Manuel Medrano is a former member of the Arizona Mexican Mafia, also known as the New Mexican Mafia, a US prison gang. He was in and out of the Arizona Department of Corrections for 20 years and served time for armed robbery and drug trafficking.
Medrano speaks with Business Insider about the gang structure and hierarchy, as well as ties to the cartels. He covers gang tattoos, language, and rivalries with the Border Brothers. He also talks about the loose alliance the gang had with the Aryan Brotherhood. Medrano discusses corrupt prison guards and offers his opinion on mass incarceration and US drug policy.
The Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, originated in 1957 in the California prison system. According to law enforcement, the gang is splintered into the New Mexican Mafia, founded in Florence, Arizona, around 1974, and other factions. Many prison gangs in the US take the name Mexican Mafia, including the Mexikanemi, or Texas Mexican Mafia.
Find out more: phasetwooflife.org
https://www.youtube.com/c/CHRONICLES1
Medrano speaks with Business Insider about the gang structure and hierarchy, as well as ties to the cartels. He covers gang tattoos, language, and rivalries with the Border Brothers. He also talks about the loose alliance the gang had with the Aryan Brotherhood. Medrano discusses corrupt prison guards and offers his opinion on mass incarceration and US drug policy.
The Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, originated in 1957 in the California prison system. According to law enforcement, the gang is splintered into the New Mexican Mafia, founded in Florence, Arizona, around 1974, and other factions. Many prison gangs in the US take the name Mexican Mafia, including the Mexikanemi, or Texas Mexican Mafia.
Find out more: phasetwooflife.org
https://www.youtube.com/c/CHRONICLES1
Category
đč
FunTranscript
00:00My name is Manuel Medrano, a.k.a. Cricket.
00:02I was a member of the Arizona Mexican Mafia,
00:05and this is how crime works.
00:09For the most part, if you look at the victims
00:11of the Mexican Mafia,
00:13they're gonna be other members of the Mexican Mafia.
00:16Looking back, I mean, it's ridiculous.
00:18No matter what, you're always gonna find
00:20some kind of villain amongst yourself.
00:23You know, it's just a hypocrisy
00:25of being a part of this organization.
00:31When I was 17, I was transferred to adult court.
00:34I had been in a lot of trouble already as a juvenile,
00:37so they transferred me to adult court in 1995.
00:40Going to prison originally, they gave me 6 1â2 years.
00:44My original crime, I was charged with an armed robbery.
00:47It was a carjacking.
00:49You know, I just wanted to be part of the cool crowd,
00:51and that's what it was.
00:53The members of the Mexican Mafia
00:54were somebody that we had all heard of
00:57throughout our time in the military.
00:59Throughout our time, you know, as juveniles, as kids,
01:01we looked up to these guys.
01:03So when I got there, my crime was dangerous enough
01:07to where I ended up on a higher-level yard,
01:10and so I just jumped head-on into, you know,
01:13obligating myself to the organization.
01:16And like any other youngster,
01:18they used me to do multiple things.
01:20I mean, stabbings, moving drugs.
01:23I was in a gang as a kid.
01:25I was from a neighborhood in the west side of Phoenix.
01:28You heard about these Mexican Mafia members
01:31that ran stuff.
01:33You heard about the homicides they committed in prison.
01:36Everything sounded so glamorous, the way they put it.
01:39And that movie, American Me, had come out,
01:42and that really had a huge influence on us.
01:45After the movie came out, everybody was running around
01:48with their shirts buttoned all the way to the top.
01:51To become a member, it's not necessarily a myth
01:55that you have to kill somebody.
01:57However, there's a lot of favoritism.
01:59There's a lot of nepotism.
02:01So there's a lot of people that get accepted
02:04and get made without the actual homicide having been done,
02:08but it's a, you know, expectation
02:11that they will kill for the organization
02:13when the time comes.
02:15At the time, I think the count was 150 members total.
