“So what’s it going to be?” I said. “You want to go to jail or go home?”
“Home,” he said, which was music to my ears. “I don’t want to go to jail.” That meant he was willing to cooperate.
“So what can you get me?” I asked.
“I can order you an ounce from Ox,” he said. Ox was the street name for a dealer. Everyone in Benton Harbor has a street name. I didn’t know who Ox was, but an ounce of crack is a big bust. It had a street value of nearly $2,800. If I could nail someone dealing that size of rock, this would be one of my biggest busts ever. In terms of jail time, the feds consider an ounce of crack to be the equivalent of one hundred times the same amount of powder cocaine. That is, an ounce of crack equals nearly three kilos or close to six pounds of powder. This had the potential to be a major, major bust.
“All right. We’re going to go over to the police station and you can make the call. If the buy goes through, you go home. If not, you know how this plays out,” I said.
“I’ll get you Ox,” he said.
I drove my suspect to the police station and listened in as he called Ox to set up the drug deal. My new informer put the phone on speaker: “I’ll bring you a zone and meet you at the spot,” I heard Ox say. “It’s going to take me a little bit to put it together, but I’ll call you back when I’m ready.”
A zone is street talk for an ounce. I wasn’t sure what the spot was, but the fact he didn’t give an exact location told me these two had done business before. This was shaping up to be a great day.
Quite a bit of time went by without Ox calling my informant back. Finally, I told my guy, “Look, man. It looks like this isn’t going to happen. You’re going to jail.”
“No, no, no, Collins, I’ll call him back. This is going to happen.” That’s when his phone rang. “I’m here now,” the voice on the other end said.
“Okay, okay, okay,” my guy said. “I’ll be right there.” When he hung up the phone, my informant said, “He’s going to be in a silver Durango at the convenience store on North Fair Street.”
When I pulled up to the store, I saw the silver Durango just where my informant said it was supposed to be. A black man sat in the passenger seat. I walked over to him, which made him appear to become nervous. Even though he was still in the vehicle, I could tell he was a smaller man. I did not know Ox, but I had been told he was a big guy. This guy didn’t fit the description. But since he was right where my informant told me he was going to be, I went ahead and confronted him. “I need you to get out of the car,” I said.
The man looked me over and didn’t move.
As a narcotics officer I was in plain clothes, not a uniform. “Police officer,” I identified myself. “I need you to get out of the vehicle.” He complied this time. The man was small and had some trouble getting out of the car because of some sort of disability that appeared to me to be cerebral palsy or something like it. Once I had him out of the car, I said, “I’ve got some information saying that you brought drugs here to sell.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said.
“Are you Ox?” I asked.
“No man. I ain’t Ox. Ox is in the store.”
Right then the door of the store opened and out walked a man I was certain was Ox. Two other police cars had arrived by this time. I nodded toward one of the other officers as I walked up to Ox as if to say, That’s our man.
“Where’s the dope, man?” I asked Ox. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I asked him again. “Where’s the dope?” Ox tried to walk away from me, so I blocked his way. “You got something for me?” I said. When he acted like he didn’t hear me, I pulled out my badge and asked him again. “I said, you got something for me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I didn’t have time to play this game. I could not let Ox get past me, or the dope he had to have on him might disappear. “Hands on the hood,” I said. I searched him. He had some money in his front pocket, which fit the pattern of drug dealers. They always carried rolls of cash. However, I did not find any crack. Another officer came over to me. “He’s clean,” I said, more out of frustration than anything else. I knew this guy was carrying. I’d heard him make the arrangements to sell an ounce to my informant. That dope had to be here somewhere.
“I told you I was clean,” Ox said. I didn’t need to hear that. I had never arrested anyone who admitted they were guilty. Everyone was always clean.
“Get in the car,” I said. Ox argued, so I repeated “Get in the car” in a way that made it clear this was not a request.
I walked back over to the guy next to the Durango. “What’s your name?”
“Reginald,” he said.
“Turn around, Reginald,” I said.
I cuffed him and then put him in the back of my squad car next to Ox. I then called the prosecutor’s office to make sure I wouldn’t mess this bust up. I wanted to search the car, but I didn’t know if I had probable cause. I didn’t have a warrant and there wasn’t time to get one. I needed to find a legal way to search the vehicle so that anything I found in it could be used in court against these guys. I explained the situation to one of the prosecutors. “I’m not sure what to do,” I said.
“Hmm,” he said. “Wait a minute. Do you smell marijuana? Maybe see what appears to be a seed?”
“Yeah, I think I smell marijuana,” I replied.
“There’s your probable cause,” he said.
I smiled. “That’s all I need,” I said. I opened the door of the Durango and leaned in. Right away I spotted what I was looking for in the cup holder. I reached in and pulled out a baggie with a large rock of crack about the size of a softball. “Just what I ordered,” I said.
