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(distant sirens wailing)
Interviewer:
Corey Pegues: First of all, thanks for reaching out to me.
My position is clear on body cameras,
and I've been publicly stating this for quite some time.
They should have everything recorded.
I mean, come on, it's 2018 now.
Those cameras should be rolling.
Interviewer:
I, I can promise you that the majority of the time
these cops are making these gun arrests,
and then they figure the story out later.
I can promise you that.
It's no secret that they're doing jump-outs.
A jump-out is three to five guys on the corner,
the cops roll up on the set,
they jumpin' out, throwin' everybody against the wall.
I mean, even today, in the wake of everything that's goin' on
and the body cameras they use, you still see it.
Interviewer:
I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you this,
and you need to print this.
It's, it's um, it's a farce to believe
that the NYPD brought crime down by themselves.
That's a lie.
I was a cop for 21 years,
and, you know, there was a lot of,
a lot of things, a lot of analytics playing
into this decrease in crime.
When I was young,
the drug game played a major part.
Right now, in New York City, the crack era is over.
(indistinct police radio chatter)
(muttering indistinctly)
(indistinct chatter)
Man: That's cool.
Hey, Ziggy, what's up?
Man: I'm cool.
(chuckles)
Bob Mari: It's like, '95, I got transferred into that precinct.
The way it worked was, they put me with whoever they,
was available to work with, so I, I wound up working with Corey.
(indistinct police radio chatter)
Corey was, uh. .
he was Black, he was like the only guy in the squad
that was, uh, African-American.
So, uh, I was like all right, I never had a Black partner.
(indistinct police radio chatter)
I had to break him in in the beginning.
Shut the radio off 'cause he almost got us killed on one occasion.
Listened to rap music on the radio with his chair reclined.
We got a call of a gun.
(rap music playing)
The music was playing. . on 97
or whatever was playing at that time,
and we couldn't hear the police radio.
And I was yelling at Corey, "What are you doing?
Shut the radio off. "
(indistinct police radio chatter)
Nobody thought he was gonna make it.
He was too stupid.
He was a dummy. He was a nigger.
Man: He was a police officer,
and he had one leg rolled up.
He had his hat backwards.
Timberland boots, you know.
Do-rag on his head.
Woman: He looked very comfortable and had his little walk.
Man: He walked with his limp, you know, with a, we call it bebopping.
He had tattoos on him.
Th-th-that drove 'em nuts,
the young male white police officers.
People never seen that type of conduct.
♪ What? ♪
♪ Yo, we down here ♪
(scatting)
Woman: In my mind, I was like, who is this guy coming in here like that?
He looked like he could have been kicked out
right out the door he came in
because we really did not know who this guy was.
Man: Mm-hmm.
-Woman: Okay. -Man: Just a second.
This is, uh, take two.
Drop sticks.
My name is Corey Pegues.
My family call me Boobie.
In school, uh, professional environment, they call me Corey.
And then on the street, I was this hardened guy named Life.
Yo, yo, put some arc on that shot, baby.
Do it.
You seen Chris?
Oh man, you got the worst layup I ever seen in Queens, baby.
It's funny because I never, ever had no aspirations
of being a cop.
I just wanted to play ball.
Yo!
Y'all must be using Monopoly money.
I don't see nobody over here get no real money.
Mimi: It wasn't a bad neighborhood that we were in,
but, um, it was changing.
It was definitely changing. And it was. .
It wasn't like, "Oh my gosh, you can't go out in the street,
you can't go to the store" type of change,
but you knew that the guys were out there.
There's more where that came from, baby.
-Here we go. -Let's go.
Ahhh! Too loose. Here we go.
Your turn. Here we go.
Get the fuck out of here, man.
Cookie: I noticed whenever I would come to family functions,
um, the way he was dressed.
And his attitude changed.
He wasn't that same humble, sweet. .
Boobie that I knew.
He just changed.
Tawn: When I was around 14, I'd started
hearing people talk about the crack epidemic
and seeing people, uh, deteriorate.
You know, they were big, and then now they're small.
I was like, why? You know, asking all these questions.
Ahh! Let's get that money, come on!
Fuckin' cheating, man.
-That's fuckin' cheating, man. -Man: Come on, man.
(overlapping shouting)
-Nigga, what you doing? -Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Pegues: Growing up in O'Connell Park, you learn really quick
who was in control, who was a cool cat,
who was the best ballers, who was the pretty girls,
who the people you shouldn't talk to.
Down, bro. Put the gun down.
Pegues: You had to be on your toes pretty quick.
That's what made me a good cop.
Put the gun down.
-Down. -What's up, man?
-What do you want, bro? -(gunshot)
Yo!
-(girl screams) -What the fuck, man!
-Go pick that shit up. -Yo.
You're a fuckin' asshole.
That's your fuckin' homeboy?
Who the fuck brings a gun around all these fuckin' kids in the park?
Chris: That's how we grew up, you know.
We was right in the middle of crime, you know.
But that's how we grew up. It was just everyday living, so. .
-Pegues: That's your homeboy? -No, man.
-That's your homeboy. -That's your fuckin' homeboy.
I'm going to the block.
Man: Yeah. I'm outta here, man.
Yo, shorty, pick that money up, man.