02:19We like to think about it as, you know,
02:21we're the elite of the prisoner system.
02:24Originally, when I was made, I had not killed anybody yet.
02:28My high-ranking member took a liking to me,
02:31and so he pushed my, my, well, there was a couple of them,
02:34but they pushed my name through it.
02:36I was voted on, and I became a member.
02:38Within a few months, I did kill another member
02:41in bad standing, and that solidified it.
02:45I think it took me a while to get to that point,
02:49and I think there's a way to stop it
02:52before it goes that far.
02:54I regret it all.
03:02The patch itself in Arizona, the tattoo that they wear,
03:06it's a sun with a double M
03:09that comes down into double swords at the bottom.
03:12It has a saber-tooth skull above the two M's in the middle,
03:16and then a black rose in between the double M's.
03:21Only people that have killed a member in bad standing
03:25or a member in the old Mexican mafia
03:27can even put that black rose in the middle of the patch.
03:31There is no motto per se.
03:33Everybody speaks about this cause that we have.
03:36It's a recruitment tool.
03:38They talk about the cultural aspects of it,
03:41the Aztec, the Mayans, you know,
03:43try to put that kind of spin on it
03:46and just make you be prideful in your race.
03:50I used to tell younger people
03:52about the cause that we were fighting for,
03:55and if they were to ask me to define it,
03:57I wouldn't be able to.
03:59In the end, it's just about drugs and money and power.
04:02That's all it is.
04:04The main rules, I mean,
04:06they have the no snitching, no homosexuality.
04:09At one time, no drugs,
04:11you were not allowed to partake in any kind of drugs.
04:14That changed later.
04:16A lot of these rules are broken multiple times.
04:19If you see a member in bad standing
04:21or a member of the old at any time,
04:23if the doors were to pop,
04:25you have to try to kill them.
04:28When you're in this SHU program,
04:30a lot of the times,
04:32the guards will make a mistake
04:34and open the doors on accident,
04:36and so you always have to be ready for that.
04:39You're up all day waiting for that, basically.
04:42You're always supposed to be ready for war.
04:45The money situation, everything has to go up.
04:49As it comes in,
04:51the rule is that you spread it amongst the brothers,
04:55those that are within your ranking system.
05:00As a normal cardinal without rank,
05:03you're just considered a brother.
05:05Then there'll be the ranking system.
05:07You have a captain, a lieutenant, a sergeant.
05:10You have a lieutenant that has three sergeants.
05:13Then the three sergeants each have
05:15five or six cardinales under them.
05:17Money will go up through that pyramid.
05:20That's where a lot of the problems obviously come in
05:23because people feel that money's always being held back,
05:26and so that rule will be broken quite often.
05:29The biggest rule is to always maintain contact.
05:32One of the reasons a lot of members have been killed
05:35is because when they get out of prison,
05:38they kind of just forget about everything.
05:41They stop contact.
05:43They just move on with their lives.
05:46The problem is they don't change their lives,
05:49so they continue with crime,
05:51and they'll get locked back up,
05:53go in there and try to give excuses
05:55as to why they couldn't write
05:57or whatever the excuses are.
05:59For the most part, it never works,
06:01and so a lot of members have been killed
06:04behind that rule alone.
06:12It started in California in the early 50s,
06:151957, I believe,
06:17but the Arizona faction started in the early 70s
06:20by three juveniles, actually, that came into the system,
06:23and they started La Familia,
06:26and then shortly thereafter took on the name Mexican Mafia.
06:30Arizona had some influence from California
06:35but was also autonomous,
06:37and now they are basically,
06:40it's not together necessarily,
06:44but friendly and on working terms.
06:47The administration was originally the ones
06:50that named them Old and New,
06:52but they were all the same thing at one point.
06:55These are members that just split into two factions.
06:58It was just the internal struggle, if you will.
07:01The organizations themselves kind of used it
07:04as a way, I guess, just to keep it straight as well.
