Rollin X /Al Profit Documentary

[Music] me [Music] detroit was once the seat of the world's greatest economic empire the auto industry whether you came from southern europe the middle east or the american south the factories were always hiring and the pay was good but as this empire of cars weakened and crumbled the city's economy began to revolve around a new business illegal drug distribution the day i arrived in detroit i was shown two bodies that had been placed inside of the trunk of cars at the detroit metropolitan airport and the stench their bodies were decomposed and you could see the maggots and that was my first trip to detroit and it was one of the most devastating experience i ever experienced 67 is as if it was biblical as if someone blew out the light my life turned upside down the the armies of addicts it was like unbelievable we never recovered people breaking in our houses snatching gold all the places i had visited detroit to me was the most out of control that that i had ever experienced between 1965 and 1970 violent crime more than doubled in the united states why this happened has never been fully explained but the confluence of drugs and the breakdown of social control associated with the civil rights movement and the war in vietnam were certainly key factors nowhere was more out of control than detroit michigan which had suffered the deadliest riot of the 60s and had become the murder capital of the country by 1971. of the 10 biggest cities detroit has the highest per capita homicide rate last month was the worst for killings in the history of detroit there were 89 homicides one for every dot on the map in the spring of 1972 the bureau of narcotics sent john sutton to detroit on a special assignment to infiltrate and bring down the city's largest black heroin dealers some of the intelligence that we were picking up on indicated there was a mafia operating in detroit what they call a black mafia agent sutton arrived in detroit to find a city divided on the one hand detroit had the most thriving black middle class in the country mostly thanks to the auto industry and many people were living the good life david buffett was a genius what that's that's the summary of where we were at in 1965 there was plenty of work and the bosses were paying the community had beautiful homes everybody was drinking good whiskey everybody was eating good they were taking trips and then i saw a kind of a black affluence that i had never seen in other cities like los angeles chicago and places everybody was driving a new car and naturally american-made car big cadillacs fleetwood brooms uh eldorados this was the neighborhood to grow up in a zillion young girls to highlight life was good in those neighborhoods everybody had jobs and they had their parents in the home you ate goods you had 500 different little local eaters that were good you didn't have to go downtown [Music] on the other hand it was a city where entire police precincts were overrun by heroin dealers and stick-up men i uh immediately detected that there was something missing here that that there was a tremendous erosion of the political system and erosion of the police department erosion of the uh religious system in the city the police was trying to come down hard they called them the big four the big four and they was always coming through the neighborhood trying to uh intimidate the blacks they'd pull us out take us to bella and put us out there in the water and shoot at us i was one of them that they put out there and shot at i drove over around lebanon and i heard what i thought was firecrackers this was pre-fourth of july and i was later told that it was the 10th precinct the two agents who had been previously assigned here had been relocated out of death threats they had put contracts out for their life i've seen the pruitt i go housing areas st louis the cabrini greens and robber tail in chicago the front in baltimore i'd seen the watts nicholson gardens the jordan down project some of the real bad neighborhoods and even down in mexico tijuana and calexico the most fearful part of my life working drugs was here in detroit uh some of the most violent people that i've met were here in detroit detroit had few black police officers in the 1950s so the department had a hard time infiltrating the city's burgeoning drug infrastructure that they were having a lot of during that time a lot of problems a lot of black guys were in traffic selling heroin i was sent here to do a police officer who apparently worked narcotics and had gone into the dope dealing business by the name of marzette and he was a kingpin in detroit henry marzette was a hometown boy and korean war veteran when he entered the police academy starting off as an undercover narcotics cop under detective vincent persante in the 1950s marzette set arrest records working in the livernois entirement area tiremen area recruited him out of the police academy put him in business big cadillac fine wardrobe and he was he was like setting records busting guys but soon started playing both sides of the fence and was convicted of corruption in the late 50s when he went to prison he began to work uh for the italians as muscle and so forth but even bigger than that he made his connection i knew him i ain't like me no i knew him i knew all of them my vietnam was into murder and kidnapping and all that as a police officer everything you learned about the drug game now he was going to apply it to himself becoming a godfather but even bigger than that he made his connection after a short stint in prison marzette came home determined to take over the streets he knew the system that's what made him very good he was the new drum doctor from the dark side and he was the man marzette made his first major move in 1960 when he had three young prostitutes lower a major west side dealer named mississippi red to a motel room where marzette was waiting with a shotgun i was given money as a young man on washington boulevard by henry and he gave me money for school and that's what he said the money wasn't for me to go and get clever in an italian net he gave me that money and he said then i expect for you to go and use this for school and nothing else in the summer of 1970 henry marzette had decided to take over detroit's drug business he called a meeting of the city's top dealers and told them that he had secured a direct asian source of supply and that he could guarantee 20 pounds a week of pure china white enough to supply most of the city [Music] he always had the african-americans involved in the distribution of drugs throughout the inner cities and in the 70s it's when the african americans were becoming more prominent in business the drug dealers wanted to do the same thing and it just made business sense for their perspective to cut out the middleman which had been the italian mafia and go the right right to the source and import heroin and control the distribution with his chief hitman jimmy moody standing behind him marzette proposed that each dealer put up fifty thousand dollars in advance and he'd provide the dope and police protection not everybody was willing to work for henry marsett though angry words soon led to dead bodies on the street and things quickly got out of control a war between marzette's allies known as the west side 12th against dealers loyal to the italian mafia known as the east side 7 led to 200 dead bodies jimmy moody himself supposedly killed 15 people between christmas of 1970 and july of 1971. in april of 1972 henry marsett died at home from kidney failure on his deathbed the head of the state of michigan's organized crime division an old colleague of marzette from his days as a detroit undercover narcotics cop showed up and asked him to stop the drug war henry marzette did this by having his chief hitman jimmy moody killed moody was found in the trunk of his eldorado at detroit metropolitan here [Music] as the auto industry slowly faded and motown records fled to los angeles the economic vacuum was filled by a new spirit the spirit of crime they made me a ward of the state tim that's when they came to my mother house and took me because they said that my mother couldn't my mother couldn't control me nobody wanted to be my friend unless i gave them something so then i learned how to be mean and nasty to the ones that uh always tried to play me for money or food [Music] detroit's industrial base had begun to die by the early 1950s leaving a pool of unemployed men to populate the streets [Music] these are not kids they're men who need jobs for a living it's estimated that one-third of detroit's inner city workforce is unemployed [Music] between 1953 and 60 alone the east side lost seventy one thousand out of a hundred and two thousand industrial jobs it's just not enough jobs what are they gonna do when they stop the war and bring jazz home there's no jobs this is what causes the crime rate to be so high traditionally detroit reflects the best or the worst of the nation's economy at any given time right now the unemployment rate here is more than twice what it was two years ago and by all indicators it is still rising where people want to pay you for what you're worth you know and every man i think knows his worth i know man that's what i'm saying that's it i need i need some money we had guys working three shifts then just like they were the fourth we we paid vacation they work eight hours a day they got paid for overtime and we had a bunch of law workers mr jackson it's alleged that just six years ago you were earning a little better than three dollars an hour as an auto production worker just how did you come to acquire this home in south field and your other business interests your automobiles well i think the law states you know that you have to file your income you know if i tell you that you know then you know my secret tonight as long as i filed my income and i think this is what the law states you know and i do do that what he understood was people he understood this was motown it was an automotive city that you work five days a week and that you should get two days off a week and he understood that that's what people's perception of a job was and back then if chrysler was paying me 300 a week if i said i'll pay you 600 a week for the same 40 hours of work he understood that these guys would get that right so you'll pay me twice what the plant pays me and i'll work the same 40 hours and he just put it and organized in the early days when he was in the retail end of it he just organized the retail operation just like they were working at the plant and it really worked you know my dad got up at seven o'clock six o'clock in the morning every day that i can remember particularly when he was involved in the underworld detroit's auto plants were microchasms of the city itself and everything that was happening in the streets was happening on the factory floor agent sutton infiltrated chrysler's dodge main plant to buy drugs from two white foreman i was introduced to a white informant