My name's John Mendoza. I'm a former member of the
Nuestra Familia prison gang. I was a category III, and I was a regimental commander in different parts of Northern California. And this is how crime works. I've been to San Quentin, Pelican Bay. In the early '90s, they put us out there with Southern Mexicans and the Aryan Brotherhood,
the Nazi Lowriders. Those were our enemies. They were putting us out
there on the yard together, and we were going out there fighting. If you were crafty enough
to bring a weapon out, we'll try to kill each other. I went to prison in 1988
when I was 18 years old. Some of my older homeboys that were there in the county jail with me basically told me that
when I get to San Quentin, that the NR is going to approach me about making a commitment.
I knew who to look for. The first time I went out
to the recreation yard, there was a group of individuals
that were in the corner that were covered with tattoos. Those were the NR members.
From that point on, they put me on a 90-day
probationary period. It's like you're functioning
within that movement, but you're not an actual member. You can do anything
that they ask you to do. Stabbing somebody, keeping
security on somebody, holding paperwork, holding a weapon. A lot of guys that make a commitment because they want the
status, they want the title. Those guys are going to
end up getting weeded out because they're not making the commitment for the right reasons.
They're not true believers. I was an NR member for
about five years, six years. People take notice when
you're functioning that long and you're not questioning authority, you're developing into a leader. Eventually the NF is going to approach you because the NR, in essence, is like the NF's training grounds. I think it was 1994, I was approached by two
high-ranking NF members, Smiley from Salinas and
Mikey O. from Salinas. Induction process is similar to the NR. You go through an indoctrination process where you learn some of
their concepts, their bylaws. You have a sponsor, and you have the guy
that actually pulls you. They're responsible for you. When you make a commitment to the NF, it's a lifetime commitment. I was asked things like, "Are you willing to kill
your own flesh and blood? Are you willing to put
the organization first before everything else in your life?" Everything else that you were
loyal to becomes secondary. They write everything down. There's 14 bonds, which is, I used to call it my little toolbox. Everything that I needed
to know how to function within that movement —
conduct, discipline. You're encouraged to study things like Middle Eastern philosophy, Socrates, revolutionary literature like
George Jackson, Che Guevara. And then there's everything
that you need to know about how to make weapons. I can make a stabbing instrument
out of 15 pieces of paper. It's all about how you roll it and then how you put the point on. When your membership is sanctioned,
there's no big ceremony. They'll get together with you maybe in a group setting
out there on the yard. They'll say something like, "Today, we're welcoming
the brother Boxer in." Me, I was right there in
San Quentin on the yard, and it was done similar. "Hey, this brother's a carnal now. He's a Familiano from this point on. He's a member of the mob." It's like, I felt like
I reached a pinnacle, a point in my career where I had really accomplished something. Everything that I've
done, it was all worth it. When a new arrival will come in, we'll get his information,
we'll get all his vitals, we'll get his name, his CDC number, we'll get a little bit about his history. We'll get things like his aka, his age, his neighborhood, what they called him. We'll look on the BNL to make
sure he's not on the BNL. So, the BNL, the Bad News
List, is, we keep a roster of everybody that's coming
in and out of that household. I'll send a filter out to all the members that are in that household,
and I'll ask everybody, "Have you done time with this individual? This guy just drove up. Do you know him?" Any good or bad information,
that'll get filtered out. If nothing comes back, he'll
be welcome into the household. Then at that point, he'll
be given a care package, soap, shampoo, coffee,
toothpaste, things like that. When you first come in to an
ad seg or even a mainline, they give you what's
called a 114 lockup order. That's like your passport. The gangs, they're going
to ask you for that, but the only way you're
going to get a lockup order is if they freely give it up. That's the only way we're going to get it. It's going to say on that lockup order whatever gang that you're affiliated with. It's going to say things like, if you got an S on your jacket, like a sex offense or something, it's going to say it right there. So somebody like that, you know, you got an S, they probably wouldn't even give up their 114 lockup order because they already know what time it is. If you decline to give up
that information, you're done. That's somebody that refused
to comply with the program. Somebody like that's
not going to be welcome out to the yard. If he tries to come out to the yard, he'll get hit at the gate. I mean, obviously there's a lot of perks with becoming a member like that. You're going to get that
rockstar-status kind of treatment from a lot of the youngsters out there on the streets and in
prison. They look up to you. They call NF members, just like they call Mexican
Mafia members, big homies. You're going to have a
lot of access at money. I've learned a lot of things
that I still hold to this day, even though I'm not a part of it no more. Things like conducting
myself a certain way. The NF is built, it's constructed or built
under a paramilitary structure. A lot of the old NF members
came from the Marines. They're ex-Marines, so
they actually took a lot of the structure of the
leadership in the military and brought it to the NF. You have captains, lieutenants, commanders, a category I-er. Or for members that are just
coming into the organization, they have no status over anybody else. Then you have a cat II. They've shown that they
have leadership potential and they can give a correct interpretation of the constitution. They'll become teachers for the cat Is. Now, in order to become a cat III, it's the cream of the crop.
