Vidal Guzman is a campaigner and spokesperson living in New York City. He was incarcerated on Rikers Island when he was 16 and returned when he was 19. He was a member of the East Coast Bloods.
Guzman discusses the gangs, violence, and conditions inside the prison. He mentions corrupt guards, gang-controlled phones, contraband, and how illegal goods are smuggled inside. He speaks about the history of the notorious US jail system, how Rikers Island itself came to be built, and the need for reform.
New York City is required to close Rikers Island by 2027.
Guzman is a prominent voice in the Close Rikers campaign and the executive director of America on Trial. He is the founder of the End Qualified Immunity in NY and #FixThe13thNY campaigns. He left the criminal justice system at 24, and started working with the food-truck initiative Drive Change before becoming a criminal justice campaigner.
Find him here: www.vidalguzman.org
And on Instagram: @Iamvidalguzman
Guzman discusses the gangs, violence, and conditions inside the prison. He mentions corrupt guards, gang-controlled phones, contraband, and how illegal goods are smuggled inside. He speaks about the history of the notorious US jail system, how Rikers Island itself came to be built, and the need for reform.
New York City is required to close Rikers Island by 2027.
Guzman is a prominent voice in the Close Rikers campaign and the executive director of America on Trial. He is the founder of the End Qualified Immunity in NY and #FixThe13thNY campaigns. He left the criminal justice system at 24, and started working with the food-truck initiative Drive Change before becoming a criminal justice campaigner.
Find him here: www.vidalguzman.org
And on Instagram: @Iamvidalguzman
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FunTranscript
00:00 My name is Vidal Guzman. I was on Rikers when I was 16, and this is how crime works.
00:05 The nicknames that it has, the Bridge of Pain, Gladiator School,
00:14 Torture Island, the name speaks for itself.
00:17 85% of people who are on Rikers Island are just awaiting trial. That means that majority of people there are
00:26 still waiting to be sentenced or maybe even get released. I worked for the Close Rikers campaign.
00:32 We heard of stories of people waiting to be seen for 10 years.
00:35 When I got locked up, I got locked up for a robbery. You know, I got picked up one morning.
00:46 It was like 5 in the morning, and
00:48 you know, my family didn't know their rights. They put the cuffs on you,
00:53 they put you on the bus, and all you see is like this bridge, and you're like, "Where are we going?"
00:59 We're going to Rikers, you know, we're going to Gladiator School.
01:03 C-74 is on the island itself. The facility that kept the 19 to 24 that age bracket.
01:11 Everybody was facing hard time. Three years, four years. When we were supposed to be thinking about prom,
01:19 or, you know, like thinking about picking out our suits, you know, or
01:24 picking out what colleges we're going to go to,
01:27 that wasn't it. I never knew that, you know, when I got incarcerated
01:32 that Rikers Island existed for 16 year olds. At that time, in 2007, there was so many youth.
01:39 They was overpopulated with youth. I had to go in there and
01:45 be the most violent so I can be able to survive. And I learned that my first day
01:50 when a youth put a spoon in my oatmeal in the morning, and
01:55 what the kids told me was like, "You were supposed to swing at him." And I was like,
02:00 "Yeah?" He's like, "Yeah, man, you don't let nobody disrespect you." Next time, I said, "You know what?
02:06 Let me corner him and tell him how I feel, if we feel some type of way.
02:10 You know, we do what we have to do." And I started slowly learning that if I want to live and survive here,
02:18 then I really
02:20 got to lose a piece of myself
02:22 that I try to hold on, right? The human side of myself.
02:33 I started learning about the program. We always knew what correctional officers were the ones that were upkeeping the
02:40 program. They could say, "Well, we couldn't put our hands on the youth, so we needed to figure out how to keep them under control."
02:47 Basically, it's this like,
02:50 power structure on Rikers Island that had people that fight for these positions to be good.
02:58 You know, to not worry about somebody taking their stuff, but not worry about somebody attacking them.
03:04 You'll get more calls to call his family, right? Because they'll take calls from people. If you're not in that
03:11 power rank, that means you're not having cereal, or you're not even having a muffin. Their commissaries get taken away,
03:18 their sneakers get taken away, you know, so I had to come in these
03:23 areas and be the most violent, right? Grab a TV, try to throw it at people, attack someone first, right?
