Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I'm Alex Stone, former military service member and law enforcement officer, now CEO of Echelon Protected Services, one of the fastest growing private security firms on the west coast. And this is ride along, where our guests and I witness firsthand the issues affecting our community.
You, I believe our proven method of enacting meaningful change through compassion and understanding is the best way to make our streets a safer place and truly achieve security through the community.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: CEO of Community action PDX.
And I'm here for the ride along.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Alex Stone here.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Welcome back to the ride along. Our guest today is JJ Arevalo, JJ Revolo, longtime friend, and we'll go into his background here in a bit. But, JJ, how's your day going today?
[00:01:28] Speaker B: It's going great, man. Just got up and moving. Came in here to see what we can do today to try to help the homeless and try to get a feel about what's going on in Portland.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: That's great. Before we get into that, let's talk about your background a little.
Know, I always like talking about personal stories. Why don't you tell the audience about the time I was sneaking in and out of your window? Because I was weird. Teenagers growing up together in high school, I was homeless. You kind of took me in. Why don't you tell about that story a little bit?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
There was a time in my life where around 1615 years old, I no longer lived with my father.
[00:02:09] Speaker C: Moved out.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: We were having conflicts. I don't want to really talk about that. But moved in with my mother, and my mother didn't know what to do with me. I was in a street gang at the time, selling dope, running around, causing trouble any way I could.
And me and you became pretty close through some different things that we had been through in that same scene. And you were going through some stuff and you needed a place to crash.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: I did, yeah, for sure.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: It's a funny story. My mom didn't know that he knew Spanish and knew he was walking into the. Coming in and out through the window. And she said in Spanish, she's like, get that freaking kid out of my house.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: And he comes out in the morning, my mom's making breakfast, and he tells her in Spanish, like, hey, I mean no disrespect. I'll leave here. My mom was mortified because she was like, I. Miguel, I didn't know he knew Spanish.
It was hilarious, man. But she still tells that story to this day. I mean, we were rough, man.
We did what we had to do to survive.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Kind of go into that. Explain. So JJ's, when we talk about our backgrounds and people's backgrounds, we use the term that life. Right. And when we talk about that life, we're talking about what would be considered a criminal activity, something that would be going on on a daily basis, and it's connected to a group of people that would be considered a gang or a cartel, a syndicate. Right. And so both of us kind of grew up in that life, and you became a very central character. And we're not going to name names. We're not going to get into that, but kind of just go into the background of how you got into that life.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I will.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: And kind of your role.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So, basically, my freshman year in high school, I've always been really cool with anybody around me. I have family members that are black.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Mexican, white, you name it. I sang r and B growing up. So a lot of people in my community, mexican american community, they didn't like that I sang r and B. They didn't like that I was cool with a lot of black folks and that I have family that was black. They just had an issue with it. And I say that because there was a riot at my high school, Sam Houston High school, Houston, Texas. Yeah. And.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: It was the Selena riots. I don't know if y'all remember who Selena was, but Selena was, at the time, the most famous mexican american pop.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Singer, artist, pop Tejano, and huge riot. And after that riot, I basically, I got kicked out of my high, know, wrong place at the wrong time. And we can go into those stories.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Well, you started the riot.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: That's what they say.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Maybe in a different episode, we'll get back to that.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: But that's what they say.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Selena was murdered by her manager. And so there was a tribute, really, a week of mourning.
It was Cinco de Mayo. And the entire hispanic community, especially the mexican american community, was grieving. Everyone in Texas, you dress up like it's called texan or tejano style, where you wear your cowboy get up and your buckles and these things. And so it was a day for that to be respected. But there were some hecklers in the crowd. Let's say it this way, there were non Hispanics that were heckling the people doing the shows.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: So the way that this really went down, and, I mean, we probably should go into detail at another point, but I was in the black history program that year in February, and I got a lot of flak because I'm mexican, and I was in the black history program singing r and b music. And during that era, there was tension between blacks and his. This is the least. And I got a lot of flak from that. But I told my friends, like, hey, man, these are good dudes. These are good people. Don't trip, man. And it was peaceful. I got flak, but there was no flak during the black history program. But in Cinco de Mayo a couple months later, they were doing a Selena tribute and some guys in the crowd who, you know, were hopping up and shouting, easy.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: That's funny.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Easy. E in the middle of the Selena lady singing songs, you know. And it just turned out that the person they were disrespecting was one of the ogs of a gang called Northside Aztec's girlfriend. And that was very bad. And so we had one program and then they would have lunch and then we'd have another program. We had three programs throughout the day because our freshman group was 2500 dudes.
In the middle of the break, I went to all of my friends that I was involved in the black history program with, and I was like, hey, man, please show some respect during this time because I can't control what's going to happen with these dudes. I don't have pool with them like that. And those guys were like, I don't give a fuck. They were like, I'm going to do what I want to do. Screw you and Selena, you know what I'm saying? And I was like, all right, man. I got no control about what happens. And so it was this huge rigmarole. They tried to separate us from each other. Somehow one group ended up seeing another group, and it just so happened that I was in the front of one group and a guy that stole my CD player earlier that day was in the front of the other group. And I just wanted my CD player back. And I threw the punch. And once that happened, I'll never forget, like a wall of fists. That's right. And I was like, I got kicked out of that high.
So I got sent to another high school called Reagan High School at the time. It's been changed to like a technology high school now.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know that.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: It's like heights technology high school. Really?
[00:08:16] Speaker A: They got rid of Reagan?
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And when I was there, I tried to change my Persona. I came in there, I was like, I'm just going to be like a guy that goes to school. But people had already heard about me there.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: They knew about the JJ.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Well, they knew that.
There's so much stories here. They knew that I was a fighter.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Well, we used to box back in the day. We would skip school to just train.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Boxing, or we would fight anybody who wanted.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: We would wrestle, you know what I'm saying?
[00:08:53] Speaker B: And we'd been fighting since we were kids, so it was just kind of something we did, basically, when I started going there, there was a gang called mexican power. And they were like, we don't like you.
I was like, why? And they just didn't like me.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: Dude, you weren't.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: I mean, I listened to, like, soundgarden.
I was like, a mexican american man. I didn't speak fluent Spanish. I hung out with black folks. They didn't like that, you know what I'm saying?
So I had a really beautiful girlfriend, and there was one guy in that gang that wanted her so bad, and so we couldn't even walk down the hallway without them trying some smack. And so I squared off with one of the guys alone. I was going to the restroom. I saw him in the hallway, and I went up to him, and I was like, hey, if you got some beef, we could settle it right now. We can just box it right now and be done with it. Screw your friends.
[00:09:47] Speaker C: What's up?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: He's like, no, man, I ain't got no trouble.
And then later that day, oh, he had trouble. They tried to jump me.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: When he found him, his friend, definitely there was some trouble there.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: And I used to carry these metal handpacks, like, metal pieces of weight that I put in each hand. I carry two knives because where I was from, I mean, you had to. You were fighting. Something was going down.
And long story short, I had them follow me to an area where there was a small entranceway and then a stairway so I could single them out. Where then instead of having.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Funnel in.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Instead of having.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: So they can't exactly angle off around me.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Exactly. So instead of having four abreasts, they could only come in two abreasts. And I was dropping them, dropping them.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Bop, bop.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: And I'll never forget, I started getting tired, and I was like, that's it. I'm going to get smoked. These guys are going to mess me up. And I was like, all right, screw it. And I just went ahead and shelled in to try to be like, all right, I'm about to take this ass, woman. And I'll never forget, same thing. Like in the ride, all these hands and legs came over me and get off my homeboy, bitch.
And what had happened was, while I was there, I had met a guy there named Looney. Lewis Benya. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind me mentioning his name and we're still friends.
And he had been taking me around, introducing me to guys and legitimately this may sound funny but we were getting interviewed for gang positions.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: In this stage of that development, in that life you would be a hangaround.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: In this stage I wasn't even affiliated yet.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: You weren't associated?
[00:11:29] Speaker B: No.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: When you grow up in this type of neighborhood, you know that there's clicks.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah, there's clicks. Well everybody, you know the clicks and you know their areas. Houston is an interesting city because they call it open city. It's huge if you're 14 and your friend has a car.
We tried out for a lot of different gangs like we went to at the time. There was brown pride, there was mexican power, there was all these different htown browns, seven ng seven, baby blue kips, rolling 60, all these different clicks. And we went and we actually talked to every og they wanted us in. We were big guys, we were smart.
And one of those gangs was called seven ng seven and it was part of the Reagan neighborhood and they fought with this mexican power gang often. And so because I'd already talked to them before and they liked me, I talked about unity. This really was my thing. I just got through. I ate, slept and breathed the movie. Blood in, blood out, right?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: You find yourself in a situation, you already got kicked out of one high school, you're in another high school, roughly the area northside.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: And I'd like to add a caveat. My father also told me if there was a time when he was like, if you get into a fight, you already know what's going to happen when you get home.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, you get into a bigger fight.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: When I got home, yeah, that's how it was. But by this time something had happened where, as you can see, the scar on my face, I got hit, busted my scar open, busted my face open, I mean, bleeding everywhere. Nurse. My father comes and they're like, hey, we're going to have to suspend both your son and this guy. My dad was like, what? I've been telling him since he was a kid not to fight. And so he allowed this kid to hit him and you're going to suspend him anyway?
