John "Boxer" Mendoza is a former high-ranking member of the Nuestra Familia. He was part of the organization from 1994 to 2007 and was incarcerated at various California prisons, such as San Quentin, Pelican Bay, and Corcoran.
He was a member of the Nuestra Raza before rising to the rank of commander in the Nuestra Familia. Mendoza speaks with Insider about rivalry with the Mexican Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood, corrupt prison guards, attacks and uprisings, weapons, and yard fights. He also talks about life inside the gang, from rules to prison tattoos and methods of communication.
Nowadays he has a YouTube channel called Paradigm Media News, where he does interviews with other former gang members and talks about life since leaving prison. He is the author of "Nuestra Familia."
Find out more on John’s YouTube channel:
https://youtube.com/@PARADIGMMEDIANEWS
And on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/john36556946?s=21&t=7p5CC5OsgeY7DlX-cWbJrg
He was a member of the Nuestra Raza before rising to the rank of commander in the Nuestra Familia. Mendoza speaks with Insider about rivalry with the Mexican Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood, corrupt prison guards, attacks and uprisings, weapons, and yard fights. He also talks about life inside the gang, from rules to prison tattoos and methods of communication.
Nowadays he has a YouTube channel called Paradigm Media News, where he does interviews with other former gang members and talks about life since leaving prison. He is the author of "Nuestra Familia."
Find out more on John’s YouTube channel:
https://youtube.com/@PARADIGMMEDIANEWS
And on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/john36556946?s=21&t=7p5CC5OsgeY7DlX-cWbJrg
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 My name's John Mendoza.
00:01 I'm a former member of the Nuestra Familia prison gang.
00:04 I was a Category 3, and I was a regimental commander in different parts of Northern California.
00:10 And this is how crime works.
00:12 I've been to San Quentin, Pelican Bay.
00:18 In the early '90s, they put us out there with Southern Mexicans.
00:22 And the Aryan Brotherhood, the Nazi lowriders, those were our enemies.
00:26 They were putting us out there on the yard together.
00:28 When we were going out there fighting, if you were crafty enough to bring a weapon out,
00:33 we'll try to kill each other.
00:34 I went to prison in 1988 when I was 18 years old.
00:44 You know, some of my older homeboys that were there in the county jail with me basically
00:48 told me that when I get to San Quentin, that the N.R. is going to approach me about making
00:54 a commitment.
00:55 I knew who to look for.
00:56 The first time I went out to the recreation yard, there was a group of individuals that
01:01 were in the corner that were covered with tattoos.
01:04 Those were the N.R. members.
01:05 From that point on, they put me on a 90-day probationary period.
01:09 It's like you're functioning within that movement, but you're not an actual member.
01:13 You can do anything that they ask you to do.
01:16 Stabbing somebody, keeping security on somebody, holding paperwork, holding a weapon.
01:20 A lot of guys that make a commitment because they want the status, they want the title,
01:24 those guys are going to end up getting weeded out because they're not making the commitment
01:28 for the right reasons.
01:29 They're not true believers.
01:30 I was an N.R. member for about five years, six years.
01:35 People take notice when you're functioning that long and you're not questioning authority,
01:39 you're developing into a leader.
01:41 Eventually the N.F. is going to approach you because the N.R. in essence is like the N.F.'s
01:47 training grounds.
01:48 I think it was 1994, I was approached by two high-ranking N.F. members, Smiley from Salinas
01:54 and Mike Eel from Salinas.
01:56 Induction process is similar to the N.R.
01:58 You go through an indoctrination process where you learn some of their concepts, their bylaws.
02:04 You have a sponsor and you have the guy that actually pulls you.
02:08 They're responsible for you.
02:10 When you make a commitment to the N.F., it's a lifetime commitment.
02:13 I was asked things like, "Are you willing to kill your own flesh and blood?"
02:18 You know, "Are you willing to put the organization first before everything else in your life?"
02:23 Everything else that you were loyal to becomes secondary.
02:25 They write everything down.
02:27 There's 14 bonds, which is, I used to call it like my little toolbox.
02:31 Everything that I needed to know how to function within that movement.
02:34 Conduct, discipline.
02:36 You're encouraged to study things like Middle Eastern philosophy, Socrates, revolutionary
02:41 literature like George Jackson, Che Guevara.
02:44 And then there's everything that you need to know about how to make weapons.