who worked at dodge maine and he he wanted to do two guys who were selling heroin and cocaine and they were white males selling dope over at dodge maine and i asked him why was he why did he want to do these guys and he said something that i found that later came to pass he indicated that all of the automotive plants are cities within themselves and that drugs are rampant inside of the plants drugs prostitution number running uh fencing everything that you can think of existed in the automotive plant he wanted to immobilize these two dope dealers because he believed people selling drugs who worked for the automotive industry would cause the complete destruction of the automotive industry he stated that cars that were assembled on mondays and fridays were lemons that they were no good because of the drug use kind of a different type dope dealer white guy called himself cowboy barb who sold dope uh at a in a penthouse over there on the detroit river this guy was apparently using his own product because he even indicated that he could hear music and hear ants crawling on leaves and stuff like that and he could see musical notes in technicolor i bought two ounces from him the second first time and i double up and in those instances what we would do we would buy a small amount come back and buy larger amounts and let them stay out there for subsequent arrests and seizure with henry marzette gone john sutton's next target was dinard devil jackson a business partner of courtney brown jr's father within a day of arriving in detroit [Music] marzette died of apparently of natural cause and devil jackson had gotten shotgun in the face the night before and there was some indication that the person that killed devil jackson was one of the informants that i would be working with devil jackson being an old-timer guy who kind of knew his way around the streets he sees that for whatever reason this guy eddie jackson's the real thing and this guy has gone from a nobody in the streets to the man in the streets in like 18 months early 1971 john classen eddie jackson's supplier was indicted in federal court and promptly disappeared but jackson and courtney brown kept their operation going until they made an even bigger connection in new york city i told you all that i was the greatest of all time so the plan is simple and he'll go out to new york take his bankroll take half his crew with him double jackson will introduce him to goldfinger some of the cubans out there he'll go back get back in business i told you today i'm still the greatest of all so when eddie's at the fight of course there's an iconic photo taken in the ebony magazine where the famous picture frank lucas from american gangster fame when he's in his chinchilla and also eddie is photographed by the photographers of ebony in conjunction with devil jackson guy named 5.0 garrett and his brother elijah the day before the fight eddie has a happenstance meeting with some members of the gambino crime family uh and you know the rest is kind of history and he ends up doing business with the gambino family for the next 10 years and it makes you know phenomenal amounts of money eddie jackson crossed paths with the high ranking member of the gambino mafia family the largest and most powerful in the country who told them quote it looks like we're in the same business and indeed they were after that i was assigned investigations i went out and worked on eddie jackson once she bought that rolls royce and moved to southfield and tore down the house and rebuild the houses he was a target you're under constant surveillance there's been all kinds of stories about your alleged connections with the underworld drug market what's your reaction mr jackson well as far as the the connection that's uh 100 false and as far as the surveillance i welcome you understand anybody who feel like they want to waste their time watching me you know standing with the naked eddie jackson we had another jackson by the name of i think it was ernest jackson had a street name of boogie bear i know when i was in the defenders i was assigned to represent a guy his real name was arnold wright pretty rick was a he was a pimp is what he really was and he was from our neighborhood he was from around mumford we have on that weekend the dope dealers had guns like i had never seen they had a saying that it's better to be tried by 12 than carrot by six i saw people driving by black males driving by with guns and you know 45 automatics the old military 1911 type and they would lock around in the chamber and hold it up and give the power to the people sign one of the things that was frightening was that the people who were man in these dope houses were addicts and there was a reputation that you know to watch them because they had a tendency to go on the nod and when they come out of the nod they would forget what they were doing and they could easily shoot you charlie usually just give me money to sit on his porch to make sure that the police wouldn't hit him i would keep watch up and down the street he was selling hera none of agent sutton's targets was more dangerous than the infamous hitman chester campbell the notorious hit man named chester campbell saw him initially while buying dope in a dope house coil i think the street was on coil and when camel walked into the room there was a kind of an eeriness about him and the guys they were marred one guy wanted to be like him talked about he was one of the famous hit men the killers that he earned like ten thousand dollars a hit in that particular case the informant ended up being killed i met chester campbell once in my life and i went to see him in the county jail and the county jail the old county is really small when you looked at him you know you're looking at him like i'm looking at you and you don't see nothing you just look those eyes it was it was andy was very very smart but in that case the informant ended up dead and his body was identified it had been eaten by the field rats and he was identified by a thumb print that had not been devoured by the field rats i suspected that uh just to kill this person while i was inside of his house buying dope and the guy suspected that i was a police called informant into the room and he wanted me to front the money i wouldn't front it and he had a little girlfriend a little attractive like complexion female and when we i told him he was in the police finding business that we would go and spend our money where they were selling dope and we left and as we were leaving and going back to the undercover car the young lady ran out and said that she would uh cop the dope for us a a blue cadillac fleet would grown pull up in front of a house was a mother's house we were standing on sitting on the front porch a guy on the passenger seat had what appeared to be a thompson machine gun he branded like that and looked at me and the informant then they drove away about 20 minutes later she came back driving that cadillac she indicated that this was a connect and if he thought i was the police he was going to spray us right there with that gun he was going to kill us there on the spot when chester campbell was arrested in 1975 after running a police car off the road authorities found four loaded guns in his car along with notebooks containing 300 names including those of murder victims dead police informants and politicians along with diagrams of their homes and notes about their daily routines but back in 72 i think we put away a large number of those dope dealers and i think hey we not put them away at that time this city would have been completely destroyed by the dopers and the murders that were taking place as henry marzette laid dying in his hospital bed detroit's economy was slipping away along with him and the young people of the city began to look toward the street instead of the factory floor for their daily bread by the end of 73 me and my friend we started selling a little weed child star wanted us to push a little hair around for him so he give us 10 packs we'll take the 10 packs and go out there and sell them then we go back get him the 90 we kept 10. we see that we were taking him all the money so we said man maybe we need to start getting our own [ __ ] and start doing them because my friend said that you well and he gonna get mad get mad all he wanted he said man but he's supposed to be our friend i said yeah well he our friend but he also not paying us much every day i was coming home with new clothes my mom were all like where we get them clothes from by the mid 70s street gangs were coming to power in l.a chicago and new york in detroit gangs like the bishops black killers and earl flynns terrorized the east side they run in with flynn two flames we beat the [ __ ] out detroit has had black gangs for years but until recently they spent most of their time fighting each other now they have banded together and are staging mass attacks they stopped a rock concert at downtown kobo hall last weekend there were beatings and robberies one woman raped 47 youths arrested alarm city officials recalled earlier than scheduled 450 policemen who had been laid off for economy reasons they will be concentrated in the downtown areas you know gangs have died used to be earl flynn's bishops shane gang oh that's east side west side was uh fa's that's the uh them finkel avenue boys pa eight mile skunk they used to always come through their shooting bk was shooting at the earl flynn's and then earl flynn was right back over there shoot up the bk this quiet looking street is the dividing line between the city's two largest gangs the black killers and the errol flynns youths blame the gang violence on unemployment and they get misled by you know older adults you know like you know these people to be around you know ain't got no job walking around committing a lot of crime that's where they're getting it from officials say at present a juvenile is arrested at 10 in the morning is released at three in the afternoon and comes back a hero to the other gang member you know so we never really claimed that gang kind of [ __ ] we just would stump a [ __ ] from the police or whoever they was doing some weed selling weed and uh heroin little little hair on they weren't doing no big time stuff but they was trying to move up but because they were shooting at each other they couldn't move they couldn't gain footholds so everybody else that was doing it was moving up the kids that the young guys who were in the flames and all that were poor kids who most of time didn't have no money kobo hall parliament funkadelic flashlight concert you know what i'm saying they can't land a mother [ __ ] about all eight of us we glass healed up with the [ __ ] uh lou miles soup song 30 [ __ ] around us barcelona's baggy ass pants they had us outnumbered we was gonna buck they gave us a pass you know we like then they running up and down the hall how we knew who they was with the earl flynn the auto jobs everyone had moved up to detroit for were rapidly disappearing but the