[00:13:30] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: And he's like, they're like, yeah, that's.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: What they did back in the day. So he was like, well, to stop. They don't know who's in gangs so they're afraid of retaliation.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: So my dad was like, well you all fucked up, and he looked at me and he's like, from now on, if anyone looks at you cross eyed, I want you to kick the living shit out of them. And if you don't, you know what's going to happen to you when you come home. So after that, when the riot went down, I was quick to get. I had been caged and granted today, you know me, I've evolved.
God, and my relationship with God and man has gotten me out of that old mentality, but it still looms. But during that time, I was a monster.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Man. Before we talk about your transition out of that life, I want to dig in deeper. So you get jumped.
They court you. You start to court other groups.
What in your mind was the determining factor? That said, I'm going to get in this clique guy right here.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: I wanted to be with the strongest, okay? I wanted to be with the people who were the most fearsome. I wanted to be with the people who had the most resources, connections. I was intelligent.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: And I'm asking this because a lot of the people we engage on the street, they're making this. It's the same decision making process occurring on the streets of major cities, especially in the homeless community.
They will click together to protect each other.
That's really important to get into. So you end up getting down.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Well, let me explain that. What happened. So we went to every single group, and we legitimately interviewed six different gangs. And then we finally met with the Htown Roland 60 crips, which we were told at the time we were allowed to be a chapter of Roland 60s. But now, after the fact, I realize that they just like the name, you know what I'm saying? They weren't legit.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: They weren't paying national dues, and they're not a part.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: They weren't from Compton, they weren't from that section, that place. And if you're going to be a real 60, you're from there.
They were set claimers, you know what I'm saying? But they were legit. They were violent, but they weren't real rolling 60 crips.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: They called themselves that. And this, of course, is the same in Portland.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: People start claiming sets, and then usually what happens is if they become legit enough, that set will reach out and say, you're not paying dues to that.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Effect, or in other ways back then that I remember that it used to go down was if an OG came from Compton and was from that area, and they would, you know, we'll allow you to use the name, and that's what we told. That's what I was know was how we were able to carry that name, which to me was a cool name at the time, you know what I'm saying?
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Of course, bro.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Everybody was a crip. I was young. This was in the early mid 90s.
But what really moved me to these people was they were big, they were strong, they were organized. They were already fighting with MS 13. Real violence.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: This is when MS 13 was just getting on the scene, on the scene.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: And there was like, really the first.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: 2Nd year they were really in the States, right?
[00:16:52] Speaker B: And so, I mean, they had already gone through many shootouts and things like that. And when I went and saw them, they were like, hey, this is our men. These are the guns we got. We have connections with the cartels, so you can start making money. But it wasn't spoke about in that way.
It was like you just knew, you know what I mean?
It wasn't like, hey, look at my guns, and we can connect you with this. And they didn't have like a five point program for success. It was just crime.
So I decided, me and Looney decided to get clicked in, you know what I'm saying? We did a couple of minutes getting clicked in. They told me at the beginning, like, hey, if you don't fight back.
[00:17:39] Speaker C: They'Re.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Going to hit you as hard.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: They say, if you don't fight back, we won't mess up your face.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: It's only 30 seconds.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: Yeah, you fight back.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: That's like, oh, my brother. It was like two minutes, and they hit every part of me. They destroyed my face. At first, they were going to call me two faced because my face was so messed up. But we went with big six, you know what I'm saying? But after I got clicked in, things changed.
I was riding around with one of the guys.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: You're a guy, you're taking orders at.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: That point, at this time? Well, I was fortunate because the people who just recruited me were the two main ogs, and they saw talent.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: They're scouting you.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: They recruited you. So at one point you become an enforcer.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: At what point does that happen?
[00:18:27] Speaker B: That happens a little bit after I kind of prove that down. So the first thing that really happened that I feel like was like it could have gone real south. Was the leader of that gang, mexican power. At the time, his name was Chucky, and he didn't really have beef with me, but it was his brother. He really had beef with me. But one time, Chucky was with his girlfriend and his mother and his daughter, I think. And they were near the galleria.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: That mobile right there, it's still there.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: You know what I'm saying?
[00:18:57] Speaker A: This is a mall and Galleria Houston mobile is a really nice area. People would go there, shop.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: This is the 90s when we still did that.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: You couldn't get a girlfriend's phone number unless you.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Unless you were at the.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: So we were out there chilling, and we pulled up to that mobile to gas up. It was myself, smiley, kid D, Looney. So your mean. And two of them were very dangerous people at the very, very dangerous people. And so when I pulled up and I saw, and Looney and me saw him, looney was like, oh, Jay. What? It's Chucky. And I was like, oh, snap. And immediately, Smiley gets his piece. He cocks it. He's ready. Kid d's ready. They're going to like, we're just going to smoke him. You know what I'm saying? And I was on, hold on, dog. Hold on. I can make this work. Hold on. So I get out of the car, I go up to Chucky, and I was like, hey, bro. I was like, you see who's behind me? And they're like. And he's like, oh. He's like, he's seen a ghost. He knows he's caught slipping, right? And I'm like, here's the deal, bro. I don't think that we should be fighting. We're Rasa. We shouldn't be fighting each other.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Rasa means race. We're one blood, right?
[00:20:05] Speaker B: We should be building. I get teared up sometimes when I think about this stuff, man. We should be building each other.
And he was like, you're right, man. He's like, you're right. I was like, look, dude, I'm going to give you a pass, but if you ever see me out, I expect the same respect. And he was like, that's what's up, dog. That's what's up. So we left a couple of days go by. At the time, I was dating a girl way older than me. Her name was Carmen. She was like 24. I was like 16.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: We'll take that out.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it is what it is. My father was consent. He consented. It was okay at the time, I think it was okay.
But long story short, we go to Gulfgate mall, and it still exists 40 years later.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Different, completely side of town, really hood.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: More a hood side of town.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Very hood.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: But definitely not the north side.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Very latino. Yeah, that's what's up. And at the time, I was from the north side, but like I said, open city. We're all over the place. And I'm walking through Gulfgate mall with my girlfriend, and I look up, and what do I see? Chucky, his brother, like, four other dudes.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what's up.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: And they're walking towards me, man. And I'm like, oh, shit, it's about to go down. So I tell my girlfriend, hey, if anything goes down, just go to your car. I go, and I reach in my pockets for my handpacks like I always carried on me. I'm like, either we're going to thump or I'm going to slice them. So I start walking up to him, and Chucky does this to them. Like, chill comes up to me.
It makes me tear up. And he's like, I remember what you did. And he's like, you're right, bro. We are Rasa. You ain't got nothing coming from this way.
That's what's up, dog. And he left. I mean, I tear up because I'm like, I hope and pray that that happens all over the world, where people realize that they don't have to fight like that over stupid, trivial shit.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Long story short, later we go to the high school, and the principals like, y'all's clicks. Because that didn't happen there. I got my pass, but it didn't stop.
As I was at that school. When we drive around, we didn't have a lot of dudes there. They had a lot of dudes there. They'd come up to our cars, hit the cars. So finally, the principal was like, we need to get these two leaders together and get them to squash this stuff. So this is when I started stepping into OG territory. It only took a year or so before I started to becoming an OG. I never claimed it, but they were saying, that's what you are. I didn't want to claim it because.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: If I, other people were naturally seeing your leadership and started following your decision.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Making, and they liked me. They loved me, actually. My ogs became my family. I ended up moving in with one of them. You know what I'm saying? And their family, and their family became my family. So, long story short, over time, that ended up squashing, because we went and the principal pulled us both in there, and both Chucky and I agreed, and we shook hands, and we're like, we're not going to do this no more. And that was it. And so that gave me some pull, some authority, because they saw that, you know, conflict resolution, all these different skill sets. So we still went around, know, beefing with people. But there was an era where they took that perspective, and I think this is how I became more of an OG, where they took that mentality and they were like, okay, all the crip gangs in Houston, we're going to unite them. And so there was an era at that time where black disciples was the largest gang.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: And then the next largest gang was Htown Crips, which was united rolling 60s, baby blue crips, crypt cartels, Houston crypt cartel. All the Houston crip gangs became one unified unit, which made us pretty strong.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Several, at least 1000 maybe, according to.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: The Houston Chronicle ad or a thing that they.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: The newspaper.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Right.
BD was like at 7000, and we were at like a five, so we were pretty big. You know what I'm saying?
[00:24:10] Speaker A: At this point, when you get to that level of organization, it's about making money. It's all about making money because that's why gangs exist and making allies.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: To take over territory.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: For power.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Yeah. For power.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: So at what point does it become, hey, I did this to protect myself. To now I'm just basically in a cartel. I'm in an organization that exists to make money. Get money and take territory.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Get money by any means necessary. I think what happened was whenever my father and I had a falling out and I moved out on my own, he got tired of me being thuggish, ruggish, and was like, you got to go. That's right. He got to a point where he couldn't really hit me anymore because I was becoming big and strong. He's like, you got to go if you're not going to go to school and do the right things. So I moved in with my og, his mom. Hopefully one day we can get him up here. He's my brother. I love him.
And that's when things started changing, because at that point, I no longer felt like, oh, I'm just a gang member in a gang. This is my family. Yeah, this is my family.
They feed me. They clothe me. That's right. They tell me that I'm loved. They tell me things that my father or my mother never told me. Hey, man, you're handsome. Stand up straight. Hey, man.
They raised me. Blue raised me, and his family raised me.
