Four Feet Tall and Rising

by Shorty Rossi

  DVI held thousands of guys being shipped all over the state. I knew a handful of them from the neighborhood, or from doing time together, but we didn’t see much of each other behind those walls. DVI didn’t mix minor offenders with guys who were never going home. If a guy had seven months left on his sentence, and he did something stupid, he might not go home for another ten years. So the DVI policy was to keep murderers away from molesters, thieves away from rapists. Every guy was locked down in his own cell and fed through a slot. We got one hour a day to either shower or visit the dayroom. Once in a blue moon, we’d get sixty minutes of rec time. In that one measly hour we had to socialize, the topic of conversation was always, “Where will we end up?”

  Every guy had his opinion, either from personal experience or from rumors. Mostly, I heard warnings: “You don’t want Corcoran.” “You don’t wanna go to Pelican Bay.” “Stay away from San Quentin.” “You don’t wanna end up in Folsom.” But I also got some good advice, like, “You gotta ask to see the counselors if you wanna get through processing faster.” I don’t remember who told me that, but they were right. No state worker was gonna move any faster than they had to. My transfer counselor didn’t care if I was there for two weeks or another six months. If I wanted out, I’d have to take control of my own “therapy,” and believe me, I wanted out. DVI was hell, and the time I did there only counted toward my time served, it didn’t count day-for-day. Waiting around at DVI was the equivalent of doing bad time. Useless.

  The psychiatrists and counselors held the next five to ten years of my life in their hands. They were the ones deciding where to put me, and the ones tallying up my points. My “points” were based on the length of my sentence, the nature of my crime, and how much good time I’d done. By now, my points were low. I was considered a Level One or Level Two at most, and Level One was model behavior. That meant I had the right to be housed in the lowest-security facilities. It meant I could avoid doing time in a Level Four, the most dangerous prisons, filled with gang guys, child molesters, snitches, flight risks, and high-profile cases. I was a Level One and that was a good thing. It meant I had some options.

  I didn’t wanna be anywhere near Los Angeles. The Southern California prisons were full of Bloods, and I knew I had to get away if I wanted to stay out of trouble. I picked my first choice: Vacaville, in Solano County. The prison there was called CMF, the California Medical Facility, ’cause there was a huge hospital on the grounds. They had open dormitories, and a lot more freedom. My backup choice was the Avenal State Prison in Kings County, ’cause they had open dorms and seven hundred acres of land. Both prisons offered college courses, which I wanted to take, and they had easier, less violent reputations. I made my picks, and then, like the three thousand other guys sitting at Deuel, I waited. It was like gambling. You made a shot for it, but you never knew what was gonna happen.

  They had five days before my birthday or five days after my birthday to transfer me. They wouldn’t give any inmate the exact date of transfer, to keep guys from arranging escapes. So two days before my birthday, they woke me up, yelling, “Okay, pack it up, Shorty. You’re moving!” They marched me into R&R (receiving and release), and that’s when they told me I was shipping to Folsom. At first, I thought I heard them wrong, but as the news settled in, I went from confused to goddamn pissed. I screamed at the officer, “Folsom! What the fuck did I do?”

  Folsom State Prison was going from bad to worse. Folsom was four thousand guys locked up behind sixteen-foot-high walls that were four feet thick. Folsom was Level Four gang territory. Folsom had bloody and violent riots. Folsom was the end of the line. I started screaming, “My points are low. I’m a Level One! Folsom is maximum security!” I threw such a fit, the officers had to get my counselor. First, he tried to convince me that Folsom wasn’t that bad. He explained there was a minimum-security unit within the compound, despite the fact that the prison itself was a Level Four. I wasn’t buying it and I wasn’t budging. Then he just had to come clean about what had really happened.

  The system still considered me a flight risk ’cause of my height. They thought I could stow away in a breadbasket or something. My counselor invoked the “bus situation” as proof and that just boiled my blood. I blew a goddamn gasket. “For six years, I’ve said the same thing! I wasn’t involved! The fucking hole was right under my feet! If I was gonna go, I’d have gone then! I can’t run for shit anyway! Look at these legs!” I was never gonna live down that Mexican gang bus escape from County. Fifty guys on the bus and I got chained to those stupid idiots. My counselor just shrugged. I could scream until I was hoarse. They were shipping me to Folsom. There was nothing I could do.

