Convicted

by Jameel Zookie McGee

  “His parents smoke, huh? Did they blow it right into your mouth? I can smell it on your breath.”

  I dropped my head, ashamed, trying to think of the next thing to say, trying to find another excuse rather than own up to what I had done. My grandmother didn’t let me hang there long. “Would you like a snack?” she asked, and we never talked about my smoking again. She didn’t need to mention it because she had already said enough.

  Eventually I quit smoking, but not for a while. It’s tough to smoke when you aren’t old enough to buy cigarettes. However, I found an answer to that. My grandfather made deliveries to stores for Little Debbie snack cakes. I used to help him empty the product out of the cardboard boxes and place it onto store shelves. When the box was empty, he always smashed it flat. I was once in a store with him, emptying boxes, when I spotted some cigarettes on a shelf near the one on which I worked. When no one was looking, I swept several packs into the box I had just emptied, then volunteered to take it outside and smash it.

  My petty larceny aside, I also lied just to get attention from people. There were times I heard someone tell a really great story about themselves or one of their family members, and I turned around and told the same story about myself. I don’t know why I did it. For attention, I guess. That is why my entire high school graduating class thought I was color-blind.

  In ninth grade our science teacher was talking about color blindness, and he asked if anyone in the class was color-blind. One kid raised his hand. When I saw the outpouring of sympathy toward him by everyone else in the class, I raised my hand too. That little lie followed me until the day I left my hometown and moved to Benton Harbor. All my friends thought I really was color-blind.

  My grandparents even got to where they believed it. And one day some of my friends were over at my house, and they asked my mother if she had to pick out my socks since I was color-blind. She smiled and said, “No, he is really good about it. He manages.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. My mom knew the truth, but she didn’t call me out on it. Later, after everyone had gone home, I asked her why. “Well, I figured I didn’t want to bust you in front of your friends.” Looking back, I think I would have been relieved if she had. When I went to the police academy, my friends and even some family members worried that I was going to flunk out because police officers can’t be color-blind.

  The fact that I had such a loose grasp on truthfulness growing up made it easier for me to adjust to certain methodologies in police work that weren’t completely on the level. There was a big difference, though, in my mind. I lied about being color-blind to draw attention to myself. I played a little fast and loose with facts on my police reports and even in my court testimonies because I wanted to get bad guys off the streets. This wasn’t about me, I convinced myself. This was about being a good cop and doing whatever had to be done to clean up Benton Harbor.

  At least that’s what I told myself.

  The truth was, I broke the rules and outright lied on my reports because I loved the attention I got when I made a big bust and when an arrest resulted in someone’s going off to prison. I was the youngest officer in the department and I was its rising star. The more arrests I made, the more my superiors noticed. The whole thing became a vicious circle. I was becoming an addict to the attention, to the adrenaline high of an arrest—to myself and my own ego.

  That is why I had no trouble writing and amending Jameel’s arrest report to reflect what the feds needed to bring an indictment against him. Not long after his arrest, I was doing a lot more than just making up facts on reports. I had already started planting the seeds of my own downfall.

  Jameel

  After spending three days in jail, I finally made bail. I still expected the whole thing to go away since they were after Ox, not me. When I got home I found out my ex had indeed come by with my baby son. After she heard I’d been arrested, she was long gone to Fort Wayne or Alabama or somewhere. She didn’t want her baby around a drug dealer, because, of course, she assumed I was guilty. A lot of my friends and family assumed the same. Word on the street was that I’d been caught with the dope on me. No matter how loudly I claimed I was innocent, most people had trouble believing me, even those who knew me best. The police really needed to clear this up and fast.

  I knew the best way to prove I was innocent was to get ahold of the security tape from outside the store where I’d been arrested. My aunt called the police and told them the tape could clear me. “If you can find evidence for your nephew, ma’am, then you need to secure it yourself,” she was told.

  My aunt then called the store. “I’m sorry but we cannot release the security tape to you,” the manager said. “We can only turn it over to the police.”

  My aunt called the police again and told them what the manager had said. I don’t know if she talked to Andrew or someone else. Whoever it was cut her off: “Your nephew shouldn’t have been selling dope. Stop calling us.” And they hung up.

  I contacted my state court–appointed attorney and told him about the tape. He didn’t really seem to care. Several weeks later when I finally got to meet with him, I discovered he’d also been appointed to defend Will, the guy driving the car who could have cleared this whole thing up. I actually overheard my attorney telling Will that if he testified against me, his charges would be reduced or dropped. I pretty much knew I was screwed when that happened.

  Long before I overheard that conversation between my attorney and Will, I was out on bail and still hopeful that in spite of what the cops told my aunt, the police had to know they had the wrong guy. Once they figured that out, this whole thing would go away. In the meantime, I needed to make some money to pay back the people who came up with my bail money. I knew I could pay them back quickly when I opened my car wash, but that was still a few weeks away. The money thing really weighed on me.