And when that happened, that's when I became the enforcer. That's when I became like. Because I followed blue everywhere. And if you just looked at him wrong, I would try to smash you. There were times when somebody would try to square up with him. And I remember one time after treasures, I don't know if I ever told you about this, and this guy was squaring up with him, man, treasures is a strip club. This guy was trying to square up with blue.
And, bro, I smashed him so hard, man, I smashed him so hard. I started hitting him so hard with my fists and my knees and my elbows, and I was moving people off of him. I was like, get away. And it was like, every bit of anger and rage from my childhood, and everything went out on that dude. And later on, a girl came up, and she was like, man, what did you do to my friend? Why did y'all jump him? And they were like, hey, nobody jump him. That was JJ. And I think that when I realized, like, oh, wow, I'm big, I'm strong. I can take pain.
I can inflict pain that I realized that was valuable, you know what I'm saying? They called me big six for a reason. I was six foot. Most of them were 5657. You know what I'm saying? Six foot one.
And I knew how to fight because I had been through all this stuff with my pops. My pops was old school.
He believed in spare the ros for the child, you know what I mean?
[00:26:57] Speaker A: And you were always dedicated to martial arts? I mean, boxing.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Boxing.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: We had set up boxing gyms in our kickboxing, wrestling.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Different ways to street fight, different weapons, how to deploy them in the middle of a fight. That was, like, what I lived for. I mean, where I came from, people were ranked boxers when I was growing up.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Did you know Alan Rosario? Remember him?
[00:27:22] Speaker B: I do. And then there was a guy named. I hope I don't drop his name. Maybe he'll be happy that I dropped his name. This guy named Victor Diablo. Everybody wanted to be him, but he was the baddest boxer in the body, the baddest mama Jama, bro. And everybody knew it, and nobody wanted none.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: You know what I'm saying? And everybody had.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Everyone thinks they won a title fight.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: But they don't really want, they don't want a piece of the champ.
I grew up idolizing men who they fist fought, you know what I'm saying? And that's how they set of their grievances.
There were times when we'd have churches explain church. Church is when we get together once a week, all of our dudes.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: It's an executive board meeting.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah, we talk about politics. Well, sometimes it was just like, family get together, even non ogs. Would come. It would be 50, 60, 70 dudes. Each section. We had section, like the P section, H section.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: A lot of people. I just want to make sure the audience understands. So the term church is used often by criminal organizations as the term for a board meeting or leadership coming together to make decisions.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Pretty much it's church.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: And I mean, in these situations, we'd have, like, for instance, the reason why I never wanted to be called an OG is because I saw one guy get OG because he was like me. He was able to recruit people and make money. His name was Gumby. Hope you're still alive, bro.
But Smiley didn't like the. No, no, sorry, not smiley. Kid d didn't like the fact that he made Og before kid d did. Because kid d did a lot of dirt. More dirt than gumby. Way more. It's weird.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: If you're earner, you tend to garner in this life. If you earn for not just yourself, but your crew and your boss, you will tend to get leadership faster than those who actually do dirt. The cleanup guys will.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: I think what it is, is intellect beats Braun. But if you have intellect and Braun.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Then you're a boss.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Then you're a boss.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: That's what's up.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: You know what? And so that's very well said. I kept to myself, and I literally saw d was, like, so mad. He's like, nah, you ain't no motherfucking no g, bro. What's up? Let's square off. And so we all got in a circle at church. At church, we hold hands, and they square off and they box. They get it sorted. And Gumby proved that he wasn't no punk, you know what I'm saying? And he got to keep his status.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: He kept that leader.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: He kept his status. Now, it wasn't long before, over time, the gang dissipated. You know what I'm saying?
Men went to jail. They realized people weren't really there for them, because we weren't checking for people in jail. We were young. We didn't understand the value in that.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: And the older you get in that life, the older you get, the more it really does become about money.
And the sense of family wanes and the desire and the greed takes over in these organizations.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I think what happened with us was we didn't get corrupted. What happened was everyone graduated into cartel members.
[00:30:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: So we were baby gangsters. But all of these men that were.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: You were running the product for the cartels at the street level, because some.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Of the members fathers and uncles were cartel members.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Og cartels. And we're talking south of the border.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: We're talking. There's a certain corridor, the Texas corridor.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:53] Speaker C: And that's all we're going to talk about.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: We don't want to go.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: I don't want to name names.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: We're definitely not going to go there because it's not relative to the right.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Over time, what happened was, as more money began to come in.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: When you talk about money, what amounts of money? Like $10, $20?
[00:31:14] Speaker B: I mean, let me put you this way. My ogs were moving, and they've already done their time for this, so I'm not afraid to say it. They were moving like, they were getting keys for 5000 on the other side. They were putting them in vehicles.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: A key is a kilo cocaine.
[00:31:32] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: And they were getting for 5000 on the other side. They were bringing them over here, smuggling them across the border. This was pre 911. And then they were selling them for 30,000 a key.
[00:31:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: They were bringing in truckloads. Truckloads.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Semi trucks.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Well, what they would do is they'd get forerunners and pre runners, and they'd pull off the panels.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Yeah. We won't get into the.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: I don't mind talking about it.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: But there was a steady flow of narcotics.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Yes.
There were many ways to get it in. It wasn't just driving. So we're not tunnels. There was all sorts.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: We're not talking about tens of thousands.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: No, we're talking about millions.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: We're talking about millions and tens of millions. Some of your ogs, they were driving ferraris.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: They were driving m three s, mercedes. Some of the other guys that were messing with the x, fully restored Impala.
There was a lot of money. There's a lot of money in the ghetto.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: We were young, meaning like 19, and we lived in our own house.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: I mean, that type of money.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: And so at some point, this lifestyle, it changes you to a point of no return.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: So, obviously, this isn't who you are today.
You own a company, community action PDX. You own a Pacific Northwest firewatch. You're a successful businessman.
At some point, you had to have made a decision to walk away. Walk away. So explain that process and explain how you're able to do that in that life, how you can walk away.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: I wouldn't have been able to walk away if I wasn't so close to blue and Smiley.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Your ogs?
[00:33:18] Speaker B: They were my ogs, but by this time, they were my brothers.
Smiley was the real dangerous, crazy guy that if you even just called him bitch or wore. You wore red around him. He would violate. He'd be like, you're in violation.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: So he's essentially like a sergeant at arms.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: He's a sergeant at arms.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: He's keeping the standard and the crew. So he's not only an outside enforcer, and Smiley's a long term friend. He's a great guy.
He's enforcing the standard within that organization as he's.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: And that's a critical role.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Any organization, you have to maintain standards. And he was the best.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: And he had to maintain reputation, too. And he was known as a crazy, dangerous man. You know what I'm saying?
And blue was like, damn, man.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: I mean, he's one of the most charismatic people I've ever met in my bro.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: He's like Big Meech, or he's like a Vito Corleone. He's just like the rock.
He was a leader.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: There's a magnetic.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Yeah, dude, you just love the dude. You know what I'm saying?
And his father was really deep connected, and his brothers were really deep connected in Mexico.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: The whole family really is just a really charismatic, just vibe that you get. It's amazing.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: And so what happened was, I'm a musician. We haven't stated that, but I've been singing since I was young.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: And at the time, we were using our connections to get me into a major record label. And we were being courted by a major record labels, and I was offered a major record deal.
[00:34:56] Speaker C: You were.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: And you had a song that you wrote that was on the radio.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: On the radio. So a couple of them.
Well, what had happened was I'd set up a deal between all of my people and the cartels and someone else to basically work a deal with the israeli mafia to give them cocaine in Amsterdam for a fraction of the cost of what they were used to paying. In return, we'd get ecstasy pills for pill. There was a guy who would take it over there and bring it back, and we were setting that up. We had done it once or twice, and we were setting that up to do for future.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: So you had gone from corner street drug dealer to being an OG in a street gang cartel, crip cartel in Houston, to directly working for larger cartel organizations that are actually producing, manufacturing, trafficking narcotics. And we'll say cocaine at this point, because this is really before, at this.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Point, meth wasn't really kicking it.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: The biker gangs really were controlling meth, and no one really wanted to step on you. Don't step on them.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Well, it wasn't as lucrative as the.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Cocaine trade, and it was pretty expensive to make. It wasn't being mass produced. So cocaine is really the deal at this point. You're going from city, state, national, to international level. So you're connecting to organizations that are across the ocean.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: So we thought it was a good idea. We went to our local bar at the time. I don't want to name it, because then people will be able to single out where we were. Exactly. But we would go to our local bar, and I had. My emissary from the israeli mafia was with me. And then we had our guys, and we went and we picked up some ladies, and we went back to a hotel, and we had this big old party. And at that party, I had a spiritual awakening the next day.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: Were you on?
[00:37:01] Speaker B: I was. I was sober by the next know. Let's just say it, a saul of Tarsus moment.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: I don't think the audience will know.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: Who that is, but that's okay. The ones who do, that's what's up.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: So, speaking more frankly, you became a born again christian.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: And that conversion process led you to believe that you could no longer maintain this level of activity?