  They came to get me in the morning. The guards shackled my wrists together, my legs together, and then secured them both to a chain that circled my waist then dropped to my toes. I was belligerent. “Really? My wrists and my ankles? That’s necessary?” The guard snorted, “You Little People are quick on your feet.” I glared at him. “How many Little People are you dealing with on a daily basis?” The guard’s neck turned red with anger. I pressed him. “How exactly do you have this information that Little People are quick on their feet?” The guard clamped the handcuffs tighter. Me and my stupid mouth. Now I couldn’t even lift my leg to get on the bus. The guard realized he had to pick me up. Him putting his hands on me “to help” was fucking humiliating. We didn’t even know each other, but he hated me and I hated him. He basically threw me onto the bus. I didn’t know any of the other guys, so I sat by myself with my head pressed against the barred, bulletproof glass. I just stared at nothing as the miles rolled past. The reality crept in. Folsom. Folsom. Folsom.

  They unloaded us one by one, and by the time I got to intake, there were lieutenants and corrections officers and inmates with juice gathered around to see me. Word got out that I was coming, and people lined up to stare, point, and whisper. It was a rare day that a Little Person, never mind a Little prisoner, showed up in Folsom. Especially one with my reputation.

  My reputation was really just a bunch of bullshit. It was the end product of a combination of things: inmate gossip, straight-out lies, and the way the press had sensationalized my arrest years before by branding me the “Four-Foot Leader of a Black Gang.” The articles should have been long forgotten, but prisoners have long memories and lots of time to talk. Since my arrest in ’88, I’d become the prison version of an urban legend. There were rumors going around Folsom that said I was the “Drive-By Bandit,” meaning the Bloods would stuff me into the trunk of their cars, drive by, pop the trunk, and I’d lean out and shoot everyone. There was one that said the Bloods used to tie a rope to my leg, hang me off roofs, and I’d shoot through the windows. Then there was the ridiculous story that the Bloods would bundle me up in a baby carriage, roll me down the street, and I’d jump up from under the blankets and blast people away. Guys had been watching too many bad movies. They made me into a mass murderer. If I’d actually done any of those things, I’d have been on death row. But the reputation served me well, so I never confirmed nor denied what I heard. Guys and guards could believe whatever they wanted. Me and my homies, we had a good laugh at their expense.

  Before they could put me into gen pop, they had to figure out what to do with me. Being four feet tall wasn’t the problem. The problem was, I was a white guy who ran with the Bloods. At Folsom, it didn’t matter which gang you ran with in the past. Once you were inside, you were defined by the color of your skin. Even if you weren’t in a gang to begin with, you still had to fraternize by color. Say you were some guy that chopped up your wife. You’ve never been in a gang, so you don’t come in with any protection. That means you had to abide by the rules of the gang leaders. As long as you stuck to your own kind, got a similar cellie, and didn’t start nothing, then you’d be left alone. You’d be considered a geek. You wouldn’t belong. You’d have to watch where you walked in the yard and only eat at certain tables in the chow hall, but you wouldn’t be killed.

&n
bsp; Since I was white, they wanted to put me in a cell with another white guy, but I was very clear: I wasn’t gonna switch over to some racist Aryan or Nazi brotherhood. For me to demand to stay with the Bloods was breaking every rule in the book. I told my intake officer, “I’ve been a Blood for years and I’m not changing.” They’d never seen the likes of me. They stuck me into another two-week isolation period. They put me through more counseling and evaluation. They did everything in their power to convince me to house with the white guys.

  Finally, the warden came down and told me I was insane, saying, “They don’t care who you ran with in the past. They just want you to be with your own kind.” I wouldn’t budge. “The Bloods are my people.” They had some Aryan guys come talk to me in front of my cell. They told me, “You’re dealing with your life.” I said, “I’m dealing with my life if I do or if I don’t, so what’s the difference?” I knew the Aryans hated me. Everybody knew that. I’d run with the Bloods my whole life and all my friends were black. Those bigots weren’t gonna just shake hands and play nice ’cause I was in a cell with one of them.