07:07They would say, you know, in Spanish,
07:10we're from the Nueva, the New.
07:12They're from the Vieja, the Old.
07:19I never got ranked.
07:21I wasn't a sergeant, lieutenant, none of that stuff.
07:24I was just a member.
07:26The five captains were the main ones that everyone knew,
07:29and those five captains sat at the,
07:32we call it the mesa, the table.
07:34We have the mesa system or table system
07:37where everything is voted on through them.
07:40There would be a captain with a black rose
07:43to sit at the table.
07:45The five captains set all the rules, the regulations.
07:48They'd change the rules.
07:50All the politicking would go through them.
07:53We're still all supposed to be brothers
07:56and we're all supposed to be equal.
07:59It's a name only that is the way it's supposed to be.
08:02Obviously, the captains have a lot more power,
08:05but again, it's more of a popularity contest.
08:09If you're a brother, you basically are expected
08:12to know what it is you're supposed to be doing,
08:15whether that's establishing stores on the yards,
08:18getting rid of people that shouldn't be on the yard,
08:21bringing in dope or collecting dope on the yards.
08:32In Arizona, our main rival,
08:35as I was coming in as a young man,
08:38was with the old Mexican mafia.
08:41The administration tried their best to keep them protected.
08:44They have a thing where it was called protective segregation.
08:47In the later years of the 90s,
08:50we started having problems with a group
08:53that started to call themselves the Porter Brothers.
08:56That became a real big thing,
08:59and California, at this point,
09:02was behind the Porter Brothers as well.
09:05So we were actually in a war for quite a few years
09:08against Mexican nationals, or Porter Brothers,
09:11and California, people that were born in California.
09:14The Mexican mafia wanted to be the only organization
09:17that had a patch as far as the, you know,
09:20on the Hispanic side, the Mexican side.
09:23The Porter Brothers started wearing a patch.
09:26They started being hit throughout the system,
09:29and there started being riots.
09:33It was probably about a 3- or 4-year time frame
09:36where it was going on.
09:39In Arizona, they also have an Aryan Brotherhood
09:42that was factioned off of the California Aryan Brotherhood.
09:45It was actually a California member
09:48that came into our system.
09:51The Arizona guys kind of homegrew it after that.
09:54We did align with them only because of, obviously,
09:57the offense to the black gangs
10:00It was just a loose allegiance,
10:03or alignment, more just friends.
10:06If there was something that the whites did wrong,
10:09we could go to them,
10:12and they would take care of it themselves, and vice versa.
10:15You know, obviously, if they bring in drugs,
10:18they don't have to give a portion to the Mexican mafia,
10:21and vice versa.
10:24Everything stays within your own race when it comes to that.
10:27They had the white gangs.
10:30They had the Mau Mau's, Crip gang.
10:33They had the Muslims.
10:36All of them were kind of against each other,
10:39and the Aryan Brotherhood was against all of them.
10:42I was part of a riot on the Santa Rita Yard in Tucson,
10:45and I got stabbed in my neck.
10:48I spoke to my mom, and my mom was born in Mexico.
10:51When I told her what was happening,
10:54she was like, what are you talking about?
10:57It's the same people.
11:00I would tell her, it's different, you don't understand.
11:03She would cuss me out in Spanish,
11:06you guys are stupid, kind of.
11:09Now that I can look back and I can see,
11:12there's no big bad wolf out there
11:15that we were fighting against.
11:18For the most part, our victims were ourselves.
11:22There's not a lot of members on the street.
11:25We don't usually make it that long,
11:28because there's a whole task force
11:31that's established for the prison gang.
11:34It was called the Violent Street Gang Task Force.
11:37It was, I believe, 2 detectives from the Phoenix PD.
11:40They had members from the FBI,
11:43from every organization you could think of,
11:46and so those were the ones that were
11:49basically on us all the time.
11:52It was tough.
11:55They would follow me everywhere.
