My name is Vidal Guzman. I was on Rikers when
I was 16
and this is how crime works.
The nicknames that it has the Bridge of Pain,
Gladiator School, Torture Island. The name speaks for itself.
85% of people who are on Rikers Island or just
awaiting trial.
That means that majority of people there
are still waiting to be sentenced or maybe even get
released.
I work for the close Rikers campaign.
We heard the stories, people waiting to be seen for
10 years.
When I got locked up,
I got locked up for a robbery.
You know, I got picked up one morning.
It was like 5 in the morning.
And you know, my, my,
my family didn't know their rights.
They put the cuffs on you.
They put you on the bus
and all you see is like
this bridge and you're like,
where are you? Where are we going?
We're going to Rikers, you know,
we're going to gladiator school.
C70 Four is on the island itself,
The facility that kept the 19 to 24,
that age bracket everybody was facing hard time three years,
four years when we were supposed to be thinking about
prom
or, you know, like thinking about picking out our suits,
you know, or or picking out what colleges we going
to go to.
That wasn't it.
I never knew that. You know,
when I got incarcerated, that Rikers Island existed for 16
year olds.
At that time, in 2007,
there was so many youth
there was overpopulated with youth.
I had to go in there and and and and
and be the most violent so I can be able
to survive.
And I learned that my first day
when a youth put a spoon in my oatmeal in
the morning
and what the kids told me was that you were
supposed to swing at him.
And I was like, yeah,
it's like, yeah, man, you don't let nobody disrespect you.
Next time. I said, you know what,
let me corner him and tell him how I feel.
And we felt sometimes some type of way,
You know, we we do what we have to do.
And I started slowly learning that
if I want to live and survive here,
then I I really got to lose a piece of
myself
that I try to hold on right the the human
side of myself.
That started learning about the program.
We always knew what correctional officers were the one that
was up keeping the the program.
They could say, well we can't put our hands on
the youth.
So we needed to figure out how to keep them
under control.
Basically, it's this like power structure
on on Rikers Island that had people that fight for
these positions to to be good,
you know, to not worry about somebody taking their stuff
but not worry about somebody attacking them.
You'll get more calls to call his family,
right? Because they take calls from people.
If you're not in that power rank,
that means you're not having cereal or you're not even
having a muffin.
The commissaries get taken away,
their sneakers get taken away,
you know, so I had to come in these in
these
areas and and be the most violent,
right. Grab ATV tractor that people attack someone first right.
Like you know get jumped first.
Some fights I lost. Some fights I won.
But number one thing I always learn in jail.
In prison, as long as you never turn down that
fight,
you good. Even when I was 16,
like the Fight Club was real,
right? Like you if you want to get in the
team you got or you want it,
you want the housing complex you have to fight them.
So sometimes the CEO might fall asleep and not pay
attention.
yo-yo, the CEO sleeping yo,
go ahead go fight. You go right in the back,
back the back of the dorm and people fight it
out.
It'd been stuff like that.
And in Rikers Island like when I was in C70
Four,
there was always this little one like
corner from where the where the cameras at one time
wasn't able to see things like that happen now right
like you know there's still Fight Night on Rikers,
right. They know that this correct you officer
might turn a blind eye
or they might not even do anything at all.
I mean, Rikers is falling apart,
so it's easy to make a weapon out of anything,
breaking a piece of the heater,
even razors, right? Like a lot of times people get
razors to shave and that means somebody got that razor.
Weapons are usually never really brung in.
They usually made inside the facilities
correctional officers. They knew when
1617 year olds, they couldn't put their hands on them.
So this Fight Club was the way for them to
in some way
of whole power, right? You know,
like I would have black eyes and correctional officers won't
even say anything.
They'll say. OK. You OK?
Did you win? Did you swing?
Did you duck? It's like make fun of you.
Like we knew what correctional officer was blood was crip,
you know, we we knew who what,
what, what, what, what housing complex they favor the most.
We knew all that.
You know when people don't got nothing to provide.
Like the struggle get hard tattoos does happen in there.
It's dangerous. But people got to hustle.