[00:37:27] Speaker B: I couldn't do it anymore. Basically, I had to choose between life or death.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: And for you, that your faith became more important than even the family that became your family in childhood.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: More important than my family. More important than my record deal. That's right. I gave up my record deal.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: You did.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: I remember that, yeah.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: More important than anything.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: And this faith that you have now is what has led you to the community activities that you're doing now.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: So we're going into the same type of neighborhoods that I'm used to being around, that we grew up in. Right. And we're trying to make a difference, a positive impact on that community.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:06] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: So I think that's what's going on with me now. All of that led me to a place now where I've been able to lead men, not in a military fashion, but on the street. And I've felt the joy of those men all working for good.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: To create unity and good within their area and their neighborhood.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: And a lot of these men that you employ are former felons, gang members.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: And not just from here or Texas, but actually from all across the country. That's right.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: I have a vice lord, nomad that works for me.
I have a couple bloods that work for me. Former blood. The vice lord is still a vice lord.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: But you're working on him I love and care about that dude. And I hope that he's actually working on himself, man.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: You know what I'm saying? He really is. And he's a leader. He just doesn't know it yet.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: All right, I'm just going to transition because, JJ, there's a lot of details here that we're not going into that stories we could be telling, but we don't want to glorify that life. That life was about survival, and it's not about building community. There's nothing hopeful and joyful about that life. That life always gets you into a position that's going to destroy your life and the life of your entire family. And so we're kind of talking about this today because you're going to go on your first ride along. You've watched me. I kind of got out of that life at a young age, went into the military and actually went into law enforcement. There was a long period of time when we didn't even talk to each other.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: About seven years.
[00:39:47] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: And so we're reunited again. We're working together. And so you're here today to give the audience and all of the viewers here a better understanding. When people are walking into these neighborhoods and you're seeing what might appear to be something mundane or ordinary, you're going to give us that perspective of, no, this is criminal activity.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No.
To speak to that. I've seen it. And what I'd like to kind of let the audience be able to see through my eye is the level of organization that is there and the level of organization that, depending on who the OG is, would be there and what's needed. Because I very much believe in your security through community paradigm. I appreciate it.
I think that would be really awesome, is if the security companies could work hand in hand with the local ogs, because I believe they'll never not be there.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: No, you're not going to get rid of gangs.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: You're not going to get rid of that stuff, because it's really the grassroots of a community organization.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: But you can engage in a reconciliation process, kind of like what your high school principal did. And you can stop violence. If someone's willing to stand up and be in the gap and pull these parties in, you can actually stop kids from being murdered.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: Well, and you can create order. Yes, because if you have derelict ogs, they're not going to get the work done. But if you had somebody like logistic myself or blue or smiley, that's all we'd be doing. Is getting the work done to make sure that there's order on the streets so there's no one fucking paying attention to us so we can make our money right now the way it is right now. It's like, dude, this is just a matter of time before this all gets destroyed. And whoever's making their money right now, they're not going to be able to make it no more. But if they would act as an order bringing group and maybe give some positive to the community, you could see some change and some difference, and hopefully.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: This will even change them.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: That's the goal. That's the goal. Because once they see that their power is being used for good. But I think that what happens is once you start using your power for disorder, you know what I'm saying? It becomes addictive.
The power in general is addictive, but I think it becomes addictive when it's.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: Like the old adage by Lord Acton, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you, and I think that's what's happening.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: The more untouchable you feel you are, the more you really want to take command and control.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: And the level of Hubris is just through the roof.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: Yeah, hubris. That pride, ego takes over.
So I appreciate you coming into the studio. I know that these are things that went on decades ago, and sometimes it's hard to talk about it. And I think that you've done a really great job kind of explaining, giving an understanding of being in that chicano gang culture. And I'm really thankful that you're here, and I'm excited about getting out on the streets.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: I'm pumped up about it, too, man. Let's go do that.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: All right.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: I appreciate it. Appreciate it. We'll be on the streets next time you see us. Appreciate it. Thanks.
[00:43:20] Speaker B: So how's the tent's been coming along around here?
[00:43:23] Speaker C: It's good, bro. That lady, Carolyn, we contacted, what, three, four days?
Got her. We got to put her at a hotel.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: So we bridged her for a night.
[00:43:35] Speaker C: And then we got her into a tiny home yesterday.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: That's nice, man.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: Yeah. And we put her in an emergency shelter, transitioned her there for, like, two days.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: So one hotel day, two transition days, and then the final day, she got into a tiny home village. It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's what's up.
And you know that pole car?
Yeah.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: So how long did she end up staying in the hotel? How'd that end up going down?
[00:44:10] Speaker A: I got to take this.
[00:44:12] Speaker C: Hey, what's up?
[00:44:15] Speaker B: I think she was going crazy. Like she was because she.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: Her kids can use it. I mean, died of overdose.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Yeah. But I think she just wanted to know that she had someplace to stay, man.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: They basically were going to try to have her arrested. They called the cops.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Really? Yeah.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: And I was like, yeah, I ain't.
[00:44:34] Speaker C: Going to do that.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Oh, this lady, she's insane, man. She's talking to herself. And I was like, let me talk to her.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Jill talked her down.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: No, we did. Oh, that was the next day.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: We gave her a couple of cigarettes.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: I was like, what's up? You need a cigarette? She's like, yeah, that sounds good.
[00:44:52] Speaker C: I was like, why you got these people?
[00:44:55] Speaker A: Like, I just. I don't have a place to stay tonight, and I'm kind of scared. I was like, how long you been on the streets?
[00:45:04] Speaker C: Two months.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: Where are you from? California.
You look, like, pretty normal.
[00:45:08] Speaker C: She goes, yeah, I was a teacher. I'm a retired teacher from California.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: I was like, why are you on the streets of Portland? Right?
Said, you know, both of my kids, I had two children, and they just both died of an overdose recently, and.
[00:45:24] Speaker C: I just gave up.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: I don't want to live.
That's Ross.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: Ross.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: I wonder if people were faced with.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: The facts, maybe, like, guys that are in the game, if they knew how this affected people, that they would still stay in. Some of them probably wouldn't.
[00:45:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
Give a man a fish.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: You be coming down here, not scrap, bro.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: Yeah, bro.
[00:45:53] Speaker C: Yeah, bro.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: We wouldn't Portland, if I was in Houston, obviously, it is a different game.
[00:46:05] Speaker C: Up here, but it's dangerous.
We've had a lot of my guys.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: Team members, respond to fire.
[00:46:14] Speaker C: I mean, just the other day, we have a guy named Haynes did wound care. A guy got shot in the neck, and we actually kept him alive.
He made it.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: But, yeah, we respond to a lot.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: Of shenanigans on the pro today. Like, from the pro today trying to clean up camp.
[00:46:44] Speaker C: Yes. So this is always good when we're on the streets. We obviously look a lot like either former law enforcement, former G's, right. And so it's kind of like urban camo. You want to be able to mix in with different groups. You're always trying to hear good information on the street, who did this? Who did that. Right.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Bro? I can't believe that this many tents are allowed in the public space.
Well, if you don't do nothing about it, then you're for it. Right?
[00:47:37] Speaker C: So we're looking for spins, a whole.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Bunch of bags there. Right there. That need to be picked up.
[00:47:43] Speaker C: All right, let's head that way. I don't know where everyone is, so he should be right here. So they started at a different place. We got better information led that way.
Wonder who that guy is.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: There's a whole group over there, though.
[00:48:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Everything been good out here?
[00:48:12] Speaker C: All right, so we'll just contact the tent and see if there's anyone home.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: No?
[00:48:16] Speaker D: Anybody home?
[00:48:17] Speaker C: You okay over there?
[00:48:18] Speaker D: Hey, brother, you all right?
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Hold on, hold on. I am dunking down.
[00:48:29] Speaker C: Hey, brother, you good? Hey, good. Okay.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: All right.
[00:48:33] Speaker D: So make sure you're all right. How you been, man? Yeah. Okay.
[00:48:37] Speaker C: Sleeping.
[00:48:38] Speaker D: Check on you later.
[00:48:41] Speaker C: So coming out in the morning is obviously hard because people are sleeping. You really want to give people the ability to wake up.
[00:48:48] Speaker D: How are you doing?
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:51] Speaker D: She sleeps here every morning.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Why do you wake them up?
[00:49:02] Speaker D: Why do we wake him up?
[00:49:03] Speaker C: Well, I thought he might be overdosing.
He might have needed an arcan.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: I thought it was, like, a thing, like, hey, we come around in the morning, make sure they're all awake. No, it's crazy. You got all this beautiful roses and greenery, and then you're hit with just reality.
[00:49:27] Speaker D: This is all odot property.
[00:49:30] Speaker C: Okay, I'll take it back.
We don't have any gloves, though.
[00:49:35] Speaker B: What is this?
[00:49:40] Speaker C: I had gloves at the office.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:49:43] Speaker D: So therefore, Odot.
They can come out and post whatever they want.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: Why does it take a lot more for ODOT?
[00:49:59] Speaker D: Because ODoT doesn't post, so they don't want people.
I don't know that for sure.
[00:50:16] Speaker C: No, it is. They want you to get permits.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Bureaucracy is getting in the way of being effective.
[00:50:23] Speaker C: Pretty much, yeah.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: Is there a shot caller for this area?
[00:50:39] Speaker C: You good?
[00:50:40] Speaker B: And is it impossible to engage them to try to help?
So they already do. They're helping the best they can.
[00:50:48] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:50:49] Speaker B: Some of them are part of.
[00:50:57] Speaker C: Police come.
[00:51:07] Speaker E: I broke it up.
[00:51:11] Speaker D: They sweep other places so that they come down here.
We had all this.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: What do you think the biggest problem is? If we had, like, beds, could we get them all?
[00:51:21] Speaker C: Absolutely. Really crazy.
