many of them still were a little bit uncomfortable with that idea, especially uncomfortable about having to give over their protection now, completely to the prison authorities. they were not able any more to rely on their gang for protection. do i feel safe? you never can feel safe in a prison environment. i don t depend on prison administration to protect me. yeah, they re going to take steps to sure we re secure. but at the same time i m going to fall back on what i learned in prison to make it in here. in some ways you feel like you hung up your balls. now you have to rely on the administration to handle things in a way you learned to handle things. now i play sports with people i was once enemies with. it s a big step.
but we met one inmate who blames the problem on the system. i never wanted to get involved in racial problems. when i went to prison, i didn t hate blacks. i didn t hate mexicans. i didn t hate indians. i didn t hate anybody like that. but when you go to these prisons and by the time you do ten years like me, if you re even halfway sane, it s a miracle. vanjlis garafolo was awaiting trial for the attempted murder of five police officers while on parole for an earlier conviction of voluntary manslaughter. the date i met vanjlis garafolo it was like meeting hannibal lecter with shackles. i saw his feet first and i kind of looked up i saw all the tattoos. this guy was huge, 6 3 , probably about 235. i mean he was built like an nfl linebacker. he looked like a stone cold killer. what s even more fascinating is what came out of his mouth.
get out of the way, step back. step back. following protocol, inmates on the yard hit the ground and those in the cafeteria take their seats as officers sprint to the scene. it was a tense moment when everybody hit the deck. sure enough, they found a weapon and we were right in the middle of it. officers catch a gang member attempting to conceal a shank, a homemade slashing weapon. this time, violence was avoided. but nowhere is gang influence more prevalent than out on the rec yards of california s prisons. this is a turf war here. everybody s got their own turf and they re not going to let anybody else take it from them. the inmates segregate themselves out here. and the reason being that the gangs want it that way. so a man has no choice but to go with his own type of people. it s all run by gangs or at least the gangs think they run the prisons, and then the correctional officers think they run the prison.
connections with a foreign drug cartel to rise up the ranks of his prison gang, the mexican mafia. once i opened the door with the drugs, i got recognition. by getting that recognition, i get power. with the power, i get control of whatever yard i go to. when once i control the yard, i control the inmates. miguel perez was a big drug distributor in various prisons he had been in. i think the thing that so shocked me is that so much of the drugs coming into prison can never happen, unless there s a whole group of people out there willing to assist. even though the individuals locked up, they have a lot of access to individuals on the street. they have visitors that see them on a regular basis. they have mail, they can send mail out, receive mail. they re able to send coded messages out to other street gangs, or carry out their deeds.
and it feels like a war. it feels like a wartime prison, pelican bay. correctional staff told us that when it comes to battling gang activity, they re fighting a system that starts long before inmates arrive in prison. they re convinced that at early ages, at 8, 9, 10, 11 years old that gangs are the way to go. such was the case with epi cortina. he joined a street gang at age 11. it led to a 16-year to life sentence for murder. i ve been pelican-bay raised. been up here going on 14 years. he d been in prison since he was 19. he was 32 at the time i interviewed him. and he d just been through years and years of just senseless violence. after his arrival at pelican bay, cortina, like many other hispanic gang-bangers from northern california, joined a prison gang known as nuestra.