Go ahead. Take the money.
(sirens wailing)
(hip-hop music playing)
Pegues: Back then, I had my crew.
It was five of us.
It was five kids that grew up together
playing ball, playing sports, laughing and joking.
We was real close, all of us.
You know, we was like the, I guess the Five Amigos.
Ren: It was just all love,
because it came from going to school together
and sitting out talking all night, every night.
And we got to become like brothers.
I was kinda the one out of the whole crew that would have a little more control.
'Cause I was older than them.
To me, Boobie's like the little brother
-that I never had. -Yeah. Exactly.
That's what he was to me growing up on that block.
I met him on the, um, in Queens
in O'Connell Park
because he played ball.
Good guy. .
but things change.
Pegues: I was going to this high school across town,
and I was playing on the basketball team.
And Due and June and Ren, they all came to my basketball game.
After the game, there was a big brawl.
The last basketball game of the season, I think it was.
I don't know what it was.
I know he just had a basketball game.
"Oh yeah, we ain't doing nothing.
Let's go up to the school and watch Boobie play. "
And there were some people in the stands, I believe.
They started, they started, like, bantering going back and forth.
We was rooting for Life, and they was rooting for somebody else.
And we just act a fool when we get in there.
Somebody had said something about me.
They didn't realize my whole mob, my whole crew was in the stands.
These are your folks that go all out for you.
These are your folks that, I bleed for you, you bleed for me.
A girl was talking about she was gonna have him jumped.
When she said that. .
there was no stopping.
There was definitely no stopping these guys.
And I wasn't gonna let nobody do nothing to my little brother.
So, one thing led to another.
Somebody came running to the locker room
and was like, "Yo, you need to get out of here. "
I said, What's the matter? What's going on?"
He said, "Yo, your friends, yo. They just beat everybody up.
"They robbed people. They're stabbing people.
Yo, these guys is crazy. "
I said, "Are you serious?"
Came outside.
Blood all in the gym, in the hallway, going outside.
And it-it just was, it was bad for me.
I ended up getting kicked out of the school.
I begged them, pleaded for them not to kick me out.
Due: His mother was really hurt.
She was really hurt.
Yeah. Everybody was disappointed
and trying to figure out how did you get into all this,
'cause you're in this great school, you know.
Due: I feel bad about that to this day.
'Cause, you know, he was playing ball,
and that was his avenue,
that was his avenue to get away from what he was doing.
(hip-hop music playing)
(indistinct chatter)
Pegues: Family! Family! Family! Family!
-I'm here. . -(indistinct conversations)
-Don't be like that. -Woman: What you doing over here?
Don't be like that.
June: That corner was like,
like a beacon of light for us sometimes.
We would always be there.
(indistinct conversations)
Kevin: That was like our second home.
We would sleep, eat, breathe.
You know, when the cops come, you know, we would run.
You know, they'd beat us up a little bit, but you know, man, but we would. .
You know, tha-that was a place called home.
There was two stores,
the cab stand, the phone booth. .
and us.
(hip-hop music playing)
Somebody might have a box, and we all be standing on the corner
dancing, laughing, joking.
Ren: Behind the store, they had a van. It was an abandoned van.
Due: You would go in there to seek refuge, it was cold.
Pegues: Those first few years we was out there,
we was just there having fun, like, all day, 24 hours a day.
It was our office. It was our hangout spot.
It was our drug site. It was everything to us.
Kevin: That block, we made a lot of. .
we was at least making. .
we used to make $10,000 a day.
It, it was phenomenal.
It was. . we was. . I mean, we was hittin' it.
Will: The crack, the coke,
and just everything went
this way, that way, quick.
Everybody's appearance totally changed.
We went from looking like, looking like we need money to new money.
Pegues: I can remember having 50, 60, 75 pair of sneakers
and, you know, wear 'em one or two times.
June: Jewelry, clothes, you name it.
It was amazing, you know, when you really think about it.
I mean, we're like 16, 15 years old.
Conrad: It was just like, um, joy.
It just made you feel like you belong, you know what I'm saying?
We didn't have to answer to nobody.
We did what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it.
I guess we thought we were bigger than the law at the time
or we were bigger than life itself at the time,
because it was, it was coming so easy.
-Leo. -Leo: Hey, what's up, man?
-What's going on, Leo? -What's up, my brother?
Pegues: I knew what I was doing was wrong,
but, uh, I was blinded by the money.
I needed to get that money.
Yo, Leo, let me get one of them ham sandwiches.
(Leo speaking, indistinct)
I made myself believe that I really wasn't doing anything bad
because if they don't get the crack from me,
they gonna get it from somebody else.
Man: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Seen Ren?
Leo: Yeah, they around the corner.
They, they around the back of the game room.
Pegues: And there wasn't like a whole bunch of other options out there.
Not for us anyway.
(hip-hop music playing)
You motherfucker!
Man: Oh shit!
Fuck off the block. You can't hustle round here no more.
That was Born. He just made a power move,
power move to kick me off the block
and thought, like, I was gonna go with it.
Everybody in that fucking neighborhood was scared of him. Everybody!
He was known as a real gangster.
He was involved in some things. He'd been to jail back and forth.
And so I guess he thought I was gonna get punked.