11:58I'd walk into restaurants and they'd be sitting
12:01and they're eating.
12:04They would go to houses of family, of loved ones,
12:07and they would tell them, hey,
12:10your son is hanging out with a real bad guy.
12:13He's suspected in multiple homicides.
12:16If there's a member that's going to get out or something,
12:19usually they're getting out with some established things
12:22that need to be done.
12:25The problem is, some of these guys will get out
12:28and even though they left the organization,
12:31they're still into drugs or into money or whatever,
12:34so they'll go back to their neighborhoods
12:37and they'll say who they were to try to get their neighborhood
12:40to give them drugs and money,
12:44and they'll try to find them to be able to kill them.
12:47Me getting out, I did have a few names
12:50that were on the list to be killed.
12:53Upon being released, I right away tried to
12:56make connections with drug dealers
12:59that were already established on the streets.
13:02At first, I tried to use
13:05being a Mexican Mafia member to influence them,
13:08but that actually scared a lot of them away.
13:11There's a history of bullying
13:14amongst the Mexican Mafia where
13:17they would approach these drug dealers with
13:20hey, we're the Mexican Mafia,
13:23we want this and that, and they just take
13:26instead of, there's no give back.
13:29So what I started doing really was
13:32I had conversations with the guys and I was like,
13:35listen, I understand our history,
13:38the only thing I'm asking you to do is give me a better number
13:41than you give most people.
13:44At the time, methamphetamine was a big thing
13:47and that's what I was mostly involved in,
13:50pounds of methamphetamine I was sending to Kentucky
13:53where it was double the price from Arizona.
14:03It wasn't like I had to send 80% of my proceeds
14:07to anybody.
14:10The established amount for non-members
14:13is they do have to give up a third of anything
14:16they bring into the system.
14:19So if you bring in three grams of heroin,
14:22one of those is going to the Mexican Mafia.
14:25But us, within ourselves, we're pretty free
14:28to make money and do whatever we need to do for that.
14:31It just comes down to that rule of staying in contact.
14:34If you get a letter saying, hey, my sister needs a TV,
14:37then you get the sister a TV
14:40and you're basically keeping people happy.
14:43Everything that came into prison
14:46was what was controlled by the Mexican Mafia.
14:49You couldn't bring dope in and make money
14:52without giving them their third.
14:55Now with the connections to California
14:58and the cartels and stuff,
15:01things are a little bit more organized
15:04and established with the drug trade.
15:07They started legitimate businesses
15:10and putting up car shops and different things like that.
15:13It depends on the members that are on the street.
15:16There was a few members in Tucson
15:19that were bringing tons and tons of dope from Mexico.
15:22They had that connection out there.
15:25I know California had a little bit more
15:28established connections with the Ariano Felix cartel
15:31at one point.
15:34It's not like saying the Mexican Mafia
15:37is working with the cartel.
15:40It's just this member has a connection with the cartel.
15:43If you need dope, we can get it, obviously.
15:46If you need 1,000 pounds, it'll be here.
15:49One of the big things that was happening in my day
15:52was coyoteing the Mexican nationals,
15:56bringing them over the border was a big thing.
15:59That was one of the things that was a little more organized.
16:02Usually we wouldn't do it ourselves.
16:05We're not going to take that type of risk.
16:08But you could send your soldiers
16:11that are looking up to you
16:14to go bring 10, 20 of the,
16:17what they call chickens, poyos,
16:20across the border and bring the money back.
16:23That was huge, and I believe still is.
16:26Just watching the news,
16:29you can see the stash houses that they catch
16:32were full of Mexican nationals being held.
16:35That was the other side of it.
16:38A lot of them were sent to a stash house
16:41and they would be held there
16:44until their family paid whatever was agreed upon.
16:47Yeah, absolutely, that's still happening.
16:50People usually come into the system
16:53already with a name.
16:56A lot of us did time together in Juvenile Hall,
16:59and so there's always some kind of connection.