03:30 You know, get jumped first. Some fights I lost, some fights I won.
03:34 But number one thing I always learned in jail and prison, as long as you never turn down that fight, you good.
03:39 Even when I was 16, the fight club was real, right? If you want to get in the team,
03:45 you got, or you want the housing complex, you have to fight them.
03:49 So sometimes the CO might fall asleep and not pay attention. "Yo, yo, the CO's sleeping. Yo, go ahead, go fight."
03:55 You go right in the back, the back of the dorm, and people fight it out.
03:59 It's been stuff like that. And in Rikers Island, like, when I was in C-74, there was always this little
04:07 corner from where the cameras at one time wasn't able to see. Things like that happen now, right?
04:14 Like, you know, there's still fight night on Rikers, right?
04:18 They know that this correctional officer might turn a blind eye, or they might not even do anything at all.
04:25 I mean, Rikers is falling apart, so it's easy to make a weapon out of anything.
04:28 Breaking a piece of the heater, even razors, right? Like, a lot of times people get razors to shave, and that means somebody got that razor.
04:37 Weapons are usually never really brung in. They're usually made inside the facilities.
04:43 Correctional officers, they knew when 16, 17-year-olds, they couldn't put their hands on them.
04:50 So this fight club was the way for them to, in some way, uphold power, right?
04:56 You know, like, I would have black eyes, and correctional officers won't even say anything.
05:00 They'll say, "Okay.
05:02 You okay? Did you win? Did you swing? Did you duck?"
05:06 It's like, make fun of you, like, "We knew what correctional officer was blind, was crip.
05:12 We knew what housing complex they favor the most. We knew all that."
05:19 You know, when people don't got nothing to provide, like, the struggle get hard.
05:28 Tattoos does happen in there. It's dangerous, but people gotta hustle.
05:33 That's the black market. You know, selling cigarettes, selling t-shirts.
05:38 People figure out their way. I remember one time, somebody even started a business of selling shebangs.
05:44 It's like these chips on Rikers Island that was, like, super good.
05:47 This person was buying these chips, created an online account, and sold them for, like, $3 more.
05:55 'Cause nobody could buy these chips, but everybody loved these shebang chips.
06:00 You use the money from whoever sent you, or if you're, like, working for 12 cents, 16 cents,
06:06 you use whatever you can to go to commissary.
06:10 People start tapping into some of the skills that they probably never used outside and used inside.
06:16 Right, like, I remember I used to write at the time when I—
06:20 with my loved one at the time, I'll have them design the envelope to look cool, right?
06:26 Like, have some, like, Mickey Mouse or something like that.
06:29 Or something, like, really, like, cartoon-y, and I'll pay somebody, like, two suits or three suits to do it.
06:34 But then you have an individual who go more deep into the, you know, the underground, the black market.
06:40 And they're trying to bring drugs in, right?
06:42 They are "boofing."
06:43 Basically, "boofing" means, like, you're literally throwing the whole drugs.
06:48 And—yeah.
06:51 So, there's always, like, stories of even correctional officers bringing stuff in, right?
06:55 Like, even when Rikers was closed to visitors, how was weapons and drugs still getting in there, right?
07:02 [whirring]
07:08 I remember when that, you know, we will call it the "red alarm," right?
07:13 You hear all the time because of the youth, "Woo-woo-woo!"
07:16 Basically, that means the "turtles."
07:17 The turtles are correctional officers with extra gears.
07:21 Their job is to de-escalate.
07:24 But that never happens.
07:26 Every time I have dealt with the turtles have been, um, just getting a stick and start—
07:31 and I mean anyone.
07:32 Majority of the correctional officers on Rikers was black and brown.
07:36 So, like, I was really expecting a lot of them to understand our struggle
07:42 and to also advocate for us for a better way to not just—
07:47 to not be in a facility but return back to society.
07:50 Some of the things that was done on Rikers when I was younger,
07:54 or even now, was done by correctional officers.
07:57 Like, they'll put crips in blood houses for what?