The fuck I said. Is you stupid or something, nigga?
Woman: Wow.
(indistinct chatter)
Fuck out of here, pussy.
Man: . got a gun.
He's got a 44.
-Woman 1: Oh, look who it is. -Woman 2: Boobie!
-Wait! -Wha. .
-(door slams closed) -What was that?
-Woman 1: What happened? -Woman 2: I don't know.
We were all women around him and at that point,
it was like, "I'm a man now.
"I don't wanna keep listening to y'all,
"'cause y'all are not men, y'all not having
to go through what I have to go through. "
-He's your brother. -Woman: You see, is that. .
He out on the street, that's what it is.
Woman: Y'all need to have more control on him.
Boy 1: Yo, what happened?
-What did Born do? -Boy 2: Yeah, what happened?
Pegues: Everybody knew. It spread like wildfire
that he had hit me in the face with a gun.
Mimi: The argument that him and the guy had,
we look at it now and say it was senseless.
It was something that really didn't need to happen,
but back then, it meant a lot.
It was, you know, this is my turf,
don't mess with my stuff,
get out of my area, you don't belong here.
You know, some guys listened. Some guys was like,
(scoffs) I do what I wanna do.
Boy 1: Yo, Life, everybody out there talking.
Boy 2: You got to make your move.
I'm thinking, just give me some time. Give me a couple of days.
I'm gonna figure this shit out. Give me a couple of days.
Yo, you could, like,
pay somebody to take him out or something.
What? No.
He has to do something.
Oh shit.
Pegues: At that point,
I was already working for the Supreme Team.
Supreme Team controlled the crack trade
in, uh, the mid '80s in South Queens.
You went from making $10,000 a day to making $100,000 a day on that side,
'cause that's what you call, what we call organized crime.
Pegues: The name Supreme Team came from the leader. His name was Supreme.
Prince was like the vice-president.
Then you got Bimmy. Then you had all these other bosses.
And then you had street sellers, couriers, security team.
It was just like a well-run drug organization,
and it was very violent during the '80s.
And I was on the low end on the totem pole.
I was a street seller.
(siren wailing)
Bimmy, he knew.
He heard about the, the whole thing.
That Born pulled a gun out and hit me in the head.
Bimmy: What you gonna do about it?
No problem, sure. Let me take care of it.
You know when they get wind of this, they all gonna try you.
Man, I'm gonna fix this shit.
I'mma take care of this shit.
I felt kinda bad for him, but you know what I mean?
I'm on the same side as he is. You know what I mean?
I can't show no emotions. I can't show no,
no slithering. I can. . You know what I mean?
I gotta hold my head high, you know.
He was nervous.
He was nervous, you know what I mean? 'Cause it was gonna go down.
He had to do it.
-He had to do it. -(hand brake creaks)
All right, man, listen, do what you gotta do.
Over there, it was business.
You couldn't step out of line. You couldn't leave.
You couldn't take a break.
I kept that so private
in the NYPD that nobody knew.
I never talked about my former life. I never talked about my friends.
Obviously, they never came to see me.
Years later, I was a training sergeant at 81st precinct.
And every day, I had to go to roll call and talk to people.
Sometimes, they'll send you VCR tapes, you pop in.
You gotta look at it and then train the people on it.
So this one particular time, I get the package in the mail for the month.
It has a VCR tape in it.
I open it up. I pop the tape in.
And. .
like, my eyes was cr. . I could not believe what I was seeing.
They had this flow chart with Supreme on the top.
Prince, Bimmy, Green-Eyed Born, Wise, Just.
Everybody, the whole hierarchy and street sellers from the Supreme Team,
and I'm sitting there watching this, saying sh. .
I'm praying that my picture,
my picture don't pop up on this flow chart
while I'm training these guys.
'Cause I had to show them the tape.
I couldn't just stop it.
It was a numbing experience for me just to sit there and watch this
on this television.
And I'm watching the cops there looking at it.
Bimmy light skin, Bimmy with red hair. It pops up on the screen.
I'm like, damn, like, not only did I work for Bimmy,
but Bimmy's my man.
Like, we go back.
Like, that's really a good friend of mine.
And so, I'm sitting here and I'm seeing, like,
these cops that's watching this, they don't even have a clue
of my connection to this tape that I'm showing.
Okay, I told you guys I had a mission, okay,
and it was Deacon Smith.
-Deacon Smith? -Yes.
-Deacon Smith -You are so nasty.
How am I nasty?
-Deacon Smith? -Yes.
Salt and pepper.
Boobie?
Hey, Mama wants to eat with all of us tonight.
-Pegues: Yeah, yeah. -No running away.
I didn't know, I didn't know about all that. Mn-mn.
I didn't know that he was that deep into it.
You know, you see all the guys on the corner,
but I didn't know that it was that serious.
That he was. .
deep into,
you know, with the biggest drug dealers in New York City, you know. So. .
Everybody knew who he was. "You know who Life is?"
Mm-hmm. "Life. " That was his name.
-That was his nickname on the street. -Yeah.
-Oh, that's Life's cousin. -No more Boobie.
Yeah.
-(indistinct chatter) -(men shouting outside)
Woman: Okay, go ahead.