17:02His dad may be in prison, his uncle.
17:05As people are coming into the system,
17:08you kind of know from their neighborhood
17:11or their family who they are.
17:14There is no obligation to the organization.
17:18You don't have to be a part of it.
17:21The only obligation you have is if there's a riot,
17:24you have to take part in it.
17:27As a Chicano or a Mexican,
17:30I really only took part in sponsoring one member.
17:33I recruited, I talked to younger kids
17:36about the cause, and I did all of that stuff as well.
17:39Everybody's paperwork is read
17:42when they're coming in the system.
17:45The pre-sentence report was the biggest thing
17:48that would have a lot of clues.
17:51Anybody with a sex offense,
17:54there's no way that you're going to become a member.
17:57Other than that, there are really no guidelines.
18:00You don't even have to be Mexican
18:03to be in the Mexican Mafia.
18:06It's just a matter of, we say, what's in their heart.
18:09If they're willing to put in the work
18:12and be a part of it,
18:15then they can work their way into being that.
18:22In Arizona, we have no color system.
18:25In California, obviously, that's their thing.
18:28They have the sureños with the blue and stuff.
18:31Arizona doesn't have that.
18:34In Spanish, la M is just the M.
18:37It's just a shortening of the Mexican Mafia calling it la M.
18:41It's a signifier.
18:44Some of the old Mexican Mafia did,
18:47but we have our own.
18:50I had the Mexican Mafia tattooed on my back.
18:53In Old English, you have four-inch letters, huge.
18:56The government actually paid to cover it.
18:59It was crazy.
19:02I couldn't walk around the rest of my life
19:05with Mexican Mafia tattooed on my back like that.
19:08They covered it up for me.
19:11The Arizona Mexican Mafia uses a lot of Nahuatl,
19:14which is the Aztec language.
19:17A lot of members learned that
19:20throughout their time in prison.
19:23We would use it a lot to write each other.
19:26For the purposes of administration,
19:29we couldn't read our letters as code.
19:32There's been other codes that we've made
19:35that are just kind of bingo-type codes
19:38where you put letters in different spots
19:41and only the other person would know it.
19:44Every member usually has a code name in Nahuatl as well.
19:47That way we could speak of other members
19:50without the facility knowing who we're talking about.
19:53It never works.
19:56They usually already know, but it's what we think at the time.
19:59The biggest way is through legal mail.
20:02It's about as thick as you can get it.
20:05In the back of one of the papers,
20:08you can write whatever needs to be sent.
20:11Now you have 300 pages of something
20:14where one page in the middle somewhere may have a note in it.
20:17It's going to be real difficult to detect that,
20:20especially since they're not allowed
20:23to actually go through your legal mail
20:26the way they can regular mail.
20:30When they get it in prison, you can put fire to it
20:33and it'll come out kind of brown.
20:36The best way to send messages is just word of mouth.
20:39There's a lot of so-called secretaries,
20:42usually members' wives or girlfriends.
20:45Back then we would have a girlfriend
20:48have 2 or 3 phones in her house.
20:51Different members would call from different facilities
20:54and she would put the phones on speakerphone
20:57and then we could just talk to each other that way directly.
21:07The biggest thing in prison was commissaries as good as money.
21:10Stamps was the big thing.
21:13That is the currency of prison.
21:16The NFL bets and all of that, everything was done in stamps.
21:19Dope, you can buy with stamps.
21:22There was 2 ways that people could pay,
21:25or 3 actually.
21:28If you brought in cash, if you snuck cash in,
21:31cash was worth double.
21:34So if you had $100, it was worth $200.
21:37Commissary was one for one,
21:40so I would give you a list the day before commissary
21:43of everything I wanted you to order for me
21:46and that's how you would pay me.
21:49Or you could do street to street
21:53and in that case, you had 10 days for the money
21:56to be received by whoever was receiving it.
21:59If it wasn't there within 10 days, it could double.