That's the black market, you know,
selling cigarettes, selling T-shirts. People figure out their way.
I remember one time somebody even started business of selling
shebangs.
It's like these chips on Rikers Island.
I was like super good.
This person was buying these chips,
created an online account and sold them for like
$3 more because nobody could buy these chips.
But everybody love these shebang chips.
You use the money from whoever sent you,
or if you're like working for 12 cents
$0.16, you use whatever you can to to go to
commissary.
People start tapping into some of the skills that they
probably never used outside and use inside,
right? Like I remember I used to write at the
time when I with my loved one at the time
I'll,
I'll have them design the
the envelope to look cool,
right? Like have some like Mickey Mouse or something like
that or something like really like cartooning.
And I'll pay somebody like 2 suits or three suits
to do it.
But then you have an individual go more deep into
the,
you know, the underground or the black market
from there trying to bring drugs in,
right? They're boofing basically. Boofing means like,
you're literally throwing the whole drugs.
And
yeah, so there's always like stories of even correctional officers
bringing stuff in,
right? Like, even when Rikers was close to visitors,
how was weapons and drugs still getting in there,
right?
I remember when that you know
we will call it the red alarm,
right. You're here all the time because of the youth.
Basically that means the turtles.
The turtles are correctional officers with extra gears their their
job is to de escalate
but that never happens. Every time I have dealt with
the turtles have been just getting a stick and start
hand every anyone majority of the correctional officers on Rikers
was black and brown. So,
like, I was really expecting
a lot of them to understand or struggle
and to also advocate for us for a better way
to not just
to not be in a facility,
but return back to society.
Some of the things that was done on Rikers when
I was younger or even now was done by correctional
officers.
Like, they'll put Crips in blood houses for what?
Like, not every single correctional officer was like that,
right? Like, I had a correctional officer who was actually
pretty good.
His name was like, right,
He was a former. I think he's still a Black
Panther.
When he came into the space,
he came with hair grease that you're not supposed to
have some comb to comb out.
Your hair smell good, so you so the dormitory is
the dorm smell good.
So there there, there were people who was trying to
do the inside work.
They gave too much
oversee for correctional officers for Rikers Island
that they haven't gave the opportunity for
therapist counselors to be in in these spaces.
You're hearing stories of people who are correctional officers getting
mental health problems because of the issues that they had
to deal with trying to survive on Rikers.
And that happens, right? It's it's stressful.
You know, they go home,
but they're locked up with us.
I had to go through that same process again at
19 years old.
When I was incarcerated in 19,
I was there for a robbery.
At that time, I was more gang related,
right? I was a member of the Bloods.
I became a part of the Bloods when I was
in the streets.
People around me was already a part of the gang,
right? I got friends, close friends of mines.
So I didn't feel like I was joining
you, you know, like how the Bloods or you know
how I wasn't joining the Blood.
I was joining the my community.
Who was who was Bloods,
right. It's different from the West Coast and the East
Coast,
right. The Bloods in the East Coast grew from Rikers
at that time,
early 80s, nineties. It was a lot of Lion X
gangs and a lot of blacks who felt that,
you know, we needed a new unite.
A lot of different gangs grew there.
The Three and Thalios, they call themselves the Patrias.
I remember when they was called DDP.
Dominicans don't play after they changed their name.
They grew from Rikers Island.
They are people who turn blood or a part of
a gang while they're in prison or jail.
And for me it was a lot different because I
was already a part of the Bloods when I was
went before I came into Rikers Island.
It was so much politics.
They keep the Crips out of certain in certain housing
complex away from us.
We don't have the same lunch.
Maybe there's internal gang beef
in in the facility at that time we had too
many gang members.
We had the Bloods, the Latin Kings and three Thalios.
And for me, it was like,
yo, man, let's figure out how we can organize these
phones so we don't get into any violence.
I've been in environments where people fight off that phone.
You'll go up to them and say,
yo, I want your phone like I want your time
slot and people will fight it out.
For a phone slot
always rules that you got to follow.
Make sure you work out every day.
