Corrupt Rikers Island Prison Guard Turned Drug Smuggler Tells his Story

0:00No Jumper, coolest podcast in the world. And today I got a very, very interesting interview for the people out there. Steven Dominguez, the author of this book, Across the Bridge, A Rikers Island Story. And I'm not going to say where we met exactly, but you definitely probably have one of the better stories of how you got a No Jumper interview of anybody ever. Yeah, I would say. We were in Miami, if we could say that. We were in Miami. That was Miami for you. That was great. I mean, LA took a series of pretty brutal L's in the boxing arena, but not brutal. Most of them were pretty close, but Miami was good.

0:38But on the last day, me and Michael went to get some food somewhere. And you actually like really grabbed my attention because you go, hey, man, you a legend in Maria Hernandez Park, which is basically like when I lived in Bushwick, I lived right around the corner from this park that we used to just go ride at all the time because they had this one little ledge. and then i later found out that it was kind of notorious because like six nine talked about it and talked about how it was like a famous heroin park it is it is and it's like out in the open you know a lot of corners in new york city are out in the open but yeah maria hernandez uh park has just like a very crazy reputation a lot of like uh you know gang culture in that park you know like uh universal meetups with like the land kings and the floods back in the 90s see i was completely oblivious to any of that when i used to live there but i do remember that there was this like really hot asian woman that i pulled out that park one time and like even just finding one bitch at that park just really stood out to me what were you doing i was just riding bikes because there's just this ledge that we used to just ride all the time it's notorious for it most skaters bmx riders run through that park yeah for sure and so then as i was leaving you mentioned like yo i did like a million views on ian bick's podcast and i'm like what i'm like what the he's talking about and uh you kind of like explained how you had this insane story uh from being on right uh working at Rikers and then actually catching charges as a result of uh some shit that you got into as a CEO so I was like you know what we got to do this I usually have my pitch already down packed for moments like this because it's like you know I gotta grab your attention it's like you get a lot of people uh on podcasts and interviews and they'll mention rikers and their perspective but i have this duality where i wore the uniform first and then i was an inmate yeah i didn't i wasn't stationed at rikers when i was an inmate that's like being like a conflict of interest for sure so i was in westchester county but we'll run through the story though definitely and for anyone who doesn't really understand rikers like i first became familiar with it back in the day because there was one of these like hood dvd type things yes Yes, that like a lot of BMX dudes that I knew were really fascinated by it and would kind of talk about it all the time because it was just so notorious for people getting their faces slashed open.

2:54Which I don't know, is that where? Hence the title. Yeah. Is that where Maino got cut? No, Maino got cut upstate. Oh, okay. But Maino definitely was on Rikers. When I was a correction officer, Maino's brother, younger brother, I believe it's his younger brother, or maybe his older brother, Mouse. Okay. He was in one of my housing areas as an inmate fighting his case. Yeah. A lot of people were. Domination with Bangor Smurf. Oh, really? And 50. He was fighting his case in my housing area. True Life. Right. G-Depp. Like, I'd see Cardi B come visit her boyfriend. So it's like, if you get caught doing something wrong within the five boroughs in New York City, you're going to end up here.

3:32So being that here is Rikers Island, it's not as big as people think, you know? Right. When I was there, there was like 10 ,000 inmates. Now there's like 6 ,000, 7 ,000. Okay. So let's get a little bit of like early life story before we get into how you even ended up working there. So you're from Queens, right? Queens, born and raised. Okay. My parents split when I was like six. My father moved to Harlem, so I go to the city a lot. I take the train, the bus by myself. All my scholar years have been in Queens. Okay. I went to John Jay College of Criminal Justice. So I would say regardless of my environment, I was kind of walking a straight path.

4:10My mom is a substitute teacher for the Board of Ed. So, you know, she had things in order. She taught me like, hey, listen, having a city job, having this employment, having these benefits, the reason you go to a dentist and a doctor and the reason why, you know, you can choose whatever cereal you want. You have a Nintendo 64. It's because of this job. So if you solidify something within the city and you get this pension and you start it early, that's like a lottery ticket. And that's exactly what I did. Were you tempted to join a gang or get real in the street shit? That was all over me in every type of layer of every corner in New York City.

4:51It wasn't just my neighborhood. Does my neighborhood have that? Absolutely. But I was able and blessed enough to say no. Right. So basketball was a good thing. Being in the park was a good thing. I was born in 88. I'm 37 years old. Okay, so you're five years younger than me. Right. So there's a certain feel of like I didn't have my phone in my hand. There's not a sport we didn't play. So growing up wasn't terrible. Again, the drugs, the gangs, the violence, it's in front of us all the time. But we were able to dodge it. I had enough good standing friends that, you know, we worked in unison. Like, hey, you shouldn't do this.

5:27Like, hey, don't go here, you know. Right. Trying to dodge shit. I feel like if you grow up in certain areas in New York, it's just like the temptation is just always going to be there. It's always going to be kind of right in front of your face. The pressure, too. It's a lot of social pressure. Yeah. Because, you know, it's a cool thing to be in a gang. You know, gang banging in L.A. and gang banging in New York is totally different. What would you say the biggest differences are? It's not that street intense where we're showing, you know, gangs still wear beads and they still flag and stuff in New York.