I picked up the baggie and walked back to my car. Ox was looking at me, so I waved the baggie in his direction and said, “Gotcha.” He turned away, clearly angry, which only made me that much happier. He knew I had him. I think he shrugged his shoulders at me, which convinced me even more that he was guilty. This was Ox and this was his dope and this was now a huge bust for me. An ounce of crack would bring in the feds, which would be even better for me. The feds didn’t take on any cases they couldn’t win, and if I gift wrapped one for them, well, that was a real boost to my career and my reputation. Needless to say, I was riding high.
I transported Ox to the police station. He refused to speak throughout the ride or at the station. That didn’t matter. I found his name easily enough, Anthony R. I needed the name to write my arrest report.
Ox refused to talk, but Reginald was eager to spill his guts. I started to read him his rights, but he told me he knew them and he was ready to talk. “That dope wasn’t mine,” he said. “I picked the other dude up at a house over on Columbus Street. He told me he needed to drop off some crack to a dude at a store. I figured since it wasn’t my dope, it didn’t involve me, so I went ahead and gave him a ride.”
“So it was definitely his dope?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I heard him call his guy on the way over to the store. That was his rock in the cup holder.”
That was all I needed. However, when I went back to my office to write the report, I knew I had a problem. Reginald could say it was Ox’s crack, but since I never saw the drugs in Ox’s possession, this was just Reginald’s word against his. I never actually saw Ox in the car or near the drugs. While I had no doubt that the drugs belonged to Ox and that he was the one who had set up the buy, this discrepancy might keep me from getting a conviction, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. Therefore, I made a few modifications to the narrative in my report to keep any unnecessary questions from coming up.
Nothing major. Just a couple of things. First, I wrote that I observed the defendant, Ox, in the passenger seat of the Durango when I arrived, with Reginald in the driver’s seat. I then wrote that I approached the vehicle and ordered both men to put their hands up. “I observed the defendant move toward the center console, then str
aighten up and raise his hands,” I added.
Modifying the report to fit the needs of the prosecutor didn’t cause me any moral conflict. I knew Ox was guilty. When I checked his cell phone, which Reginald had in his possession when I pulled up, I found a call to my informant. That settled any questions of guilt in my mind. The worst thing I could possibly do, I believed, was to allow someone I had caught red handed to get off because of reasonable doubt. When you catch someone with drugs, there is no doubt. With my report I simply removed any that might have remained.
I woke up that morning hoping to make a big bust. Not only had I reached my goal for the day, but I also had nailed a very big fish who was now staring at some serious, maybe even federal, prison time.
All in all, a pretty good day.
Jameel
I could not believe I had been arrested again. The whole thing felt unreal, like a really bad dream. I had not done anything wrong except be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong guy. Now I was the one in jail. When I got in the car with Will, I thought he might be up to something, but that didn’t mean anything to me. That was his business. He did his thing and I did mine. All I needed was a ride.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been arrested for something I didn’t do. When I was fifteen I was living with my dad. A couple of my friends came by our house kind of late and asked if I wanted to go for a ride. I looked outside and they had a pretty nice car. “Cool. I’m in. Let’s go,” I told them.
My dad, however, had other ideas. He stopped me at the door and asked, “Where are you going?”
“I’m about to go hang out with Drew. He got his daddy’s car and I’m fixing to go hang out.”
“I don’t think you should go. You should just stay home and chill. You’ve got a big week coming up. You’re about to graduate. Leave the hanging out to them,” he said.
Even though I was only fifteen, I was about to graduate from high school. I was a very good student. I hoped to go on to college and do something related to music. My dad knew my big plans, which is why he was trying to stop me. I also had no business going out because I’d broken my foot playing ball and had to hobble around on crutches.
Of course, I didn’t listen. “Nah, Dad, I’ll be all right. I’m cool.”
“I’m telling you, Son, stay here. Them boys are gonna get you in some trouble. Whose car is that anyway?”
“That’s his dad’s car.”
“You sure?” my dad asked.
“Yeah, Dad, I’m sure,” I said. “Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna do nothing. You know I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I don’t do drugs. I ain’t going to do anything to get myself in trouble. I’m just riding with them. Nothing more.”
Reluctantly, my dad let me leave. I hobbled out of the house and got in the car with my buddies. We’d gone about a block when a police car pulled up behind us with its lights and siren on. As it turns out, my friends had stolen the car from some guy at knifepoint. I tried to tell the police officers that I had nothing to do with the carjacking, that I got in the car afterward, but it didn’t matter. The victim even said I was innocent, but no one listened.
The prosecutor told my mother I was being charged as an adult with attempted murder and carjacking and two or three other crimes that were going to land me in jail for decades. Without asking me, she pleaded guilty for me to the lesser charge of receiving stolen property. At my sentencing I begged the judge and told him that I was a really good student and that I was about to graduate from high school. He told me I was going to graduate in prison, and just like that, boom, I received a three-year sentence and was sent off to an adult prison.
I grew up that day. I had to. My childhood was over.
It was a short childhood.
When I was little, both my parents used cocaine. That’s why I hate drugs. There were times we did without food and shoes and other essentials because all the family money went to buying drugs.
