I got caught slippin'. 

In Los Angeles, when you first get arrested you are locked up in a county jail while you are fighting your case, waiting for trial or waiting for sentencing. I think it’s a bit different now, but back then you could be placed in county jail for up to 5 years, depending on how long your trial could take. County Jail is more vicious and worse than prison. This is where I learned that you have to have an attitude and, no matter what, you can’t be a pushover. You're housed with drug addicts who are coming off drugs, people with mental issues who are not on medication, different races and your enemies from the streets. You can be placed alongside innocent people, gang members, rapists, or petty criminals like burglars. County jail is an environment with zero organization and no rules amongst the prisoners. You have very little control here. When you first arrive, you don’t sleep for 24 hours up to 3 days. You’re constantly moving from tank to tank, or they call it “Catching the Chain”. Each tank could have about 30-50 people inside at a time, it was so overpopulated. They would move you in groups and you would spend 6 hrs in one tank, then transfer to the next for 8 hrs and so on, until you were finally situated. 

I remember these huge riots that would occur where up to 1200 men were involved at a time. Riots would break out if two races got into a fight, which is one of the most common reasons for riots in prison. You could hear the rumbling begin above you and it would echo and vibrate until it reached your tank. It was scary, you had no choice but to defend yourself. The police wouldn’t know what to do because they werre outnumbered. This one time during a riot, the police started spraying mace, throwing smoke bombs, shooting pepper spray balls and rubber bullets at everyone. We all hit the floor choking, I was laying on the ground and I couldn't breathe. I look over at my friend who’s next to me and his face is covered in blood and he’s touching his face asking me what’s going on, what's in his head and asking if he’s okay. I remember looking closely and saying “Oh, shit! Dude, I think there’s a toothbrush in your fucking skull.” it was broken in half and embedded in his skull right above his left eye. He starts freaking out and asking me to pull it out. So with my fingers, I reach in and pull the broken toothbrush out of his face. Blood immediately started pouring out and amongst all the chaos, he just wrapped his face in his t-shirt to slow down the bleeding. No one died that day, but it was ruthless and this was a common occurrence during most of my time in county jail.

Once you do get sentenced, you are then transferred to a reception center where you spend roughly 6-12 weeks waiting to go to a general population institution. Reception is less hostile because it is more organized with cops and amongst the inmates. There is more security and more structure. Inmates are divided by race, which is similar to a general population prison. You’re given the rundown by other inmates in your race and you spend most of your time in your cell. One thing I learned here, very early on, was about awareness and being aware of your surroundings, even to the point of being aware of the energy and noise around you. If all of a sudden it gets really quiet, you automatically know you're in a situation where you have to pay close attention. I had to find this out the hard way. As I arrived at the reception center, I was given a porter job, which is basically someone who cleans and sweeps the tiers or passes out food. As I was serving food, I served someone who had a mental problem and he was upset that I gave him a tray with a missing syrup. I handed him the tray and he immediately tried to hit me and swung the tray at my head, which flew over my head and hit the wall behind me. This resulted in an unnecessary altercation and that was my first memory of having to pay attention to my surroundings. 

Prison is the last step in the process, and it is a place of extreme order. When you first arrive to general population, someone of your race will clear your papers. This means that someone will ask to look at your “128” which is this paper that you must keep on you at all times. It shows that you have no priors that include sex crimes, violence against women and children, as well as no mental issues.

Although I have been in and out of a handful of maximum security prisons here in California for the past 23 years, and I know my way around, you still can’t get too comfortable. You never know when something might go down. Kern Valley State Prison is known as Murder Valley and getting too comfortable can result in you getting caught slippin'. Once again, I had to learn this the hard way. One morning, 3 years ago, I was walking to medical and I remember there weren't that many prisoners out due to the rain. As I walked maybe 50 feet from the building, the rain started coming down even harder. The next thing I remember is that I'm waking up on the floor with a man on top of me beating my face relentlessly. When I start to regain consciousness, I am able to reach around, grab the back of his legs and force myself up, slamming him on the back of his head. I ended up defending myself and knocked out 3 of his teeth and broke his nose. By this time, the officers ran up and started spraying us with mace, shouting for us to get down. I was still in a half daze from being knocked out, when I finally realized I was hit from behind on the left side of my head and landed face first. I busted the bridge of my nose and had cement rash across my forehead and skull. I’m also realizing the guy who attacked me was from a different race. The cops were talking amongst themselves, saying “Did you see that, he hit him from behind” and I immediately interjected and said “No, that's not what happened, I slipped in a puddle and this guy was trying to help me up.” and I stuck to that story.  The guy who hit me started saying to the cops, “You know why I did it, it’s nothing personal, I told you to get me off this fucking yard.”  If it was any other scenario and any other inmates of my race were around, a riot would have occurred. So, when I came back into the building, I deescalated the situation by telling my race he was “rolling it up,” meaning he was getting off the yard. He snitched on himself and asked to be permanently removed. 

After that incident happened, I remember dealing with PTSD for a while. I was so shook, I kept obsessively thinking like “Fuck, this guy could have slashed my throat from behind, what the fuck was I thinking, how did I let that happen.” It was at this point I realized that all of a sudden I cared about my life and I actually needed to start doing things differently, this was a huge wake up call and things started to change in my life. I needed to change.