5:59But it's not as intense to like, hey, this is who we are. This is who we're representing. It's more low key. Yeah. You know? Yeah, I did a vlog where we went to the Bronx with like a couple hundred bloods to shoot this video with Shea Davis and King Pill and stuff. Shea Davis is a legend. Legend for sure. I worked at the Coliseum on Jamaica Avenue. I sold fitted jerseys, sneakers. That was part of my hustle while I was in high school. So aside from getting a discount and getting stuff for the low and early, that's kind of how I maintained being fly and not being bullied and pressured. and I was kind of part of like, hey, this kid's cool.

6:35He got his own. I don't have to steal or rob or do certain things. I always had good money management from a little kid. I would shovel snow. I would do a whole bunch of stuff, anything. Sell sneakers, Jordans, everything. I mean, that's kind of like a rare thing, or I guess it's maybe not that rare, but to be like a real hustler, but to also have like a commitment to not doing stuff that's illegal just because I feel like the older you get, the easier it is to understand like, yeah, I could probably make a lot of money if I become like a Coke kingpin or something, but like, it's just not worth it because what is doing 20 years in prison?

7:09It's glamorized. Yeah. So when you see, uh, going back to the DVD stuff, working on Jamaica Avenue, I had access to all of these things. I saw the Scarface for life. I, as a correction officer, we'll, we'll go back. I used to, um, have a housing area with a DVD player and the warding of the, of the jail knew what was going on. They would bring in like, you know, uh, uh, how to have like anger management stuff, DVDs, but it's still a DVD player. The A officer used to bring his own DVDs, put in movies, he'll put in the equalizer, he'll put Scarface and it'll calm these inmates down because they're in a day room, 31, 25 deep with five channels on the TV.

7:48Yeah. And it's only the news. So when you distract them in a good way, whether it's a Sub-Zero DVD, whether it's a Smack DVD to come up, I used to bring those DVDs in way before I used to really do the wrong thing. Right, for sure. So, okay, you went to college? I went to college. While I was in college, I was a TSA agent. So from 18 to 21, I worked at LaGuardia Airport. So that's kind of like the foundation to me getting a check every two weeks. I maintained college part-time and did that part-time. And so what was the process of you becoming a CEO? So I'm coming out of John Jay one day waiting for a friend, and there's a desk just like this, and they're doing like a recruitment.

8:30Hey, want to be a CEO? Want to be a CEO? You know, hey, you know, just giving out the paper. Hey, if you go to this school, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the test is free. Back then it was like 50 bucks, 30 bucks. How old are you? Well, I'm 19. This is the interaction I'm having with him. He goes, all right, what do you do now? I said, well, I work TSA. He goes, well, you want to make some big money? And he shows me his pay stub. And it's like 4K. This is 2007, 2006. So 4K back then to someone. Went a lot further, yeah. You know, my mom's a substitute teacher. I'm a product of a single mother.

9:04I'm out here hustling, doing things the right way, you know, trying to make a quick buck without having to ask for one. And I'm in my mom's living room, and I don't have, like, a sense of, like, manhood yet. So I just want to get out of my house. So, you know, I have that liberation of, like, well, I got a job. I got a study job. I'm about to graduate college. I want my own place. Like, you know, the standard stuff that we do and think as young men. and that 4k was something i haven't seen uh being part-time at tsa i'm getting like 700 bi-weekly oh wow so i take the test pass it with flying colors they call me four months shy of my 21st birthday i let them know hey listen my 21st birthday is in four months okay you might not make this class you'll make the next one cool they literally call me four months after my 21st birthday it's like quarterly that these classes are coming in mind you these classes are 350 to 450 recruits that means all these people pass a test they passed orientation and they took an oath saying we're going to protect new york city's most notorious jail right i do all of that stuff i pass uh the test i pass uh the academy it's four months long uh we go to old job training and it's our first introduction to what rikers island was And that was my first introduction as a about to be officer because I have visited friends on Rikers Island.

10:30I have seen what we know as DVD culture exploiting what Rikers is really. So this is like the real deal. Twenty one is so young to be around all of these hardened criminals who realistically are basically like the most violent people in the city. Yeah, they are. And a lot of them are there for, you know, a mistake that they probably didn't leave their house knowing they were going to commit, you know, so it's like a revolving door of that, the minor crimes and the major crimes, you know, and it's a constant rotation. It's like the airport is 24 hours. Right. It does not stop. so my my sole experience with getting locked up in my adult life was when i was i don't know like 24 and i basically me and a bunch of my friends got arrested at a party because some girls were throwing glass bottles out the window and one of them ended up hitting a taxi cab the cop in the middle of midtown too and the cops end up like storming the apartment i told all the guys i was with like don't rat out the girls because we need a place to stay and there's no way they're going arrest all 10 of us and then they absolutely did arrest all 10 of us this is why you lived in brooklyn uh yeah and this was like uh but it was in midtown so it was like they locked us up for like 24 hours and then that was essentially the end of it i had to go to court like one time and they dropped the charges no definitely not but i was in like the men's uh like i forget what it's called the the but basically central bookings yeah central bookings for like 24 hours really as much as that is like nothing in the grand scheme of things really made me realize like how much i never wanted to go to jail again i was arrested twice on minor violations and ended up uh staying weekends in central bookings and i still was able to pass and be a correctional officer okay you just you can't have a felony can't have a felony so you can have been charged with misdemeanors and convicted it also does depends what it depends the misdemeanor uh in a sense of like what type of crime right i'm pretty sure there's misdemeanor uh domestic violence and i don't think they'd accept that okay because they'd see that as like an anger issue you do have to go through uh psychological they're not just giving this test out and just because you passed right you're good you know so but so if i like me spending that 24 hours in uh central bookings if i had gone and seen the judge and the judge basically was like no we're not letting you out you got to stay here they would have sent me to rikers you would have went to rikers or you would have went to the boat or from the boat you would have still went to rikers the boat is more holding facility for people that probably aren't going to spend too much time okay if they are if they are classified as such like they might be on the boat for two weeks and get a superseding indictment and it's like oh now you have a murder charge now you go to rikers okay so you you start the job and what was that like like uh intense yeah um this was something that you know no no one can really prepare for right uh and again being 21 years old telling uh guys 21 and older what to do and then understanding how new i am the badge is super shiny my boots are super shiny like they've been there three four years fighting their case they know who's new and these are guys who are better than anybody at like finding weakness and honing in on it and exploiting it there's nothing else to do it came to the point that and then i'm just giving you a random bullet point they knew what days i'd get a haircut just because of like routine and it's like you know my routine that's crazy that means you're really like locked in and as much as that's like useless information it's like they don't really have anything else to do it's how they survive too because now it's like playing chess i'm ahead of you you might think i'm lacking because i left this piece here but i'm two pieces right interesting so do they like slowly ease you into this environment what happened with uh me and i can only talk for myself is that the empathy kind of grew because these are a lot of my peers i'm running into you know it's a conflict of interest for you to have a friend or family member uh be in the same uh building facility that you're working in but how do you prevent that when you're a new york city kid and i've played in every basketball court there is.