[00:51:23] Speaker D: I was denied nine beds outside yesterday, and I already have.
So that's, what, 24 people this week?
[00:51:34] Speaker B: Just this week alone.
[00:51:36] Speaker C: So we're back on the streets. We're here every day doing cleanups and trying to get people into shelter. We're contacting people in the tent. It's a little early, I would say. What, about 50% are probably still sleeping. So it's always better to get people usually right after lunchtime. That's usually the best time to get someone to shelter. We got a lot of community partners out here today. One of us joining us is Stan Pinken. Stan, do you want to introduce yourself, give us a little background?
[00:52:03] Speaker F: Sure.
[00:52:04] Speaker G: Stan Penkin, president of the pro district of a new nonprofit.
We're working with Echelon and loving one another to help take care of the problems on our streets in a humanitarian way, helping get people into shed. We've got community members out here regularly to help clean up the streets and help take care of our neighborhood.
[00:52:38] Speaker C: Where are we today?
What area is this?
[00:52:41] Speaker G: Well, this is the area along the I 405 for many, many months. We keep coming back, trying to keep.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: It.
[00:53:03] Speaker G: Continuing saga to try to keep it safe.
[00:53:09] Speaker C: Obviously, we're in an underpass kind of a man made shelter. Right. What else about it is making it difficult? Why are people wanting to gather here and congregate here in 10th?
[00:53:19] Speaker G: Well, I'll be honest with you.
The city and actually ODOT property, they're not taking care of it.
[00:53:28] Speaker C: So the Oregon Department of Transportation.
[00:53:30] Speaker G: Correct.
[00:53:31] Speaker C: ODOT, okay.
[00:53:31] Speaker G: And the city, well, it's a little complicated because at ODOt, city is supposed to be taken, but they have to be funded by ODOT. They ran out of funds. Now they have some more funds. It's really a back and forth.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: It sounds like bureaucracy is stopping.
[00:53:53] Speaker G: There's no consistency.
[00:53:55] Speaker C: No consistency.
[00:53:55] Speaker G: So it's an issue of resources that's part of.
So we're out here doing the best that we can't depend on our government to do everything, right.
[00:54:09] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:54:09] Speaker G: And they can't do everything.
We need public private partnerships to.
[00:54:14] Speaker B: Really.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:54:18] Speaker C: Well, I appreciate you talking with us today. I know. I don't want to stop you because we're here to clean up and engage. So thanks for your time. I appreciate it, Stan.
[00:54:25] Speaker B: My pleasure.
[00:54:26] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks, Alan.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Back to work.
[00:54:29] Speaker C: Back to work. Got to work.
What we like to do during the week, we're hitting this property every day, and really just any area where there's accumulation of trash and tents, and we like to hand out trash bags, and people will tend to clean their own areas. They just need trash bags to do that. And then we pick up those trash on a regular cycle, take them to the dump. JJ's company, Community Action PDX, is one of the partners we use to do some of these cleanups and some of these dump runs. It's been very.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: Of, it breaks my heart, man.
[00:55:07] Speaker C: Kind of turning over this conversation, like, do you see a criminal element operating here? Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. So what do you think you see going on right now.
[00:55:17] Speaker B: I mean, people are still waking up. I think the people that were really active were on that side over there.
The guys that were right here, actually. And one of them was riding around.
[00:55:33] Speaker C: A couple different times, the guy on.
[00:55:35] Speaker B: The bike, trying to get a good understanding of who we were.
[00:55:37] Speaker C: So he probably is running this area, working this area. This is Wilson, former law enforcement. She's part of our ops team. And we're out here and we're just discussing that. There's been a gentleman, white male, probably twenty s, with a black face mask, and he's been riding on a bicycle, a little bmx bike. And he's the spotter and a lookout for what's going on right now. Right.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: And their guys are here, though. Once they saw that, people started coming with all of the trash cleaning and all the cameras, they're starting to book. They're putting their stuff away.
[00:56:07] Speaker E: They were asking a lot of questions.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: Yeah, they're dealing for sure. Yeah. And it's easy to see over there. It's pretty easy to see.
[00:56:15] Speaker C: So obviously, yeah.
One of the reasons we're here is because as just an overall business model, we're trying to show that you don't have to in order to do security. One of the key elements I think, moving forward with stupidig is community engagement and how community engagement actually leads to less crime. And this is the prime example. We come out here, we only have like ten volunteers, but we're spread out enough to where we're taking up like three or four blocks.
[00:56:42] Speaker D: No, you still want this, too? That was on the ground.
[00:56:45] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:56:46] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:56:46] Speaker D: You can have that. There you go. And this ten we can throw away, too.
[00:56:50] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:56:50] Speaker D: All right, cool.
Yeah, I got you at the top of the list for a shelter. I got somebody into a tiny home yesterday.
[00:56:58] Speaker E: That's what I really want.
[00:56:59] Speaker D: You want a tiny home?
[00:57:00] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:57:01] Speaker D: Well, they're going to be opening up, and those new ones are really nice. They actually have enough for two people. They have a kitchen, they have a refrigerator.
[00:57:12] Speaker E: Because my husband, he's in jail right now.
Soon.
[00:57:18] Speaker D: How long do you think till he gets out?
You don't know? Okay, well, it'd be nice for you to be in a place when he gets out.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: Let's see if we can get someone.
[00:57:27] Speaker C: Else to talk to us. Yeah.
[00:57:31] Speaker E: Hello.
[00:57:31] Speaker C: How's your day today?
You want to talk to us today? We're doing kind of a documentary. We're trying to walk by you guys the other day. Awesome. Where were we?
Oh, that's right. Yeah. Over on Hoyt.
[00:57:46] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:57:47] Speaker C: Yesterday. That was yesterday.
[00:57:48] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:57:49] Speaker C: Nice. So my name's Alex Stone. This is my cousin, JJ Revlo.
[00:57:53] Speaker B: Pleasure to meet you.
[00:57:54] Speaker C: So what's your name?
[00:57:55] Speaker E: Kayletta.
[00:57:56] Speaker C: Kalena.
[00:57:57] Speaker E: No, Kayletta.
[00:57:58] Speaker C: Kayletta. Okay.
[00:57:59] Speaker E: There you go.
[00:57:59] Speaker C: Thanks for being patient with me. I don't hear well.
[00:58:02] Speaker E: Neither do I.
[00:58:04] Speaker C: So you're currently homeless, right? You're living in a tent. How did that happen?
[00:58:11] Speaker E: Well, I got evicted from our apartment. Reminding my husband's apartment.
[00:58:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:18] Speaker E: And we've just played right over here.
[00:58:27] Speaker C: Spence. Yeah. He's amazing, isn't he?
[00:58:28] Speaker E: Yeah, he's been trying to get.
[00:58:36] Speaker C: Oh, that's amazing. I know. We got a lady named Carolyn into a tiny home yesterday, and so. That's amazing.
[00:58:43] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:58:44] Speaker C: How long have you been on the streets?
[00:58:52] Speaker E: A year and a half.
[00:58:53] Speaker C: A year and a half? Wow.
And for your mental health, I mean, that's got to be kind of hard, right?
And so you're lucky to have a husband. A lot of women on the streets, they're kind of vulnerable out here. A lot of the women, wouldn't you say?
[00:59:14] Speaker E: Oh, yeah.
[00:59:15] Speaker C: A lot of them end up being trafficked.
[00:59:17] Speaker E: Yeah. There's a lady that I know.
[00:59:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:59:28] Speaker E: I guess she used to be more sane like I am, but now she.
Unfortunately, I don't want to say too much about her.
[00:59:40] Speaker C: Yeah, of course. You haven't mentioned any name.
[00:59:49] Speaker E: I don't know what to do.
[00:59:50] Speaker B: We're talking about the lady over.
[00:59:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:59:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:54] Speaker C: Well, Kayletta, I'm so glad you talked to us. I know that everything's lots going on today. You're really busy. So Spencer, who worked with loving one another, he's going to check in with you tomorrow, okay? Is that right?
[01:00:07] Speaker E: No, Monday. Monday. He's going to check in with his contact on Monday and then hopefully we can get one.
There was some room up on the 120 2nd.
I'll go today.
[01:00:29] Speaker C: It's almost impossible. So in this industry, sheltering someone on the weekend is nearly impossible. There are emergency shelters, but for couples, especially couples, it's almost non existent. Very difficult.
[01:00:40] Speaker E: Well, right now it would be just me.
[01:00:48] Speaker C: I'm so sorry to hear that.
I'm so sorry, Kayla. Wow, this is hard work. It's hard being on the streets. I was homeless. JJ's been there as a kid as well.
I'm so sorry you're going through this.
[01:01:06] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:01:09] Speaker H: Here.
[01:01:16] Speaker C: We'Ll let you get back to it. Okay. All right. Thank you for your time.
[01:01:19] Speaker B: It was a pleasure meeting you.
[01:01:21] Speaker C: All right, good. Talk to some folks.
Yeah, we'll just chill here. For a bit.
[01:01:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:01:32] Speaker C: Cameras might escalate someone with mental health issues. So we're going to just stay here while Spence is dealing with this issue. There's a couple other people out here. I would like to see if they would talk to us for a couple minutes, because it's important for people to see that community engagement really is the future of security work. It's the future of owning your neighborhood and keeping it safe.
Hey, Glenn, can you talk to us?
So we're doing a ride along today.