  Next up to make their case was the Mexican Mafia. They wanted to make sure I knew exactly what would happen if I chose the Bloods over the Aryans. If an Aryan or Nazi tried to kill me, then the Bloods, the Crips, and the Bay Areas would have to jump in. If that happened, the Southern Mexicans would have to jump in on the Aryan side, and then the Northern Mexicans would have to back the Bloods. It would be a full-scale war. Politics in Washington had nothing on this shit. I still wouldn’t budge.

  A prison gang conference was called, and all the gang leaders sat down to discuss my fate. I wasn’t invited. Afterward, a guy I used to run with, Chris Thornton, came to my cell to let me know what went down. He was older than me, an O.G., and the guards hoped he could talk some sense into my thick skull. Chris asked me, “Why did you come here?” I yelled, “It’s not like I signed up on a list to come to this shithole!” Chris just shook his head. “Shorty, the whole prison is in an uproar over you.” I couldn’t get it. “I ain’t nobody!” Chris smiled and said, “This week, you are.” He came straight out and told me that the Aryans said if I got placed with them, they would kill me. Gang leaders from other prisons had even weighed in on it. By the end of our conversation, Chris agreed with me. I had to stick with the Bloods. He told me, “If you come with us, there’s a more than likely chance you’re gonna get stabbed.” I’d just have to take my chances.

  Right before they were gonna move me, Lieutenant Cinturino came to have a final word. He was the lieutenant of Four Building. He asked me, “Are you still gonna go through with this asinine crazy-ass idea? You are about to start a war.” I told him, “The gangs have agreed. Everything’s been said. There’s nothing we can do.” Cinturino went for the Hail Mary pass. He postponed my move one more time, and tried to ship me to another prison. I secretly hoped they’d reconsider my request for CMF or Avenal, but word came back from the director of CDC that basically said, “What are we supposed to do … just bounce him around everywhere? He picked his fate. He can deal with it.” Lieutenant Cinturino just wasn’t willing to watch me die. He came up with an idea. “I’m bringing you over to Four Building.” Four Building was fine with me. The Four Building gates were open most of the time since it was considered a Level Two facility and it was a calmer building with a lot less violence. But then Cinturino went one step too far. “We’re gonna put you into a cell for the first week by yourself.” Being alone in my cell was bad news. If I was asleep, and the cell opened up, someone could just slide in there and take me out. I insisted they put me in a cell with somebody I knew. The gang leaders decided my first cellie would be a young kid named J.D., the son of a guy I knew from the projects. Out of five thousand inmates, I’d be the only inmate in an interracial cell. Even the old guards, who’d been there for over twenty years, had never seen anyone do what I did. They thought I was crazy.

  The day of my move, I felt fairly certain I was gonna die. If not, I’d at least be shanked, and I imagined it would be painful, but there was nothing I could do to protect myself. I’d never felt more powerless. Who knew whether the guards were really gonna guard me? They could have been Nazi sympathizers for all I knew. When they came to get me, I just took a deep breath and tried to look calm. I felt like I was walking to the chair. We made it out of Three Building with no problems, but once I set foot in Four Building, the Aryan Brotherhood made their move. A big-ass white motherfucker came charging at me. I don’t know what he was thinking—there were guards all around me. Maybe he was trying to prove himself, but the guards saw him charge, and they slammed him to the ground about three feet away from me. I saw the knife in his hand, and that’s about all I saw, ’cause suddenly, the guards swarmed from every direction. The place went into complete chaos. A guard pushed me into my cell, and then, slam, slam, slam—cell doors started closing one by one. They put the whole prison on lockdown. J.D. and I stood inside the cell, just staring through the bars, as the guards dragged the guy away and the screaming, the banging, the noise was earsplitting. My stomach was in knots, but I wasn’t dead. J.D. stared at me, eyes wide open. “Man, that was close.”