children of detroit had grown up in the shadow of the world's largest corporations and were ready to graduate from petty crime to the world of big time drug deal what's up i'm b skeeter original ybi 1977 before the snitching and the [ __ ] i grew up on yosemite elmhurst but i lived on my deal on elmhurst that's where it all began that's where ybi started just a bunch of young [ __ ] like the little rascals you know saying we we was like all brothers all our mothers loved each other and uh loved all of in july of 75 the corner of finkel and livernoise a solid working-class neighborhood in northwest detroit was the site of a mini riot that laid bare detroit's unholy trinity of crime race and class last night's unrest was touched off by the fatal shooting of eighteen-year-old obi wynn a black by a white tavern owner who accused the youth of trying to steal his car an angry crowd of several hundred residents responded with a rock throwing window smashing burning spree through the predominantly black business district of northwest detroit despite efforts by mayor coleman young and police officials to restore calm detroit already in the grips of a devastating economic recession was ripe for violence unemployment approaches 25 percent more than 125 000 workers the bar and andrew canarian the bar owner now accused of second-degree murder are both controversial according to area residents chinarion allegedly maintained a white only policy at the bar this is a white honky bar [Music] why do you say that because the man he's got a buzzer on there if you can come down and you see that you black you do not get in i was the only one along here that had nice one that's you know without being picked up and i liked it that way because i took pride and the way the things were kept but how you're going to have pride in something like this well some people with legitimate concerns showed anger frustration of the demonstration in front of that bar other hoodlums and rip-off artists for taking advantage of the situation and ripping off the area between seven mile and saint martins for instance on livernois and other areas that will not be tolerated one of the men charged and killing the polish immigrant was a charismatic 20 year old from the dexter and martindale neighborhood on the west side named raymond peeples raymond come up out of it he was acquitted but you also know that people were disappearing and didn't come to court we already was doing a little something but out of the love for raymond they slid him right in he had the gift of gab he had the respect everybody loved him right on top we had never seen anything like ybi we had never seen a kid that young that uh reserve that articulate uh that smart we call this the red zone from davidson to joy road living noise dexter red zone and we held this down you can't slang [ __ ] around here we start eliminating all these old [ __ ] sitting up behind the door slang and [ __ ] right get the [ __ ] on mark dale and elmhurst dexter and dwayne dexter in tuxedo it was the runners sally sally from the valley you know the big hands and all that big man bobby and fatty if a [ __ ] would ask them damn damn who got it them young boys got it because we was all the kids when the addicts on dexter began calling them the young boys they decided to stamp their heroine packets with that name we stamped that [ __ ] young boys incorporated not ybi and cursive young boys once the police and newspapers found out about it the name stuck and young boy's fever spread across the city we had spots on calvary [ __ ] uh 12th highland park that we towed in half we got a lot of crew out of highland park once they singing our mentality praying joy road was our first spot we took that [ __ ] mac and gray a mac and b wig only in detroit hometown of three of the world's largest corporations could a group of teenage drug kingpins call themselves incorporated and when i came back in 79 i saw a city that rotten into the core around this time nathaniel boone craft joined the army special forces where he received the training he'd later put to use as a hit man in the streets of detroit they say vietnam was over but yet they still fighting over there on the cover on the dollar they sent somebody in to do something hey we was paid to do this and i did it they we basically i said the army wouldn't talk much about me most of us that did come home they weren't expecting us to do what we did july 1979 three bodies with their heads chopped off are found in a van near john r just south of erskine they had uh some would be headed they had one guy uh at a street named dark holiday in one guy street name i think his name was frank usher's a frank nitty and they decapitated three uh three people frank nitty usher suspected by the detroit police being the city's largest heroin dealer is quickly charged with ordering the murders notorious hitman and drug dealers james red freeman and adolph doc holliday powell are charged along with nitty and robert partee the notoriety of the case came because their heads were cut off and the bodies were found and of course if there's just been three dead people they'd have said oh there's three dead people but when you cut somebody's heads off then of course it became the crime of the century usher was convicted as being an aider and a better nobody claimed he shot the people and he was basically there they're all there so he was convicted he was doing a mandatory life sentence his people came to me the prosecutor's theory was that party and red freeman killed the people i mean they were supposed to be the killers they were the according to the prosecutor's theory and the jury convicted party and he's doing life another jury acquitted red freeman and he's doing life on another case now steve fishman helped usher get his conviction overturned in the late 1980s so i got him a new trial i think that the evidence showed that he was a target i think it showed that somebody was trying to have him done probably doc holliday was now dead and that frank either by force of personality uh quick talking or luck he got to the sideline rather to be one of the victims frank usher is one of the easiest clients i've ever dealt with i'm still friendly with him to this day he's been out many many years and i had a drink with him three months ago he's a gentleman if you didn't know he was frank nitty if people didn't say oh frank nitty and you saw him at a ball game or in a bar he doesn't curse he doesn't smoke i never saw that in other cities i never saw a bodice put in the trunk of cars and left to rot i never saw little kids uh pre-teens shot in the back of their heads by dope dealers a lady hired my brother to do something to a numbers man my brother wound up getting in touch with me we go to do it i wind up going to prison for it but it was another man that we had to put the frightening of god in him so you know he must pay the corner of john iron erskin had been a known drug hot spot since the 1950s and in 1978 ybi general dwayne davis sent his soldiers down on john r to set up [ __ ] we right here on uh john iron nursing man there was so many [ __ ] bags up in here i was the first out of us yeah to come downtown i came down here working for raymond wayne and bone man we had pink coin envelopes with china white stamped on it and there was a building right here the old man that sold liquor after hours i rolled on this corner he hit my dope in the vacant lot [ __ ] getting laid out to through the head broad daylight [ __ ] odin in the alley scam moves snatch the [ __ ] snatching money armed robberies murder downtown detroit is where [ __ ] come from all over michigan to get dope whether it be the brewsters john r nurskin cash corridor to the jeffrey project white i wouldn't care what this is dope central it led me to realize this [ __ ] is bigger than ybi karl taylor was running a private security company at cobo hall and joe lewis arena in downtown detroit when he first crossed paths with ybi and one of our guys that was working the doors said man this group just came to the side door and they got all these little young guys and i'm like well who was that and we kept so i thought well maybe they're break dancing or whatever so we get back and i got my lieutenants and everybody looking and and they get out and they look at you with a very brazen look they got out all like little men and the girls were going crazy some of the guys were very you know good looking little guys that need haircuts they had the adidas identical suits and so i really was just and we had about 15 of them and they had them in the room and they were making them empty their pockets and right then you knew you had something different because they were one spokesperson and he said why are we emptying our pockets what have we done are we under arrest asking questions that season and they had these bicycle chains yo man that [ __ ] is real you know they would be checking you and then one had that map of america i mean i've never seen anything like that and i got to see the map uh maybe nine months later and he had a few diamonds and nine months later it had more diamonds and someone was explaining that was where they made distribution of what they did business and i couldn't believe it and then the cops they got rough with the kids which would normally scare the cahoots out of regular game you you giving us our [ __ ] back or we're calling our attorney there was a midtown hotel up on warwick and mack that's why i used to keep my big stad and they watching me i'm nervous then a [ __ ] we were selling 100 bundles or better every day a car pull up then peep my stash ran but that china white pink pack was so good he came back the next day time i'll give me two i fired on that [ __ ] with a short [ __ ] right dropped him fuji's stumping him with the [ __ ] cousin glass heels you know what i'm saying here come raymond wayne bushride [ __ ] we the [ __ ] boys dexter ybi we were on dexter at esquire's uh the corned beef place which was legendary and suddenly this court bed drove up two young girls got out and this was in the summer like in august and had meat jackets on little venuses they were just gorgeous and then a mercedes drove up right behind us and a bmw and that was the first time we got to see the whole crew and the kid who went in to get our sandwiches came back and had screwed up all our orders all he wanted to say was why me i was in there with their girls and that's when you knew at that moment that this was something like we had never seen before seven o'clock on a warm evening in march and you are riding in a caravan of unmarked police cars about to raid what they call a major distribution outlet of heroin in the brewster housing project police tell me some of the heroin would be sold to other drug dealers in the project and some would be given to kids to sell on the street the place police say is a suspected dope house in the young boys incorporated network and the thrill of being on top stepping in somewhere and everybody know your name they