02:48 I can make a stabbing instrument out of 15 pieces of paper.
02:51 It's all about how you roll it and then how you put the point on.
02:55 When your membership is sanctioned, there's no big ceremony.
03:00 They'll get together with you, maybe in a group setting out there on the yard.
03:04 They'll say something like, "Today we're welcoming the brother boxer in."
03:09 Me, I was right there in San Quentin on the yard and it was done similar.
03:13 "Hey, this brother's a carnal now.
03:15 You know he's a familiano from this point on.
03:17 He's a member of the mob."
03:18 It's like I felt like I reached the pinnacle, a point in my career where I had really accomplished
03:23 something.
03:24 Everything that I've done, it was all worth it.
03:26 When a new arrival will come in, we'll get his information, we'll get all his vitals.
03:38 We'll get his name, his CDC number.
03:40 We'll get a little bit about his history.
03:41 We'll get things like his AKA, his age, his neighborhood, what they called him.
03:47 We'll look on the BNL to make sure he's not on the BNL.
03:50 So the BNL, the bad news list is we keep a roster of everybody that's coming in and out
03:55 of that household.
03:56 I'll send a filter out to all the members that are in that household and I'll ask everybody,
04:01 "Have you done time with this individual?
04:04 This guy just drove up.
04:05 Do you know him?
04:06 Any good or bad information?"
04:08 That'll get filtered out.
04:09 If nothing comes back, he'll be welcomed into the household.
04:13 Then at that point, he'll be given a care package, soap, shampoo, coffee, toothpaste,
04:19 things like that.
04:20 When you first come in to an ADSEG or even a mainline, they give you what's called a
04:26 114 lockup order.
04:28 That's like your passport.
04:29 The gangs, they're going to ask you for that.
04:31 But the only way you're going to get a lockup order is if they freely give it up.
04:35 That's the only way we're going to get it.
04:36 It's going to say on that lockup order, whatever gang that you're affiliated with, it's going
04:40 to say things like if you got an S on your jacket, like a sex offense or something, it's
04:48 going to say it right there.
04:49 So somebody like that, you got an S, they probably wouldn't even give up their 114 lockup
04:57 order because they already know what time it is.
05:00 If you decline to give up that information, you're done.
05:05 That's somebody that refused to comply with the program.
05:08 Somebody like that's not going to be welcome out to the yard.
05:10 If he tries to come out to the yard, he'll get hit at the gate.
05:13 I mean, obviously there's a lot of perks with becoming a member like that.
05:18 You're going to get that rockstar status kind of treatment from a lot of the youngsters
05:22 out there on the streets and in prison.
05:25 They look up to you.
05:26 They call NF members just like they call Mexican mafia members big homies.
05:31 You're going to have a lot of access at money.
05:33 I've learned a lot of things that I still hold to this day, even though I'm not a part
05:38 of it no more.
05:40 Things like conducting myself a certain way.
05:49 The NF is built, it's constructed or built under a paramilitary structure.
05:55 A lot of the old NF members came from the Marines, they're ex-Marines, so they actually
06:00 took a lot of the structure of the leadership in the military and brought it to the NF.
06:05 Then you have captains, lieutenants, commanders, a category one for members that are just coming
06:11 into the organization.
06:12 They have no status over anybody else.
06:15 Then you have a cat two.
06:16 They've shown that they have leadership potential and they can give a correct interpretation
06:22 of the constitution.
06:23 They'll become teachers for the cat ones.
06:25 Now in order to become a cat three, this is the cream of the crop.
06:29 You need to be voted in.
06:30 Then you have the inner council and the general council that basically make the decisions
06:35 for the entire organization.
06:37 You have a general for the prisons, you have a general for the streets, and then you have
06:43 a general that's basically like an internal affairs.
06:47 He handles investigations, internal disputes, things like that.
06:53 When you're in the chute, you might be in charge of like 200 guys.
06:56 You're not really running the whole prison.
06:58 There's guys out there on the main line, regimental commanders out there that are doing that.
07:02 On the streets, if you're a regimental commander out there, it might be 20 or 30 guys.
07:07 I was a regimental commander all over Northern California, different parts.
07:12 Each time, there was probably around 10 to 20 members that were under me at that time.
07:16 A day for me, well, it depends.
07:19 Like San Quentin, you're running H unit, North block, West block.
07:23 I would have to sit there and answer some investigations.
