or anybody out there watching us.
(44:29):
You know, you want to welcome to you know, share
that and you know where to find you anything. You know,
anybody going through some changes they need they might need
some help. Whatever, anything you got, you enlighten anybody with
out there. You're more than welcome. Man, this is this
is our platform, this is what is designed for so
we could get ours all because you know, when you're
in jail, you don't have a voice.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
You know what I'm saying, So this is your boy youth.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
The only thing I want to say is man, take
advantage of opportunities. Man, and be yourself. Those are two
things that I didn't do prior to going inside. Wasn't
secure and be on myself, and I didn't take advantage
of opportunities. When I was inside, I learned how to
be myself and say, funk whatever people think about me,
I'm gonna do me. I'm gonna instead of going out
to the yard every day doing bullshit, I'm gonna go
to this college program. I'm gonna be me.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
I'm gonna take advantage of these opportunities. And that shit
worked out for me.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
That's right. Of course they did well. With that being said, Man,
you already know is your boy pistol pet dog in
the yard. You know what is your boy pistol p
walking back to the dog in the yard. First and Allard,
I want to thank Dennis uh for the work you're
doing up there in Poughkeepsie with your program. As we
(45:41):
all know, h Dennis is the father of Finishing Strong
Awareness Center and he's up there and Poughkeepsie doing grateless
and I appreciate that. You know, you can always count
a dog in the yard for those brothers out there.
The youth police too dead, you know what I mean.
Just know that it's real. Jail is real, and you
already know. With that being said, Dennis, we love your here.
(46:01):
You already know, come back anytime you want. Boy past
pete dog of the y'all.
Speaker 5 (46:10):
Thank you, kallu sling.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
We're alive, shelf shining, were alive itself shining the gosh
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