were legendary at that very moment before rap hit we was entertainers in the hood but them boys would start pulling up in the big ass cars and wearing all that jewelry from there on out that neighborhood which usually responded to the temptations and the celebrity like ybi was the [ __ ] before the first indictment of young boys detroit was second only to new york for the consumption of heroin and they literally took over that was the precursor for street sales in the united states it originated here in detroit intrigued by this new type of youth gang taylor kept seeing them at events in detroit and all around the country including the tommy hearn sugar ray leonard championship fight of 1981 for which taylor ran security for the tommy hearns camp he is the wba welcome to the world undefeated in his professional career introducing thomas ran in security when he fought uh leonard the first time and ybi came out and uh members of the whole entourage and came to the fight they went to the fight as if they were going to kobo arena who else could fly out to vegas and stay in caesar's palace with us not only did the fellas didn't talk you didn't want to be asking them stuff i mean you could end up dead asking the wrong things as a matter of fact if i follow the social science method of gathering information i wouldn't have anything i speak the language and respect the rules in the underworld and the underground growing up in the infamous jeffries projects near downtown detroit rd was exposed to the drug game at an early age when the jeffrey projects you know what used to be the jeffrey project that's where i'm from this is where it began for me before they got us up out of here every day for us was the hustle you know what i mean get paid fifty dollars a day stand right here on fourth at the fire hydrant and yell hook down you know i mean because the big guys was out there selling the packs the jeffries soon became a ybi stronghold with the young dealers leaping on the hoods of passing cars in a frenzy to sell their wares and in one three-day stretch of winter 1980 18 people were shot near the corner of seldon and gibson yeah this was selling heroin you know they can't watch out for the hook and try to serve the customers so they'll be like little brother here take this 50 dollar stand over there and you see the hook just yell ardy's parents might have thought they made it out when his father got a job working for the big three and the family moved out of the jeffries and on to the near west side they got a job at the plant and they moved over on stoko and davidson well it looked better because the neighborhood man was it was laid out it looked like we moved to the [ __ ] suburbs coming out coming out the jets you know what i'm saying but when you got over there and i got to socializing with them guys over there them guys was like martians i've always been a martian on this [ __ ] i'm i'm on earth but i'm not one of you [ __ ] you know what i mean nobody want to talk to them guys i had to run down to the projects every day because i couldn't deal with them cats i don't give a [ __ ] about you and that [ __ ] in the jury your poke-ass car none of that [ __ ] i'm from dexter i'm yb [ __ ] out they kept approaching me with the money i'm down here making fifty dollars yelling police as opposed to them guys over there they gonna give us a hundred dollars a day whereby's being young we don't know no better you know what i'm saying a hundred dollars a day is great when you're a little guy just think what you can do with a hundred dollars a hundred dollars man you can go get some gym shoes with outfit you wanted what they had man and they were smooth about it give you a few dollars huh man come around and see me tomorrow or something everybody making them out to be monsters and all that [ __ ] man guys wasn't like that man guys was they were smooth man bee took his first arrest while working for raymond peoples near dexter avenue i'm in the joint on calvert and dexter i'm getting a hundred dollars a week in all the tops i can get damn here they come i run back i flush the packs i got you know you selling dope use you selling though for raving people they they beat my ass couple hours 1300 broken typewriters broke deaths broke chairs broke from where they've been whooping up okay we're here on the corner of seldon and gibson and back circa 1980 81 or so in the winter time like we are now there were 22 shootings in just a period of about two weeks just right on this intersection and why was that well today there's new developments around here this is all gone up new casino down the street but this was the infamous jeffries public housing project been torn down and replaced but back then it was one of detroit's most valuable drug properties and ybi and ponydon and others were shooting each other over who got to sell they were shooting customers if they bought from the wrong people and doc davis and his brothers were supplying both ponydown and ybi arrests 16 people all at one time over in jeffrey's projects 15 minutes after we take them downtown there's another 25 or 30 runners out there dealing dope that doesn't sound like we're winning to me and one of those that was shot was one of my cousins larry rebels was shot in the phone booth right over here um about a block over he got shot here uh with a shotgun but he lived beefing with some of the guys in the jeffrey projects what was harry was he selling no larry was one of my goons and and he you know he was looking for somebody that owed money over in this area and they caught him they got him they got him before they got he got to them and he shot him up with a shotgun in the phone while he was on the phone talking to me now uh you were never convicted in any of your cases of any violence no absolutely not but and we're going to practice the fine art of saying less but to maneuver in the streets of america's most dangerous cities let's just say the davis family could be very dangerous if need be that's right strongholds for the drugs during that time besides john iron earthskin and dexter and other places that the wabian and pony was involved how much a day would come out of just a place like this about the same thing about a hundred thousand a day with all the different groups that would be down here you know just coming post up like anybody else and you wouldn't be the only guys out on the wall we wouldn't be the only ones out here posted up and it was what best bag wins the customers bought what they wanted you know yeah pretty much whoever bet had the best drugs rule ruled and why and we were supplying ybi and pony yeah well we would mix the stuff out of amsterdam which is number three the stuff out of bangkok which is number four you know number four means more highly refined the number four is the the the best to come is 97.4 pier number four they call it number four it comes from the golden triangle then you got number three that comes from turkey and pakistan and them areas around there which is more crude two in the afternoon at woodrow wilson in cortland on detroit's west side watch the teenager in the blue jacket as he approaches the car throws a signal by holding up two fingers and finally waves the car in a moment later a second youngster approaches the car and apparently makes a delivery the car drives away and the teenager in the blue jacket passes the money he's received to the runner who made the delivery we would mix the two and once you mix your two you'll have something with a with a strong hit which would be the number three and the and the high and the whole would be number four so once you had that you would lock the city down see a lot of guys would didn't have the capacity to go overseas and get to get dope like from anthony amsterdam turkey through amsterdam and bangkok and and they didn't have the the connections like that it wasn't too many it had connections i had in four different parts there were four continents one key of of the number three one key of the number four mix it together and then we would give one key to to a week to the ponies and one key a week to the wabiak what was this what would this black a bit look like on a day like this back in 82 full of young guys or no just every day everyday thing that's going on you know guys we talking about how they run to cars we've been running the cars now we're at joy road in petoskey another well-known center of heroin trafficking back on the west side and this time it's high noon young people and teenagers are out on the streets stopping cars apparently making sales right under our nose and hollering out what police say are brand names of heroin like whip cracker so let me ask you this at the time ybi and pony down were going and all this violence was going on you had young children and did you ever think about at the same time you had young kids young kids are on these corners selling drugs how does someone at your level at that time of the drug game reconcile those things is it something you don't think about or what no at that time i it it's i wouldn't focus on that and i regret that because i wouldn't want my children to be strong i don't grow up or selling them or selling them that's why i kept them from that i'm not proud of that as some that that you know i really regret at the time but at the time i was so i was so consumed in the lifestyle and the money i didn't think about the the the psychological part and the the part where it would affect how it affected people how it affected young people my position if it was whatever i had to play at that time could it be no i mean dropping off it could have been picking up dropping off standing on the block kicking your ass you know what i mean it could have been all different types of things you know but beyond the money and the violence the rise of ybi marked a new era in detroit an era in which drug dealers and drug dealing became pillars of the economy in the community people in the community knew what was going on man it just it wasn't like now see now [ __ ] disrespectful shooting and doing all that stupid [ __ ] back then well we well we hustled that we kept the block clean we kept the grass cut we cleaned the fields it wasn't no chaos when nobody getting robbed and nobody messed with the neighbors as the gang broke into separate crews b left raymond peoples and went with dwayne w w davis and was soon making more money than he could spend as davis's right-hand man wayne come over and we talked we talked took me shopping all kind of [ __ ] i want you to get out with me i said [ __ ] we don't and wayne was that guy he was wearing dark shoes uh carrying the italian handbag so he would tease with me i don't matter what it takes for you to be my guy i'm like you know you gotta be kidding laughing yeah right i have clients which i did i was your brother's bodyguard and others wayne just had gave everything to me wayne trying to step out of the game wayne had changed his mannerism address speech wearing this goddamn jerry curl [ __ ] i ain't understanding