After Katrina: A Ten Year Roller Coaster, Part 17

A photo of several people in jail

♪ ~ /Flickr

Previously: For three or four hours me and my co-defendants sat in the holding tank. I was asking the others how this go, because I never dealt with the FBI before. The kingpin—my head man in command, the one I used to drive around in his fancy car—say, “Enjoy the ride, because you ain’t gonna go home no time soon. Keep your head up, stay strong, stay like the team we were on the street…”

To keep my mind off what was goin’ down, I was tellin’ my co-dees (co-defendants) how I got caught. Right in the middle of my story, the D.C. correction officer came to escort us in a van to the D.C. jail. The van pulled up, and I could see out the its little window.

I asked one of my codees, “What’s that building there?” They’d all taken this ride before, but I was new to the city.

He said, “A hospital.

And I said, “What’s behind that?”

And he said, “A cemetery.”

I said, “Damn, man, that’s crazy—a jail, a hospital, and a cemetery all like that?”

When we enter the jail building, the correction officer say, “Here come the money,” joking like we been out hustling. First we turned over our paperwork.

They were four correction officers and put us in a line. Then they call, “One of y’all step up.”

One by one they took us into a room with benches—and with showers behind it—to strip search us. They ask questions like, Are you a gang member? Do you have any enemies that you know of in the jail? Do you have anything on you that you know you not supposed to have on you, including cell phone, cigarette, drugs?

Then they give us towel, socks, slip-on shoes, shower slippers, toothpaste, toothbrush, cup, shampoo, and an orange jumpsuit (at DC jail, you automatically get a pumpkin suit), and they tell us to take a shower before they escort us upstairs to the receiving tier.

We all wasn’t put on the same floor. They try to keep the nine of us separated, to keep us from communicatin’. We were seven guys and two females, and we all worked together as a team on the street.

They put me in a cell with an old guy. We didn’t really talk other than he said, “Dang you came all the way up here from New Orleans and got into trouble?”

I don’t really talk too much when I go in prison, other than with people I know. It’s not a place to open up with just anybody. I was on a serious charge, so I had to watch who’s around me. If I open up and say the wrong thing, you never who you’re telling or who he works for. Not good to go in and talk about your case with nobody.

After a few days, though, we start talkin’. I ask him what he know about the court. He say, “Man this is crazy.”

I was a little depressed because I don’t know what was gonna go on.

He told me, “Man, you might don’t go home. I don’t know too many people who walk out of federal court.

I kept thinkin’, I’m gonna get life in prison! I worried I would never see the street again, cause remember you’re dealin’ with the FBI people. I thought about how I would miss my family, miss bein’ on the street, miss bein’ free period. And I would miss eating fried chicken.

To be continued . . .

My book, Still Standing: How an Ex-Con Found Salvation in the Floodwaters of Katrina” is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle form.


Issues |Weather


Region |Washington DC

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