  For the first couple of days after I was released on bail, I just sort of laid low at my grandma’s house. On the third day I got a call from one of my homies, Greg, who asked, “Hey, man. You still hook up music in cars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well I need you to hook up my music real fast. I just got a new CD player I need you to put in.”

  “All right, cool,” I said. “Where you at?”

  “Over on Bus Street,” he said and gave me his address.

  “I’ll be there quick,” I said. I was glad to have something to do and a way to make a little money. I had some money on me when I was arrested, money they did not return to me when I was released on bail. Back in 2006 when all this went down, Michigan had a law that allowed police to seize and keep any money or property involved in criminal activity. Since they assumed I had been dealing drugs, they assumed the money I had in my pocket came from drug sales. It hadn’t, but that didn’t seem to matter to anyone but me.

  When I arrived at Greg’s house, I got right to work. I pulled the old radio out of his car and started to install the new one. Then I realized the electrical tape I needed was in the house, so I crawled out of the car to go inside. As I did, I noticed a car rolling slowly down the street. I recognized the driver. It was the cop who’d busted me less than a week before, Andrew Collins. “Hmm, what’s that dude doing over here in an unmarked police car?” I said out loud to myself.

  I went into the house and got all the stuff I needed to finish the job. When I walked back out, Greg stepped over to me and said, “That’s a sheriff’s car sitting right there.”

  I looked and saw a clearly marked squad car parked on the street. “Oh, wow. They must be fixing to arrest somebody,” I said, then returned to the car to get back to work. With so many drug houses in Benton Harbor, seeing a patrol car parked on the street with cops about to raid a house is no big deal. Back then it was just life in my hometown. I knew they couldn’t be looking for me since I had just been released on bail three days earlier, and I hadn’t done anything anyway.

  A few minutes after I crawled back in the car, I heard car doors slam. I lo
oked up to see a couple of cops walking up Greg’s driveway right toward me. I jumped out of the car and stood up.

  “Jameel McGee,” one of them said, “we have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “There ain’t no way,” I said and started walking away from the cops. “No man, there ain’t no way. I ain’t done nothing wrong. You got the wrong person. Leave me alone.”

  “Jameel McGee, you’ve been indicted on federal drug charges for possession with intent to distribute,” the cop said. As he said this he pulled out his handcuffs.

  “Look, man, I got no idea what you are talking about. You just leave me alone and get on somewhere so I can get back to work,” I said. I was starting to get mad, which is why I was walking away from the cops.

  “No, you’re going to jail. Your indictment just came in. You need to come with us.”

  Now I was really about to lose it. “I’m indicted? Call it in. I need to hear it myself. Otherwise I ain’t going nowhere with you.” I’d already made up my mind I was not going to let them arrest me again for something I didn’t do. But the cops kept moving closer and closer to me. “Don’t get too close or we’re going to have a problem,” I said. And I meant it.

  One of them pulled out his Taser. “Don’t make me use this,” he warned.

  I stopped backing up. “Use it. If you’re gonna use it, you use it right now, but that thing ain’t going to be enough ’cause I’m going to pull those wires out and then I’m coming right at you.”

  I wasn’t thinking about what might happen next. All the anger I felt about being arrested a week earlier, along with the anger I had bottled up inside me over the wrongful arrest and conviction back when I was fifteen, came boiling up. This wasn’t going to end well, and at that point I really didn’t care.

  All of a sudden my brother Richard ran over and jumped in front of me and grabbed me by the shoulders. Greg had called him as soon as the police showed up.

  “Zookie!” Richard yelled.

  “What?”

  “Zookie, calm down, man. You don’t want to do this. Man, just go on down to the station. You ain’t got nothing to worry about. Just go down there. You’ll be good,” Richard said.

  I looked Richard in the eye. He looked scared, which sort of pulled me back.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. The cops just stood there, looking at me. “You know what? Forget it. I’m gonna go down there and get this over with ’cause I got stuff to do. I ain’t got time to keep messing with this. Let’s just get this mess over with once and for all.”

  Richard looked relieved. I was relieved too when a short time later, as I sat in a holding cell in the Benton Harbor police station, an FBI agent came over to me and said, “You’re not Ox.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Jameel McGee.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just turned around and left.

  “All righty then,” I said and let out a sigh of relief. I truly believed this was finally going to be okay. Now they knew I was not the guy they were after. I waited for someone to come back to my cell and let me go home. In a perfect world they might also apologize for the mix-up, but I knew that was never going to happen. I didn’t need an apology. I just wanted to go home and get on with my life. But nobody came back. Not the FBI agent. Not one Benton Harbor cop. Not Andrew Collins. No one. I sat there for three days, waiting.

  Finally, someone showed up. They handed me a short stack of papers. I immediately knew what it was. They had to give me a copy of the arrest report and show me the charges filed against me. I saw the report was the same one I’d been given when I was arrested a few days earlier when this whole mess began. But this one was longer. Stapled to the original report was an amended version. As soon as I read the first line, I knew I was in trouble. Where the original had the name Anthony R. throughout, the amended version replaced every instance with Jameel McGee; Ox was now Zookie.