14:45I've taken every train there is. It's not a neighborhood I haven't walked through. So it's like, you know, it's hard to, uh, not, um, gain a certain, uh, friendship and relationship or, or some type of just a middle ground with like, Hey, you're Dominican, you're Colombian, you're from Queens. You went to this high school with me, you know, this girl, you know? So it's like a lot of things that struggle for me started early, but, um, I didn't let it hold me down I was still a good officer I mean that wholeheartedly by like I tried to do whatever I could do within the means of my capability of why I'm here for the next eight to 16 hours so if you want to know if your package came through and the officer didn't call before I'll call for you and at least if the if the officer on the receiving end says him at least you saw that I tried and I kind of gained that respect right because you know you're not so different from these dudes in a variety of ways because you know as a mean tough gangster these guys were they're going through an emotional roller coaster going to court coming back uh having family members die while they're uh awaiting trial like um things happening while not knowing if their kids are okay so all these things it's like they're just venting i felt like a therapist yeah definitely and i mean but i've read studies and there's like a bunch of famous uh experiments that they've done basically over the years where when somebody goes into the role of being uh you know a guard or a correctional officer at a jail or whatever that they start to like believe or like really like their view of the relationship between them as the as the guard and then the prisoner starts to like really change where they start to view themselves as like all powerful and i feel like that's almost beneficial because of the fact that the prisoners are basically going to try to exploit you and take advantage of you so how much like training or preparation did they give you for that it's it's drilled in you pause it's drilled in you every single day in the academy to not sell your integrity okay they literally make you read something off a wall i will not sell you know not in those words verbatim but you know i will not fall to this and it's because it's the accessibility is there the the hey can i borrow your pen because it depends on commissary or rubber and a street pen that i have to uh log uh in my book with those hard pens they want to write because they want to write a rap lyric or they want to write their girlfriend you know and it's like all right yeah here you just broke a rule but you it's something it there's something humanistic about hey bro i just want to write my girlfriend tiny little bit of a connection right there you're humanizing them a little bit and they're going to take that and build up on it always was why not and then when you question that why not to other officers you become an inmate level what they say they label you as that right and it's like no these guys are bad these guys are horrible these are the guys that are robbing your grandmother and taking her purse and it's like yeah maybe not all though right i can wholeheartedly say there was some innocent people in that building right in the building i worked in and like you know especially just kind of growing up observing and listening to hip-hop and shit like that there's a lot of bad behavior that we're all able to justify when we find out that our favorite rapper ordered a murder in the case of like a little dirk or something like that yeah there's a part of us that's like wow what an idiot you know obviously it's alleged at this point but like there's also a part of you that's like well what would i do if somebody killed my friend right you know we can all kind of put ourselves in their shoes and i'm sure that some of that has to start taking place in your head when you're a ceo as well we're all human yeah uh the only difference between me and them at that point was that i took a test and they didn't yeah that's the only difference and that probably just keeps being reminded to you over and over and over it does it doesn't you're literally there when these guys are at their most vulnerable point and you see that maybe other inmates don't but they might show you because they might cry on a visit floor and only it's them and their mom and then when they get back to the housing area you know he's he's the big whoever he is he's got to be that guy in order to survive you know but as an officer you see the you see the tender points and they kind of respect that with you because they know that you're there with them yeah we're all stuck in this system you know definitely so what's the crazy shit that you've seen in the first like few months that you're there a lot of blood it wasn't so much the violence that i got to see personally but if i were to walk by uh you see someone was uh stabbed 11 times in the infirmary or you're on a hospital run because this guy got sliced from top of the ear to bottom of the lip right and it's like like this guy still has to go to court next week yeah judge doesn't give a what's going on definitely so how prevalent was the culture of stabbing there because like rikers being so famous for it i would imagine that they've had to take really drastic measures to make that as difficult as possible uh inmates make weapons out of anything and Rikers is deteriorating as an infrastructure on itself.