Make sure you know you're in taking your lessons right.
The brotherhood of being around the Bloods.
Don't mess with someone in the LGBT community.
Don't be a rat. There's always those codes basically in
almost every gang,
right? The way that they might say certain things to
say something right.
Majority of the letters that sent to Rikers Island are
read,
so they got to write whatever they mean in coding.
So they're always been like kites letters.
Let's say they're trying to get the information to someone
who might be close to them and they'll wrap up
the paper and make like a square for it to
be able to slide between doors.
Because I speak Spanish, I will always be able to
relay messages faster because I knew Spanish and I was
able to if if I knew harm was coming,
I was able to relay that fast
to anyone. But like wars can can happen between gangs
and
it can just like
change. Like a a letter will go out at
what time and what time needs to happen and everybody
got to move,
everybody got to move, basically mean that harm has to
happen and it's a fight throughout the whole facility.
I think a lot of people
don't really know what is Rikers,
right? Like they think Rikers is a prison,
but Rikers is a collective of facilities that are not
just on the island itself,
but facilities that are close to the courtroom in Manhattan,
Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. I think people don't understand how
old Rikers Island is.
Rikers is a close to
160 years that has been oppressing black and brown communities.
Richard Rikers was a part of the kidnapped club.
It was a judge who broke laws again and again
by selling black people was not enslaved back into the
slavery in the 1930s.
It was built by incarcerated people to extend Rikers.
You know majority of Rikers Island is built on trash.
You know when it rains,
I mean is it rains in the facility you smell
this like eggy disgusting smell all the time.
You know you can't drink the water there.
You're fighting rats and roaches all the time.
I never seen collective of detainees get together to get
a mouse out this out of the out
of the sale housing complex.
You know we heard of people dying,
you know get heat strokes,
you know because of how Rikers Island doesn't have air
conditions.
I remember like a lot of times,
they'll turn a fan on and a regular fan
and let it blow all the way down the chair
and everybody, all of us would be like in our
cells
on the ground, no shirts in our boxes,
to at least feel the coldness of the floor so
we can at least cool down and you're in a
cell where you're like,
I can't drink this water.
I got to keep throwing water in my face.
There's dormitories in cell areas,
so in the cell area would just be me.
So cells only have one individuals.
There is different from different jails or prisons.
On Rikers Island, you know,
you had at least like 20 people,
like, you know, one per cell.
In dormitory, it'll be like 50 people.
And dormitory would be a little bit scary because the
bed will be an
arm's length of how close they was.
If you want to wake up somebody,
you can just reach out your hand and just like
tap them.
When it talks about being in crowded spaces,
the dormitory was one of the most horrible place to
be at
the population in 2020 was at 4000,
now today is at 6000.
Majority of those times when you see a collective of
detainees together is when they're probably going to court or
when they're on the visiting floor or maybe for,
you know, medical.
When I was doing my second bid when I was
19,
I actually came back to Rikers to try to get
my cases
to run. Collectively they was running wild 3 1/2 year
for the case,
the robbery, and then a year and a half for
violating
probation. At that time my brother was a was a
a member of the Three and Thalios.
And at that time when I went back into Riker,
there was this beef between the Bloods and the Three
and Thalios and I found out he was in a
different dormitory.
But I found out that they was that they say
money on my brother's head to harm him
from the Bloods. And I found out
they was having a meeting at a lower library.
And I was like, let me go in there and
tell them that's not going to happen.
When I sat down, I said that is my blood
brother.
They got talking about trying to put hands on.
They was mad because he didn't want to give some
tobacco to the Bloods.
That was the moment where I was like
I felt that the change
came right that gangs are,
you know sometimes they they they put family against family.
And I was like, Nope,
nobody better not touch him.
And if they if any guys does get in the
situation it should be a one-on-one.
One day, you know I woke up the next morning,
I was like in the dormitory.
My brother was in the same dorm as me.
It was so sad
not because I I was happy to see my brother.
It was sad because my mom's had both of her
sons
in prison,
one doing 16, the other one,
you know, trying to finish their five years.
