DRUG TRAFFICKERS

"PAUL"

How were things changed since the 1980s with the police?

Today, they're stricter. They don't let you walk away from anything. They
want to know what's going on and if there's a possible arrest to make, they
will make it, based on what they see. If they don't see a crime, they still
arrest you, they still take you in sometimes, just for the arrest, I guess.
Drugs, if you an addict, or you're a bum or you're homeless or something
like that--rather than help you, take you to where you supposed to go--they
arrest you.

So it was easier back in the days when you could hang out, talk to people
on the street. People said hello back in the days. They don't say that to
you today. Today, they look at you, uh-huh, and keep going. It's not only
the police, the kind of people you have today. There's a lot of Judases
around now. People tell on you, even when you're not doing anything, they
call the police. . . . And if you're on parole, probation, stuff like that
and people know it and they want you out of the way, they do spiteful
things. Then they tell on you that you're doing something when you're not.
People today--and they're hard, too. Some people you just can't talk to today.

What does it mean when people say, "back in the days?"

Oh, here we go again. Back in the days. I'll go to a different perspective
here. Back in the days things were easier. People communicated with other
people, people helped people out. I remember when I was in a gang up in
Bronx called the Royal Javelins. I don't mind naming them by name. But they
had the neighborhood, so that it was drug free. You couldn't sell drugs on
the corner anywhere. If you involved yourself in that type of behavior,
what happened was that they chased you off, and not so nicely sometimes.
Sometimes people were reluctant to leave. But today, it's not like that.
Saying back in the days. Back in the days, there was parties, what we
called gigs or sets like that where we played hooky and went to somebody's
house and danced, smoked a little reefer, a little wine or beer, whatever.
We had fun. But also back in the days, like I'm saying, things on the
street was a lot different than they are now because of the police and the
way that people are today. People are very hard. They treat you with a cold
shoulder.

Describe for me the mid-1980s when crack hit New York.

I was a part of that in a big way, up in the Bronx. I used to travel into
Manhattan. There were different people, Latino people who felt that when
crack addicts or what they called baseheads first started using base,
instead of making the base, buying the cocaine and making the base, and
they coming back and buying more cocaine like that, they weren't making
that much money from it. So they started making the crack cocaine
themselves like that and started distributing it that way and since there
were, I would say, more baseheads at that time than there were cocaine guys
that just sniffed cocaine or guys that shot cocaine, they started making
money faster, started moving faster, more people using like that.

So, there was a lot of drugs, a lot of cocaine. I was in the midst of that
because I did a lot of stuff myself that helped them along, also. I cooked
a lot of cocaine. I was doing that for a while. But people, once they get
into a drug or something like that that's fascinating or really draws their
attention or takes them away from everything like that, into another zone
or another dimension, they like to beam up Scotty and so, it caught on. It
caught on a lot. And that began like in 1983, 1982, around there. But like
everybody knows, base that been around forever, but back then it was a
high-class drug. Only people like movie stars and sports, they used stuff
like that. But when it got past that state and into the street, people was
like, wow, overwhelmed. Wow, this is base.

When did you first start being involved with crack?

I used to buy the cocaine and then cook it and make crack out of it. See,
this is how I learned how to do it myself. And I got hooked up with some
people and started doing it for them on a large scale. That's when I really
got into it, into cooking base and stuff like that. It wasn't no little
half a gram. It wasn't no half an ounce. You talking about kilos, cooking
whole kilos because I don't know what it is, but when you cook more of it
in one batch, it becomes more potent, stronger, more powerful,
concentrated, like concentrated orange juice--pour it in a quart bottle and
add water. Well, this is almost the same thing except in reverse. You take
all that cocaine and you come out with a little rock or a little boulder
and that become concentrated, it become more pure. A lot of the cocaine
that I cooked into crack became somewhere between 98.2 percent pure
cocaine. When it hit your system, it hit your system hard. So, people began
getting addicted to it and I got addicted to it myself.

When did you get addicted to it?

Around 1983, around there.

How much were you using, and what was it like?

It took me into space, into a big wide space where there was nobody there
but me. I was the central figure there. Nobody to bother me, I would say,
okay? It took me way out of myself, so I was able to function without
having anybody around, or if people were around, I'd just completely phase
them out. So I got hooked because of that. I wasn't the kind of guy that
got a hit and then started peeking around or here's the police or scared or
paranoid or anything like that. I got philosophical. I got talkative. I
came out of myself, so I caught onto it like that. That's what started me
off on it.