07:28 You're getting daily filters or weekly filters from all these different blocks.
07:34 All day long, I would just be getting inundated with kites.
07:38 San Quentin is the worst place to be as far as being a leader.
07:49 The main rivals for the NF are the Mexican Mafia.
07:52 They're following the Surreños.
07:54 And then you have the Aryan Brotherhood, and they're following the whites.
07:58 Out on the main line, it's mixed.
08:01 Everybody's mixed out there.
08:02 The Norteños, the Surreños, the blacks, everybody's mixed.
08:06 If you're talking about in an ad-seg type of environment, a shoe program, everybody's
08:12 kind of segregated.
08:13 I spent all the 90s in the shoe program.
08:15 When you see us out there on the yards, and we're doing burpees, and we're doing exercises
08:20 out there, we're not out there doing that because we're just trying to get karate bodies
08:23 and just trying to look nice, right?
08:26 We're training for a war.
08:28 That's what it is.
08:29 They're getting ready to go to the shoe programs.
08:31 They're going to be engaged in a conflict.
08:33 So the shoe program is like a prison inside of a prison.
08:36 They put you in a cell, and you stay in the cell about 23 hours a day.
08:41 You'll come out of the cell for a half hour to take a shower, and then you might come
08:45 out for yard.
08:47 And you come out to a yard that's, you got four concrete walls and a camera.
08:52 That's all that's out there.
08:53 You got plexiglass on the top.
08:55 If you see a bird fly over, you're like, "Damn, I seen a bird today, man."
08:58 You go back in there and tell people in the pod.
09:01 In the shoe program, they got what's called a nerve system.
09:04 Everything is electric up there in Pelican Bay.
09:08 They sit up there and they push buttons all day.
09:10 You know, you got one cop up there that's in charge of six different pods.
09:15 So he might forget somebody's in the shower, or he might forget that a door is open, and
09:20 he'll press another button and somebody else will come out.
09:23 You could be in there watching TV or working out one minute, and you'll be out on the
09:29 tier in a fight for your life the next minute.
09:32 It'll happen just that fast.
09:34 So us as Northaniels, you know, all day our mattresses would be rolled up, and we'd
09:39 be sitting by the door.
09:41 I mean, I get up and I work out.
09:43 I watch my TV.
09:44 But for the most part, whenever there was movement or activity on the tier, I would
09:49 be posted up on my door ready just in case my door would open.
09:52 Because a lot of times, the COs would say it was a mistake, but it wasn't a mistake.
09:59 You know, they pop certain doors open for different reasons.
10:03 I used to see them.
10:04 I used to watch from my cell.
10:06 There's a lot of different places out there on the yards to bury weapons.
10:16 Inside the buildings, up on the, like in the little rafters.
10:19 We obviously know where they're at.
10:21 Under sinks or in the walls, buried.
10:24 They keister it, you know, to move a weapon from one place to another.
10:29 They'll put it in their anal cavity is how it's moved around.
10:32 I don't know how you want to put that out there.
10:35 So I went through cork and shoe wars back in the early '90s.
10:40 We were going at it with the Mexican mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood.
10:44 They knew we were mortal enemies, that we would kill each other if we had a chance.
10:48 But they would put us out on the yard.
10:50 And they knew.
10:51 The administration knew over there.
10:53 You'd have to have your light on.
10:55 And that meant that you wanted to go to yard.
10:57 Guys used to turn their lights off because they didn't want no part of it.
11:01 But those of us that remained active, we'd turn our lights on and we'd go out.
11:07 It's like a little enclosure before you get out to the yard.
11:10 And the yard's like a little, it's kind of shaped like a piece of pie.
11:14 When you get in that little enclosure, you can see through the yard door who you're going
11:17 to go out there and get off with.
11:19 So we go out, we fight.
11:21 Always try to get yourself situated so that they have their back to the gunner.
11:26 So that you can see what the gunner's doing.
11:29 Because we were the ones that were getting targeted.
11:31 It was the Northerners and the blacks that were getting shot and killed over there.
11:35 There's no warning shots per se.
11:37 But what they have is, they have like a, it's called a bertha or a knee knocker.
11:41 It's like a gas gun that fires little wooden blocks.
11:44 Sometimes they'll fire once, twice, and then they'll grab the real gun.
11:49 But yeah, they don't give warning shots.
11:51 Now the other thing though too is, the COs are making bets.
