It was in the mid-90s, while serving time at FCI Beckley in West Virginia, that I first heard about White Boy Rick. Like any street legend he had an equal number of supporters and detractors on the inside. I didn't read about White Boy Rick in any newspaper or see any media reports about him on the television. I wasn't from Detroit so I wasn't exposed to the media hoopla that surrounded his case and notoriety. All I knew was what was going around the prison yards and what I heard from his homeboys in the federal system.
Some dudes from Detroit called Rick an informant, while others said that he was a good dude. This was the time period right after Rick had testified against a bunch of dirty cops in what they papers were calling the biggest police corruption scandal in the United States. I would learn all this later. As a young white kid that played basketball and listened to hip-hop I was impressed with Rick and the way he seemingly made an impact in the streets of Detroit in the black underworld. In some kind of way I felt a kinship to him.
But I never sold cocaine or was involved in the crack trade like Rick allegedly was. I sold drugs in the suburbs. I was a deadhead that supplied college students with LSD and marijuana. But because I played sports in prison and listened to hip-hop I hung around a lot of blacks. Which was really a big no-no when you're white in prison but I could only be who I was. And lets be honest, when I entered the Bureau of Prisons in 1993, the War on Drugs was in full effect and most of the offenders serving time were crack dealers from the inner-city. So as they say in the penitentiary I was getting in where I fit in.
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