It was a hard time for everybody.
It really was.
Because we thought that he would get killed.
It was not about jail.
Most people say that. It was about death.
It was about death.
(indistinct chatter)
Yes.
We did a lot of bad stuff.
Everybody had, like, a little. .
armament for just-in-case measures.
Pegues: I was like, you know, I gotta get this guy back.
I decided that I was gonna kill him.
I put in my mind that I'm probably gonna do five years.
I'm like, okay, so, five years I'll be home.
So, I'm gonna murder him.
I said but when I do it, I gotta make sure it's a big splash.
I gotta do him when everybody's out so everybody could see.
(telephone ringing)
Woman: Boobie!
(ringing continues)
Woman: Boobie! Can you get the phone?
Due: I was away in college at the time.
I would stay in touch. I would go home every weekend
or every other weekend, or whatever the case may be.
But this particular time, I wasn't down there.
(phone ringing)
Yo, Due.
Like any young man with an ego and pride,
you know, he fel-felt that he had to, uh,
right the wrong a-and fix it.
Wait. What?
Man! Born, man!
Who was out there? Who seen it?
Listen, I'm gonna take care of that.
-Due: Just relax, man. -Yeah, no, fuck that.
Due: No, just get your mind right. Get your thoughts together.
This is gonna pass, bro. This is gonna pass.
Just wait for me. I got you.
Pegues: I don't know if I can fucking wait.
Due: Don't make no more moves, all right. Forget that gun.
We'll get through this together.
Pegues: It was just too overwhelming.
When you're in these streets, everything is about street credibility.
And so, I had to have that.
It's like, after God, you gotta have street credibility
when you're a drug dealer and you're in gangs and the streets.
(indistinct conversations)
-(indistinct conversations) -(hip-hop music playing on stereo)
Pegues: I got the gun in my pocket, and I'm ready. I'm locked and loaded.
I'm ready to go.
I wasn't this big gangster. Wasn't no gangster.
I just was a street hustler getting my money.
But at times, you put in the situations where you had to prove yourself.
Yo, didn't I tell you not to be around here no more, man?
Fuck you gonna do? Shoot me, nigga?
Life pulls the gun out and puts the gun on his chest.
-Squeezes the trigger. -(gun clicks)
-And it clocked. -For some reason. .
The gun jams.
He pulled it again.
(gun clicks)
-(gunshots) -(woman screams)
I carried guns but didn't even know how to shoot them.
(distant sirens wailing)
Due: Thank God that he didn't know to rack that slide.
Mimi: When I heard about it, I didn't know it was him at first.
They never said no names.
They said there was a shooting but then like I said,
all of a sudden Boobie was gone.
Bimmy: No Corey.
He disappeared on me.
I was looking for him.
(laughs)
I was looking for him, and I was like, where this motherfucker at?
He gone.
Pegues: I just wanted to disappear off the streets of New York.
I was thinking about it all night.
I would have been walking around with a murder
on my conscience.
I knew at that moment I was in too deep,
and I wanted to get out of there.
So it was like, what I'mma do?
Due: Me and him would talk more. .
than we were talking to anybody else.
We would share. .
intimate feelings.
So he would always tell me, like,
"Yo, I-I want to leave this, I wanna leave this game alone
before this game get us. "
And I said, yo, you know, I said I'm on my way, you know.
You gotta, you gotta figure it out.
But it's hard to just get out that game, you know.
The people that you work for, they don't want you to get out.
Bimmy: No.
No, you ain't getting out.
When you come with us, you know a lot of secrets.
So you can't afford to be outside,
be out there knowing all these secrets.
You know what I mean? Who they were. You can take us under.
So you gotta go.
You know.
I was gonna speak to Bimmy an-an-and see if he can get a pass.
But even, even on that level
ain't no pass.
Only way you gonna pass out of here is, is you going to the penitentiary
or you going out in a coffin.
That's your pass.
Interviewer: So what were the ways to get out of this day-to-day life?
Well, um, I can't say go to jail,
'cause you're still going to be if you're in jail.
I'll say dead.
Dead.
Lot of guys die with us.
A lot.
(heavy breathing)
Ren: He'd seen where everybody else was getting locked up,
-back to back. -Going nowhere.
He could. . On his shoes, he probably said, "Damn, Lorenzo got locked up.
"Damn, June got locked up.
Damn, they locked Will up. "
They. . this is the people on the block, his crew,
going one by one.
So it's like, you're next.
(heavy breathing)
One day. . all of us decided
we was gonna name our crew The Life Mob.
So it was, it was Boo-Life, which was me,
June-Life, Will-Life, Due-Life, Ren-Life.
It lasted for maybe one or two days
but my name stuck, and they all started calling me Life.
(kids shouting excitedly)
Pegues: I thought those were the best years of my life.
We didn't have a care in the world. We was running around.
We're carrying guns. We're selling drugs.
We were just doing a bunch of crazy stuff.
And those times could never be recreated.
June: That block and those particular guys became a family.
That's all I knew, was them.
(indistinct conversations)
June: I was like the black sheep of my family.
I don't wanna live by these rules, 'cause it was rules in my house.
And my pops was like, "Either you gonna live by these rules
or you gotta go. "
So me, thinking that I knew it all,
I left.