My mom got off drugs before my dad. She found Jesus and started going to a church that stressed verses like “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” After that my mother did not spare the rod. My twin brother, Jamal, and I were the two youngest, and we took the brunt of the beatings. Both of us ran away to escape from her. Usually we went straight to our grandma’s house. That was my safe place. If my grandma was out of town, we stayed on the streets. A few times we were placed in foster homes, which was a really bad experience.
My dad finally got clean, but he ended up in jail before that happened. Once he got out, he fought to get custody of us. Eventually that happened, which was when I finally got to experience a real childhood. But then I woke up one day and was in prison with men a lot older than me for something I did not do.
My rough childhood had prepared me for prison life. When I was a kid, Jamal and I learned to box. Even though I’m not a big guy, I can take care of myself. You have to know how to fight in prison, but I also had to defend myself on the streets of Benton Harbor. The town was rough, real rough. When I was a young teenager, gangs got real heavy in town. You had to be careful not to wear the wrong colors or go into the wrong part of town with the wrong people. Fights were the least of the problems I faced. I had friends who got shot and killed. One good friend was just walking down the street one day when a car pulled up next to him and the people in the car opened fire with an AK-47. He had so many holes in him that he looked like swiss cheese. That told me I better be constantly aware of everything going on around me. If I wasn’t, I might end up dead like my friend.
That’s how I was in prison too. I walked in the gates and immediately went into survival mode. I was aware of everything around me, and I carried myself like a man, not a scared boy. There was also a lot of anger boiling inside me, but I could not let that get ahold of me or I might do something stupid and end up hurt or dead.
I was lucky because some of the older guys liked me and wanted to make sure I got out of prison the way I came in and that I never came back. They taught me the culture in the prison and helped me process the experience and just stay out of people’s way. I got my GED while I was in there. Before I was arrested, I wanted to go to college, but that dream pretty much died the day the judge sentenced me to three years.
The biggest change that resulted from that first trip to prison was my relationship with God. Before I was arrested, I didn’t want to have anything to do with church because my mom was really into a church that taught a lot of rules, rules that got me a beating if I didn’t follow. She was so into her church that she went every single day and made us go with her. If we didn’t, we got a beating. Every day but Sunday my siblings and I were the only kids there, but that didn’t bother my mother. She was going to make sure we stayed on the right path, and if we strayed, we got a beating.
It didn’t take me long to decide that if that’s what God and church were about, I didn’t want anything to do with them. But when I went to chapel services in prison, everything was different. In prison, nobody tries to prove anything or come across like they are the greatest, holiest Christians ever. A lot of people in the churches I went to as a kid seemed to worry more about what everyone else thought of them than what God thought. Prison church life was just the opposite. It’s just you and God.
God used my time in prison to get my attention. I went to church services nearly every week, and I liked what I heard. Everything was just real. Right before I got out I took the next step and prayed to give my life to Jesus Christ. I was eighteen. I pretty much meant what I prayed, but I think I made the decision more for the other people in my life than for myself. I wanted to show them that I had changed, and this was the way to do it.
My parole was approved after I had served a little over two years. When I got out of prison, I left God there. It wasn’t something I immediately did. It just sort of happened over time.
When I got back home, I went back to my old friends and started looking for a job. I did not go to church. Like I said, I didn’t think highly of churches
outside of prison. Most people there came across as fake to me. I didn’t need that. So I got a job and got on with my life.
I made some changes in my life as well. For starters, I never got into a car with anyone I didn’t know really, really well. No one. I made an exception to that rule on February 8, 2006, which was how I ended up in trouble again.
I had gone back to prison for a short time in between my getting out the first time and being arrested by Andrew. My brother and I had gone over to a cousin’s house. We hadn’t been there but a few minutes when the police raided the place. My cousin had drugs in the house and they carted him off to jail. I got sent back to prison for a parole violation, even though I had nothing to do with his drugs and had no idea they were even there. Again, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. That happens a lot in places like Benton Harbor to a lot of people. You are guilty by association. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. If you are there, you’re guilty. Case closed.
I reconnected with God when I went back to prison for my parole violation. I started reading my Bible and found some friends there who helped me work through the questions I had about who God is and what it means to live for him. I still had a lot of anger inside me because here I was, back in prison, for violating my parole over a conviction of a crime I did not do. I had tried to do things the right way, but because I got in a car I didn’t know was stolen, a lot of my life had been stolen as well.
God and I talked a lot about that. One of the conclusions I reached was that God had used this situation both to get my attention and to protect me. Remember my friend who was shot up on the street? That could have been me. The worst of the street violence in Benton Harbor broke out while I was in prison the first time, and a lot of my friends died in it. If I had been on the streets, I might have been killed too. Back in the nineties, Benton Harbor had more murders per capita than any place in the country.*
On my return to prison I got very involved with chapel. The guys there are broken before God, and I realized that’s how God wants us to be with him. He needs us to be broken. As serious as I was about God, I still pretty much left him behind when I got out again after another year. Altogether I had served three full years for going for a ride with my friends who had stolen a car. I was twenty years old.
Convicted Page 3