22:02When you're talking about the economy in prison,
22:05something that costs $20 on the street
22:08is worth a couple hundred in prison.
22:11And so when these guards,
22:14you offer them that type of money,
22:17it's hard for them to say no.
22:20The integrity only takes them so far.
22:23Corruption is not difficult
22:26because they're human,
22:29especially when you're young
22:32and you're being offered big money
22:35and you're getting paid $40,000 a year
22:38and these guys are waiving
22:41that amount of money to you
22:44for doing something that seems almost too easy.
22:47Some of them will be relationships.
22:50The guys will get into a relationship
22:53with a woman guard
22:56and then the woman just feels this obligation
22:59or love or need to please
23:02and so they'll bring in anything.
23:05Sometimes they're lied to.
23:08Hey, I just need you to bring me this pair of shoes.
23:11But the pair of shoes is full of dope.
23:15They're good with it. It just depends.
23:18I've seen guards open doors
23:21and let people go in and stab somebody.
23:24As far as training is concerned,
23:27that may be part of it.
23:30I've seen them as young as 20 years old, 21.
23:33They're just kids and you're dealing
23:36with career criminals, people that have been
23:39in prison for the last 30 years.
23:42Just putting someone in a cell for five years
23:45and then releasing them
23:48and expecting them to be different
23:51than they were five years ago,
23:54that's not a plan. It's not going to happen.
23:57If anything, I think it makes you worse.
24:00In my day, there were no programs.
24:03You can get your GED and that was basically it.
24:06Just giving people the tools
24:09to do something with their lives
24:12may even change them on the inside
24:15if you give them a little sense of worth.
24:18When you're just sitting in there day to day
24:21feeling like you're warehoused,
24:24I think it takes some of the humanity
24:27away from you as well.
24:30You just fall in line with what's going on.
24:33The killing, the drugs,
24:36life just becomes normal.
24:39It's not hard to become a murderer.
24:42It's not hard to kill.
24:45I think the Department of Corrections
24:48would do everybody a favor
24:51if they separated everybody in that way.
24:54Younger from older, dangerous from non-dangerous.
24:57But they don't.
25:00Everybody just gets mixed in.
25:04How many guns can you have?
25:07How many guards do you have to man these facilities?
25:10But in a perfect world,
25:13I think separation would be the best way.
25:16I was released in 2001 on parole
25:19and I was out for 7 months.
25:22I went back in on just a possession of marijuana charge.
25:25I was out for 4 1â2 months
25:28and I got locked back up.
25:31I was pulled over with a gun
25:34and in the car under the passenger seat.
25:37Even though I got found not guilty,
25:40the prosecution put in for the judge
25:43to violate my probation or my parole
25:46and sentenced me to 15 months in prison.
25:49I was released April of 2003
25:52and then in May we had the federal sting
25:55where they called the meeting
25:58for all members.
26:01There was like 13 or 14 of us
26:04on the street at the time
26:07and we all went to this meeting
26:10where we talked about past stuff,
26:13homicides that we had done
26:16and future stuff,
26:19homicides that we were going to do,
26:22drug deals that were on the horizon.
26:26They had video cameras,
26:29audio, everything set up
26:32and so 11 days after being released
26:35I was re-arrested.
26:38I went back to prison
26:41and I thought I was going to get out from there.
26:44I didn't know yet about the sting.
26:47I thought I was just arrested on my violation of parole.
26:50My son's mom, based on the fact
26:53that she would be the weak link
26:56so they had greenlighted her
26:59and they were going to kill her
27:02but no one spoke to me about it
27:05and everybody, we were all there together.
27:08The people that made this decision,
27:11one of them lived right next door to me at the time
27:14and so when the feds came
27:17and talked to me about it
27:20I didn't believe them
27:23because I saw the proof.
27:26So when I got back to the pod
27:29I brought it to their attention.