11:55 They would be like, "Hey, we got money on you guys, man.
11:59 You guys better go out there and do your thing, man."
12:02 Sometimes they would take their best fighters from one building and they would take the
12:06 best fighter from another building and get them out there.
12:10 When I first came in the system, I was young.
12:12 I used to mean mug them.
12:13 I used to have a bad taste for certain individuals.
12:18 And I didn't even know why I hated them.
12:20 It was because I was supposed to.
12:22 That's the mindset that was instilled within me.
12:24 But being around them, a lot of them were just like us.
12:28 They were solid dudes.
12:29 If there's a Surreno and he needs some toothpaste or I got a book and he wants to read it, we'll
12:34 pass literature back and forth to each other.
12:37 We can play chess on the tier.
12:38 It doesn't do us any good to make that environment any more stressful than what it is.
12:44 Now like I said, if the gates open, we were directed to basically torpedo out and engage
12:50 with whoever was on the tier.
12:51 If we were going to take off on staff, the guards, our politics might get set aside for
13:02 a bigger purpose to where, yeah, we might come together to go against the administration.
13:09 You might see something like a small uprising within an ad seg unit or something where we're
13:14 not getting fed right.
13:16 They're tearing up our cells and disrespecting personal possessions like pictures and things
13:21 like that where everybody says, "You know what?
13:24 We had enough.
13:25 Let's just all board up."
13:26 Blocking your window so that they can't see in there, which basically forces them to have
13:31 to come in there and cell extract you.
13:33 It's something that I was personally involved in before in Susanville.
13:37 You know, when we were going through the cork and shoe wars, people might debate this, but
13:43 a lot of the COs were split as far as who they favored in that war.
13:48 Even some of the female officers, it's just, you could tell that they were either sympathizing
13:56 for the North or they were sympathizing for the South.
13:59 A lot of it is just, is geography.
14:02 Where their prison's at, whether or not they got family that might be hooked up.
14:07 So it just depends.
14:09 Corruption is rampant in the county jails.
14:12 I mean, you see a lot of relationships that happen where female officers are getting into
14:19 relationships with inmates.
14:20 The next thing you know, they're bringing in drugs.
14:23 They're not getting that kind of stuff into the visiting room.
14:25 They're getting it through corrupt COs.
14:28 In prison, one of the things that is a huge problem are the cell phones that are coming
14:32 in.
14:33 But it's a huge business for COs.
14:35 They can make anywhere from $1,000 to $4,000 bringing in a phone, a cell phone.
14:41 Having the phones, it's a lot different because, again, when I was in the shoe program back
14:47 in the '90s, you had, when we'd be back there plotting somebody's murder, there was a lot
14:53 of lag time that was involved.
14:55 Whether it had to go out through a letter, a coded letter, a phone call, or a visit.
14:59 You'd have to wait maybe a week or two for somebody to drive 300, 400 miles to come see
15:05 you up in Pelican Bay.
15:07 But now you put these cell phones in the hands of these leaders, if somebody's got a green
15:12 light on them, they'll make a phone call.
15:14 You'll get a leader that will call a figurehead on the streets and it will happen in real
15:21 time.
15:22 "Hey, this dude's got a green light on him.
15:23 He's got to go."
15:24 That happened that same night.
15:25 Let's say somebody came on the tier, I was on the tier in the ad seg or something, and
15:36 he was like six cells down.
15:38 I'd make verbal contact with him.
15:40 I'd yell down there, "Hey, homie, that just came in.
15:42 Hey, once you get situated, go ahead and make a line so that I can get at you."
15:48 Making a line is where you take the elastic from your boxers or from the strands from
15:53 your sheet, you'll make a line and you'll tie them together so that you can put a weight
15:59 at the end of it and then you'll throw it down the tier.
16:02 It's just like a way to get back and forth to the cells.
16:05 So he'll tie the kite on there and I'll pull it in and I'll read it and then I'll respond
16:10 to it and he'll pull it back.
16:11 Ingenuity, there's a lot of different ways to do things like that.
16:15 Covert communications, there's a language that we use in there, it's called Nahuatl.
16:20 It's an Aztec language and there's different dialects, but we use it so that if we're on
16:24 a tier and we need to communicate and there's officers on the tier, we can talk on the tier
16:32 in front of them and they're not going to know what we say.
16:35 There's very few people that know the whole language.