but he's getting into a whole new crowd of people you know what i'm saying these square [ __ ] with that clean dollar they got a house man with a swimming pool in the back we got business in the driveway whatever you know whatever everything what you would think but all our neighbors is jews chaldeans or whatever you don't say they like damn they stay in a [ __ ] window but i have to tell you he was driving the mercedes i was driving to mercedes mines came with hard earned money and i think honestly i probably was a little jealous i got four or five houses in the suburbs i got every kind of car that you can imagine you know so now at this time i'm really looking at like the government i had never even met bush i always didn't heard about it bush bush bush this bush that but i detect a little animosity i detect a little fear and [ __ ] that know them and a lot of [ __ ] who didn't want him coming off into our thing you know what i'm saying but let me go back to the time when butch dropping me and mark off with uh 300 bundles going to uh highland park young being uh uh mark i know y'all with wayne man but i won't spit something at y'all i'm gonna take this [ __ ] city over i need y'all to get down with me butch soon wanted to take over things for himself and his crew of enforcers known as the wrecking crew or the a-team were the most feared gunmen in early 80s detroit been a lot of occasion man different kids with guys trying to come you know tell us we couldn't roll here we couldn't roll there you know what i mean but that wasn't no [ __ ] we worried about we handled the problem right then we had it ourselves red and crew all those guys will come later if we couldn't handle it for the most part you gotta be able to handle it yourself or you ain't gonna pay to get down you couldn't hold it ain't no sense of you being out there the young boys first hit the newspaper in 1979 when the detroit police found out about a free heroin giveaway they were conducting on the west side we had a great dope giveaway we passing out cars all through the neighborhood everywhere uh dwayne and justin the great dope giveaway 70 000 a day one spot hamilton and highland we got the whole building boom ybi truly marked the decline and demise of authority period they are not scared of the police a landmark to me as a researcher that this was a pivotal turn in attitudes about young black men in the world i mean i love the wire but i'm like these detroit boys have been doing this well mayor young was in office i remember he had made his speech and he was like yeah black man get your money but he was meaning it toward uh black store owners and black businesses i think at that time they had seen a complete erosion of the law enforcement in the city and there's no doubt that law enforcement in detroit at that time from the local level was they were in up young boys on a corner a motion of poetry that was deadly and they had no control over it and this whole concept of using two things that people didn't use before uh which was young kids that were juveniles and taxi cabs man we got away with a lot of [ __ ] cause we was young you know what i'm saying they didn't really have no laws for the young kid they kept this man with 50 bundles man about sixteen thousand little young [ __ ] who you get that from bam who you who you roll for i don't know what you talking about what they gonna do nothing you know you have a murder case you weren't going to jail butch jones who was probably the most famous young boy of all was one of the conduits from the suppliers to the streets and he got a relatively short plea bargain agreement in the first ybi indictment but the parts where they get to talking about lieutenants and captains that only can come from one person which is you know hey man we'll talk about it later on young adults they were hell bent toward traffic and drugs making earning money quickly we'll send this [ __ ] five dollars a pack we're the first [ __ ] to come out with five dollar packs of of a mixed giant uno all day every day no they didn't want to do like their parents did they didn't want to go into the automotive industry many of them did not want to go to school to get an education bush them had the bomb who's your kind raymond them had rolls royce bone man has so-and-so pontiac southwest downtown hamtramck north no feeling a bad [ __ ] man we was everywhere we as if you name it we was pushing packs [Music] not since the great depression of the 1930s have so many people lined up for a free lunch at the capuchin brothers soup kitchen in detroit these are among the most desperate victims of the recession in michigan it began when dealers couldn't sell detroit's cars auto plants closed thousands were laid off there's more jobs out there we could get up and get off this welfare some people are getting out like pearly mcpherson she her husband and their three children moved here from mississippi but he couldn't find a job so the other night they loaded a trailer and moved back to mississippi detroit's renaissance center the towering symbol of the city's economic recovery has been losing tenants shops have closed the center has lost more than 100 million dollars when coleman young said there's the problem in detroit is there's no more dodge main everybody who put it because you know all the white people said it was always about race with him but that was the most accurate thing i think that summarizes the situation in the city today the easy come easy go theory is all over with if you're related to the automotive industry in any way right now when it came back in 79 one of the saddest things i recall seeing was i had bought dope at dodge made in hamtramck and seeing them close down what they call dodge mate and hamtramck and there was a black male in the uh detroit free press they showed this picture and then they showed an article saying that he had worked for dodge for 27 years and he had he was the crime rate is rising again so is drug and alcohol abuse 81 had shot a guy on cavs cave man and he was testifying on me you know what i mean so i'm at the tim precinct waiting to pay my bond after my prince clear [Music] they bring two dolphins in now then they sails next to me damn man them [ __ ] blow ww head off i get home my mama's standing in the door crying you know i said yeah yeah yeah when i get over the ksk everybody standing around tears fall saying i love that brother man i miss him he didn't deserve that bruiser my nephew he was down with the ybis young boy incorporated they would do things out of broad daylight and everybody see it you don't do anything where anybody witness you shooting down somebody that was their downfall everybody knew who was doing the killing sure enough they went down then he broke away and started his own crew 2020 board a [ __ ] get his season and it wear out for you in detroit big money in the pockets of small boys has the attention of federal investigators tell us what was going through your head when you were taken into that courtroom and of course as we're going to get into you know the way the newspaper article is written is that i guess you were supposedly or somebody threatening the judge and they had to take you in the basement but uh and there was a letter supposedly written by you threatening the mayor but at the time you couldn't read or write correct no i couldn't couldn't read or write so what was what was going on in your mind when this was happening well basically it was like why was they targeting me so i'm just trying to figure out what was really going on and you were what age at this time i was 17 just turned 18. so all this mythology about you that supposedly did or didn't happen at all was just in a space of what you being 13 to 18 or something it wasn't about two three years if that it's really not even possible for all the things attributed to you to even have happened in that short period of time to make me public enemy number one little guy named kendricks was a rat long time ago so if he was a rat long time ago why would i want to do something to him he wasn't nobody he was just a guy that was out here just like everybody else you know trying to be in the streets and when it came down to it he told you know he lied and told which that's what a lot of people is doing now they lying and telling i was on the east side or was that that joseph brown yeah so that's a case where you were telling me that the police fed one of the witnesses to say it was my name so he supposedly made a death bed he's coughing and he's dying and the police told him to say yeah yeah yeah so that wasn't even his name no it wasn't even that it wasn't even the right nickname because when i read that i was like wait a second that's not even the right nickname so how would he have said that all right that's like the police were getting so so until it wasn't right once i found out that it was them polices over there i knew then it was something else behind it wasn't really even an attempted murder he got shot in the butt right here on saint antoine yeah he said i chased him down the street and everything but you know i ain't doing none of that started a case and ended up being the ybi young boy's ink case he ended up indicting that case along with uh group within that young boy's ink they had a group called the pony down they had certain little crews that were dealing i i can't really say i suppose that when i first got to be more well-known was when i started representing a lot of those guys from the pony down gang which is leroy but from was supposedly the head of it dwayne davis's old crew was spared the indictment probably due to davis death if wayne hadn't got killed we possibly would have got indicted the new york times reported today that authorities are trying to crack drug rings paying the boys thousands of dollars to work as runners distributing heroin to addicts one eleven-year-old was arrested with two thousand dollars in his pockets and one auto dealer said a fifteen-year-old bought a mercedes-benz recently i believe what happened there i don't know because i wasn't working for the government but i think with respect to ybi and pony down i think it got to a point where not enough of these guys were going to jail we were winning i mean otis culpepper was representing the ybi guys and he was winning anytime they'd get it they thought was a good case and state court would win same thing here they'd bring a homicide charge i'd win you can't talk about all those other chamber brothers or nobody ybi is the organization that named selling drugs made it help and made killing people okay 1985 sturdivant street near dexter avenue ray peoples recently paroled from federal prison and already having survived being shot on east philadelphia and monica and puritan is killed while sitting in a car ybi would never stop to the casket drop you know what i'm saying because there's always a [ __ ] trying to emulate us and that's the aftermath of what these [ __ ] out here doing now and a [ __ ] can't tell you no different he's