One of the riders is Jeremy Rebello. He owns a company called Community Action PDX. He does a lot of remediation for properties, really large properties, industrial areas. And we're talking about how community engagement takes away the criminal element when people are out here picking up trash every day, which I know you're passionate about. Criminals see that and they don't want to be here anymore because they don't want witnesses. So can you kind of talk about what you're doing here today and the good work that your organization is doing?
[01:02:32] Speaker F: Well, it's all about taking over your turf.
[01:02:34] Speaker C: It is your neighborhood.
[01:02:38] Speaker F: What happened during the COVID Everybody was.
[01:02:40] Speaker E: In apartments for two years.
[01:02:44] Speaker F: Basically, nobody took over the streets. It was basically empty.
[01:02:48] Speaker C: Right.
[01:02:50] Speaker F: And then all of a sudden, Covid, there's other elements that have taken it over.
[01:03:00] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:03:01] Speaker F: So right now, we're in a transition, taking over our street against safe right now as a community, especially in the evening. So somebody coming from work, a woman comes from work, she wants to walk her dog. She can go out and walk that loop around.
But because there's other people walking there, and then we have such a great. We're in a high density, vertical neighborhood.
People can look at the street. It's back better than any camera.
[01:04:01] Speaker C: It is, yeah.
[01:04:01] Speaker F: That you can have.
[01:04:02] Speaker C: So many people will call as long.
[01:04:04] Speaker F: As people have a place to call.
[01:04:05] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:04:05] Speaker F: They know they can make a difference.
[01:04:07] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:04:08] Speaker F: People know what's going on in your neighborhood.
[01:04:10] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:04:11] Speaker F: They only need an outlet or an avenue to take.
[01:04:17] Speaker C: I really appreciate your time today, Glenn. Glenn and I have known each other for years. We've been working on similar initiatives, and we're always on different boards. We see each other all the time. And I got to tell you, you have been more determined to get this done than almost anyone else in the city. And I appreciate that. I really appreciate that. We are doing it.
[01:04:35] Speaker F: We can make a difference.
[01:04:36] Speaker C: We are making it today.
[01:04:37] Speaker F: Don't let somebody else do it. You have to do it yourself.
[01:04:41] Speaker C: That's right. Personal ownership, taking responsibility, leadership like Alec.
[01:04:45] Speaker F: To direct all this resources to the right way, that's the most important, and you'll find people to follow.
[01:04:54] Speaker C: You're awesome. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate it. Awesome.
All right, I think we walk around a little bit. Did anyone see where Spence went?
[01:05:02] Speaker B: That way.
[01:05:03] Speaker C: So he's still dealing with the mental health?
[01:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you want to go over there?
[01:05:06] Speaker C: No.
In sociology, there's this idea of the third space Starbucks adopted that want you have home, you have work, and then that third space or that third place.
Yeah. And so during COVID the rise of crime, which is a generational thing, the increase of drug use, all these things, they've eroded public space in that third place or that extra space where people occupy when they're not home and not at work. And when you do that, they essentially disinvest emotionally from space. And then when people no longer have that emotional attachment, people no longer. Monies don't flow into that. People stop investing money wise, and criminal organizations just take over. They realize that, like, broken windows, if that broken window doesn't get fixed on that building, no one cares about that building. That block is a good place to solve dough. Yeah. See what I'm saying? As a former gang guy, I mean, you see the potentiality out here for gangs to take over.
[01:06:07] Speaker B: They already have.
You want to come in?
[01:06:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
Hi. Hey. Reed Kerr, coo echelon protective Services.
Can you talk about how security is important, not just the outreach efforts, but how security kind of works alongside these outreach efforts?
[01:06:24] Speaker I: Yeah, we're every day, everybody, we know her. We know the three people that are sitting over there. We know everyone. I mean, we're here working alongside, and we play the long game.
We don't walk up and I'm Mr.
Stud muffin, and you need to be intimidated by me. The long game is that through going here and building relationships, doing a lot of the similar things that Loa does.
[01:06:51] Speaker C: I love it.
[01:06:52] Speaker I: Working with Loa, understanding people's names and getting to know them. Over time, we're able know build a good enough relationship to where we can actually make a difference around here.
[01:07:02] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:07:02] Speaker I: Where these people actually, when we show up. Oh, hey, Reed, this happened to me.
[01:07:07] Speaker C: Right?
[01:07:07] Speaker I: So that's what we do.
[01:07:09] Speaker C: And do you see a difference in the level of engagement from criminal organizations?
Right. Can you kind of talk about that?
[01:07:18] Speaker I: Yeah, I think they're like what Jay said, I think they're here already. They're operating. I mean, clearly the difference is that when you're a criminal and you're trying to do your thing and you've got somebody that has the ability to access law enforcement, access different people, different systems, it makes it a little more uncomfortable to do what you're doing. And it's kind of that classic, like, path of least resistance. We're not here to stop freaking gangs. Not going to happen. We need the FBI. We need all this. Like, that's not our purpose.
[01:07:51] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:07:51] Speaker I: However, if we're just there, it's just enough to where possibly somebody's going to say, hey, let's do our dirt over here. Five streets.
[01:07:58] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:07:59] Speaker I: That way.
[01:07:59] Speaker C: Perfect.
[01:08:00] Speaker I: Just right here.
[01:08:01] Speaker C: Perfect example.
Excellent. Awesome. Well, let's go engage over here. Let's go talk to some folks. Love it.
[01:08:10] Speaker I: Still checked on him earlier.
[01:08:13] Speaker C: Yeah, we had a guy completely knotted off over here, but he was able to talk. Oh, good.
[01:08:21] Speaker F: Day.
[01:08:26] Speaker B: Those are definitely the ones selling, bro.
[01:08:28] Speaker C: Yeah, they're selling for sure.
[01:08:34] Speaker I: We ain't using the boy. Got one?
[01:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah, totally fun.
[01:08:39] Speaker C: Totally sell them.
[01:08:42] Speaker B: So you think the ones that are selling know what they're doing? Yeah, they know they're creating. Creating like a. I think so group of slave like people enslaved to the drugs.
[01:08:53] Speaker C: For sure.
[01:08:55] Speaker B: They just don't care.
[01:08:59] Speaker C: Okay. Need you to help.
[01:09:00] Speaker E: Yeah, dude behind me, he's like the block boss.
[01:09:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:09:03] Speaker E: He's taking all these tents to move for me. What do you need? He's thinking about what he needs. A new tent. I said we can give a new tent, but I don't know what else. This is a lot of tents. Move. Do you want to negotiate something with them?
Hey, Nick?
[01:09:16] Speaker C: Yeah? Why don't you let Jay Jay talk to him? This is Jay.
[01:09:21] Speaker B: What you need, bro?
[01:09:25] Speaker E: Do they need.
[01:09:30] Speaker B: What do you think they need? I'll ask, like a list.
Is anybody trying to get in homes?
[01:09:36] Speaker C: Yeah, every one of them.
[01:09:37] Speaker B: Really? Are they on lists?
[01:09:39] Speaker E: I don't know. Well, I've talked to Amy, Joe in the first tent. I've talked to Aaron and Susie in the second tent up here. They're signed be. They're on the list. It could be a week to three months.
[01:09:50] Speaker B: That's crazy.
Is that discouraging?
[01:09:54] Speaker E: He has a house. Why don't you tell?
[01:09:57] Speaker B: I live in Sammy Creek, Washington.
[01:09:59] Speaker E: He's looking out for his brother.
He doesn't have to be out here. But he's out here.
[01:10:04] Speaker B: And you're here just trying to watch his back.
Yeah. So then you came down here for your brother and then just. Everybody knows you, respects you, that's what's up.
[01:10:18] Speaker C: So you run the block here?
Yeah. I mean, you've seen them. Really scored away.
You know what's up, right?
[01:10:27] Speaker E: It's rough down there.
[01:10:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
If you're willing to make a deal, bro, and you can help some of these people move, Jill's completely authorized to make that deal.
[01:10:34] Speaker A: Whatever you need, we can get you.
[01:10:36] Speaker B: All right, I'll make a list.
[01:10:38] Speaker C: Yeah, sounds good. Yes. Get that list and then start negotiating.
[01:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's cool. But the real issue is I don't.
[01:10:48] Speaker C: Have any weapon on me.
[01:10:53] Speaker E: You want to make it happen on Monday or Tuesday?
[01:10:56] Speaker B: That's pretty cool of you to do that.
[01:10:58] Speaker C: Come by Monday.
Okay. Come by Tuesday morning and we'll get a deal going.
[01:11:03] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[01:11:04] Speaker C: And if anyone wants a shelter, we got you.
Okay.
[01:11:09] Speaker B: Work it out.
[01:11:10] Speaker E: Your brother, is he in the tent?
[01:11:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:11:13] Speaker E: Is there anything we can help him with? I don't know.
[01:11:15] Speaker C: I had to keep his ass.
[01:11:17] Speaker E: I know you did.
[01:11:18] Speaker B: Okay, so we're here every day doing this.
[01:11:22] Speaker C: Every day.
[01:11:22] Speaker B: Every day.
[01:11:24] Speaker C: Awesome. Good job. Good job. Tuesday.
[01:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:11:27] Speaker E: I hope that he's legit with that deal.
[01:11:31] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. All right. Legit.
[01:11:34] Speaker B: I think he's the one providing the dope.
[01:11:35] Speaker E: Yes. He just offered me a bag when I walked up.