And it-it's crazy, but it's like the streets,
they, like, more for me, they, like, embraced me. .
as opposed to, "Oh, you're never gonna amount to nothing. "
You're always gonna be nothing.
I didn't hear that from them.
Due: But we wasn't this happy-go-lucky crew,
like, we was when we was first starting up,
and we fucked up.
We took advantage of it
and went to places that we didn't have to go.
So, I'm going, like, what the, what the hell,
everybody keep coming back for this here,
spending $20 for this stuff?
Then we wound up using it.
We got addicted to it, and then we lost our power.
Corey never did.
Good dude but you know what?
Sneaky.
Very sneaky.
And just know how to beat the system.
(engine revving)
Pegues: I had to get out of the streets really quick
to save myself.
(distant siren wailing)
And I had very limited options at that time.
And so I went down to the recruiter and asked the army recruiter
how fast can he get me out of here.
I got in the back of the car, and I just left.
So I wasn't telling anybody.
I just was gonna do what I had in my mind. It's the great escape.
I'm leaving all of this.
(helicopter blades whirring)
Lamont Fanniel: At the time, he was. .
he wanted to change his life.
He came into the military
to get away from the streets.
He didn't let the streets know what he was doing.
He just vanished.
And he really never said why he left.
Pegues: Two weeks after I go into the military,
the Feds take down the Supreme Team.
That's crazy. Just two weeks.
Two weeks.
Ren: We all separated.
We ain't heard from each other. Wasn't no Facebook.
Wasn't no cell phone.
I got arrested. I got locked up.
I get a one to three. I came home on work release.
And I got a job in 1989.
I went to jail.
I came out on work release.
Got a job.
(distant gunfire)
Pegues: I was in the military for three years and eight months.
I hated it.
So I was looking for my next move.
Due: He had children at that time. He had young children,
and he was 20.
There's no benefits out on that corner.
You know, children need hospitalization.
They need Medicaid and things like that. So. .
Actually, believe it or not, I took the police test
and corrections officer's test
and was just like whoever called me first,
that's the one I'mma take.
So six months later, I went to the New York City Police Academy.
(indistinct police radio chatter)
Due: It was always in the back of his mind
that somebody would run and say, "You know what?
"He used to be out on the block,
"and he used to be selling drugs
and he used to be carrying guns," you know.
I had friends and family telling me that the police department was contacting them.
And my next door neighbor told me, "The cops knocked on my door today.
They was asking a bunch of questions about you. "
So I knew it was real.
And I remember being in the, in the academy saying,
"Man, what did I get myself into?"
I didn't hide anything.
I answered the questions as truthfully as possible,
to the best of my abilities, the ones I was supposed to.
Mimi: He was getting ready to graduate.
I was like, "Yeah, right. Get outta here.
There's no way that you're gonna be a cop. "
He was like, "For real, I'm gonna be a cop. "
I was like, "How you, Mr. Hood Rat, gonna be a cop?"
He was like, "I'm gonna be a cop. Watch, Mimi, I'm gonna be a cop.
I'll be a good cop. " I was like, "Yeah, whatever. "
I didn't believe him.
(hip-hop music playing)
Due: He still dressed the same. He still looked the same.
He still act the same. He still walked the same.
So, when other people would see him,
now maybe in a uniform, or in the squad car,
they're like, "Hey, what's going on here?"
And the next time I saw him, he was a officer,
because he's marching down 135th Street.
I'm like, "That's my boy. .
Corey. Boobie. "
I said, "Boobie. "
He's in the uniform. He's like. .
That's it.
I said, "This nigga made a cop. "
(Pegues speaking)
Leon Leslie: The first day I met Corey,
I was in the command, I was in the desk area,
and I didn't, I didn't know who he was.
There was just something different about him out the gate.
Leslie: He was too representative of his minority community.
He was Black, and he shows it. The men didn't like it.
You gotta understand, back then, it was a white. .
job, you know.
Corey, Corey was Corey.
I saw the attention he was getting, so I naturally pulled him aside
and said, "Listen, man,
"you might want to tone some of that stuff down. You may want to. . "
And he was like, "Yo, I'm gonna be who I am. "
He would be given punishment assign-assignments a lot.
Uh, punishment assignments meaning, you know,
go sit in with a hospitalized prisoner
or go guard the, uh, dead person.
When they thought they were punishing him,
they were really blessing him.
So when they sent him there, he-he would sit in the car
or he'd be at his spot with his book, reading.
(indistinct conversations)
Due: He didn't grow up wanting to be a police officer,
but he was able to say, you know what,
I can do that.
I can do that. I'm gonna be in the streets.
I'm gonna be walking the beat, you know.
And I'm gonna know how to make an arrest here,
'cause I'm gonna know what they're doing out there.
I've did it. I seen it.
I smelled it. I heard it.
(Pegues speaking)
I come home one day,
I think I've run into him.
He's a sergeant now.
-I said what. . -The fuck?
"You're a fucking sergeant?"
"They gave you a fucking licensed gun?"
I said, "Who do you know?"
-Oh, the fuck. . -"Get me in there, bro. "
-"You got a licensed gun?" -I don't wanna do this no more.
Because what I was doing, I was looking over my shoulder every night. .