an offspring whether i don't stuck my dick in his mind me or not he's one of my sons cause you're doing [ __ ] i used to do and you're trying real hard at it but it could never ever be done again [Music] no arrest is ever made in the murder of raymond peoples and the ybi era comes to an end with butch jones in prison and raped people's joining dwayne davis and death but detroit had been changed [Music] forever cocaine had become an acceptable drug but the the the explosion the real explosion occurred when crack cocaine and they called it freebase whatever they wanted to call it so you had to have money to get hacked what no [ __ ] batman on your door with foul dollars but no this [ __ ] came in on the free base and spent 150 and and blew his brains off heard them bales you know what i'm saying like nina ward said ring my [ __ ] young dealers can make up to 800 a day possess an arsenal of weapons and readily kill to protect their turf and profits the smallest confrontation can become a matter of life and death whenever police raid a crack house they say they're also bound to find some heavy firepower drugs and guns are a deadly mixture and together they've given detroit the highest murder rate of any american city this is a war this is an epidemic i've been to vietnam but this is a war right here this is our vietnam where the cocaine cocaine was dead but it just really got real popular this summer has been especially violent with more than 500 shootings reported in two months fbi figures show detroit with 61 murders for every hundred thousand citizens last year gary indiana was second and other major cities ran far behind it didn't get really wild into 84 85 and 86. detroit police say they see this less as a crime problem than as a drug problem thousands of people jobless and hopeless look for a way out and find trouble instead in the aftermath of the ybi and pony down indictments the hundreds of young workers they employed graduated to running their own operations many of them taking their show on the road and dealers from detroit started getting arrested all around the country the little forty thousand we make here today we go out of town and make eighty thousand man we was going to st louis man alabama cleveland knocking their heads off well yeah well it was easy to go out of town and get it because of the mannerism and the way we was brought up here as opposed to going downtown them guys ain't got nothing they slow and we go down there teddy heads up and come home and spin the wealth flint michigan is a short ride up the i-75 freeway from detroit and the center of general motors car production you know we took that ybi thing straight to flint because they ain't know no better because we were still using a lot of them old stamps that they left them guys was going to work man we just had to wait till friday to really really roll up there you know what i'm saying because they worked all week and got hot in the [ __ ] on the weekend but man after we stayed in that [ __ ] for three months [ __ ] start quitting getting fired from the plants man and then this [ __ ] the [ __ ] just turned into an epidemic with [ __ ] was getting money every day our toledo wisdom was the first stop then we went down to lyme and then we spread it out even farther and pull right on the end and start doing business break it off and so forth in every state across the united states man you got a set of detroit guys set up in their town you understand what i'm saying and i learned this from being in the fair joint in every state man i got 188 months i did 10 years man for them suckers man the young boys inc and those that followed after didn't make the streets fill up with drugs they were just there at the right time to profit off the average citizen's desire to get high and that's why no sooner than the police sent a so-called kingpin off to prison another rose up to take his place demetrius holloway walked in my office in 19 i want to say 85. he walked in i was still in the lafayette building he said he had a fed case fell him in possession and he just got out of jail out of prison came in and he said look i i'm going to try this case i've got a defense which he did i don't have any money hardly you know i've got i mean some 500 bucks whatever was he had but my word's good he says i'll you tell me the fee it'll take me some time but i'm gonna pay i'll pay the fee and he was at the time literally had just gotten out of jail on federal parole and there was something about the guy i thought he was telling the truth and and it was a tribal case and i'm a sucker for trials and i said okay we got a deal and we tried the case and he was found not guilty demetrius holloway had he wanted to be could have been a ceo of a major corporation he never drank he never smoked he laughed at people who used drugs he was smart as hell and he was cunning and he was a leader he was a big big whale is what the cops used to call him them demetrius holloway and and rick carter even though they were friends were as different as two human beings could ever be anybody in the streets will tell you this soon after getting out of prison boone crossed paths with maserati rick in an east side pizza parlor after one of rick's underlings started an argument with him boone flashed his gun and maserati stepped in to defuse the situation he said man did this man we could work together if you just give me time to speak with you we went and got into his beings we talked he was telling me about himself about what he do and so forth he said you might have heard me they call me maserati rick was cheap and petty i mean he was all right to deal with but he he was he wasn't all right today he was a pain in the ass is what he was and uh he liked to flaunt stuff you know and walk around like he was a big shot which i in a sense he was i guess but i want to know what you'd be willing to be my bodyguard i said i want you talking he said i give you a couple thousand dollars just hang with me make sure nobody you know do anything to me thought about it you know say okay cool but when i supposed to get this money he pulled out two thousand dollars gave it to me pistol case outside the the uh skating rink over there on east side because he was eastside guy he owed me money i won the case and that's why i say he was cheap it was a slime it was a pistol case he probably owed like three grand or something like that and the damn guy would not pay it was always i'll see you next week so i typed up a motion to withdraw i had another case pending and i typed up a motion withdrawn i called the guy in that was from the east side i said take this thing i wasn't following him tape this thing to the walls and the windows like the everywhere on east side so people can see what a cheapskate rick is and and the guy went out and about two days like man what are you doing i said well [ __ ] you won't come in and bring me the money and they brought me a leather coat instead i had just got out of prison so i had a lot of anger and tension in me i'm trying to find some way to release it the best way to release it without going back to prison and so forth was tough man contest so i went and fought in that coba hall bruce brought some of his friends down there which uh was the brown brothers best friends an ironic name for what the fbi once called the most murderous drug ring in united states history i didn't really know much of anything about the best friends other than that they were supposed to be a bunch of killers on the east side but i didn't know they were called the best friends i just knew they were some evil looking guys when the fight was over and i stepped out the ring to go back to the back uh bruises stepped up and told me that uh reggie wanted to meet you rocking reds they approached me like damn man we also hear that uh you supposed to be working with maserati ring suspected of 80-plus murders across multiple states best friends started on detroit's east side as a murder for higher ring run by the four brown brothers i did things for people for bruiser before i met them by 1985 the brown brothers were doing hits on the east side for various dealers rick boy long as he got the money was anybody boys as long as you got the money to pay us you ain't got the money pairs basically we would take you out and take over your operation that's when it started happening that way but a lot of people didn't want to sell to us because we had the reputation of killing maserati rick did sell to us he didn't mind because he assumed that he's all friends now that's why everybody will see us they say oh yeah my those are mine's riding rick boys could we basically hang with him because hey he would sell us the drugs cheaper i knew that might represent reggie brown twice represented him on an assault intent to murder that we won that case it was in the middle of eastland they were looking for the guy they found him and they started shooting i think they were shooting in the yeah and the mall itself not in the store but yeah right in the mall people were going crazy rocking red would get like i said he'd get a little drink in him and so forth and then he want to go on a killing bins we know we're in shootouts we're like god damn man is there anybody here you don't want to shoot then i represent on a homicide case where he shot he killed one person and the other person he thought he killed but the guy lived we consider ourselves hitman murder for hire incorporated you know you got the money we got the gun reggie reggie was driving down the street on the east side he saw that he'd been looking for the roussel reggie brown started chasing him in the car jumped out of the car ran in the house shot russell dead shot the other guy thought he was dead and the guy lived and i can tell you from experience not just this case hardest case there is it's when you think you killed somebody and the guy lives and identifies you so he got convicted and judge cracker gave him life they were just they were cold guys i mean i don't know it's one of those things where you wonder i met the father i met the mother father worked in the factory his whole life mother was a regular normal citizen in december of 86 unknown assailants shot ezra and terence brown in the head as they sat in a car near the seventh precinct ezra died but terence book brown survived by throwing a brick through the precinct's front window to alert the police of the shooting before he collapsed on the sidewalk a week later gregory ghost brown is gunned down on peter hunt street still wearing the suit he just worn to his brother's funeral having added train killer nate boone craft to their team of shooters the surviving brown brothers terence and rock and reg decided to exact revenge for their brother's death by taking over the city one kingpin at a time first up was their so-called partner maserati rick that was his problem at the apartment majority rick introduced boo to his columbian connect mike i'm watching boo and i'll say oh [ __ ] basically i just stayed with him