You need to be voted in. Then you have the inner
council and the general council that basically make the decisions for the entire organization. You have a general for the prisons, you have a general for the streets, and then you have a general that's — it's basically like internal affairs. He handles investigations,
internal disputes, things like that. When you're in the SHU, you might be in charge of, like, 200 guys. You're not really
running the whole prison. There's guys out there on the mainline, regimental commanders out
there that are doing that. But on the streets, if you're a regimental
commander out there, it might be 20 or 30 guys. I was a regimental commander
all over Northern California. Different parts. Each time, there was probably
around 10 to 20 members that were under me at that time. A day for me, well, it
depends. Like, San Quentin, you're running H-Unit in
North Block, West Block. I would have to sit there and
answer some investigations. So you're getting daily
filters or weekly filters from all these different blocks. All day long, I would just be
getting inundated with kites. San Quentin is the worst place to be as far as being a leader. The main rivals for the
NF are the Mexican Mafia, they're following the Sureños, and then you have the Aryan Brotherhood, and they're following the whites. But on the mainline, it's mixed. Everybody's mixed out there. The Norteños, the Sureños,
the Blacks, everybody's mixed. If you're talking about in an
ad-seg type of environment, a SHU program, everybody's
kind of segregated. I spent all the '90s in the SHU program. When you see us out there
on the yards and we're doing burpees and we're doing
exercises out there, we're not out there doing
that because we're just trying to get karate bodies and just
trying to look nice. Right? We're training for a
war. That's what it is. They're getting ready to
go to the SHU programs. They're going to be engaged in a conflict. So, the SHU program is like
a prison inside of a prison. They put you in a cell, and you stay in the cell
about 23 hours a day. You'll come out of the cell for a half hour to take a shower, and then you might come out for yard, and you come out to a yard that's, you got four concrete walls and a camera. That's all that's out there.