And then, the glamour, the grandiosity, being able to tell people, you want
some crack, you want some crack? I got some, I got some. Having it in
abundance and giving people out, because I had it like that at that time.
So it was very addictive, not only the drug, but the lifestyle. It was
tremendously addictive. Four cars parked outside. Walk around with a gun.
Police don't bother me. They knew who I was. A lot of police seen me in
that neighborhood many, many times, but they never suspected anything and
then when they did, they didn't have enough--I've never been arrested for
sale or possession of a drug, so I was very, like, acoustic. I bounce off
the walls.

What does it mean, "cooking crack?"

When I was in school, right, lot of years ago, science class--they taught
you how to make crystals out of certain hydrogen and other molecules and
stuff like that. Then you'd heat up, it'd turn into a fluid, then you could
turn it into a crystal again. So what you do is, to process the raw cocaine
that you get into crack, you re-cook it, melt it down into a fluid or a
liquid type where it changes into an oil, more like a thick grease, use a
little water, baking soda, you mix it in there real good, then you cook it.

Then at the bottom it gets a residual, like a grease, like an oil, very
thick, almost brownish yellow paste. And that's the crack. You take it off
the stove--sometimes you know you have to make sure you cook everything, so
you had to cook for a couple seconds more, then pour the water out, pour a
little cold water in, new water out, little cold water in. This filters out
all the impurities. So you're left with this little mass of grease. And
that little mass of grease turns into crystals, or like a solid rock, like
you hear a lot of people say, "You got any rock?" Meaning rock cocaine,
like that, or crack, why? Because it cracks, it sizzles when you smoke it.
They call it crack because of that, too.

. . . Crack was a mom-and-pop business?

Maybe more than that, too. It was sister and brother. Well, I don't think
the Colombians ever envisioned, or ever had it in their minds, they never
fascinated over it, they never thought about it, crack coming from their
cocaine. They don't even do that now. They don't cook crack in South
America and send it here, even though it would be to their profit. They
send the pure cocaine here, and they're going to continue to do that. They
are not going to change a good thing. Once they got started with the
cocaine, you say, oh, this is a good thing. We don't want to change any of
this. It would be very devious if they did, because that would cut out a
lot of middle people right here on the streets of New York. It could start
a war.

But I don't think they ever envisioned crack. That's America, that's the
United States. They don't know. Colombians didn't know. I don't want to
call them naive, but in that they were naive. They didn't know that
Americans would take something that they had, that was profitable to them,
and make it even more profitable to us here.

Who started doing it here?

Well, there were a few guys doing it on their own. It started with a few
guys. It didn't start just overnight--everybody was just selling it. It has
to catch on first. But the way it caught on, it spread like fire in a dry
bush, whoosh, it was just all over the place, and not only here in New
York, but it spread out all over, Connecticut, New Jersey, it went
everywhere from here. I believe it went everywhere from here. It didn't
start in Los Angeles or California. For me it started right here and spread
out, like a fire, in a lot of dry kindling. People were like . . . one hit
and they were addicts. I've seen them fight over it. Guys deal around the
corner, he only got one bottle left. "That one's mine. " "No, it ain't."
"We'll fight for it." I've seen that.

The Dominicans were the first?

They were the first to monopolize on it, I'm pretty sure of it, in their
naive way. I say naive because they have no happiness. They come from
another country with no drug habits, no alcohol habits, and how would you
say it, their national plight was money. They have no money. And the
easiest way to make money back then was to distribute crack. So a lot of
them monopolized whole neighborhoods--if you went from one neighborhood to
another, whoever controlled that neighborhood came back, retaliated. It
moved into all the communities. Not at once, though. It just slowly spread
out. I would say that it hit the Latino and the black community hardest,
because it was right there. I wouldn't go into your community and say,
"Hey, white guy, hey, white guy, you want to try this?" You know what I'm
saying? But the people that live right next door to me, you say, "Yo, what
you getting high on? Oh, this is what I'm getting high on. Want to try it?"
"Sure, why not."

There's a lot of money to be made?

Millions. Millions. Zillions. Trillions. There was a lot of money to be
made. Lot of money. I've seen this personally, I've done this myself, go to
work, with the $500 that I earned, working the hours that I worked, to come
home that Friday night and spend all of it on crack. Going to get me a
welfare check, nowadays they only give you $68 every two weeks, you end up
paying all of it to go on crack cocaine, my food stamps, to go on crack
cocaine. People will spend anything, sell anything, to get crack cocaine.

Who was making the money?

The people who were selling it, you know, the distributors, basically,
whether they are Dominican, black, Puerto Rican, Irish, whoever was
distributing it--they were getting the money, ultimately, to buy more
cocaine, to make more crack, and make more money.

Were the guys on the street making any money?

No, not really.

But he's taking the risk?

He's taking the risk. He's going to go to jail, and he's not going to get
bailed out. He's going to do the time.

So why would someone do that?