because at that time it was riding around trying to find him it didn't already shot up a white van that looked like maserati but it wasn't it was some white companies that would be driving down that street and got shot at who calls me tells me uh man they just shot rick on the west side man where the hell were you at still rolled around the car wash looking we rolling down the streets we stopped at the fish shop we listened to what people saying and so forth so we went to the hospital talked to him but that time boo was pissed off like hey man uh the word on the street that we [ __ ] that's what you're talking about they shot rick man the word is that we ain't doing nothing to protect him and rick thomas don't go after the people who pulls up he steps over he said man what's up i said no what's up on you he said man i thought you was gonna stay away from already i said no rick's still paying me man he can't be paying you laying up in the hospital and plus the guy said that as long as we pay his bill he don't care what happened to rick yeah the columbus said long he somebody paid that bill he don't care what happened to real life basically the columbus is saying that he don't give a [ __ ] if you if you do something to him then he said who you down with us or him i'm down with whoever got the money and you should know that and um there was a a guy that operated on the east side of detroit his name was maserati rick and uh he was a bad dude big guy a big time drug dealer drove a maserati that's why they call him maserati rick and i remember i met him he agreed to meet with me which kind of surprised me and i met him at a big boy on the east side of detroit and i'm just in there having a cup of coffee with him and and he's actually it's before cell phones were even prominent but he had one as all good significant drug dealers would at that point and i remember him uh i thought he was actually doing business right in front of me which he probably was but i remember giving him my card and i said rick i'm gonna tell you one of these days a guy like you is gonna need a guy like me and he said i don't think so but if i do i'll give you a call well two days later he was assassinated and killed he didn't make the call quick enough officials say two men were seen near his room when the shooting was discovered really we don't have a whole lot of details other than the fact that some people saw two men maserati rick's beef with big ed hansard supposedly was at the heart of his murder but no one has ever been convicted mize is dead man we want you down with us boom we want you down with us i said man i'm done with whoever got the money he said okay that's all i want to hear baby everybody gonna think that uh that jerk did it man so we clean on this but we got to go to the fruit road though dude make sure you know that people know that we're there we still bagging up mines right here then life or death a maserati uh all those names those names were as big as mike tyson and tommy hearns and so forth white boy rick i mean white boy was legendary if not one of the biggest drug dealers in detroit's history richard white boy rick wurstey is certainly one of the most well known if rick wirshe would have been anything other than white nobody had ever heard of him the fact of the matter was it was so novel to the media to the public that here was this white kid that was in detroit was supposed to be this big huge kingpin well i mean he was 17 years old there's no damn way white boy rick or rick worship was the biggest drug guy in detroit at the age of seven it's ridiculous from january 7 to late 87 that whole kind of year he was it in detroit in terms of media gangster and the newspapers followed him he was eventually charged with possession of eight kilos of cocaine one day we following him he went to kathy house we sitting there watching wait wait for him to come back out and all of a sudden the car pulled up two guys stepped out we checked around and from what we get it was the curry brother that sent somebody to do that because he and then screwing one of the curry brothers wife at the same time he was walking around with uh johnny curry's wife not only the fact that she was attractive but the fact that she was the mayor's niece there was a federal indictment i represented johnny before the federal indictment and again pistol case and and they had the usual it was the usual federal case they had wiretaps good wiretaps that killed us you know just having her on his arm gave him a lot of weight it came out in in court documents that mayor young had actually told hart to assign an entire security detail to follow where she and volson uh around on a daily basis but to in no way make any arrests or stop any criminal activity but to simply be there in case gunfire was to break out to go corral and take her take her away from harm then we followed him from over on um i think it was hayes street it uh that he had a spot over there by the time we pulled up on the side the whiteboard rick at the light at dickenson and uh out of drive slid back that door sprayed them but the mac got stuck boo was like man look at the buffer get away he took off worse she became linked to the best friends in the media when members showed up at his trial well we went down there to make sure that he didn't get off we're down there and we just didn't pretend that we his uh that we his crew when he went to trial this whole entourage of [ __ ] show up you know with their pants on backwards and their plan was for worship to get convicted so the best friends could assassinate him in state prison we just wanted to make sure that that boy didn't get out among any what he got trial lasts a couple weeks jury's out for i believe four or five days comes back guilty rick gets life life in prison without possibility of parole he had recently just turned 18 years old his run is over and and his life is over in a lot of ways after finding himself in danger from both rock and ridge and boone and michigan state prison white boy rick called the feds entered witness protection and helped initiate a massive police corruption case later on uh when he was in prison against kathy's father willie and jimmy harris who was uh mayor coleman young's chief of security indicted for and rick helped them build the case for running a uh protection ring for drug dealers and the fact that he's still in jail is obscene having nothing to do with i understand he cooperated whether he did or he didn't the fact that that kid is still in jail lol these 25 years later is obscene because whatever he was he was a kid he was just a kid keeping him locked up somehow is in the public good in their perception because he represents that era he knew a lot of information the contract was on him for hundreds for a hundred thousand at that point i mentioned no name but the political figures they offered half of it to get that boy [Music] we damn near killed every goddamn body there was to be killed those that we didn't kill ran and left the state though that didn't left the state went to prison big james and then was already dead curry brothers chamber brother october 88 the chambers brothers are convicted in federal court for running dozens of crack houses across the city generating millions of dollars a month it was all about money homie power at that time everybody wanted the power also in october of 88 best friends hitman nathaniel boonecraft is sentenced to a short stint in prison for drug possession i go to prison while i'm in prison my little brother get killed i come home to the funeral people telling me this and telling me that that uh buu was behind in this and that bruiser told me exactly what went down and how he said man andre went to booth and got some dope he was home on 12th and calvin selling out that apartment there blue brown that don't buy he told andre that's a bad idea man he keep getting from boo i decided to set the ass up with the dea so i went to the d.a and told him the situation did this man this dude was responsible for my little brother death and i want to help y'all get them because i know y'all looking for them so they prefer to have boo and let me go for for my participation despite working with the dea nate boone craft went to do one last hit with the best friends well i had no choice either go with them or they would have killed me right here and there so they shoot him to stop him from going so they can finish the guy in the back they open the door of the cab locked in empty damn 16 in his ass then a few seconds later i felt like somebody was pushing me after killing the target and the cab driver chuck wilkes and lucky shot boom in an assassination attempt that's me getting hit in the back chest leg and so forth but they say that oh it was an accident boone lived but was charged and convicted for second-degree murder and the cab driver's death that's what's my deal terence book brown never made it to the best friends trial he was killed in atlanta and wrapped in his polo bed sheets by other members of the inner circle of best friends on the eve of making a six hundred thousand dollar cocaine purchase because they felt that hey boo helping us knock off everybody in the group can't be best friends if you doing your own friends and that's what boo was doing boo was knocking off his own people steve fishman defended thomas k.o carr in the best friends trial best friends got indicted in federal court i represented thomas carr saying everybody they had about 45 or 50 dead people uh in this trial most dead bodies i've ever had where they actually charged it and tried to they only tried to prove i think and did prove because the jury found them guilty of them maybe seven or eight but when you would cross-examine the witnesses well that was been so and so walter daniels got killed on aggression talking about murder was like talking about you know your dog ran in front of a car it was just nathaniel craft testified in the best friend's case he really needed to be on tv in one of those detective or police movies because he played the role of the tough guy and the big hit man uh he scared the [ __ ] out of a couple of the lawyers he he claimed he was a hitman for the best friends and he killed this guy or he killed that guy and he was smart he's a smart guy look he he basically was it was advertising if you want someone killed call me i mean that's basically what his testimony was he got convicted of everything and then the next thing i heard he cooperated and he's out he got he got a sense reduction and he got rule 35 they call it and he cooperated and i know he's out uh so far i don't know one that haven't cooperated that's why they just getting life in prison without parole they brought in charles wilkes and he admitted to 15 homicides 12. they gave him like a 15-year cap he's out lock your doors and windows he's out something but yeah it was a murder case it was a mass murder case that's what it was they wouldn't kill my little brother none of this would have happened we'd all still been out