16:39 They'll just know certain words like weapon, drugs, CO, hit, green light, things like that.
16:47 Norteños, our color is red.
16:49 Surreños, they wear blue.
16:51 So the NF insignia, the sombrero, obviously it signifies the Mexican heritage.
16:56 You got the dagger that signifies that this is a violent organization and then each drop
17:02 of blood characterizes its own individual meaning.
17:05 So one drop of blood is for blood in, guys that have spilled blood coming into the organization,
17:12 blood out, meaning anybody that tries to walk away from the organization.
17:18 It's an automatic death sentence.
17:20 And then the third drop of blood is for members that have honorably spilled blood that have
17:25 died in the course of their career.
17:28 I had Nuestro Familia tattooed on the back of my head and I got that covered up.
17:33 I had a star on my hairline when I had hair.
17:36 That signified the NR.
17:38 I had Familiano over my left eyebrow, being a family member in Spanish.
17:43 And then I had a tattoo on the back of my forearm.
17:47 I had an NF back there.
17:54 The whole purpose of generating money is supposed to be for the less fortunate members, you
17:58 know, that are doing life in prison, that don't have a means to take care of themselves.
18:02 That's what it's supposed to be.
18:03 It's a smoke screen though.
18:05 There's no trickle down effect.
18:07 There's a trickle up effect.
18:08 The money that comes in, it goes to the leadership, the select few at the top of the hierarchy.
18:14 And they're the ones that use that money for their own expenses.
18:18 You know, some of it's used to invest in drugs and to invest in new regiments or new territory
18:26 that they're breaking NF ground out there on the streets.
18:29 If I got a visitor that's willing to bring in drugs, off the top, my gang is going to
18:35 require whatever, 25% of it, 50% of it, or I might even have to turn it all over to them
18:43 and they'll give me back what they feel that they want to give me.
18:48 You know, you're part of that gang.
18:49 You're going to take care of that gang or that criminal organization.
18:53 The biggest thing in prison, county jails, the biggest, the currency in there is soups.
18:59 Everybody loves soups, Top Ramen's.
19:02 That's like a prison or jail currency right there.
19:05 But you know, obviously then you got weed, tobacco, then the hardcore drugs and things
19:09 like that.
19:10 You know, White Lightning, you know, like a cup of that, it can go for like $50, but
19:14 you're talking about like a cup of something that's like vodka.
19:23 I learned early on from a young gang member that the more violent I was, the more blood
19:30 that I spilled out there on the streets, the more respect I got.
19:33 The fastest way to elevate yourself within the organization is by hurting people.
19:39 So out on the streets, the structure, you know, you have your regimental commander,
19:43 second in command, your squad leaders, and then your manpower.
19:47 You know, I would have a second in command and he would be my buffer.
19:51 He would collect the money.
19:53 He would make sure that everybody's following policy, you know, issuing out the drugs, the
19:57 guns that were coming in off the streets.
20:00 That was to kind of keep me insulated.
20:02 In the 90s when it was a lot different, the regiments were called colonias.
20:07 Back in those days, everything was compartmentalized.
20:09 You had a robbery crew, another crew that would sell dope.
20:13 You had a wrecking crew.
20:14 I think the influence has waned over the years, like a lot.
20:19 In the 80s and the 90s, you couldn't testify against the NF and live in the same county.
20:26 You wouldn't even want to be in California.
20:28 The threat was, it was very real back in those days.
20:32 But once the three-strike law came into effect, we kind of stepped away from the violent crimes
20:40 and started doing almost exclusively selling drugs.
20:44 The influence is there.
20:46 People know that they're out there.
20:47 They're in the cuts.
20:48 They're functioning.
20:49 It's just not as, it's not like it was.
20:59 I want to say since like '68 is when the NF first came into inception.
21:04 From that time on, that's when they took a stand against the Mexican mafia in South Block,
21:10 San Quentin.
21:11 This is basically when the NF banded together, decided that they weren't going to be abused
21:16 by the Mexican mafia anymore.
21:18 From that point on, that's when the war started.
21:21 So for almost the next five decades, that war was in effect.
21:26 The truce actually started back in the SHU program in Pelican Bay.
21:30 The end of hostilities, their agreement.
21:33 Again, the whole purpose of it was for a lot of these guys that had been in the SHU program
21:38 for some of them three decades, it was to get back out to the main lines and to basically
21:44 show CDC that they could live on the same yard without killing each other.