It was that moment in my life where I was
just kind of looked and I was like,
yo, it got to be a different life for me.
That meant that I I decided to drop being blood
advocates from the city, are just tired of
of hearing stories of of how much Rikers has slowly
been killing our people's spiritually,
mentally and physically.
And it hasn't changed. The only thing that changes,
that the youth are not on Rikers.
Rikers has, has became more violent.
I turn on the TV like everyone else and I
hear about somebody losing their life on Rikers.
I tear up just like them,
you know, I tear up for their family,
'cause I know that,
you know, like, I could have been one of them.
A lot of people who are going to Rikers Island
are individuals who have mental health problems,
who are poor, can be able to pay their bill,
and and our individuals who are coming from communities poor,
over incarcerated and over police.
When you say you survive Rikers,
that's a real thing, right?
Because
even now, like since 2020,
close to 30 signed death.
I mean, it's going to keep going up.
In 2020, some of the legislation was introduced and passed
was something called the Khalif law.
Khalif Browder was one of the most knowledgeable individual who
experienced Rikers as a youth and started speaking about it.
I just got lost with Khalif Browder because
I think a lot of times when we think about
Khalif Browder
and everything that he kind of went through getting abused
by correctional officers and
that one hit hit us the most.
The khalif law really got the population from where it
was 20,000 to the 4000.
But a lot of that right now that has been
growing is because of broken window policing,
right. I I think because of the khalif law
when we went up to Albany passing Speedy Trial Discovery
Law and bail reform.
Bail reform, the bail reform issue was you have people
in there,
they was in there for maybe like shoplifting and they'll
be like
$5000. They'll keep pushing his court date back
and they'll use the the method of keeping you incarcerated
on Rikers until you give up and and and and
cop out right or take whatever they trying to give
you. And that's a tactic that also gets used.
What we also seeing is like the population is growing
because resources are declining.
The resources that are were needed to fully provide Rikers
Island to the next chapter of closing.
Was not happening.
I think what sent me to the path on Rikers
is it's poverty.
When people don't understand how poverty impacts you.
You know, when I was very young,
me and my mom was homeless.
I think for me, I don't.
I get traumatized knowing that right?
And and and experiencing that with my
mom's And then, you know,
growing up, you know, seeing people around you,
being in the street, eight or nine years old.
I was already out in the neighborhood trying to figure
stuff out And you know,
1415 years old, started getting harassed by police.
Even being so young,
you know, walking down the street from middle school,
from elementary, imagine you getting thrown on a wall by
this big police officer who's like 6,
three, 200 lbs. And you're just a kid.
My brother was incarcerated. He was incarcerated for 16 years,
and my uncle was incarcerated for around
7 1/2 years. But it's not just,
you know, I got most of my family been locked
up all the time.
And I grew up to be a man too early.
Being tried as a adult
meant that the judge doesn't see me as a youth,
that it doesn't matter if I was
16120 lbs, that he sees me
as someone who's a grown man.
I think I regret. Just
like the violence, right? Like it's hard,
right? Because you leave these spaces,
you still got to look yourself in the mirror.
I'm 32. I've been in a system for 14 years.
What I mean in a system that means in jail,
prison, under some type of parole,
probation, supervision. And you know,
I'm 32, so this past two years been my,
my first two years to being free.
It feels really good
not reporting to anyone or,
you know, being able to
to know I'm done. You know,
in 2015 when I came home,
I worked for Drive Change,
basically a food truck that it hired formerly incarcerated youth.
They got involved in a lot of social justice work,
right? They help people out to also figure out what
do they want to do further in their,
you know, in their,
in their life. And for them,
they noticed that I was always a good speaker like
you need to get involved with campaigns.
So the campaign is called The Campaign to close Rikers.
They're led by organization called Freedom Agenda and their goal
was basically to keep continuing the organizing into it finally
closes
the city has closed some facilities on Rikers and facilities
are part of Rikers
like the Brooklyn facility C70 Four.
I can't wait till 2027 because I'll be right there,
right next to the bridge,
trying to collect the brick.