20:02So when the radiator over here is chipping, there's a chip in the back that I can sharpen and I can go and, you know, try to cut whoever I need to cut, you know. Really? So there's a sense of, like, they can just get certain items. They can dig the spokes from the fan. And, you know, as an officer, you see there's two or three missing. Yeah. And you'll tell the captain, and the captain will get a little spray paint and put it. and it's like all right we know these are missing and then tomorrow it's like oh these are missing it's like well now they have six but does that trigger like a raid of everybody's cells or is that just too much work a lot of it is just preparing for war that's all it is it's just preparing for war you don't know who's gonna go after who so there could be something that stems from the street and it gets sent to uh rikers and they say hey listen you got to go get uh adam because adam's in five main right we know you're in five main so now you're easy now you're you're you're caged in with the wolves and the and the apes and the and everybody you know right so these guys are all just kind of placed together there's no pressure cooker it's a they're all just in this exact room imagine 25 of us right with a small tv and wreck is called at 5 a.m and is it like is there any attempt to take dudes who are of different gangs and to kind of separate them they do that uh they've tried many things when i was an officer they did something called 555 they'd have five uh trinitarios five bloods five uh crips and it'll just to like well there's an equal part of them so maybe they might you know maybe this might work you know they've also uh you know secluded uh whole gangs the thing that is on this side the crypts on this side right from your perspective like what's more effective i would say less of a population would be more effective so it's the overcrowding that caused a lot of problems again the infrastructure things are deteriorating it stinks uh it's super hot in there during the summer there's no ventilation uh the food in there is trash um there's no sunlight there's no nothing so when you're working in a place like this it kind of you kind of also feel like man the system you feel just like these guys they just feel it on a different level so is there part of you that like did you start to notice this degrading your mental state just being in this environment pretty quickly absolutely i started to act um with this like diligence outside and it was like overwhelming right it's like you know little sounds i felt like an army vet and i would never know what that feels like if i didn't serve right but it's just like i have to be on point every single second right and i would take that home did you start to see violence against the ceos i saw uh some violence but it was i would say it's equal okay not in the sense that the ceo is starting problems the ceo is just protecting themselves right which they should yeah but um you know I don't know what you're going to do, so my verbal with you might escalate, so I'd rather escalate it first.

23:11Damn, okay. And there were some officers you can't depend on, and there were some that you were, so either way you're alone. Everyone in there feels alone, even though there's a separation of inmate, officer, and civilian. They're all alone because the civilians get slashed and cut all the time. Mental health clinicians have been cut and slashed. Really? Just for no reason? Just a random. And it could be because the inmate doesn't want to go back to his housing area. And he's already doing 25 to life, and he goes upstate next week. So let me start my upstate bid in the box alone where I don't got to offend and fight all day because it's just me.

23:52But putting people in the box has got to be complicated too because I assume that there's too many people that they want to put in solitary. There's people that owe box time, and they don't give it to them. and they'll say, hey, you know what? This person should go in front of this person. It's like it's aligned for it, you know? And especially as a juvenile, that's very deteriorating to the mind. Damn. Okay, so how long did it take before you started to see, well, did you see CEOs who were basically like corrupt or doing things that you saw as fucked up? Corruption has existed in Rikers Island before I was born.

24:29So this could go from bringing in contraband. It can go from writing something on a document that's false saying that the inmate did this and they didn't. It can go anywhere and faking an injury report. So the corruption is always there. I feel the system itself is corrupted and it just teaches you how to corrupt. So you might bend the rules today and realize later, like, at least nothing happened. I'll try not to do that again. Yeah, because I mean, just being in that environment, would you say it's fair to say that the CEOs almost become like a gang in their own way? In their own way, they're in unison.

25:09You know, if I see a CEO getting jumped, I have to jump in. Does everyone jump in? No. Did I ever have a physical altercation on Rikers as a correction officer? No. Really? You never did? Never. Never. Was there an opportunity to or you just kind of? I think there were many opportunities, but I just kind of de-escalated my way out. And it wasn't because I was trying to avoid a fight. It was just like, wait, I don't think we got to do this because this doesn't end here. You still got to come back. I still got to come back. You know, so even though they might ship him to another building now, you know, if I felt like it, I could get him jumped somewhere else.

25:47And it's like you have that animosity because this guy spit in your face or threw urine at you. and that never happened to me i never put myself in those predicaments so you didn't see anybody die while they're in rikers but i saw uh two suicides really yeah not myself seeing the person hang but witnessing having to deal with it how would they do that uh they grabbed the oh they would hang themselves they would hang themselves but uh there's a way of hanging without hanging so they'd uh turn around the bed frame uh-huh and they'd uh rip the um sheet like just have like like a whole rope type of sheep, they'd lay on the ground and they'd noose themselves and they'll just twirl like sharks do or like crocodiles do that or alligators do that.