[01:11:38] Speaker B: He's the one.
[01:11:38] Speaker E: Because you dropped this.
[01:11:39] Speaker C: No, he's selling dope for sure.
He's willing to move because he knows this is going to be an active area.
[01:11:45] Speaker B: That's what's up.
[01:11:46] Speaker C: All right, let's transition to. We're going to go talk to Ken. Sorry, I got, like. You're good here. What's your name? Nick.
[01:11:53] Speaker B: JJ.
Good to meet you.
[01:11:58] Speaker E: How long have you lived up there?
[01:12:16] Speaker C: Alan. Good to see you, brother. We got to follow up. I know.
[01:12:22] Speaker B: One of the tents said, abandon all hope. He who enters here.
[01:12:25] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. That's funny.
Yeah. Time. Bags. So I think he's going to get all eight or nine of these tents to move on Tuesday. Wow. Yeah.
It's awesome. Where are they going to go?
[01:12:40] Speaker A: I don't know.
[01:12:41] Speaker I: Crazy.
[01:12:42] Speaker C: They get to choose where they go.
[01:12:43] Speaker I: That's true.
[01:12:44] Speaker C: It's agency, right? Yeah. So. Good question.
That's what we're trying to line that up. Jill's going to start lining up shelters on Monday, so by the time we come out here, we already have beds reserved on Tuesday morning. Cool. So we're hoping. I mean, there's like, nine people, so if we get two, that's a big. Huge.
[01:13:01] Speaker B: That's huge.
[01:13:03] Speaker C: That is great. I'm concerned about Spencer. Could someone check him? Yeah, I'll go look. He's with that lady. Know the mental health subject.
I'm in route. He's gone, though. We don't know where he is.
[01:13:15] Speaker B: Reed down the block left is where I saw him go. So then after everybody picks these up. So somebody come around and pick.
[01:13:23] Speaker C: Yes. Spencer will come back in the van or the truck and we'll throw everything.
Okay, so we have Reed getting in on lafe, right? Laif's miked up, so we don't know what's going on. Is he okay?
[01:13:36] Speaker I: Yeah, he's going to go take her out to lunch and get her some smokes and then she's fine.
[01:13:40] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:13:40] Speaker B: That's what's up. She just needed some hope.
[01:13:43] Speaker C: Awesome. She's friends with Kayletta, the lady we interviewed earlier. And she said that this mental health crisis is a recent thing, that she was completely normal just a couple months ago.
Wow. Is it fentanyl? I don't know. I would imagine drug induced. Yeah, that's what I would imagine.
[01:14:01] Speaker I: Have they really studied long term effects? Effects of using fentanyl over and over and over and over?
[01:14:07] Speaker C: I don't think so.
It's relatively new. And plus all these designer drugs from China.
[01:14:12] Speaker I: Yeah, right.
[01:14:13] Speaker C: What is fentanyl trank like?
[01:14:15] Speaker B: Is this an opioid?
[01:14:16] Speaker C: It's a synthetic heroin.
[01:14:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:14:19] Speaker I: But the thing about it is, what they're saying is there's really no drug right now that doesn't have fentanyl.
[01:14:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:14:26] Speaker I: So even your meth, your cocaine, like, they're finding any tests that they do. There's still traces of fentanyl within it, which is just a totally new thing.
[01:14:36] Speaker B: I mean, it's going to end up killing a lot of people.
[01:14:38] Speaker I: It already has.
[01:14:46] Speaker C: We're out here on the streets. We're in Portland under the 405. We just talked to another guy in the green vest. His name was Stan Pinkin. Yeah, I don't know if you know.
[01:14:54] Speaker H: Him, but he's the PDNA departure.
[01:14:57] Speaker C: Okay, great.
[01:14:57] Speaker H: Yeah, this is a PDNA livability safety cleanup.
[01:15:01] Speaker C: Okay, great. And your name is Ken. Yeah, we'll just go by Ken. Is that okay? And so what's kind of the purpose of this?
Awesome.
[01:15:19] Speaker H: So these is clean? Yeah, they come out and do periodic couple times a month to do know. Because Lois. We also know Lois gets a good time on a Saturday morning to work with them, to interact with camps while we're cleaning it up. So I think it's a great.
[01:15:38] Speaker C: That organization you just mentioned is striking a deal for Monday, for nine of these tents to actually move.
[01:15:44] Speaker H: Good. Or do we have a place to move it?
[01:15:46] Speaker C: Well, we can't decide that. That's for them to decide. But we think that there's going to be at least two of the nine that are going to get into shelters.
[01:15:52] Speaker H: Right.
[01:15:52] Speaker C: So we're going to try to find those shelters Monday morning and then transition them on Tuesday.
[01:15:56] Speaker H: Great.
[01:15:57] Speaker C: I know, it's amazing.
[01:15:58] Speaker H: That's great.
[01:15:58] Speaker C: And so that's the objective.
[01:16:00] Speaker H: We can get the county and the city to work with us.
[01:16:03] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the key. How do we do that?
[01:16:06] Speaker H: Well, I think it's outreach. You got a few of our county and city leaders and Dan Fields who had the joint commission.
[01:16:17] Speaker C: Should we get a petition? Do we start doing, hey, we're going to have a petition. We're going to have people sign up. We're going to get 5000 signatures.
[01:16:24] Speaker H: No, I think you have to get a groundswell of people that do it. I think the risk. We have.
[01:16:36] Speaker C: Places like. I think you're right.
[01:16:39] Speaker H: Due to the care resource, they think they can stay here full time. Then that will create.
[01:16:46] Speaker C: So what Ken is discussing is starting July 1, they're going to a kind of retroactive banning of tenting and camping during the days. So when the sun comes up, the tent goes down. When the sun goes down, the tent goes up. And that's going to push more people off of public sidewalks.
[01:17:03] Speaker H: This is a public sidewalk.
[01:17:05] Speaker C: Yeah, and then.
Yeah, exactly. Off of regular people's properties into these Odot areas, these smaller enclaves. As you see up here, we have almost like a Bedouin style large tent Complex.
Aren't going to be affected by that.
I don't see that.
[01:17:19] Speaker H: I don't know.
[01:17:20] Speaker C: Yeah, we don't know what's going to happen. No one really knows.
[01:17:22] Speaker H: Nobody knows.
[01:17:23] Speaker C: And I think that's part of the problem.
[01:17:24] Speaker A: Right.
[01:17:24] Speaker H: Like when you shake a tree and the birds fly, you don't know where they're going to land.
[01:17:28] Speaker C: That's right. You don't.
[01:17:29] Speaker H: So the question is, where are they going to go? My guess is they're going to go someplace where they don't think they're going to be moved.
[01:17:36] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:17:36] Speaker B: And.
[01:17:44] Speaker H: This doesn't become a permanent people from the street, from low barrier to high barrier, clean them up, put them in a halfway house where you help them.
I think that's going to have to.
[01:18:07] Speaker C: Be something like we have to create.
[01:18:09] Speaker H: To a Bibby Lakes model.
[01:18:11] Speaker C: Yes. It has to be a process of personal transformation. And we got to get people on that track.
[01:18:17] Speaker H: Problem right now is even on the shelter side as we all know the shelters are sitting at lesson and if you don't pay people to staff those, the staffing to client ratio is at a level they can't open up all the beds. We can't get people's into bed. Get people on the street.
[01:18:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:34] Speaker H: So we can work hard to get them ready to move. But if they have a nomad.
[01:18:39] Speaker C: So the county has around 2000 beds. The city has just over 200. But if those entities aren't staffed, this is what I think I hear you saying that really we're only at maybe 1500 beds because we don't have enough employees at those individual sites to get the staffing levels at the level where we could then open up more beds.
[01:18:56] Speaker B: Couldn't they use people that were like people in community service in those positions to help to further along the cause? Or is that like not like volunteers?
[01:19:08] Speaker H: I think it has to be paid.
[01:19:10] Speaker C: They need to be paid very well.
[01:19:11] Speaker H: Almost like social workers. They have to understand how to deal with.
[01:19:14] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:19:14] Speaker H: I see a lot of us mental health, it's exceptional abuse. Okay.
I think you know that we've got to come up with a new model, I think Danfield, I have Kaiser. He knows how to run systems. We need to give him time to do it, but he needs to move.
[01:19:29] Speaker C: Awesome.
[01:19:30] Speaker E: Well, thanks.
[01:19:31] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you for your time. We appreciate you. We want everyone to come out to the community and help. This is about getting the word out that number one, Portland is safe. You can come here. We want people to come here. We enjoy visitors and this is not a scary place to be. If you want to come, you're welcome to come here. If you live in the community, come out, get in contact with us. Look at loving one another. The Pearl District Neighbor association safety Committee livability are the ones that do these.
[01:19:56] Speaker H: Clean teams that do the cleanup. So really need to get people engaged.
[01:20:00] Speaker C: The Portland District Neighborhood Association's livability and safety committee. Check them out online. Come and engage the community with us. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.
[01:20:10] Speaker B: I think the thing that's just like frustrating even just coming from that perspective is, bro, it's really all about having treatment and beds and like that guy said, helping people to get separate from the streets so that they can get over their addictions, get through it with help, of course, so that they can have some form of, I don't know, man. Like self respect, I guess you call.