08:00 Like, not every single correctional officer was like that, right?
08:04 Like, I had a correctional officer who was actually pretty good.
08:07 His name was like, "Bleep," right?
08:09 He was a former—I think he's still a Black Panther.
08:12 When he came into the space, he came with hair grease that you're not supposed to have,
08:17 some comb to comb out your hair, smell good, so the dormitory—the dorms smell good.
08:23 So, there were people who was trying to do the inside work.
08:30 They gave too much oversee for correctional officers for Rikers Island
08:36 that they haven't gave the opportunity for therapists, counselors to be in these spaces.
08:44 Hearing stories of people who are correctional officers getting mental health problems because
08:49 of the issues that they had to deal with trying to survive on Rikers.
08:54 And that happens, right?
08:55 It's stressful.
08:57 You know, they go home, but they're locked up with us.
08:59 [Motorcycle engine]
09:05 I had to go through that same process again at 19 years old.
09:09 When I was incarcerated at 19, I was there for a robbery.
09:12 At that time, I was more gang-related, right?
09:16 I was a member of the Bloods.
09:18 I became a part of the Bloods when I was in the streets.
09:21 People around me was already a part of the gang, right?
09:25 Like, friends, close friends of mine.
09:27 So I didn't feel like I was joining, you know, like how the Bloods or, you know, how
09:32 I wasn't joining the Bloods.
09:33 I was joining my community who was Bloods, right?
09:39 It's different from the West Coast and the East Coast, right?
09:42 The Bloods and the East Coast grew from Rikers.
09:45 At that time, early 80s, 90s, there was a lot of Latinx gangs and a lot of Blacks who
09:52 felt that, you know, we needed to reunite.
09:54 A lot of different gangs grew there.
09:56 The Trinataleos, they called themselves the Patrias.
09:59 I remember when they was called DDP, Dominicans Don't Play.
10:03 After they changed their name, they grew from Rikers Island.
10:05 There are people who turn blood or a part of a gang while they're in prison or jail.
10:11 And for me, it was a lot different because I was already a part of the Bloods when I
10:15 was, before I came into Rikers Island.
10:19 It was so much politics.
10:21 They keep the Crips in a certain housing complex away from us.
10:26 We don't have the same lunch.
10:28 Maybe there's internal gang beef in the facility.
10:33 At that time, we had too many gang members.
10:35 We had the Bloods, the Latinx Kings, and the Trinataleos.
10:37 And for me, it was like, yo, man, let's figure out how we can organize these phones so we
10:42 don't get into any violence.
10:44 I've been in environments where people fight off that phone.
10:47 You'll go up to them and say, "Yo, I want your phone.
10:49 I want your time slot."
10:51 And people will fight it out for a phone slot.
10:54 Always rules that you got to follow.
11:03 Make sure you work out every day.
11:05 Make sure you're intaking your lessons, right?
11:08 The brotherhood of being around the Bloods.
11:12 Don't mess with someone in the LGBT community.
11:15 Don't be a rat.
11:16 There's always those codes, basically, in almost every gang, right?
11:21 The way that they might say certain things to say something, right?
11:25 Majority of the letters that are sent to Rikers Island are read.
11:28 So they got to write whatever they mean in coding.
11:33 So there have always been, like, kites, letters.
11:37 Let's say they're trying to get the information to someone who might be close to them, and
11:41 they'll wrap up the paper and make, like, a square for it to be able to slide between
11:45 doors.
11:46 Because I speak Spanish, I will always be able to relay messages faster because I knew
11:53 Spanish and I was able to—if I knew harm was coming, I was able to relay that fast
11:58 to anyone.
12:00 But, like, wars can happen between gangs, and it can just, like, change—like, a letter
12:09 will go out at one time and what time f*** needs to happen.
12:15 And everybody got to move.
12:17 Everybody got to move basically means that harm has to happen.
12:20 And it's a fight throughout the whole facility.
12:23 I think a lot of people don't really know what is Rikers, right?
12:34 Like, they think Rikers is a prison, but Rikers is a collective of facilities that are not
12:41 just on the island itself, but facilities that are close to the courtroom in Manhattan,
12:46 Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
12:49 I think people don't understand how old Rikers Island is.