26:31Well, once they bite, they twirl continuously until they can't get out of it. Really? That takes so much commitment. And it happens a lot. If you check the statistic, I guess there's like 15 to 25 suicides a year. Really? And is that a huge priority for the COs to prevent that stuff or is your attitude whatever no we have 9-11 what we call a 911 knife which is like shaped like this so we can cut that noose like we're prepared for it they do teach you that in the academy because it happens so much people don't want to deal with the time you might get someone back from a court that's why they make you see the psych right as soon as you come back from court hey everything okay you're good alright because people become suicidal but it's wild because how much time are people really doing at Rikers before they get sent off to prison or they're freed like a couple years max at least two to three years fighting their case if it's a big case okay i've seen people on rikers for six years really and that's me uh being a correctional officer four and a half they already have two years of being in that building and i come in as a rookie and they're still there yeah wow and again you go through these people turning 21 22 and who who's also turning 21 22 me you know definitely wow um so are you like you end up essentially kind of spoiler for people out there but you end up basically kind of going to the other side and starting to do stuff that's inappropriate illegal was there were there things that led up to that that you found yourself doing that you kind of saw yourself and you were like ah like i'm i'm biting off little bits of rebellion here i'm doing little things that are inappropriate that led up like i mentioned earlier the uh the dvds okay even though i got the okay from white shirts meaning uh uh captains or wardens like hey yeah you're good because they just want a quiet shift so if something if the sub-zero dvd is playing everybody's like this you know and it's like if i say hey guys it's uh 10 minutes to lock and grab your shit so we can lock in it's militant yeah why because this guy helped us today right what would be the alternative if they're not trying to like go to their cells like are they just gonna sort of just hang out and dilly dilly have someone of higher rank and tell them all right is dominguez and i think that kind of boosted my ego in a sense of having the control that i needed and looking back at that though is that all kind of part of a concerted effort to like sort of win ceos over we can say that but but these guys are going upstate rapidly.

29:06They are there for years at a time, but they're also going to different housing areas. They're also going to different buildings. Things are happening to them. They go to the box. I don't see them for two years. So it's not like one inmate stays in a housing area for five years. That doesn't happen. Definitely. You know what I'm remembering too is that like, when I was saying that DVD, the Scarface shit, I remember one time being out riding with these dudes and they seen one of the dudes from documentary and there was like it was like they met this huge celebrity i was with one of the dudes renegade he's the one that says um once they pull out that mata vaca yeah he's in my housing area one main yeah i mean and at the time i was like really surprised that they recognized them but i guess when you see somebody with a buck 50 you are gonna pay attention pistol p was in that too really yeah this is when pistol p was really like in and out of records really and he built the cages in the box or in the wreck yard because of pistol p so what you were there for what years uh 2009 to 2014 was there was the slashing like totally out of control 30 to 40 slashings a month in my building a month is so insane in my building because what happens is that once uh the alarm goes off i can't see what's going on in three lower but i i know that the alarms are ringing their officers have their uh radios and you hear 10 11 in progress 10 11 in progress and the inmates hear that yeah whether they're in the law library whether in chow so So it's like, ah, Adam popped off in three lower.

30:33Yeah. Because we spoke about Adam popping off. And now I know to pop off on whoever because it's just a domino effect. Do you feel like there would have been any conceivable way to stop people from slashing each other? Or is it just they're going to find a way? They're going to find a way and they're going to find a means, whether it's someone promoting a scapel or some type of sharp object, or they're going to make it themselves. Yeah. But again, Rikers is falling apart. That's why these things exist. That's why I'm able to break things off and make them into a shank. Yeah. Damn. It's crazy. And these search, they do a search, a tactical search, every time somebody gets cut just to find more weapons.

31:17And they do, and it's just nonstop. Really? It's nonstop. Was there a lot of phones in there at the time? During my era, no. No, okay. No, during my era, no. And this is, you know, iPhone 4. Yeah, they're kind of new. Yeah, and things of that nature. Like, you don't want to get caught with that stuff. And no one, I don't think as much corruption as there was, aside from me doing what I was doing, I don't think a cell phone around that time, you didn't have enough money to bring a cell phone. It wasn't. $1 ,000 was, that's what you get for tobacco. So a cell phone had to be 10 grand, and nobody's paying 10 grand.

31:51Right. Yeah, I recently interviewed somebody who told me that they knew a dude that they were in prison with who could fit four of these in his asshole at the same time i saw that clip i'm still thinking about how crazy that is and the fact that this is a dude who was respected for being able to do that and the thing is it's like that's saving whoever is around him and himself another seven years so it's like no way in hell hey it's either do this or take the seven years you know yeah i just like on a purely physical level that's just amazing to me that anyone could do that no comment but you you don't think that people were people stashing stuff in their booty hole on rikers yeah of course i guess coming off the visit and getting the bag you know and it's like hey it's part of it like it's not it's respected at that point like you just said it's part of it that's the culture and it's like it's accepted culture because uh my uncle used to do this and my dad used to do this when they were on rikers 45 years ago yeah and it's just like all right it's just crazy too because i feel like they get out and then they try to act like that didn't happen because the the street has a very different perspective of that i'm sure yeah embarrassing eating on this table and sharing a soup with you is embarrassing yeah because uh you know it's something i'm i'm getting money in town i don't do that stuff now you have to is this amazing because like this sort of street culture is like the most homophobic culture you could ever think of i think the world is like that for the most part but i mean like a lot of gang members and stuff it's just you could never be gay and be a gang you know everybody but you could put four phones in your ass that's the thing that's the thing circumstances and and desperation leads to aspiration for sure did you know uh asap yams i was just seeing that too childhood best friend really childhood best wow that's crazy going to harem like i told you earlier i met yams when yams was like really just having all his ideas in a hat and slowly just you know really yeah so you were very strategic uh you were in touch with him throughout the tumblr era and everything way before that i would say getting into that when he had a blog called um uh chop is on deck yeah yeah and then he did um east side stevie and then like real n-word tumblr i think it was the one right before he popped rocky off yeah that was that was the one where it was like i knew his capability just because of the images he had he would get these images like of uh rappers just chilling and it's like it's not him taking the picture he's like yo it's just on the web like you know yeah he was he was going through like old issues of the source and just find like the most fly south pole ad and just upload that and that was a post he worked with dude the god he worked with jim jones so he was around that a lot i remember uh one of rocky's first shows was at atmos on 125th my girlfriend at the time was a manager there so it was like it just it just worked yeah purple swag went crazy like me and a lot of other nobody ass internet kids used to talk to him on twitter and tumblr or whatever and like i remember the one time i met him was at this gucci man and young scooter show here in la and i'm so drunk leaving this party and they had bottles of gray goose at the party and there was one like this big and i had it in my pants i'm stashing it not where the cell phones go but i was coming out and now that was how i got to meet him and i probably made a total fool of myself because i was wasted but the thing about yams is that he's he's in his in his own world like he was he's just a thinker man he's just always been a thinker he's always been strategic and he just kind of knew what to do like he just had the puzzle pieces and again he would just put them together yeah for sure for a lot of people not just asap yeah it's crazy that we'll never get to see like what his long-term contribution could have been i mean it's Still, you know, I get stopped for the tattoo a lot.