You got plexiglass on the top. If you see a bird fly over, you're like, "Damn, I seen a bird today, man." You go back in there and
tell people in the pod. In the SHU program, they got
what's called a nerve system. Everything is electric
up there in Pelican Bay. They sit up there and
they push buttons all day. You know, you got one cop up there that's in charge of six different pods. So he might forget
somebody's in the shower or he might forget that a door is open and he'll press another button and somebody else will come out. You could be in there watching
TV or working out one minute, and you'll be out on the tier in a fight for your life the next minute. It'll happen just that fast. So, us as Norteños, you know, all day our
mattresses would be rolled up and we'd be sitting by the door. I mean, I get up and I work out, I watch my TV, but for the most part, whenever there was movement
or activity on the tier, I would be posted up on my door, ready, just in case my door would open. Because a lot of times the COs
would say it was a mistake, but it wasn't a mistake. You know, they pop certain doors
open for different reasons. I used to see them. I used
to watch from my cell. There's a lot of different places out there on the yards to bury weapons. Inside the buildings, up on the, like, in the little rafters. We obviously know where they're at. Under sinks or in the walls, buried. They keister it. You know, to move a weapon
from one place to another, they'll put it in their anal cavity, is how it's moved around. I don't know how you want
to put that out there, but. So, I went through Corcoran SHU
wars back in the early '90s. We were going at it with the Mexican Mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood. You know, they knew we
were mortal enemies, that we would kill each
other if we had a chance, but they would put us out on the yard. And they knew. The
administration knew over there. You'd have to have your light on, and that meant that you
wanted to go to yard. Guys used to turn their lights off because they didn't want no part of it. But those of us that remained active, we'd turn our lights on and we'd go out. It's like a little enclosure
before you get out to the yard, and the yard's like a little, it's kind of shaped like a piece of pie. When you get in that little enclosure, you can see through the yard door who you're going to go out
there and get off with. So we'd go out, we'd fight. Always try to get yourself situated so that they have their back to the gunner so that you can see
what the gunner's doing. Because we were the ones
that were getting targeted. It was the Northeners and the Blacks that were getting shot
and killed over there. There's no warning shots, per se, but what they have is they have, like, a — it's called a bertha or a knee-knocker. It's, like, a gas gun that
fires little wooden blocks. Sometimes they'll fire once, twice, and then they'll grab the real gun. But yeah, they don't give warning shots. Now, the other thing though, too, is the COs are making bets. They would be like, "Hey, we
got money on you guys, man. You guys better go out there
and do your thing, man." You know, sometimes they
would take their best fighters from one building and they
would take the best fighter from another building
and get them out there. When I first came in
the system, I was young. I used to mean-mug them. I used to have a bad taste
for certain individuals. And I didn't even know why I hated them. It was because I was supposed to. That's the mindset that
was instilled within me. But being around them, a lot
of them were just like us. They were solid dudes. If there's a Sureño and
he needs some toothpaste, or I got a book and he
wants to read it, you know, we'll pass literature back
and forth to each other. We can play chess on the tier. It doesn't do us any good
to make that environment any more stressful than what it is. Now, like I said, if the gate's open, we were directed to basically torpedo out and engage with whoever was on the tier. If we were going to take
off on staff, the guards, our politics might get set
aside for a bigger purpose to where, yeah, we might come together to go against administration. You might see something
like a small uprising within an ad-seg unit or something where we're not getting fed right, they're tearing up our cells and disrespecting personal possessions like pictures and things like
that, where everybody says, "You know what? We had enough.
Let's just all board up." Blocking your window so that
they can't see in there, which basically forces them
to have to come in there and cell-extract you. It's something that I was
personally involved in before, in Susanville. You know, when we were going
through the Corcoran SHU wars, people might debate this, but
a lot of the COs were split as far as who they favored in that war. Even some of the female officers. It's just, you could tell that they were either
sympathizing for the north or they were sympathizing for the south. A lot of it is just geography. Where that prison's at,
whether or not they got family that might be hooked
up. So it just depends. Corruption, it's rampant
in the county jails. I mean, you see a lot of
relationships that happen where female officers are getting
into relationships with inmates. The next thing you know,
they're bringing in drugs. They're not getting that kind of stuff in through the visiting room. They're getting it through corrupt COs. In prison, one of the things
that is a huge problem are the cellphones that are coming in. But it's a huge business for COs. They can make anywhere
from $1,000 to $4,000 bringing in a phone, a cellphone. Having the phones is, it's a
lot different because, again, when I was in the SHU
program back in the '90s, when we'd be back there
plotting somebody's murder, there was a lot of lag
time that was involved. Either it had to go out through
a letter, a coded letter, a phone call, or a visit,
and you'd have to wait maybe a week or two for somebody to drive 300, 400 miles to come
see you up in Pelican Bay. But now you put these cellphones in the hands of these leaders, if somebody's got a green light on them, they'll make a phone call. You'll get a leader that
will call a figurehead on the streets, and it
will happen in real time. "Hey, this dude's got a green
light on him. He's gotta go." It might happen that same night. Let's say somebody came on the tier, I was on the tier in
the ad seg or something, and he was, like, six cells down. I'd make verbal contact with him. I'd yell down there, "Hey,
homie that just came in. Heyo, once you get situated, go ahead and make a line
so that I can get at you." Making a line is where you take
the elastic from your boxers or from the strands from your sheet. You'll make a line, and
you'll tie them together so that you can put a
weight at the end of it, and then you'll throw it down the tier. It's just a way to get back
and forth to the cells. So he'll tie the kite on
there, and I'll pull it in, and I'll read it, and
then I'll respond to it, and he'll pull it back. Ingenuity. There's a lot of different ways to do things like that.