21:50 So I thought it was a temporary thing.
21:52 They were going to get out there.
21:53 Somebody was going to push a line somewhere and it was going to kick off and then it was
21:57 just going to be a domino effect.
21:59 But it's lasted.
22:00 I mean, honestly, I never thought in my lifetime that I would ever see the day when Norteños
22:06 and Surreños would be out there on the same yards playing basketball with each other,
22:12 walking laps with each other.
22:14 But at the same time, there was a lot of house cleaning.
22:17 Guys that had issues, internal issues within their respective gang were getting dealt with.
22:23 Whether it was over misconduct, something came up in their past or something like that,
22:28 there was a lot of house cleaning.
22:29 And then there was a lot of guys that didn't agree with the peace treaty.
22:33 They felt like, "You know what?
22:34 I didn't sign up for this, man.
22:38 What are we doing?
22:39 What about all the brothers that have spilled blood in the past?"
22:43 I think the violence is worse.
22:44 When they let these guys out of the SHU program, all these leaders, guys that are from the
22:49 '70s, from the '80s when I came to prison, they're starting to bring the old school back
22:54 where they're not just poking people and slicing people up no more.
22:59 You see all the murders that are happening out there.
23:02 You know, the Mexican mafia, the NF, they're behind it.
23:05 They would rather eat their own right now, stab some of their own people.
23:09 I mean, it's crazy.
23:10 The politics that are going on right now, everything's going backwards.
23:21 In 2004, I was arrested in a multi-agency investigation where I was the leader of a
23:29 street crew, an NF regiment.
23:31 So I was the main target in that investigation.
23:34 The first day, on June 11, 2004, they raided around eight houses that were all in relation
23:41 to this investigation.
23:42 On the first wave, they hit my house where I had all my guns.
23:46 They hit another house where I had all my money.
23:48 By 2005, that case continued to snowball.
23:52 They put me in an observation cell because they said I had too much influence with the
23:57 North Daniels.
23:58 So they wanted to keep me isolated.
24:00 And during that time, my whole concern was my girl, she had lupus.
24:06 I was trying to do everything I could to make it easy on her.
24:09 I knew I was in trouble, but I didn't want to tell her because she had lupus.
24:12 And for somebody like that, stress is a killer.
24:15 So during the first couple weeks, talking to her and my mom on the phone, I had some
24:19 difficult conversations with them.
24:21 "What are you going to do?
24:22 Are you going to sacrifice yourself?
24:24 Think about your family for once?"
24:26 My mom kept pushing me to cooperate.
24:28 She kept pushing me to cooperate.
24:29 You need to cooperate.
24:30 You need to do what you do.
24:31 Your wife's out here dying.
24:32 What are you going to do?
24:33 And I basically started pacifying her, telling her whatever I needed to tell her.
24:37 Let the case play out.
24:38 I haven't even been to court yet.
24:40 So what they do is, and understandably, they release my phone calls of how I've been talking
24:45 to my girl.
24:47 And all my co-defendants hear these conversations about cooperating.
24:53 Trying to explain that to the NF, it was going to fall on deaf ears.
24:58 Because of who I was, I was a leader.
25:01 I get held to different standards because I know better.
25:06 And I got no business talking like that.
25:08 This is five years later now.
25:11 People are still speculating that I'm cooperating.
25:13 Come on, man.
25:14 It's five years and there's no police reports.
25:16 There's nothing.
25:18 So somebody that had an agenda pushed the issue with leadership up in the bay.
25:23 They put a green light on me.
25:25 Nothing happened.
25:26 It was literally the dude that tried to, honoring the green light, tried to push a phone over
25:32 in front of me on the tier.
25:34 I still held my mud.
25:35 I still wanted to be a part of the organization.
25:39 Seventeen months later, they put me back on the active tier.
25:42 I functioned for another two years, put another green light on me.
25:47 And the second time, it was just as bad as the first time.
25:50 Somebody wanted to act like they were trying to spear me through the bars.
25:54 The spear was like two feet too short, didn't have a tip on it.
25:59 You know, my wife, she died.
26:01 She ended up dying.
26:02 My mom ended up dying.
26:03 She passed away.
26:04 So they did this at a time when I was already in a dark place.
26:08 You know what I mean?
26:09 I'm looking at life.
26:10 I was getting ready to plead out, but then they pulled that.