12:52 Rikers is close to 160 years that has been oppressing Black and brown communities.
12:58 Richard Rikers was a part of the Kidnapped Club.
13:01 It was a judge who broke laws again and again by selling Black people who was not enslaved
13:09 back into slavery.
13:10 In the 1930s, it was built by incarcerated people to extend Rikers.
13:16 You know, majority of Rikers Island is built on trash.
13:19 You know, when it rains, I mean, it rains in the facility.
13:22 You smell this, like, eggy, disgusting smell all the time.
13:28 You know, you can't drink the water there.
13:30 You're fighting rats and roaches all the time.
13:33 I never seen a collective of detainees get together to get a mouse out of the cell housing
13:41 complex.
13:42 You know, we heard of people dying, you know, get heat strokes, you know, because of how
13:48 Rikers Island doesn't have air conditions.
13:50 I remember, like, a lot of times they would turn a fan on, a regular fan, and let it blow
13:57 all the way down the chair.
13:59 And everybody, all of us, would be, like, in our cells on the ground, no shirts, in
14:06 our boxes to at least feel the coldness of the floor so we can at least cool down.
14:13 And you're in a cell where you're like, "I can't drink this water.
14:17 I got to keep throwing water in my face."
14:19 There's dormitories in cell areas.
14:27 So in the cell area, it would just be me.
14:29 So cells only have one individuals.
14:32 There is different from different jails or prisons.
14:37 On Rikers Island, you know, you had at least, like, 20 people, like, you know, one per cell.
14:42 In dormitory, it'll be, like, 50 people.
14:45 And dormitory would be a little bit scary because the bed would be an arm's length of
14:51 how close they was.
14:52 If you want to wake up somebody, you can just reach out your hand and just, like, tap them.
14:57 When it talks about being in crowded spaces, the dormitory was one of the most horrible
15:04 place to be at.
15:05 The population in 2020 was at 4,000.
15:09 Now, today is at 6,000.
15:12 Majority of those times when you see a collective of detainees together is when they're probably
15:18 going to court or when they're on the visiting floor or maybe for, you know, medical.
15:24 When I was doing my second bid, when I was 19, I actually came back to Rikers to try
15:36 to get my cases to run collectively.
15:40 They was running wild.
15:41 Three and a half year for the case, the robbery, and then a year and a half for violating
15:48 probation.
15:49 At that time, my brother was a member of the Trinitalios.
15:54 And at that time, when I went back into Rikers, there was this beef between the Bloods and
15:59 the Trinitalios.
16:00 And I found out he was in a different dormitory, but I found out that they was, as they say,
16:07 money on my brother's head to harm him from the Bloods.
16:11 And I found out they was having a meeting at a lower library, and I was like, "Let me
16:17 go in there and tell them that's not going to happen."
16:18 When I sat down, I said, "That is my blood brother they got talking about trying to put
16:23 hands on."
16:24 They was mad because he didn't want to give some tobacco to the Bloods.
16:28 That was the moment where I was like, I felt that the change came, right, that gangs are,
16:37 you know, sometimes they put family against family.
16:41 And I was like, "Nope, nobody better not touch him."
16:46 And if they, if any guys get in a situation, it should be a one-on-one.
16:50 One day, you know, I woke up the next morning, I was like in the dormitory, my brother was
16:55 in the same dorm as me.
16:56 It was so sad.
17:00 Not because I was happy to see my brother.
17:04 It was sad because my mom's had both of her sons in prison.
17:12 One doing 16, the other one, you know, trying to finish their five years.
17:17 It was that moment in my life where I just kind of looked and I was like, "Yo, there
17:21 gotta be a different life for me."
17:23 That meant that I decided to drop being Blood.
17:27 Advocates from the city are just tired of hearing stories of how much Rikers has slowly
17:41 been killing our people spiritually, mentally, and physically.
17:45 And it hasn't changed.
17:49 The only thing that changed is that the youth are not on Rikers.
17:52 Rikers has became more violent.
17:55 I turn on the TV like everyone else and I hear about somebody losing their life on Rikers.