Covert communications, there's a language that we use
in there. It's called Nahua. It's an Aztec language, and
there's different dialects, but we use it so that if we're on a tier and we need to communicate and
there's officers on the tier, we can talk on the tier in front of them and they're not going to know what we say. There's very few people that
know the whole language. They'll just know certain
words, like weapon, drugs, CO, hit, green light, things like that. Norteños, our color is red. Sureños, they wear blue. So, the NF insignia, the sombrero, obviously it signifies
the Mexican heritage. You got the dagger that signifies that this is a violent organization. And then each drop of blood characterizes its own individual meaning. So one drop of blood is for blood in, guys that have spilled blood
coming into the organization. Blood out, meaning anybody
that tries to walk away from the organization, it's
an automatic death sentence. And then the third drop
of blood is for members that have honorably spilled blood, that have died in the
course of their career. I had "Nuestra Familia"
tattooed on the back of my head, and I got that covered up. I had a star on my hairline, when I had hair, that signified the NR. I had "Familiano" over my left eyebrow, being a family member in Spanish. And then I had a tattoo
on the back of my forearm, I had a "NF" back there. The whole purpose of generating money is supposed to be for the
less fortunate members that are doing life in prison that don't have a means to
take care of theirselves. That's what it's supposed to be. It's a smoke screen, though.
There's no trickle-down effect. There's a trickle-up effect. The money that comes in,
it goes to the leadership, the select few at the
top of the hierarchy, and they're the ones that use that money for their own expenses. Some of it's used to invest in drugs and to invest in new
regiments or new territory, you know, breaking NF ground
out there on the streets. If I got a visitor that's
willing to bring in drugs, off the top, my gang is
going to require whatever, 25% of it, 50% of it, or I might even have to
turn it all over to them and they'll give me back what they feel that they want to give me. You know, you're part of that gang, you're going to take care of that gang or that criminal organization. The biggest thing in prison,
county jails, the biggest, the currency in there is soups. Everybody loves soups, Top Ramens. That's like prison or
jail currency right there. But, you know, obviously
then you got weed, tobacco, then the hardcore drugs
and things like that. White lightning, a cup of
that, it can go for, like, $50. But you're talking
about a cup of something that's like vodka. I learned early on from
a young gang member that the more violent I was,
the more blood that I spilled out there on the streets,
the more respect I got. The fastest way to elevate
yourself within the organization is by hurting people. So, out on the streets, the structure, you have your regimental
commander, a second in command, your squad leaders,
and then your manpower. I would have a second in command, and he would be my buffer. He would collect the money. He would make sure that
everybody's following policy, issuing out the drugs, the guns that were coming
in off the streets. That was to kind of keep me insulated. In the '90s, when it was a lot different, the regiments were called
colonias back in those days. Everything was compartmentalized. You had a robbery crew, another
crew that would sell dope. You had a wrecking crew. I think the influence has waned
over the years, like, a lot. In the '80s and the '90s, you couldn't testify against the NF and live in the same county. You wouldn't even want
to be in California. The threat was, it was very