  I was screwed. I started reading. The more I read the madder I felt. Nothing lined up with what had actually happened. The report, written by Andrew Collins, said he arrested me while I was inside the Durango. That was a lie. The security tape could easily have shown I was not in the car when the cops arrived, but I had my doubts that the tape even existed anymore. He also wrote in the report that I had leaned toward the center console before raising my hands. That was a huge lie. I was inside the store buying milk for my baby when the cops arrived. No one would believe me now, not when a cop said I was in the car with the dope.

  God meant for me to be in that cell by myself when I read the report because if anyone had been with me I might have done something stupid. I was depressed and angrier than I had ever been in my life, and I just needed to vent. It didn’t help that the bailiffs and everyone else I’d dealt with while I was being booked said something about how I faced a federal indictment and the feds don’t indict unless they know they can get a conviction. Most people do not realize the feds have nearly a 99 percent conviction rate on cases like the one I faced. Everyone connected to my case had already made up their mind that I was guilty, including the state court–appointed attorney I had in Benton Harbor.

  I also had a probation officer from an earlier case where my brother had bought himself a gun on the streets for protection after someone had stabbed him. I was in the car with my brother when he got pulled over. To protect my brother, I said the gun was mine. I received probation for suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon, which I shouldn’t have because you can’t be convicted of being suspected of doing something. You either did it or you didn’t. But I got probation anyway. Now that I had been arrested again for something I didn’t do, my probation officer pretty much yelled at me, “You’re so stupid for doing this! You’re a father now. What is wrong with you?”

  “But I didn’t have anything to do with this,” I replied.

  “Yeah, right,” she huffed and walked out on me.

  Right then I knew no one was going to listen to me. There was nothing I could do to change this situation outside of a miracle, or someone in the police department actually looking at evidence like the security tape from the store. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  —

  A few days after I read the amended police report, two officers came to my cell.

  “Jameel?” one said.

  “Yep,” I replied.

  “I’m Officer Lange and this is Officer Modigell. We’re going to transport you to the federal justice building in Grand Rapids.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Right now.” I was then placed in shackles, with my hands and feet cuffed and a chain in front of me connecting them. Officers Lange and Modigell then led me out to an unmarked car. They walked. I sort of shuffled along. People stared at me as I went by, which made me feel like less than a man and more like an animal on display. I think that was the point of shackling me. It’s not like I was a dangerous criminal who might try to escape or hurt someone.

  The drive from Benton Harbor to Grand Rapids takes a little under an hour and a half. It was a long hour and a half for me. As soon as we got in the car, Officers Lange and Modigell started trying to pump me for information. They first read me my Miranda rights and then started in.

  “You know you’re doing ten years in prison,” Lange said. “There’s no way around it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “No,” he continued, “you aren’t coming home, not for a long time. You’re staring at a ten-year sentence, minimum.”

  I tried to ignore him.

  “Yep. Ten years. Your only hope to get that reduced is to give us some information.”

  “You need some information, do ya?” I finally replied.

  Lange looked over at Modigell and smiled. “Yeah, we need some information. You got something for us?”

  “Y’all already got all the information you need, but y’all misusing it,” I said.

  Lange gave a sarcastic laugh. “Oh. And just
how are we misusing it?”

  “Because you know this is not my case and you know those were not my drugs and you know I ain’t got nothing to do with none of this,” I said. “I was just riding with that guy to get milk for my baby. Y’all know that wasn’t my car and it wasn’t my dope…and you know I didn’t do nothing.”

  Modigell spoke up. “Oh yeah,” he said with a “gotcha” tone of voice. “Well, we talked to Williams and he said you were involved. We talked to everybody, and everybody said you did this. They told us everything you’ve done.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Prove it,” I said.

  Lange jumped in. “No. It’s your job to prove it.”

  “Yeah, man, you’re right. It’s my job to prove I’m innocent.”

  I already knew that. I had learned it the hard way when I was fifteen. The Constitution of the United States might say you’re innocent until proven guilty, but that’s not how it is on the streets. If you get arrested, you’re guilty unless you can prove otherwise. And if the cops insist they saw you do whatever they claim to have caught you doing, you might as well give up. There’s nothing you can do. I guess if you’re rich, you can hire a really good lawyer and have him get to work finding evidence to take apart the prosecutor’s case, but there aren’t many people out there who can afford to do that. The rest of us, like I said, are screwed.

  “Oh yeah,” one of the officers in the front seat said, “you’re going to get ten years.” He sounded really happy about it.

  “I ain’t got nothing else to say,” I said. For the rest of the drive I just sat in the back seat and stared out the window. Lange and Modigell kept trying to get me to say something. They asked me questions about who else I knew was dealing drugs in town, and they asked a lot of questions about my cousin Ox. When I didn’t reply, they got mad, but I just sat there, mute.

  When we finally arrived at the Grand Rapids federal justice building, they pulled me out of the car and led me to the processing desk. The officer in charge asked me my name. I did not reply. He asked my date of birth. I kept my mouth shut. He asked my Social Security number. I did not say a word. He asked me my name again.