  Now, outside people assume that inmates are being stabbed or killed all the time, but those were the days of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Prisons had become a lot less violent since they’d instituted the SHU, the Security Housing Unit. It was a system they used to control the really nasty guys, the Hannibal Lecters of the world. Getting thrown into the SHU was essentially like being thrown in the wet room at the Youth Authority. It was solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day. Things still happened, of course, just not as often, and in Four Building, it was even rarer. That’s why the attempt on my life was met with such stiff and immediate punishment … lockdown. For the next week, nothing happened. Everybody was locked in their cells. We were let out once every other day to take a shower. Sleeping in my bunk those first few nights, I didn’t feel safe. I trusted my cellie, but he was only one person, and lockdown in a prison is like a woman and her husband driving around skid row at three in the morning. She may trust her husband, and her doors may be locked, but she still wants the hell out of the ’hood.

  Lockdown caused even more friction. The inmates were pissed and blaming me. Everyone wanted me shipped away or taken out. The officials convened another meeting with all the prison gang leaders to calm things down. Of course, the leaders lied and called a “truce” to lift the lockdown, but I knew that with the gates wide open, I was in serious jeopardy. Now anybody could get to me. Every time the guards opened our cells, the Bloods would show up to surround and walk with me. That woman driving around skid row would be a lot safer with three patrol cars escorting her home. The Bloods knew I’d stay alive a lot longer with three or four guys beside me at all times. There was a concerted effort to protect me. They were my patrol cars.

  For my first walk across the yard, it took an entourage. I felt like a movie star, everybody staring at me. Crossing that yard was a crash course in Folsom’s gangs and their turf. There was the Mexican Mafia, which was the oldest gang in California’s system. They were considered a prison gang, not a street gang, ’cause they’d actually started at Deuel, the DVI prison I’d just left, and had been around for about forty years. Their members were mostly from Southern California. Across the yard from them was Nuestra Familia, another Latino gang that started at Soledad Prison in the 1960s but also had a strong presence on the street. They were made up of all the Northern Californian Mexicans, and they hated the Mexican Mafia. Then there were the Border Brothers, also Mexicans, to round out all the Hispanic gangs. As for the whites in the yard, there were two gangs that claimed space: the Aryan Brotherhood and the Nazi Low Riders, an Aryan Brotherhood spin-off that started at the Youth Authority back in the ’70s. The Aryans were the ones that really hated me, though the Nazis had no love for me either. At County, I was used to the Bloods having one side of the yard and the Crips having the other, but at F
olsom, all the black gangs shared turf—even the Black Guerrilla Family, which was another prison-not-street gang that had started in San Quentin. There weren’t as many of them as there were Crips or Bloods, but they were still a presence.

  Basically the yard was a bigger, more dangerous version of high school. The gangs almost functioned like self-contained cliques with their own “jocks” and “nerds” and “druggies” and, of course, the “popular” guys, the guys in charge, leaders who got their ass kissed by everybody. You could see them, giving orders with a slight nod or just a look. They ran the entire prison, and just like high school, most of them never wanted to leave. Once they got out of those walls, nobody would listen to them. On the yard, they were big men. Outside, they were nothing, nobody.

  What shocked the shit out of me was seeing so many guys I knew from the projects. There were more Bloods in that yard than there were on the streets. It was like a damn reunion. I didn’t know it then, but over the next five years, I came to realize prison was a never-ending cycle. If we ever got down to three or four Bloods in the building, ten more would get transferred in. It was just endless.

  I saw cons come back through those bars five, six, seven times. They’d be let out on parole and three months later, they’d be back. They didn’t have the motivation to succeed. Either they didn’t care or they didn’t know how to change their lives. It was too easy to do the same old things once they were out. Most of them went home to the exact spot where they got in trouble, and the temptation of the easy life was just too great. They’d think, “Why am I gonna be yelled at by this damn man, making seven dollars an hour, when I can be my own boss making seven dollars a minute?” Most guys didn’t have the attention span to stick with the struggle. Not only were they a failure at being a gang member, they were a failure at school, a failure at home. They’d never had any success, so they didn’t even know what it felt like to be someone different.