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Gang menber turns his back on life of crime |
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Written by FRANK PEEBLES
Citizen staff
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Friday, 15 August 2008 |
Former gang member Phil Roy poses with shirt off showing his gang tattoos. (David Mah, Photographer)
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"It's becoming a little overwhelming," said Phil Roy, 31, a former drug dealer and addict who now lives a clean life, gainfully employed, working hard at being a family man with one child already, a stepson and a newborn on the way.
The most overwhelming of all is the death he has seen, including the drive-by shooting that murdered his friend Mitch Henry, 21, in January in a restaurant parking lot. Police have said that this incident, like much other high-profile violence in the past year, is connected to the drug world in the region. Most of it has to do with a war between rival members and associates of the Independent Soldiers gang, according to the RCMP. Sources said Henry was not a member of this gang but was a solo drug dealer. The reason for his execution has not emerged.
Those who knew Henry want the public to see the hip-hop poetry he wrote (excerpts below) and know his creative side. He could break-dance well, had skills as a rapper, could sing and loved to make his friends and family laugh. He was someone who wanted a different life outside of the underworld, but hadn't made the break there yet.
Henry seemingly could see a premature death coming. It came up in his writings - writings Henry's loved ones hope to have published as a book. It would be a memorial and a caution to other youth teetering on the brink of a similar life. Those involved in the Mitch Henry Project also hope to establish a youth centre to divert and help at-risk kids before they are drawn too deeply into thug life.
****italics****"
I once chilled with Jehova now I'm
burning with the devil
'cause the angel on my shoulda's
a push-ova
I've learned right from wrong
now wrong seems so right
death ain't far along
and yet neither is tonight.
***end italics****
Henry's sister Coral Henry, 26, also used to be drug-involved. She doesn't deny the hardcore life she lived as an addict and enforcer in the local street scene. For her and her younger brother it all came from their upbringing and a family member who literally led them into a life of crime while they were still children.
"We started doing drugs when we were eight and 12," she said. "I stole some cocaine and mushrooms out of (the family member's) stash. It was kept in the wall, behind the drywall, nobody knew it was there but every weekend there was a lot of partying, (the family member) was doing it all the time so we thought it was normal. A babysitter we had at the time showed us how to smoke it."
When little Mitch was eight, she said, he found a wallet in front of a neighbour's door where it had fallen. Inside was several hundred dollars. He wanted to turn it in to the police, she said, but the family member said no, they were going to keep it for themselves. These were the lessons in right and wrong that they were taught as kids. Soon Mitch evolved into crime and it wasn't long, said Carol, before her brother was addicted, doing violence and at 13 he was first put in jail, a place with which he would become very familiar.
****italics****
I grew up too fast with
no sense of direction,
life and death on my chest
to express all the stressors.
****end italics****
It wasn't any different for her, Coral said. On top of the drug life she grew into, there was also the trauma of the sexual assaults she suffered at the hands of three different men, once at age 13, once at age 10 and the first time she remembers at the age of four.
With no moral guidance, untreated emotional anxieties, the resulting alienation from mainstream life, and a hatred for legal authority invested in them by the family and friends around them, hostility was a natural progression. She too became involved in the drug world, a world unsafe for addicts and dealers alike.
According to police and court documents, drug debts as little as $100 could result in days of beatings, forcible confinement, torture and mutilation. A common punishment in the Prince George drug world is finger amputation, often with garden shears or cigar trimmers. In recent years murder has become a frequent item on the thug menu. Most of the unsolved homicides in the past five years police connect to the drug trade.
*****italics******
All I see is violence, drugz
nine millimeters and thugz
civilians duckin' slugz
crackheadz tweakin' on the rug."
*****end****
Roy said his upbringing was much different than Mitch's and Coral's but still the prime factor in how he entered the gang life.
"I was raised by my mom who was a hard worker and tried hard for us. She wasn't always there but she was mostly there," he said.
"My father was a gangbanger who followed us around and tried to kill us. I got love from the streets, or so I thought. Sometimes people go searching for acceptance. They gave it to me, they gave you protection, they gave you drugs, but what they didn't give you was that warning that eventually they wanted it all paid for. Once you were in it, you had to keep paying it back."
Coral Henry got lucky, she said. Her apartment is cozy, spotlessly clean and orderly. Her young son is a joyous presence flitting about the place. She wants the rest of her life to be free of the thug influence and she recognizes that her experience gives her a unique ability to warn others of what will come if that road is chosen.
"The only reason I came out the way I did was because my grandma took me when I was 13," she said.
****italics*****
Peace is a fantasy
sex, drugs and bigotry
is our only strategy."
***end****
"If me and Coral can change our lives, everyone else can do it, too," said Roy, pleading with the public to never take the easy way out and assume the ones shooting at each other and dealing drugs are forever set in their ways.
"It was hard but I did it, I got out. It is an easy life to get into but a pain to get out, but people can do it."
It seems that even in the depraved world of selling drugs, survival sex, underworld debt collection and desperation thievery, there is a code of conduct. That street code is not being followed right now and authorities warn the public that the violence won't end until there is a decision made to stop or some dominant force intervenes.
That force could be the public good stepping in with some law enforcement and some help to rehabilitate the gang members, or it could be the barrel of a gun.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 15 August 2008 )
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