usually i d probably be the last person that you would see, you know. i was the nuclear option. power power wonder working power in the blood at the end of the day, life is about choices. all of this stuff is an illusion, the life i led on the streets, the dope dealing, the gang banging, the getting drunk and getting high. if you really want to keep it real make better choices than the ones we made because that life will lead you down one of three paths. death, a life in prison, or empty existence on the streets. wasn t that bad for our first go-round. while stroud uses music to escape the restraints of prison
long run on television is because we don t just feature the loudest inmates or the most violent inmates or the troublemakers. you are refusing to do what you re supposed to do. i didn t refuse nothing. i have my back to you! we go into prisons and jails across the country to try to find a cause and effect. producers start by asking the first question, which is what s the status? what are you charged with? convicted of? what did you do to get in here? then they ask the more important meaningful question. what happened? donald coleman s answer was concise. me getting in trouble, just being in and out of jail, getting in trouble. i was working for the military making good money. i screwed it up because i wanted to make fast money selling dope and gang banging. now i m in here. coleman s story was not unlike that of many inmates, but what happened to him in jail less than two weeks before his release serves as a true cautionary tale. it all started the day we met him at
he keeps me cool. i m real hot headed. quick snap on somebody. real quick. no problem, don t worry about nothing. he keep me out of it, cool. despite the fact there was sort of a mentor relationship, you could see that cousin ice couldn t totally impart all that he had learned in his years on to dooker. a new generation. check all you old folks out. fisher told us that gang-banging has changed since he was thompson s age. we just wanted to protect our side of town. you know what i mean? i mean, none of us owned nothing over there. but we called it our side of town. when i was 18 there wasn t you heard about somebody getting shot maybe once every three months. now, it s every day somebody s getting shot. dinell thompson can attest to that. he s been shot eight times. i ain t scared of death, though. death s scared of me.
the banging, guns, the money, the killing, all of it. to thompson s cellmate and some time mentor, wasting such potential is the real crime. and that s something titus fisher was determined to see not happen to his own children. he moved his family from california to arizona to help them avoid a future of gang-banging i ve seen my son gettg ready to start when he was only 14. so, i hurried up and got him out of there. that s another reason i moved out here. when we moved out here, i said, you can be whatever you want to be. you know what i mean? now he s straight-as. he hasn t got a b in, like, three years. he s straight-as. he s on the football team. star football player. so, he s on his way to do something. you know what i mean? thompson also has three children. but their future seems less certain. i had a son. he go bang what daddy bang. really, is that what you want for him? he ll have the same life. but if he choose the other way, hey, go ahead.
i haven t actually went out gang-banging, shooting at people just because they re from across town and all that. i haven t done that in years. but i still hang with my homeboys. and if something happened to one of my close, close ones i m going to have to help retaliate. you know what i mean? dooker loc, on the other hand, was still caught up in the game. he was still infatuated with this romantic notion of being a gangster. what do you want for your future? money, power, respect. top of the food chain. everybody s like that when they re young. they don t see the big picture. they can t see it yet. you know what i mean? it s just whatever happens happens. having been in and out of state prisons in california, fisher sought to share his wisdom with the younger thompson. i ve got him out of situations in here, he was just reacting to [ bleep ]. i m telling him you can t always just react. you know what i mean? you got to slow down and think about something real quick. he th