35:41I also see people with merch and stuff. I was at Yams Day when I came home right before COVID hit. So I got to experience the love that he got. So that kind of like, all right, cool. Like I say, acceptance of like legacy, you know, like this. Not that it was supposed to happen. Nobody wants death, but, you know, it definitely changed the trajectory for a lot of people. Yeah, there's a lot of people at that time, when you think about it who like not that he was doing it but there was a lot of glamorization of lean and drugs in general and that that era really kind of like led to where we're at now where it feels like people are not so open about it activist was 1500 a bottle yeah and this is 1500 in 2012 11 1500 is a lot of money back then just to drink something yeah but now you probably get taxed for 10 15 grand now now that's different you know if you can find that that's inflation with everything yeah yeah just like drugs in jail and prison it's inflation and now activists is like like it's a historical heirloom yeah it's totally different yeah but um okay so how did they start like when like break down how you first kind of went over to the dark side approach i think as any uh correction officer there's always that temptation of you're the one that can do this you know the impermissible item i cannot have i'm willing to put a nice ticket on it so uh it'll always be in a cool form like yo domingo let's make some money man i'm like nah bro i'm good and i boast and brag about how much money i'm making as a ceo i'm and making okay money for my age it's three times more than tsa was right but it's because i'm working 16 hour shifts so every five hours of overtime in my era you were getting 550 dollars which is not bad no yeah you know but if you're doing that three four times a week you're getting the 4k that i saw from initially when i was at john j so you'd work a 16 hour shift and then what have a day off and then do another i do a 16 hour back-to-back sometimes i do three 16 hour back-to-backs and then have an eight hour because they'd have uh uh your days off are numbered so if you just came off from your two days off they're consecutive your first day you're prone to overtime 100 okay you just had your rest days that's how it's like thought of yeah so you're gonna stay in comparison to dominguez as an officer he's on his third and he got stuck yesterday send him home okay so it's like there's a level to who gets stuck there's also a lot of favoritism you know um yeah some people uh would rather as far as captains go certain officers in their housing areas because they don't know they'll have a chill day yeah i mean it's like you're making good money but then also it's probably kind of destroying your life in a way because you don't really get to have much free time um i started drinking a lot i started uh being like more of a night owl and this is all just i guess the ptsd of it happening live going on like you just you don't know when to rest right it's a very stressful job a correction on itself is a very stressful job definitely were the inmates doing drugs there yeah a lot of weed a lot of tobacco um back then suboxone was big the strips they looked like listerine strips and they're sneaking it in or they could get it they were bringing it through the mail oh okay um because it was such uh they're like little listerine strips oh yeah you guys weren't like trained to look for that yet not yet but after a while you know you started realizing again uh drugs evolve and getting drugs inside of jails and prisons evolved.

39:17So they're saying ways. Sometimes, you know, like, there were stories that they put it, like, behind the stamp itself, you know, things like that. But so, before you started breaking the rules, did you know other COs to be doing similar stuff? Like, especially, like, sneaking drugs in. So, just being a smoker now and always have been one, you know the smell of weed. Yeah. And it's like, damn, how the fuck did they get weed in here? And, you know, you kind of want to blame it on the visitor. But then it's like, well, you know, staff can also bring things in. And again, going back to the academy days, don't bring anything in.

39:52These guys aren't your friend. They're going to offer you money. Don't bring anything in. And it's just over and over and over because there's going to be that point, just like it happened to me, just like it happens to all officers. Hey, listen, proposition, you know, just bring this in and I'll pay you Western Union. I'll have someone meet you on the corner, wherever you want. you know it was like before uh uh zell and cash have been so it was like that that was the method for sure so okay how did this dude actually kind of so this is particular which is everyone that i have denied in the three years that i've been a co now that i have been uh very straightforward aside from just bringing in the dvds um i know him from the street i've seen him in live time he knows a girl that I know and I know him to be this big drug dealer in in the street in the town pre-Rikers Island he's also been an inmate these three years that I've been an officer so tons of familiarity and tons of trust trust he's worked every uh job you can have in these three years and I just see him in translation because I'm also on the wheels so I was working a one to nine shift and I'd work uh sanitation and then my next week shift would be nine to five and I was work in the rec yard and then the next week after that i worked five main only and it's like i'm seeing this inmate throughout the building he's a well-known inmate even though uh he's on one side of the building he has access to the entire building one day we're on the overnight shift i'm working a sanitation post uh i'm doing a vacation relief because i'm going on vacation soon it's 3 a.m we're going around every single housing area picking out the garbage outside he's one of my workers and we're just talking shit talking shit a lot of his talk was about once he gets out he's gonna run this business and he's gonna do this and that he's gonna leave the streets alone and i'm always just like yeah man you know that's a good thing he'd ask about the girl that we know and he asked about the street and just just like you could tell you miss being home he's facing an attempted murder charge i know this from get-go so his minimum because he's a predicate fellow and is 15 to life and he's around my age and it's like damn 15 to life and you got this going on and you know he's got a nice g-shock watch he's got a cuban link on uh back then all right because you were able to wear street clothes you weren't wearing uh sweat pants or um a jumper right now they're wearing tan jumpers brown jumpers uh before you could wear street clothes so dudes had uh true religions um uh academic hoodies like uh jordan's on and it it was like that also built a certain ego within, I'm flyer than you and I'm still here.

