In 1995, Jamal, an old coworker of mine, was a 17-year-old high school senior with no direction in life. His mother had passed a few years earlier, he had no relationship with his father, and he was living with an older cousin, Hassan, who was addicted to cocaine.
After graduating from high school he had no plans for college, but he knew that he wanted to move out of Hassan’s apartment. He knew that he needed to make money. He couldn’t stand working at the McDonald’s around the corner from his apartment anymore.
Walking to and from work that summer he noticed the kids in his neighborhood wearing more and more red. The kids were also constantly together, as if they were a family—something that was foreign to Jamal. He would hear stories about how the young gang members would look up to the older gang members and how the older gang members would take care of the younger ones.
Before he knew it some of the gang members his own age were driving around in Mercedes and BMWs. It wasn’t long before he started asking questions about how he could be involved with the 93 Blood gang.
There were two leaders of the 93 Blood gang at the time, Brazy Red and Slim Blood. They had spent time in the Riker’s Island Correctional Facility and built reputations of being dangerous. One of them allegedly killed another inmate while serving time.
Brazy and Slim were in their mid to late 20s at the time and liked to target juveniles for the gang because they were easy to convince. They had seen Jamal walking to work from time to time and approached him a few times to recruit him. They would say to him, “When you’re ready to stop flipping burgers and mopping floors, come see us.”
When he was ready to join the gang, there were several things that he had to do for the initiation. First thing he had to do was rob a random person on the street. The second thing was to slash a random person’s face with a razor. The third was to fight three members of the gang for 93 seconds, which was really just him getting beat up for 93 seconds.
Once those three tasks were completed there was only one thing left: the three burns that branded him a Blood for life. He was officially a gang member.
When you’re in a gang they tend to treat it like a mix of the military and the Mafia. There are generals, captains, soldiers, but there are also capos, dons, etc. To move up in rank you have do something called “putting in work.” This includes anything to help promote and make money for the gang.
Jamal didn’t do much to move up in rank his first year of being in the gang. He sold cocaine on the corner of 139th Street and Amsterdam Avenue for almost a year. He made enough money to buy fairly nice clothes and have some money in his pockets.
By the time the summer of 1996 came around, Jamal had also started selling heroin, which was more profitable than cocaine, and started making more serious money. It was then that the leaders of his gang really began to notice him. He moved out of his cousin’s house, got his own apartment and bought himself a car.
In the summer of 1997, Jamal was named capo or captain of the 93 Blood gang. This meant that he was directly under Brazy Red. Slim Blood was actually doing a 10-year sentence in the Attica Correctional Facility, so in fact Jamal was considered a boss. It was good because he was making more money than he had ever seen, but he was also a target by the NYPD and other rival gangs.
In the spring of 1999, Jamal was arrested for possession of heroin. He was convicted and sentenced to three to five years in the Clinton Correctional Facility.
Jamal’s first week in prison changed his whole life. Unlike on the streets where he was practically untouchable, in prison he had to watch his own back. During that first week he watched an inmate get stabbed by a homemade knife, he saw another get boiling hot oil thrown on him and saw an inmate get raped in the shower.
These were men who looked tougher than anybody he had ever seen, and it scared him. For the next month or so Jamal spent most of his time in his cell or “pod,” as he called it, in fear of his life. He said it was about two months before he snapped out of his scared state.
For his remaining years in prison, Jamal had a lot of time to think. He read many books and lifted weights. He thought hard about how he got there. He would ask himself, “Was the money really worth being here?”
The answer is simple. No amount of money is worth your freedom. In letters he had received from people on the outside he was told about how the gang scene was becoming out of control. People were dying, and Jamal was getting fed up.
After three years inside, Jamal decided that he wanted no part of the gang anymore.
In 2003, Jamal was released from prison. He decided to move to New Jersey and start counseling inner-city youths about life in the gang. He warned the kids about the dangers of the gangs and explained that everything is not always what it seems.
He told them: “Money is nice to have, but it is not the most important thing in life. The most important thing in life to have is morals. If you can wake up in the morning and know that you are not doing anything to harm anyone else, it is an incredible feeling.”
Jason Thorpe is a student at Rutgers-Newark. Posted January 2006.