real back in those days. But once the three-strike
law came into effect, we kind of stepped away
from the violent crimes and started doing almost
exclusively selling drugs. The influence is there. People know that they're out there, they're in the cuts, they're functioning. It's just not as — it's not like it was. I want to say since, like, '68 is when the NF first came into inception. From that time on, that's
when they took a stand against the Mexican Mafia in
South Block San Quentin. This is basically when
the NF banded together, decided that they weren't going to be abused by the Mexican Mafia anymore. And from that point on,
that's when the war started. So for almost the next five decades, that war was in effect. The truce actually started
back in the SHU program at Pelican Bay, the end of
hostilities, their agreement. Again, the whole purpose of it
was, for a lot of these guys that had been in the SHU program for, some of them three decades, it was to get back out to the mainlines and to basically show CDC that they could live on the same yard
without killing each other. So I thought it was a temporary thing. They were going to get out there, somebody was going to
push a line somewhere, and it was going to kick off, and then it was just going
to be a domino effect. But it's lasted. I mean, honestly, I never
thought in my lifetime that I would ever see the
day when Norteños and Sureños would be out there on the
same yards playing basketball with each other, walking
laps with each other. But at the same time, there
was a lot of housecleaning. Guys that had issues,
internal issues within their respective gang,
were getting dealt with. Whether it was over misconduct, something came up in their
past or something like that, there was a lot of housecleaning. And then there was a lot of guys that didn't agree with the peace treaty. They felt like, "You know what? I didn't sign up for this, man. What are we doing? What
about all the brothers that have spilled blood in the past?" I think the violence is worse. When they let these guys
out of the SHU program, all these leaders, guys
that are from the '70s, from the '80s, when I came to prison, they're starting to bring
the old school back, where they're not just poking people and slicing people up no more. You see all the murders that
are happening out there. The Mexican Mafia, the
NF, they're behind it. They would rather eat their own right now, stab some of their own
people. I mean, it's crazy. The politics that are going on right now, everything's going backwards. In 2004, I was arrested in
a multiagency investigation where I was the leader of a street crew, an NF regiment. So I was the main target
in that investigation. On the first day, on June 11th, 2004, they raided around eight houses that were all in relation
to this investigation. On the first wave, they hit my house where I had all my guns. They hit another house
where I had all my money. By 2005, that case continued to snowball. They put me in a observation
cell because they said I had too much influence
with the Norteños. So they wanted to keep me isolated. And during that time,
my whole concern was, my girl, she had lupus. I was trying to do everything I could to make it easy on her. I knew I was in trouble, but I didn't want to tell
her because she had lupus, and for somebody like that,
stress is a killer, so, during the first couple weeks talking to her, my mom on the phone, I had some difficult
conversations with them. You know, "What are you going to do? Are you going to sacrifice yourself? Think about your family for once." My mom kept pushing me to cooperate. She kept pushing me to cooperate. "You need to cooperate. Do what you do. Your wife's out here dying.