18:01 I tear up just like them, you know, I tear up for their family because I know that, you
18:07 know, like, I could have been one of them.
18:10 A lot of people who are going to Rikers Island are individuals who have mental health problems,
18:14 who are poor, can't be able to pay their bail, and are individuals who are coming from communities
18:21 that are poor, over-incarcerated, and over-policed.
18:24 When you say you survived Rikers, that's a real thing, right, because even now, like,
18:32 since 2020, close to 30-something death.
18:35 I mean, it's gonna keep going up.
18:40 In 2020, some of the legislation was introduced and passed was something called the Kalief
18:44 Law.
18:45 Kalief Browder was one of the most knowledgeable individuals who experienced Rikers as a youth
18:52 and started speaking about it.
18:53 I just got lost with Kalief Browder because I think a lot of times when we think about
19:01 Kalief Browder and everything that he kind of went through, getting abused by correctional
19:06 officers, and that one hit us the most.
19:11 The Kalief Law really got the population from where it was, 20,000 to the 4,000.
19:17 But a lot of that right now that has been growing is because of broken window policing,
19:21 right?
19:22 I think because of the Kalief Law, when we went up to Albany, passing speedy trial,
19:28 discovery law, and bail reform.
19:29 Bail reform, the bail reform issue was, you had people in there, they was in there for
19:35 maybe like shoplifting and their bail would be like $5,000.
19:39 They'll keep pushing his court date back and they'll use the method of keeping you
19:45 incarcerated on Rikers until you give up and cop out, right?
19:50 Or take whatever they're trying to give you.
19:51 And that's a tactic that also gets used.
19:54 What we're also seeing is like the population is growing because resources are declining.
20:00 The resources that were needed to fully provide Rikers Island to the next chapter of closing
20:07 was not happening.
20:08 I think what sent me to the path on Rikers is poverty.
20:18 When people don't understand how poverty impacts you.
20:23 When I was very young, me and my mom, we was homeless.
20:28 I think for me, I get traumatized knowing that and experiencing that with my moms.
20:36 And then growing up, seeing people around you being in the street, eight or nine years
20:42 old, I was already out in the neighborhood trying to figure stuff out.
20:46 And 14, 15 years old, started getting harassed by police.
20:50 Even being so young, walking down the street from middle school, from elementary, imagine
20:58 you getting thrown on a wall by this big police officer who's like 60, 200 pounds, and you're
21:04 just a kid.
21:05 My brother was incarcerated.
21:08 He was incarcerated for 16 years.
21:10 And my uncle was incarcerated for around seven and a half years.
21:19 But it's not just them.
21:20 Most of my family been locked up all the time.
21:23 And I grew up to be a man too early.
21:25 Being tried as an adult meant that the judge doesn't see me as a youth.
21:32 That it doesn't matter if I was 16, 120 pounds, that he sees me as someone who's a grown man.
21:46 I think I regret just the violence.
21:50 It's hard, right?
21:52 Because you leave these spaces, you still got to look yourself in the mirror.
21:55 I'm 32.
21:57 I've been in the system for 14 years.
21:59 What I mean in the system, that means in jail, prison, under some type of parole, probation,
22:06 supervision.
22:07 And I'm 32.
22:09 So this past two years been my first two years to being free.
22:15 It feels really good.
22:16 Not reporting to anyone or being able to know I'm done.
22:26 In 2015, when I came home, I worked for Drive Change, basically a food truck that it hired
22:32 formerly incarcerated youth.
22:34 They got involved in a lot of social justice work.
22:37 They help people out to also figure out what do they want to do further in their
22:43 in their life.
22:46 And for them, they noticed that I was always a good speaker.
22:48 You need to get involved with campaigns.
22:51 So the campaign is called the Campaign to Close Rikers.
22:55 They're led by an organization called Freedom Agenda.
22:58 And their goal was basically to keep continuing the organizing until it finally closes.
23:05 The city has closed some facilities on Rikers and facilities are part of Rikers,
23:11 like the Brooklyn facility, C-74.
23:14 I can't wait to 2027 because I'll be right there, right next to the bridge trying to
23:19 collect a brick.
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