42:37Yeah. Damn, that's crazy. That feels like so inappropriate. They changed that once I left, though. Yeah. Like 2015, they started, they changed into the, you know, the 10s. Yeah. Going back to this night, he goes, yo, let's make some money, man. And I'm like, nah, bro, I'm good. And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, it took you a while for you to even ask me. And I'm like, nah, bro, I'm good. and I'm just kind of brushing it off laughing. He goes, no, but I need you to do security on the street. I'm like, what you mean? He's like, you know, like just drive around with my brother. I'm like, I'm like, doing what?

43:12And it's like, he didn't have to say, I already knew because I already know what he does. He writes on a piece of paper, the phone number, nobody's watching, it's like 3 a.m. I only have him and the other inmate picking up the garbage. So everyone's locked in. There's like one or two officers in the corridor and me and the intake officers are getting the new inmates ready for court. Rips out the piece of paper from his Bible and writes a number down with a pen and gives it to me. He's like, yo, call my brother and he'll tell you more information. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I got you. But at this point, it could be legit work, right?

43:48I'm thinking once he says security and just me putting two and two together knowing what he does, I'm like, do you just want me to drive because i have a gun and a badge and i have that security you know no pun intended that if i get pulled over i'm also law enforcement because that's a big thing in new york city uh to have a gun in new york city and to have a badge on top of that it's like yeah you're superior because they don't give out there's no guns you can't buy a gun in new york city yeah they don't give everyone a license yeah a lot of people might not realize within new york it's just like having a gun is so different than having a gun in atlanta or texas you know it's just like the the hardest place to have a gun in america correct correct and before uh if they found you with a gun you get eight months on rikers island and then you go upstate get a get a number a state number then you come back and you do that you're really doing seven months out of that eight so you say before what you feel like that's changed a lot changed the law so now you get three and a half three and a half years three and a half years for just having a gun on you per gun operable or inoperable wow yeah that's how heavy the gun laws are in new york right so i take the number and I put it in my pocket.

44:55I got these big cargo pants on. I just throw it in there. And we continue the night, grabs the garbage. He grabs his tray because it's breakfast and goes back to the dorm. I'm done with my shift because my shift was 9 to 5 a.m. I go home and I'm getting ready for my vacation because now I'm going on vacation. I come back from vacation. I'm doing laundry. I'm taking all the pockets out. this is a week or two ahead and I see the number. And I'm just like, I don't know. Mind you, I'm pondering this while I'm in the living room in my mom's house. I'm this city employee of three years and I'm still in my same situation.

45:39So maybe that kind of p***ed with my ego. And I just broke, my integrity broke that day because I called the number. and so what's your first mission like for these guys well i'm gonna run through the phone call yo what's up man how are you uh hey uh such and such told me to call you oh okay okay uh you want to link up tomorrow i leave in three days i'm sorry i just came back uh uh from vacation i work tomorrow so i tell him hey listen i get out at nine all right yeah cool no problem uh meet me on 150 something and uh Amsterdam Avenue this is Washington Heights I know Manhattan just like I know Queens I know where I'm going hang up and I'm just like I'm not regretting it but I'm just like I might regret it tomorrow I sleep on there I don't think nothing of it he texts me yo uh this time ah fuck all right cool i go up we meet him he looks just like his brother this is his younger brother big earrings big watch big chain sweatsuit just mimics uh washington heights you know drug shit you know uh let me go grab a bag i'm gonna come downstairs all right cool he's still smoking a cigarette lets the cigarette go grabs the duffer bag comes downstairs puts it in the trunk where in my car he gets in the passenger seat gives me a dab starts talking shit yo how's my brother this and that i don't know what's in the trunk yo we're gonna go to 44th street and 10th avenue who we get on the west side highway yo park right here to in uh parking lot where you go inside into the garage real dark uh pop the trunk gets a trunk meets a guy in a minivan i'm just dead like so you're in the car i'm in the car the entire time i didn't touch anything so if this guy I tried to rob him and you wouldn't even really be that useful because you're still in the car.

47:34I'm in the car but guess what I also have my gun on me. So that was kind of like my other wave of armor where I'm just like alright I'm also in my vehicle I can leave whenever I want you know if that were to pop off that did go through my mind but more so I just wanted it to end. He gets back in the car in a duffel bag. Yo can I smoke a cigarette? Yeah yeah go ahead bro. Well where we at? Oh just take me back to the crib. Get back on the west side highway drop him off he smokes another cigarette he said yo hold on gets on the phone walks up the block comes back down $1 ,500 I didn't know it was$1 ,500 yo call me tomorrow I got you I get on the Grand Central Parkway I go home to Queens cause I go in that same day at 1 I don't count the money till I park the car cause I'm nervous I'm like damn that can't be it couldn't be that easy I didn't touch anything I didn't bag nothing up they didn't tell me We go somewhere.