-Yeah. - . thinking somebody trying to get me.
-Woman: Yeah. -Yeah.
He would study, study, study, study, study.
The patrol guide was, you know, couple of thousand pages.
He could read things once or twice and, you know, be able to recite them back.
-Woman 1: There he is! There he is! -Woman 2: Oh, look.
(whooping)
Man: He's one of the most intelligent people that I've ever met.
He's never failed an exam.
(cheering and whooping)
Pegues: Sergeant in 1998.
Lieutenant, when I lost the cornrows.
Woman: All right.
Pegues: And in 2005. .
(cheers and applause)
People who didn't know him, but they were like, "Man, who-who's this clown
they let get promoted?"
But in the back of my mind, I'm like,
I was like, "No, he's playing y'all. "
(crowd chattering)
(crowd laughing and applauding)
Pegues: Chris. .
I had the most violent command
in the Housing Authority in the city of New York.
They gave me the worst housing developments and projects in the city.
But what was good about being at that command,
you know, I used to sell drugs in the projects, in Baisley projects,
you know, right around that area.
And so, I was able to go into these communities,
go into these housing developments and develop relationships.
I would go to, um, these crime strategy meetings,
and I remember the chief, he would say, "Corey, you got two people shot. .
last week at this location. "
"You have no stop, question, and frisk.
What's going on? You're not stopping people. "
(applause)
In the police mind, somebody gets shot,
grab as many people, you know, identify as many people as you can.
And my philosophy was, I mean, I used to be a criminal.
When you shoot somebody, you're not staying there, like. .
So what we was doing
with that mindset that the police want you to do,
you're just grabbing up innocent people.
And police work, at least in NYPD,
it had this thing called "collars for dollars. "
You lock somebody up, you're going to get six, seven hours overtime.
And so that's what that was about.
Padding their checkbook
as opposed to taking care of these young kids.
(children shouting)
Man: One big thing he organized was cops and kids.
We'd bring the community together for, like, sports days
and mentoring projects.
It was really about changing minds,
you know, perceptions about the police.
(children chanting)
Tim Pearson: Many of the police officials thought,
"Well, what's your purpose in dealing with these people
in the community like that?"
He would be around so-called labeled "drug dealers"
and people who the police department were
not comfortable interacting with.
There were things that, that they felt he should have stayed away from.
He was so connected
to, you know, uh, to the hood, so to speak.
The way, the way the hood moves.
I had seen plenty of captains came
but nobody that. .
He was real,
and he was sincere.
He would come in. He would be like, "Yeah, what's going on," you know.
He'd have his tattoos on.
(R&B music playing on speakers)
Man: He got the gift of gab.
He got that smile. H-h-he charms.
(people cheering)
Woman: He can get you to talk to him, whether you want to or not.
He had mothers talking to him.
He even had the, the guys who,
the so-called gang leaders and the gang people,
he would tell 'em, "Yo, come here, man. Let me talk to you. "
If I had a gun. .
I know I could take it to him,
no questions asked, "Here's a gun. It don't need to be on the street. "
-Two minutes. -Woman: One.
Crowd: Yeah!
Oh my god!
Pegues: I really wanted to tell my story.
I was like people gotta know that you could make
a bunch of crazy mistakes,
even. . criminal mistakes,
and then reven. . reinvent yourself.
But I knew I couldn't do that.
Woman: Let's hear it for Captain Pegues!
When you can't be yourself or can't tell the true story.
You know what I'm trying to say?
You quickly become less of the person you are.
(indistinct chatter)
Billups: And you have to deal with that for your whole career
until you're able to, at a point, where you can speak out and share that.
You know, that's like in a sense of, like, somebody not coming out of the closet.
Um, never coming out of the dark.
So he made himself a image of what people wanted to see.
Pegues: I really conditioned my mind not to look back.
You. . it's. . you can't be a cop talking about,
"Yo, man, you know, I used to carry guns.
I sold drugs for the Supreme Team. "
You know, you can't be doing that stuff.
So, I tried to stay under the radar as much as I could
and started writing in my journals things that was happening to me.
At one point, um. .
Corey Pegues was, uh, investigated
in the police department for, uh,
association with known drug dealers and things like that.
(indistinct police radio chatter)
Pegues: In the NYPD, it's clear that you can't hang out with convicted felons.
That's just clear.
So. . (clears throat)
for me, it was more like navigating through that,
because a lot. . some of my friends was convicted felons,
and, um, I wasn't going to defriend them.
But I knew if I wanted to survive as a cop,
if I wanted to go to the top of the ranks,
that I wasn't going to be able to hang out with them
like I normally would.
So I would just once in a while,
I would be with them, I'd sneak a drink with them.
(indistinct police radio chatter)
(indistinct conversations)
Me and Life, you know, we was just inseparable
so, you know, we was going to be in contact more so,
but, you know, the love didn't stop with the other guys.
When the sun went down and everybody's off duty
or off duty doing what they're doing and you see somebody,
you know, and you at a little club and, you know,
you're having a little social drink or something like that,
then by all means, you know, we were still cool.
Man: There were rumors that surrounded him in terms of the company he kept.
We stayed in contact constantly.