27:32I was first told that the organization comes first
27:35and all this type of stuff
27:38and I agreed, I knew that.
27:41However, I felt that I should have been
27:44at least included in the vote.
27:48They agreed and apologized
27:51and said it wasn't going to happen
27:54but that I needed to talk to her
27:57and ensure that she wasn't going to speak out.
28:00That was the issue.
28:03I had told her that she could tell on me.
28:06Go ahead and tell them whatever you need to tell them
28:09to get your case dismissed.
28:12Plead, bargain, whatever you got to do.
28:15They had a tape phone conversation
28:18where it was being sent out
28:21and so immediately
28:24the day the feds came
28:27with the information about the phone call
28:30is when I told them
28:33go pick her up, put her somewhere safe
28:36and we'll start talking.
28:39They put her on the phone with me
28:42and with my son I still remember
28:45she was like, so you're going to flip?
28:48She goes, what the f*** is wrong with you?
28:51I was like, what do you want me to do?
28:54They're going to kill you.
28:57What do you want me to do?
29:00I can't just leave you at the house.
29:03That was the beginning of the end.
29:06They sent me to the CCA
29:09for about 4 or 5 more years.
29:12It was the end of my criminal career
29:15I guess you would call it.
29:18I think that was the hardest time.
29:21At the same time I was on
29:24lockdown 23 hours a day
29:27and in fact they had enhanced
29:30security measures on me
29:33because I had went to that CCA
29:37and so the marshals had put
29:40all these extra security measures on me
29:43where I had to be housed alone,
29:46rec alone, shower alone,
29:49a lieutenant or above had to be there
29:52to take me out of my cell.
29:55But I still thought that I was going to get life.
29:58I never in my wildest dreams
30:01thought that I was ever going to get out.
30:04Now I've been out about 9 years.
30:11This other side that I'm doing now
30:14with speaking out against it,
30:17I think I owe it.
30:20There's a lot of kids that look up to this c**t
30:23that think that this is something
30:26that is honorable and it's just not.
30:29Me and my son's mom started
30:33Our target is the at-risk youth
30:36and trying to keep these kids
30:39at the very least away from these prison gangs
30:42but if we can, away from prison in general.
30:45This is just about going into juvenile facilities,
30:48schools, talking to these kids.
30:51We've done fundraisers
30:54where we do back-to-school backpacks.
30:57We've given PE equipment to schools.
31:01In the long run, our hope is
31:04for this non-profit to have its own facility
31:07where we can offer these kids some kind of trade,
31:10some sense of self-worth
31:13and have us there as adult guidance for these guys.
31:16A lot of these kids don't have that.
31:19I've talked to lots of people now.
31:22I've made contacts through the YouTube channel,
31:25crazy as it sounds.
31:28Members reaching out to me that are still active
31:31and telling me things that are going on
31:34within the organization now.
31:37I think it's a good way to know
31:40the happenings of today.
31:43They're no different than before.
31:46It's the same drama, the same stuff.
31:49Obviously, if I wouldn't have done
31:52what I've been doing, this type of stuff,
31:56nobody would know what I look like.
31:59I've burnt myself by doing what I do,
32:02but all of the older members that I did time with
32:05are either doing life
32:08or they're out of the game altogether.
32:14I think that the glamour behind it
32:17has been overblown.
32:20Those movies, American Me and Blood In, Blood Out,
32:24are significant in making younger individuals,
32:27kids with easily influenced minds,
32:30see this as a glamorous thing
32:33to be a part of.
32:36Although these are smart individuals,
32:39they're convicts.
32:42For the most part, they're drug addicts.
32:45They're not the elite
32:48that we would like to portray ourselves as.
32:52That's what I want to put out there
32:55more than anything,
32:58is these kids to know
33:01that that hype is just that.
33:04There's no cause.
33:07There's no family.
33:10These aren't your brothers.
33:13You're going to end up hurting your real family,
33:16everything that you love
33:19if you just plain pretend.