i wasn t a bit surprised when i come to work when they called me and said hey, they just found drugs on cherry down in seg. didn t surprise me. he s a mule. the information i ve gathered so far was, cherry was supposed to get information later on in the day as to what to do with them, who he was supposed to give them to. he was going to make $300 just holding them. cherry s bust was not a surprise to lieutenant fox, nor was the fact that his son was the officer that found the drugs. kyle has been here now for, what, four years? always done a real good job. he finds shanks all the time, and i don t know whether it s because of the years of me talking to him about what goes on out here that when he stepped in here, he just immediately he just does a good job. that s like my first big drug bust. i ve found a lot of shanks, a lot of tattoo guns, a lot of tobacco, but i ve never found
[ bleep ] two hours. after that, what s going to happen next? still do the same [ bleep ]. come on, man. come on, man. [ bleep ]. ain t going to stop nobody. for a couple hours. yeah, but not for life. i m still going to do it again. and keep doing it. just passing time. coming up this is one of the spots we use to hide the tattoo guns. the ingenious techniques inmates use to conceal the tattoo paraphernalia. that s how we do it. and? she ll roll it up into a ball and throw it underneath, which actually rolls into the other cell. erica haywood s disturbing behavior and the impact it has on her neighbors. went right under my bed. oh, man. coming up on look! famous people!
asked him what it is and he just pulled it out. opened it up, tattoo. a catch like this is pretty rare. was a good catch, man. right here is from inside of a light, a staple. this right here is the same copper wire that came from the inside of the hair clippers and two checkers pieces to hold it together. these guys know what they re doing. another inmate marcelo cardenas is not a tattoo artist but has gained a reputation for crafting high-quality jailhouse tattoo guns. i rent the gun or i sell it, it goes for $30, $25 or $30 in this county right here. because he is due to leave the jail any day now to start his six-year prison sentence for assault, cardenas agreed to demonstrate how it s done. right now it s not like i really care about it. if they wrote me up, i m going to leave before they do punishment or the reprimand on me. cardenas starts with some
they will hide it on top of the light fixture, under the stairs as well, in a toilet. they will find any little small opening that they know you won t find and they will put all of their contraband in there. hiding anything in jail where every area is subject to inspection at any time takes determination and creativity. just ask marcelo cardenas. this is one of the spots that we use for to hide the guns, the tattoo guns. i m just right now making one. cardenas, who is sharing his secrets because he is soon leaving for state prison and says he is not worried about punishment, has a clever technique for hiding his homemade tattoo guns. the process begins with another piece of contraband. a box hinge. this is my tool that we use to break the wall in by literally scratching it.
wire scavenged from some electric hair clippers. we rub the wire like this here. he winds the wire around the screw to make a crude electromagnet but he also needs a metallic magnet which is pilfered from a phone or intercom speaker. the magnet, when you put it on top of the screw, it bounces with the cycles of the electricity. you bounce like this. the needle is made from a staple attached to a q-tip shaft. and then you use soft string to tie it up. that s pretty much how you do it. the magnet when it bounce, it push the needle. i don t invent it but i learn it. several other bexar county inmates also make their own tattoo guns or rigs, and the source of their knowledge could very well spring from just one man, jose hidalgo. early on in his incarceration he was teaching the other inmates how to create these tattoo rigs, how to do the tattoos, and as a result they