[01:20:35] Speaker C: It self worthy self agency. Yeah. The ability to know that you can make your own decisions, right? So you're not being controlled by a substance or by just the whims of your own emotions, that you're in a place where your mental health is solid, your addictions are baited, they're taken care of, and you can say, hey, I'm thinking clearly. I can make my own decisions. I have agency in my own life. That's what people need. There's a lot of money being spent, but at the end of the day, we talk about all the time. It's a field of dreams. If you build it, they will come.
And people, I think it's, to be honest, a lot of the people that work in these organizations, that are in offices, that want to get people into shelters, they're just too scared to actually go out on the street and talk to people, right? They're just too scared.
That's what it comes down to. I just don't think that they have the fortitude, the courage, because you could get killed.
A lot of these tents have guns. There's a lot of shootings. This dude, this white guy we just talked with, he's an Og, bro. He's running a block. He's selling dope. And people feel really uncomfortable. These people who have gone to college, who never don't have a lot of life experience, these jobs don't pay that well. They're younger people. They don't know what they're doing. They're going to come out to these tents and kick it with an OG and try to get people into shelters, and they don't even know how to do that.
That's the problem. Hey, let's go check out old town real quick. Yeah.
[01:22:21] Speaker B: How are you going to fix it?
Why do you feel like it's your place?
[01:22:28] Speaker C: I don't like people or seeing people get hurt.
There's people here, brother.
[01:22:34] Speaker B: I know, dude, but it's heartbreaking when you got like, the other day, I had three ladies. One of them was pregnant and on med, and I tried to get them in homes, and they were like, yeah, we'll put you on a waiting list. And so they all left.
[01:22:52] Speaker C: Of course, the transition, it can take two or three days. That's why we bridged, like, Carolyn the other day. We had to put her in a hotel 11:00 at night.
There's no shelter intakes at 11:00 at night. Most people are most vulnerable at night.
During the day, they're up trying to.
[01:23:13] Speaker A: Earn money, trying to get drugs or food.
[01:23:17] Speaker C: And if they stop that activity, they.
[01:23:19] Speaker B: Don'T eat that day.
[01:23:20] Speaker C: All right, man. So we're back here in Old Town, right? Obviously, this is a more common area to see that type of drug dealing. Usually during this season, during the summer season, we have the Saturday market going.
[01:23:31] Speaker A: On here at the waterfront, and they.
[01:23:33] Speaker C: Tend to clean it up a little bit. Right. The police spend a lot of time, even up 90 days before all this kind of cleaning this up.
[01:23:40] Speaker B: It's a waterfront.
[01:23:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:23:42] Speaker B: I want to see the waterfront.
[01:23:43] Speaker C: Let's go to the waterfront, bro. Yeah. Talk about what we just experienced.
[01:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
[01:23:48] Speaker C: How do we get the guy with the teardrop, Steve, Nick, I don't know. Whatever.
[01:23:52] Speaker B: And he was definitely the main dude, and he was hustling.
[01:23:55] Speaker C: Well, he said, yeah, I'm running the mean. How do we get that guy to stop selling?
Like, how can we engage that guy to be like, hey, bro, you're ruining people's lives.
[01:24:07] Speaker B: You got to help them with opportunities, man.
[01:24:10] Speaker C: Number one, I think we take the clients away.
Yeah, you take the clients away, man. You get the clients into shelter.
Right? You get them to move, and that puts people in a position where if they're going to continue to do business, they got to go somewhere else.
[01:24:28] Speaker B: The problem is, Alex, is that it's difficult to get expedient service when it comes to getting people in shelters. I think that if you could narrow that time, then you could have a more fertile ground to be able to plant the thought process.
[01:24:46] Speaker C: Yeah. We have currently 14 people waiting to get into shelters.
[01:24:50] Speaker B: You know what I mean? You know how many people you can lose overnight just from overdoses?
I feel like until that's been addressed, the other stuff is you're just putting band aids on it, man.
[01:25:05] Speaker C: You are.
I mean, at the end of the day, bro, I can't do real. I'm not a surgeon.
[01:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:12] Speaker C: I don't have those capabilities. The government has to do that.
[01:25:16] Speaker B: Right.
What can the private sector do?
[01:25:19] Speaker C: I think the private sector can put on bandaids. I think the private sector. So this is the exact whole purpose of this business model.
We don't run a shelter. We just get people into shelters.
We can be the ambulance that gets them to the hospital, and then we take them to people that are waiting, ready to do intakes. The problem is, it's very rare that you can find people that want to do those intakes. I think Ken mentioned that there's a problem with employees and staffing. A lot of people don't want to work with this population.
They don't want to work. Especially after Covid, it's hard to staff people are afraid of stuff like that, and they don't want to be around the houseless.
[01:26:03] Speaker B: I can understand that.
You just got to get your hands dirty sometimes, dude, especially if you want to see change, of course, in your community.
[01:26:13] Speaker C: I agree 100%. I was going to ask you. So this dude selling dope over there, there's like, 40 or 50 people over there, looked like there's three guys selling dope.
[01:26:22] Speaker B: Right?
[01:26:23] Speaker C: How much money do you think they're making a day?
[01:26:25] Speaker B: Oh, snap.
[01:26:27] Speaker C: Right? Yeah. Three dudes. The two, one in the bike, that was a spotter. The two over here with the female, and then the one guy with the teardrop. Right?
[01:26:35] Speaker B: I think the female was just there.
She's working.
She looked like she was just, like, kind of there with the dudes.
There's a lot of money in the ghetto, man. There's no telling. I would say probably anywhere between. I don't know what they sell the doses for. You know what I'm saying?
[01:26:56] Speaker C: With fentanyl, for a white, you're talking $2, and for a blue, you're talking $5 pills. They crash them up. They smoke them on foil in the area.
[01:27:07] Speaker B: I'm thinking they probably pull home anywhere between probably, like, three to 700 a day. Wow. I think.
[01:27:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, that dude wasn't even involved there. And he came up, that kind of native american guy, hispanic guy, teardrop, sold him something.
That makes sense, because if you're talking a transaction is an average of $15. Let's say $20.
That's only 20, folks.
[01:27:36] Speaker B: And I think that the dude would behaving that way because he.
[01:27:40] Speaker C: The OG.
[01:27:41] Speaker B: Yeah. He could operate with impunity. You know what I mean?
[01:27:44] Speaker C: Nobody cares, man.
[01:27:45] Speaker B: No one cares.
[01:27:46] Speaker C: And so the money are overdosing, and they'll even know who the dealer is. And no one's going after that dealer.
[01:27:52] Speaker B: I mean, I'm being real with you. I think that guy is there because he says his brother's there, right?
[01:27:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:27:56] Speaker B: I think that guy's there to make sure people don't overdose, if you know what I mean.
[01:28:02] Speaker C: It's funny you said that, because they actually had Narcan. They had the needle. Did you see it? The needle form of Narcan?
[01:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:28:08] Speaker C: So he might be there keeping them alive so that they can keep using. And I was wondering. I was like, man, they have a whole bunch of Narcan. They got the needle form. Not even the nose spray.
[01:28:17] Speaker B: I know guys that would stay up till five, six a. M. With crazy that he was serving in order to make sure that they didn't die.
[01:28:24] Speaker C: Yeah, that makes sense. And that's why he's willing to move them all, so that we don't get him into shelter.
[01:28:29] Speaker B: That's his bread and butter.
[01:28:30] Speaker C: He's making $400 a day, potentially. Why do you think that? This guy, he came up to us and said, hey, do you all need us to move? I can move these people.
I think he's protecting his profit.
[01:28:40] Speaker B: That's what I think. The reason why is because we made the spot hot, and he realizes that it's been consistently people coming around there cleaning, taking video, asking questions. And then he met us.
We have a certain vibe. I have a certain vibe. So he might have been like, all.
[01:28:59] Speaker C: Right, these might be undercover, who know telling, maybe another gang is looking out for that spot.
[01:29:04] Speaker B: I don't know, but I don't know, man. I know that they want to make their money, but I'm pretty sure that if they were given a different perspective, a different chance.
[01:29:13] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:29:14] Speaker B: If they were like, okay, well, you sell this. What if I could get you to go sell cell phones? There's a good chance they might not be there. I feel like if they had some comfort in knowing that they had potential for growth in some sort of career, that they definitely wouldn't be there.
I'm here to tell you that's a motivating factor. He got a built in thing there. If he can get the people to move where he wants them to be, he can continue to serve them. No one really cares because they're dregs.
And on goes the chaos, which. Crazy, man, kind of drives me insane, man.
[01:29:53] Speaker C: Well, hey, I know we're talking about this now, but we should probably hit up the studio, talk about this as more of an after action, and get down to the details of what's really going on.
[01:30:04] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I have to agree.
It's just when I start to look.
[01:30:08] Speaker C: At this place, I mean, look at that. Just the graffiti right there. Well, it's just crazy.
[01:30:13] Speaker B: Such a beautiful place, man. For just a couple of blocks away, there's people doing drugs, bro. We got all this livelihood going on behind us. Saturday fair and all that.
[01:30:27] Speaker C: This place is breathtaking. Yeah, it's the juxtaposition of the worst and the best all in one place, man. It's crazy.
[01:30:35] Speaker B: Well, let's go check out your spot.
[01:30:37] Speaker C: Yeah, let's go set it up.
[01:30:59] Speaker B: Man, that food's smells so good.
[01:31:01] Speaker C: It does.
[01:31:02] Speaker B: I think I saw somebody eating some euro earlier.
[01:31:07] Speaker C: Angelina runs a euro place, and she used that Saturday market.