Well, money, greed, luxury, grandiosity, social standing. Guy wants to get
up in life, get to a point where he don't need no more money, and then just
stop, and go on about life--but that never happens, or if it do, it is very
rare. It's very rare that anybody gets anywhere in this business anyway.
It's a hot dollar for a hot meal, and it's gone. It's here now, gone later.
That's the way it is. I've had a lot of money pass through my hands. If I
got $30 on me, I've got too much money.

But somebody has got to be making millions.

Zillions. Whoever is distributing, in Colombia, wherever the drug is coming
from, they buy it cheap now, but they buy so much of it that it's a profit,
it's at a profit, it goes right down the line. See, you got to understand,
that when I get money, I spend it. Where is the money going? Money is going
everywhere, everywhere at once: car, new tires, nice chromes, Pioneer
radio, or a Tiac Pro amp, equalizers, a guy stomping around in the
neighborhood with a car that you can hear five blocks away, that's where
the money is coming from. . . . Guy taking trips to the Bahamas, that's
where it's going. You don't see it, but it's there. Some people choose not
to see it.

Part of going out there and dealing, pitching, cadging, or whatever, is
that you know the odds. You are going to get busted sooner or later. There
is nobody out here that ain't going to get busted sooner or later that is
doing something illegal. You've got to know what's going on in your
neighborhood. What I look for on the street is an ambulance. Not many
people look for an ambulance on the street. I look for an ambulance. I'll
circle the block three or four blocks around, or send somebody to look for
an ambulance, the EMS, the emergency services, yeah, I look for them.
Because wherever they are parked, they are on station, waiting to see if a
bust goes down and a bust goes wrong. They have emergency services all over
the place, police on this corner, police on that corner, police on that
corner, and ambulances parked a block away or two blocks away, something
like that.

And half the people, I'm telling you, more than half the people that get
arrested on the street for drugs of one sort or the other are little tiny
people; they're not the major people that they are supposed to be catching
out here with 20 kilos, 50 kilos. Where is the logic? How are you going to
arrest 30,000 people in a year, 40,000, 50,000, 100,000 people in a year,
and none of them are the big guys? It's politics. We just want the drug
dealers and the drug users off the street. Forget about the drug
trafficante--the guy that comes around and says, "Yeah, I'll sell you 10,
15 kilos." Where's the logic in that?

Explain to me how it worked when you were in business.

Well, you buy a kilo of cocaine, right, from somebody who is considered a
distributor here in New York. Back when I was buying, I spent 35 Gs, 30 Gs,
it went down to 20 Gs, 25 Gs, that's regular, you know. Unless you're
buying a mass, like 20 kilos, 50 kilos, like that, you get it even cheaper.
The more you buy it in one bundle, the less that you have to pay for it. If
I sold 10 lines on a gram, that's $10. Unless I mix it with something else
and make more of it, you get less, six lines for $10, which is what
happened today. The more you can mix stuff into it, the more you can make
from it.

How long does it take you to sell it?

In this area? About two minutes. Maybe three. That's how quick it goes.

Even today?

Even today. So people know you when you're selling, people know who's on
the street, they know who you are, even the police know who you are. Here's
an officer walking around eight hours a day, watching you stand on the same
corner for eight hours, all through his shift. You think he don't know
you're doing something wrong?

Is crack still here? Is crack still the drug of choice?

Yeah, there's a lot of crack out here. There is more crack being sold in
this neighborhood than there is anything else. That I can believe. I've
seen it.

But a lot less than in the mid-1980s?

Yeah, I would say that. A lot less. It's like it's becoming an underground
cult. You got to know one member to know where all the spots around. A guy
that comes into this neighborhood and really don't know anything can't buy
anything. If they don't know somebody, they can't buy from you.

What do you think of the war on drugs?

They go around waving all these flags, it's politics. They're waving this
flag that says, I'm against drugs. We're going to bust everybody that's got
drugs. See what I'm saying? But they're letting it in to the United States.
They let it in. People on the street are going to use it. There is a demand
for it. And that demand is being met. They got no trouble selling the drug
to somebody. People got trouble when they can't buy it because they don't
have any money to buy it. That's where the trouble comes from. That's where
the politics come in too. Because now these people that are going around
stealing to support their habit, they're the ones getting arrested. They
are the ones that are taking responsibility for everybody that is selling it.

[part of a series]

Campaign for the Restoration & Regulation of Hemp's HempTV website now has
the full, two part, total of almost 4 hours of video of the PBS Frontline
"Drug Wars" available on the web for free video streaming using the Real
Player 8.

To watch Part one of Drug Wars, go here:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/docs_drugwars1.html

To see part 2, go here:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/docs_drugwars2.html

Click this link for an index to this series:
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n1551.a01.html