Like, "Yo, this is my number, and this is where I'm staying. "
Stuff like that. And every now and then, we would get together.
Pegues: I had several Internal Affairs investigations.
There was letters written about me.
Most of the allegations were anonymous.
I went down to Internal Affairs, like, so many times.
What was happening was they was trying to trump charges up on me
to get rid of me.
Cordero: People still didn't like him. There were people
who still didn't like him, and I was just, you know, the bottom line.
Man: He had people resenting him
and, uh, not believing that he was who he was.
"How'd this guy become a sergeant? How'd this guy become a lieutenant?
How'd this guy become a captain?"
But he knew how to maneuver,
'cause you had to know how to maneuver in NYPD and how to, you know, uh. .
'Cause you're dealing with all kinds of people.
He knew how to. . be his best in this environment,
how to be his best in this environment,
how to be his best on the street.
You know, he knew how to adjust. Very few people can do that.
I called him my brother, you know. I. .
You know, he's Black, but. .
Corey could fill in. .
I told you, he could dress in a $500 suit
and act like he was very educated and a professor,
or he could put on a pair of jeans, a sneakers, and a baseball cap
and now he's a thug.
Corey could adapt to any situation
and carry himself as a professional
or as a, as a ganst. .
you know, as a thug gangster, you know what I mean?
He was, uh, accused of hanging out with drug dealers.
It was investigated and found to be unsubstantiated.
(people chattering)
Babba-Boom Laude!
Shaka Zulu Zulu Laude!
After taking the captain's test,
you know, you have your bachelor's, there's no more exams.
So my mindset was I need to do a little more,
go and get my master's, you know.
Try to separate me from the, the other guys
where the commissioner look at me and say, "Hey, well, let's use this guy. "
(woman speaking)
(indistinct conversations)
He was so happy, and I was happy for him 'cause he was happy.
It was just. .
something I never expected.
(indistinct conversations)
Listen. Listen. Shh.
(laughter)
He loved his job.
You know how some people like their career.
He loved his career.
That's all he talked about, and he always talked about the next phase.
Soon as he become lieutenant, "Oh, I gotta start studying,"
you know, "I gotta get ready to become a captain. "
He become a captain. Oh, next move is deputy inspector.
It was never him getting to the next level and just being content there. Never.
(applause)
(cheering and applause)
Will: We all said we wanted to be cops.
Because we wanted to be bullies.
Basically, like, pull people over and stuff like that,
because woo-woo-woo sirens and stuff like that.
We all say we want to be cops and then you know what,
we wound up being the bad guys.
We always wind up f-f-freaking up.
Corey didn't.
Corey did what he had to do.
(indistinct chatter and laughter)
He wasn't a quiet guy. He didn't shy away from the cameras or. .
He loved to take pictures.
If you know about him,
he could be a congressman or a rapper or a movie star.
He was gonna let them know he was in the room.
"Can I take a picture? Take a picture?" Tch, tch!
Mimi: And when we got a new President
and I seen him, they actually put it on the news.
And when I seen that, I was like, you know what,
he, he's really done it.
He even met the President.
Now you know he has definitely gone the extra step.
I said, I am so proud of him.
Pegues: I tried my hardest to stay away from trouble.
A lot of people who told me, keep your mouth shut,
just concentrate on being a commander,
but at some point I knew
it ha-had started becoming,
you know, I could, I could make a difference.
I could make a difference in people's lives.
You just have to look at the climate of America.
We, we can step out of New York City, out of East Flatbush.
Just look at the climate in America, in minority communities,
and their dealings with the police.
There's a, a serious discord.
We, we see it all over America.
Corey, um, would be vocal about some things happening
in community outside the 6th, 7th precinct.
Long Island, other places.
Different issues going on.
There was a noose found in the men's locker room
of the Hempstead Police Department.
Reporter: On September 28th, Corey Pegues,
the president of a Black law enforcement group,
became enraged after learning about a noose
hanging in this small Hempstead New York Police Station.
I'm the first one to argue with him, like, "What are you doing?"
My phone starts ringing. My email starts going off,
like, "Yo, wha-what's Corey saying? You should tell him to shut the fuck up. "
It was causing friction with a lot of people
because I was speaking out,
and I was out there doing it.
But then when I did the Freeport thing
that's when things started changing.
Pegues: Residents of Freeport. .
Freeport is this, this small town in Long Island.
Um, they elected their first Black mayor, Mayor Hardwick.
Uh, cops, they hated him out there.
They was having a town hall meeting. He asked me to come.
He says, "I just need your support to give a, you know, a statement. "
There was cops there.
It was mostly white majority, about 95 percent.
(people shouting and jeering)
Walker: You know, a police department is really sensitive.
So to have an executive, you know, make some statements,
um, against another police department was a no-no.
(people shouting and jeering)
Woman (shouting): Get lost!
Damon Jones: When you have a precinct commander come out
against law enforcement
and the policies and procedures and speak on that,
it's very damaging.
I didn't realize somebody was videotaping it.
And so they put it up on YouTube, and it just went viral.
You know, that video reached everywhere,
and it just became a big, a big problem for Corey.
I think the problems in Freeport
need to be, needed to be addressed, and he did so.
And maybe they didn't like the words he used.