there doing our thing that brought down best friends after the best friend's trial boone entered witness protection the d got a bad ass rep man you know what i mean it's only a few of us out here man that now went in man and they never ratted on nobody gas but they put them in a position where they don't have any choice other than to make deals with people and i found over time that very often guys whose reputation in the street is they never tell they all do life they'll walk on nails with those shoes and they have been but they don't really tell they don't come in and testify they just give information let's say about people they don't like or people they're at war with and it's one of the vagaries of of being involved in these kinds of cases simony bull all the mother was in there when i was in there with somebody bull white boy red how the [ __ ] do you tell the [ __ ] and go to jail like the [ __ ] who ratted on me them dumb [ __ ] was sitting up in jail with me what was the point of telling when i got there right where rick had signed me in and uh the next morning i met with him and told him what the deal was i said man did this man i knew what happened at the state prison you thought i was coming in to hit you which was true but here i'm not down like that no more i'm just like you i'm a snitch a turn code or fink or whatever people want to call me but i called it getting back at the [ __ ] that killed my brother [Music] detroit police there were called in to break up scuffles after tens of thousands of people turned out to apply for grants from the federal government for housing and utilities as the desperate crowd got larger some people fainted others fought the city got enough federal money to help 3 500 families pay rent and utilities but police say 35 thousand showed up instead this is a travesty i've never seen anything like this in my life and then tempers started to flare this is ridiculous people falling out fighting this is crazy at least five people were hurt in scuffles some fainted more than 100 police officers tried to calm an anxious crowd faced with too much desperation and too few resources for the kids that grew up in the aftermath of yby best friends and the rest selling drugs has become just another low-wage job man i first started at 12 man you know i used to skip school go sit up with them boys and chamber boys my auntie boyfriend was messing with him i remember real vividly man i get up boom brush my teeth i hit the dough my grandma think i'm going to school i'm on my way to the trizzi get to the spot you know what i'm saying lock the doors down they dropped the hoop the whoop off number nickels in that mud so big way you could cut them boys in half sell them for 20. it'll never be another yeah it'll never be another bmf it'll never be another nothing man all that [ __ ] is over with the streets is dead man these young [ __ ] out here ain't doing nothing man you know we was cashing out for cars [ __ ] riding in cars they playing no song man it's [ __ ] up out here now compared to the way it used to be and i helped tear this community up so i helped try to put something back man in 2010 we got to keep going forward man take advantage of all our opportunities man to make this [ __ ] right they used to say it takes in a village to raise the children it ain't no village left to raise you know what i'm saying then i tore it all down i think it's unfair for the society to hold young people um as if they are insane the drug economy is mainstream in this city young kids who are in the dope game are talked about almost like disease vectors they're talked about almost like you hear people talking about rats you know what we need to do is clean our communities of this scourge i'm luke bergman i'm director of research at the city of detroit health department most of what i'm involved in has to do in some form or fashion with substance abuse treatment and substance abuse prevention services it's powerful to watch the impact that alcohol has on on them actually because uh very few young black folks in detroit do hard drugs you know the hardest of the hard living that they're doing i think is because they are drinking at insane levels and i'm motivated by the fact that they are profoundly depressed they sort of lose any sense of focus or purpose for the most part whatsoever they're not engaged in any institution they're not in high school they're not in college they're not employed they've just become you know totally wayward dr luke bergman wrote the book getting ghost after working with young drug dealers in detroit's juvenile detention facility that is a is a is a book that grew out of the you know my phd thesis that i wrote while i was at the university of michigan which was about the experiences of young african-american drug dealers working in detroit and i spent most that time living on the west side of detroit just off of linwood avenue in in what's usually called sort of dexter linwood area and i was living on a little street called pingree you know that it doesn't make sense to move around the linwood dexter area if you don't understand that something catastrophic has happened there rodney was the alias bergman used for the young detroiter from the dexter collingwood area that he grew closest to and rodney was kind of this extremely active extremely charismatic rowdy young kid he was 17 at that time you know his reputation definitely preceded him which was really saying something because there's some crazy cats out on dexter i i would drive them to schools in the morning i would you know tutor them and reading afterwards and then they would be you know chopping up rocks and and selling on the front porch steps you know after tutoring the the drug that was being sold the most was heroin um in paper packs certainly it was the drug that was bringing in the most money and then a lot of wheat was being sold if you walk in the liquor store and the weed man would say trees when you walked in etc so it's just sort of like you know like being offered a coupon when you're going shopping or something and there was this coney island restaurant and one of the corners turned into an absolutely blazing heroin spot probably about five thousand dollars a day the only confrontations i would see is when white people would park in the parking lot and try to come into the store because there was a very clear but but also kind of tacit understanding that if you were white and coming onto dexter to buy dope you could not get out of your car you know you could see the sort of pleasure that young black drug dealers would have in you know setting these sorts of rules and constraints on white people man we had neighborhood people but our main clientele was the white people they used to come down in the shamrock cabs he's mac nichols and strasbourg by the time you get to six pounds strasbourg and finley you been about everything from prostitution to penny candy because we had a penny candy store right there on the corner we were selling dope out of there i mean the whole stroll here like 17 000 a day man everyone is desperate the people cop and are desperate in those areas and the people selling were desperate um when i would drive down the street literally in waves young people coming out of their houses and running down their porch steps and they would just be you know i mean and waving stuff for me you know if they didn't have money from the drugs that they were selling for the most part on their front porch they didn't have [ __ ] during the course of bergman's research rodney was suspected in a homicide at the all-star strip club on eight mile they had a contact in the police department who could get them the crime report um for 2400 bucks so they got 2 400 bucks together drove it down it was a sunny afternoon drove it down to bobia and got this police report and he and within a couple months he had managed to make about 30 000 selling wheat in jackson and retained a lawyer as soon as he had retained this lawyer he turned himself in uh managed to beat the case in pre-trial my entire body is covered with scars my back is bullet holes running all through it my legs my thighs i can't even walk properly without getting cold my leg locking up on me uh it's no good ak-47 went in here and blew out all this bomb tore up they hit be hit poles in it my hands my fingers they don't even work this hand is just here man [ __ ] the game man that was some of the dumbest [ __ ] i could ever got involved in it's only it's only so many turnouts death penitentiary you're gonna be on drugs like you're saying you i never thought i would use drugs the snowball effect of there not being a real economy in this city drives kids who are smart and who are leaders who could have made some of themselves and by the time they're 19 or 20 they've ruined their life that's the overriding legacy of the drug culture in the city detroit in my opinion don't let them see you doing that my brother seen me doing it he wanted to do it and he got killed my nephew the same way he at that point had been um was really extracting himself from the dope game and had bought a space in which he was building a car wash right on dexter he was wearing a kevlar vest the whole time he was working on this space one day he finished work took off his vest hopkins car went up the street to cvs or something to get some beer somebody stepped out from a couple of buildings right around payless shoe store that used to be there and just filled his car up you know with the ak you know the corner where he had lived so much of his life you know that it also was the corner where he where he was killed uh is um i think powerful for anybody who knows him i'm just hoping that people would take heal and understand that they need to build detroit not tear it down anymore they've been tore down enough from us don't following us fools ways of the old time because now this is new time build this city what happens when the american system breaks down when the politicians and ceos fail in their decision making it's called detroit and as the future rolls upon us remember that detroit was once the seat of the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen and now it's just a memory let me go back in the 70s they had a mcdonald restaurant had a little spoon it was a coffee stirrer and it had a little indentation it was a little minor plastic spoon and it became so famous in detroit they was you could dip it into a heroin thing and they were selling a grams of heroin and they call it a mcdonald's spoon so because of the notoriety that that spoon was used in the drug trade today mcdonald has changed that spoon with the to a flat spatula um because of detroit because of detroit

Channel: Al Profit

Views: 242,744

Rating: 4.7321243 out of 5

Keywords: rollin 313, al profit ybi, maserati rick al profit, rollin fall of the auto industry in detroit, detroit banktruptcy, coleman young, white boy rick

Id: B2vO0fmuCy4

Length: 95min 27sec (5727 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020