26:12 So I was like, you know what?
26:13 I'm done, man.
26:15 The district attorney wants to wash me up.
26:18 You know, I'm in bad standings now with the NF.
26:21 What do I do?
26:22 Law enforcement again came up and they're like, you know what?
26:25 Loyalty only goes so far.
26:26 Come on, man.
26:28 I agreed that I was done and that, you know, that I would talk to him.
26:35 So that's what I did from that point on.
26:37 I denounced my membership and, you know, I agreed to cooperate.
26:43 However, the cooperation that I gave was just, I didn't go in as a precipient witness.
26:48 Everybody that I got arrested with was gone.
26:50 So I went in there basically talking about what I'm talking about now, how gangs work.
26:56 The judge struck two of my strike priors, which took me out of the three strikes and
27:02 gave me 16 years, eight months.
27:04 I've been in the county jail almost 10 years.
27:07 None of that had to happen.
27:08 If the NF would have let me fight my case, I would have been a big dummy sitting in Pelican
27:13 Bay right now with a life sentence.
27:14 Yeah, I was one of the true believers, but you know, by them pulling the trigger twice,
27:19 I felt betrayed.
27:27 For somebody that just doesn't want to be part of the organization no more, for them
27:32 to walk away, to just ride off into the sunset and go on about their life and not hurt nobody,
27:40 it's still not considered honorable, but it's something that people will say, "You know
27:46 what?
27:47 He didn't tell on everybody.
27:49 At least he didn't hurt nobody."
27:51 But there's never a retirement.
27:56 You'll never be able to walk away in good standings.
27:58 I've had a couple of situations where I ran into some individuals, when there's 15 of
28:03 them, that's when everybody wants to get active.
28:06 But when I catch cats by themselves, they're not trying to do all that.
28:11 And I'm not trying to look for trouble either.
28:14 I'm trying to just live out the rest of my days without all the drama.
28:20 I'm not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.
28:29 I grew up in San Francisco, California.
28:32 My mom was a young heroin addict.
28:35 She got involved with drugs at a young age.
28:38 At the age of 11, I found my way back to my mom's from foster care.
28:43 I found out she was using.
28:45 She didn't just give it to me.
28:48 People are going to be like, "What kind of mother gives her 12-year-old child heroin?"
28:51 I understand that, but I don't blame her.
28:55 I look at it as she was stuck in her addiction at a young age.
28:59 She got stuck in that cycle, and I kind of manipulated the situation.
29:04 I told her I knew what she was doing, and if she didn't give it to me, I was going to
29:08 go get it in the streets.
29:09 And from that point on, for the next 40 years, that shit tore my life up in every way possible,
29:19 from relationships to the choices I would make, me becoming involved in the criminal
29:25 element.
29:26 From then, I stopped going to school.
29:30 I started drinking.
29:32 That's when I started getting involved with gangs.
29:34 It started with burglarizing cars, ripping out the radios, the speakers, selling them
29:40 for drugs, robberies, home invasions.
29:43 And then we started using weapons, and it just continued to escalate.
29:47 From that time, it didn't take me long before I got caught up in the juvenile justice system.
29:51 I caught four robberies, one out of San Francisco and two out of San Mateo.
29:58 I took seven years, ran consecutive, and they sent me to prison.
30:10 My book is, I've met, through talking to at-risk youth, I've talked to kids that have gotten
30:19 in trouble.
30:20 Probation officers come up and tell me that, "These youngsters, they read your book, and
30:24 we actually use your book as a workshop type of thing."
30:28 The name of the book is called, "New Western or Familiar?
30:30 A Broken Paradigm."
30:31 And so I started doing a YouTube channel, Paradigm Media News.
30:35 I got a series on my channel.
30:38 One's called "Inner Demons," and the other one's called "War Stories."
30:42 It's also therapeutical to talk about it, to try to help some of these youngsters that
30:47 might be headed for that type of lifestyle.
30:51 I give them the fine print that they don't hear about until it's too late, until they
30:56 make a commitment and they find themselves in that situation.
31:00 I've seen a lot of my homeboys die throughout the years.
31:03 Most of them are gone.
31:05 There's only three roads you're going to travel in this lifestyle.
31:08 You're either going to spend the rest of your life in prison, you're going to die trying
31:14 to push the organization's advancement forward, or you're going to turn your back.
31:20 There's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
31:22 [laughter] [applause]
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