What are you going to do?" And I basically started pacifying her, telling her whatever I needed to tell her. "Let the case play out. I haven't even been to court yet." So, what they do is, and understandably, they release my phone calls of how I've been talking to my girl, and all my codefendants hear these conversations about cooperating. Trying to explain that to the NF, it was going to fall on deaf
ears because of who I was. I was a leader. I get held
to different standards because I know better, and I got no business talking like that. This is five years later now. People are still speculating
that I'm cooperating. Come on, man. It's five years, and there's no police
reports. There's nothing. So, somebody that had an agenda pushed the issue with
leadership up in the Bay. They put a green light
on me. Nothing happened. It was literally - the dude,
honoring the green light, tried to push a phone over
in front of me on the tier. I still held my mud. I still wanted to be a
part of the organization. 17 months later, they put
me back on a active tier. I functioned for another two years. Put another green light on me, and the second time, it was
just as bad as the first time. Somebody wanted to act like they were trying to spear
me through the bars. The spear was, like, 2 feet too short. Didn't have a tip on it. You know, my wife, she
died. She ended up dying. My mom ended up dying. She passed away. So they did this at a
time when I was already in a dark place, you know what I mean? I'm looking at life. I was getting ready to plead
out, but then they pulled that. So I was like, "You know
what? I'm done, man." The district attorney wants to wash me up. I'm in bad standings now
with the NF. What do I do? Law enforcement again
came up, and they're like, "You know what? Loyalty only
goes so far. Come on, man." I agreed that I was done and that I would talk to them. So that's what I did from that point on. I denounced my membership, and I agreed to cooperate. However, the cooperation
that I gave was just, I didn't go in as a percipient witness. Everybody that I got
arrested with was gone. So I went in there basically talking about what I'm talking about
now, how gangs work. The judge struck two of my strike priors, which took me out of the three strikes and gave me 16 years, eight months. I've been in the county
jail almost 10 years. None of that had to happen. If the NF would've let me fight my case, I would've been a big dummy
sitting in Pelican Bay right now with a life sentence. Yeah, I
was one of the true believers. But, you know, by them
pulling the trigger twice, I felt betrayed. For somebody that just
doesn't want to be part of the organization no more,
for them to walk away, to just ride off into the sunset and go on about their
life and not hurt nobody, it's still not considered honorable, but it's something that people will say, "You know what? At least he
didn't tell on everybody. At least he didn't hurt nobody." But, you know, there's never retirement. You'll never be able to
walk away in good standings. I've had a couple
situations where I ran into some individuals. When
there are 15 of them, that's when everybody wants to get active. But, you know, when I
catch cats by theirselves, they're not trying to do all that. And I'm not trying to
look for trouble either. I'm trying to just live. Live out the rest of my
days without all the drama. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I grew up in San Francisco, California. My mom was a young heroin addict. She got involved with
drugs at a young age. At the age of 11, I found my way back to my
mom's from foster care. I found out she was using. And she didn't just give it to me. You know, people are going to be like, "What kind of mother gives
their 12-year-old child heroin?" I understand that, but I don't blame her. I look at it as, she was
stuck in her addiction at a young age. She got
stuck in that cycle, and I kind of manipulated the situation. I told her I knew what she was doing, and if she didn't give it to me, I was going to go get it in the streets. And from that point on,
for the next 40 years, that s--- tore my life
up in every way possible, from relationships to
the choices I would make, me becoming involved in
the criminal element. From then, I stopped going to school. I started drinking. That's when I started
getting involved with gangs. It started with burglarizing cars, ripping out the radios, the speakers, selling them for drugs. Robberies, home invasions. And then we started using weapons, and it just continued to escalate. From that time, it didn't take me long before I got caught up in
the juvenile justice system. I caught four robberies,
one out of San Francisco and two out of San Mateo. I took seven years, ran consecutive, and they sent me to prison. My book is — through talking to at-risk youth, I've talked to kids that
have gotten in trouble. Probation officers come up
and tell me that, you know, "These youngsters, they read your book, and we actually use your book as a workshop type of thing. The name of the book is called "Nuestra Familia: A Broken Paradigm." And so I started doing a YouTube channel, Paradigm Media News. I got a series on my channel,
one's called "Inner Demons" and the other one's called "War Stories." It's also therapeutical to talk about it, you know, to try to help
some of these youngsters that might be headed for
that type of lifestyle. I give them the fine print that they don't hear
about until it's too late, until they make a commitment and they find theirselves
in that situation. I've seen a lot of my homeboys
die throughout the years. Most of them are gone. There's only three roads
you're going to travel in this lifestyle. You're either going to spend the rest of your life in prison, you're going to die trying
to push the organization's advancement forward, or you're
going to turn your back. There's no pot of gold at
the end of the rainbow.