48:31You didn't see anything. I'm not on camera. I didn't see nothing. I count the money as$1 ,500. And I'm like, shit, this is my biweekly check with no overtime. In 45 minutes. Hooked. What were the rules about what you're allowed to do when you're off duty with your gun on you? You're doing that for sole purpose of personal protection. It's just personal protection. We know you're going to run into inmates. We know this can escalate. so this is to protect self so you're allowed to have it on you no matter what you're doing when you're out and about some establishments might tell you no yeah like uh perfectionist would tell me no starless would tell me no for sure but uh yeah that was really what it was for just to protect self that's a huge city's not that big that's such a big advantage to even being a co in the first place because then you get to be one of the very few people that are able to move around This is why I'm thinking at this time, not in hindsight, you're paying me to do the security, this moonlighting.

49:30Right. It's because I have a badge and a gun. So we got pulled over and he had seven bricks in the back. And I was like, hey, my bad for the tents. And they were like, oh, go ahead. I just saved us 20 years. You know, so. And that happened. They painted that picture. No, but they painted the picture of like, this is what we're using you for. Right. The fact that you're law enforcement. But nobody ever told you when you got the job, like, hey, you're not allowed to go and do this. Now, obviously, you getting the work through the prisoner is bad, but they're not necessarily really going to be able to prove that that's how you got connected to this dude anyway.

50:05I could have said I went to high school with the girl that I knew mutually. Right. You know, so no, no, no. But you did have to let the department know if you were doing security on the outside. Okay. Because they weren't preventing you from working outside. I just couldn't conflict with work hours or, you know, your responsibility as a peace officer. Right. Because you get peace officer status when you graduate the academy, which means if I am in plain view of someone getting assaulted and as a peace officer, it's my duty to stop that from happening and arrest. I have that duty and I have that OK from the city of New York to arrest.

50:44Right. if a situation like that happened in the street because obviously if it happened on rikers that's my job right you know so in retrospect they were basically having you do the most minimal amount of actual in the beginning right and they were paying you very very well because they want to make you feel like this is an arrangement that you want to keep coming back to correct and i'm not it's kind of justifying like hey you're not bringing nothing in yeah until that situation happened so how long you do that for i'm doing this for like 18 months okay um now in my fourth and a half year of uh being a ceo i'm six months away from top pay top pay at that time was like 107 107 000 a year and i guess if i had the patience to wait those six months maybe i wouldn't have done uh all these runs that i was doing and then started promoting prison contraband like i did when one of these runs the aunt that I met in translation because I started meeting the organization as a whole not just the brother I was doing runs with the cousin I was doing runs with the aunt I was doing runs with this person because it's like hey listen I need you here I need you there and it would be a different person so I kind of knew the inner workings of what was going on and who was who and this whole time obviously you're not an idiot you know that there's drugs being moved but you're not seeing it right not touching nothing so that's me justifying it to myself like I'm not here bagging and scaling shit up like hey if they get caught i they hired me as a security guard right that's always going to be my uh my my title to what i'm uh positioned here to do if they were to get hit with a rico or something you know and i mean realistically if they had you know if there was a big sting done on this operation or whatever and they ended up pulling you guys over and you were in the car you would have a lot of plausible deniability there of just like i'm a security guard like what do i know about what's in the double bag i needed uh more money and and i took this job uh i'm oblivious and i don't know what's going on yeah you know that's what i would tell i have to get a good lawyer and you know work your way through it but it wouldn't be too bad to do so because aside from the 1500 these runs uh started becoming uh frequent every two to three days i was doing a run and i would get 4k 7k i guess it depended on how good they were doing you know i got 12k once right and it's like oh shit yeah and then shortly after that 12k the aunt is like hey um you work tomorrow and i'm like i do and i'm doing a mutual which means i'm gonna work for someone else so they could work for me another day so i could split like a shift like officers used to do that they'll work two days 16 and be off for four days because you'll work my 16 that i owe i work yours so if i'm in five main you work uh seven to three i work three 11 i work your i work adam schiff and vice versa okay and i'm like yeah i do can you give that to him what is it and it's a small black box it looks like a deck of cards okay and it's in duct tape black duct tape it doesn't weigh anything and i'm just like deer in headlights i'm like all right same same scenario that happened the first time where i don't like analyze what's going on right And now I just kind of go with the flow.

53:55And you didn't look inside the box? No, I get back in my car and I'm just like, and I'm squeezing. I'm like, the fuck is this? And I'm like, damn, the thing that I try to avoid from day one and saving my integrity for this entire year, or four years, four and a half years that I've been a CO, now I have to break it because I've been doing these runs with these people. I'm already in too deep. You feel me? Like, I'm already like, they could have someone pick up a phone and say, hey we know someone so it was like i kind of had to at that point and how much are they searching you on the way into rikers so the thing now is that i'm i am a tenured officer i'm not a rookie anymore even though four and a half years as officer they're 20 25 plus but because there's so many classes back to back after my graduating every four months three four hundred at a time my seniority goes high and also i get a a steady shift i told you i was on a wheel where they will change my shift and they do that purposely they want you to know all the ins and outs of the jail so you can't say you don't know how to work this post in your first couple years of probation probation is two years after probation is when they gave me a gun so that that was like okay you graduated you know so my seniority is high and uh i'm not really getting the crazy housing areas that i used to before but i do work the uh shoe the rhu unit restrictive uh housing unit on Rikers where these inmates have a mental health level of like level 1S, like the highest level, like they're the bugged out ones, and they're doing box time.