(Pegues speaking)
(people shouting)
-(people shouting and jeering) -Woman: Get out of here.
I said, "If you continue
"with this untraditional way
"and you come at them the way you are,
"brass, bombastic, and just charging at them,
"they're gonna turn on you and they're all gonna galvanize
and look at you as the person they have to take down. "
They actually really wanted me to just go there,
keep your mouth shut, in a year you get promoted,
and I just couldn't do that.
I believe he wound up getting disciplined over that.
Um, there was Internal Affairs investigation,
and, uh, he wound up getting disciplined about that.
So that kinda was like, you know, just some more
uh, nails in the coffin, you know, so. .
(Pegues speaking)
Everybody that was in the precinct
was promoted
within like a year, year and a half.
I was in that precinct for three years and eight months,
and I didn't get no ever promotion.
(siren wailing)
I retired in 2013
due to, uh, a line of duty injury.
Popped a disc in my back and was rushed to the hospital.
So I was no longer able to be a full-duty police officer.
But, uh, I retired in good graces.
I mean, I had some of the best assignments,
most prestigious assignments in the NYPD.
He wasn't ready for it, you know.
He would act like he was ready for it, you know.
He would crack a joke here and there.
"Oh, I could do whatever I want to do, you know, now.
I'm retired now. I can travel. I can. . "
He didn't mean it.
So it was like he, you know. .
I think he just felt like it got snatched away from him too soon.
Because I know that his plan was he wanted to be a chief.
Combat Jack: Yo, internets, you tuned into The Combat Jack Show.
Combat Jack Show dot com.
We got a special episode today, man.
I met this man a couple of weeks ago, and his story blew me away.
Internets, I welcome to The Combat Jack Show
Mr. Corey Pegues, AKA Life.
What's up, Life, Circle of Life, what's up, Mr. Pegues?
-What up? What up? What up? -Jack: Yo, man.
Let's go. Let's get it done. I've been waiting to get on this show.
I was at work,
and he called me.
He said, "Yo,
"I'm on The Combat Jack podcast.
We going live, baby. We going live. "
And I said, "All right," you know, "Let me know. "
I really don't know nothing about podcast at the time.
Jack: I-I still am blown away by your story.
Pegues: Mm-hmm.
Jack: You know, like, like, going from the Supreme Team
which is a very intense movement
to the NYPD.
Man: But hold on for a second. Pull back a little bit more
an-an-and talk about the neighborhood.
Jack: I've never been on the block in my life.
-Pegues: Right. -Is selling drugs easy
or do you still have to be very good at it?
No, you gotta be very good.
-You gotta be very good. -Jack: An-and what made you good at it?
I'm like, I'mma do this interview
and I said, I'm gonna just jump off the roof.
I'm telling everything.
Come home. My man pulled a pistol out on me
and punches me in the face with the pistol,
like, "Yo, get the fuck off the block. "
Everybody coming like, "Yo, let's get this dude. "
He had just popped a cop, a female cop in the chest.
Initially, he felt, he felt the same way that almost everybody felt
that, you know, life jumped out, out the window,
like, you know, what are you doing here?
And I was like, "Oh my goodness. "
It was just so crazy.
I mean, everybody knew Boo gonna say what he wanna say
and don't care what nobody's saying.
For 21 years, I was able to hide the fact
of my previous life to everybody.
I said, "Man, I have a story to tell, and I need to write this down. "
I heard about the book for years, you know.
He's always talked about he's going to write this book.
And then he would show me a stack, you know, where he had written the book.
I was trying to reach people and, you know, make connections,
and it just wasn't happening for whatever reason.
And then I met, I met Reggie Osse
who's known in the hip-hop world as Combat Jack.
Jack: Was your shit busted? Was your shit busted up?
No, it was a glancing blow, but it's all about the street cred.
-Jack: Right. -Man: Right.
-Jack: Was there people around? -People was out there.
-It's all about the street cred. -Jack: So he checked you?
Man: You was on some crazy Ray Liotta shit right now.
Pegues: Oh yeah, I was crazy.
Philip Messing: One thing I got to know after doing it for more than 30 years
is what a good newspaper story is and what a good newspaper story isn't.
When I heard that there was a, um, a podcast,
I said, this can't be true.
I mean, and I, you know, usually when you're in,
uh, the business of being in the newspapers,
whenever you think you're smart or brilliant,
you find out that there's two or three other people
that are smarter than you or more brilliant than you
a couple of days earlier.
So it's, it's very unusual that you're the first person
to have something.
I put on my jacket, I got my nickel-plated 25
in my pocket.
I go right down to the block, 198 and Murdock,
pull a pistol, I put in his chest,
pull the trigger right in his chest.
Bah!
-Don't go off. -Jack: Ah!
-Bah! Two times. It don't go off. -(Combat Jack laughing)
The guy who was, who was basically one step away from wearing handcuffs
was, um. .
a senior official in the NYPD.
I mean, it's, uh, it's startling.
Pegues: He pulls out on me.
Jack: What's, what does he pull out?
He pulls out his 38, and I get lost.
(laughter)
And the most egregious element of this, to me,
the most egregious element is that on the radio show
it sounded as if like he was, uh,
um, regaling the host with laughter.
I mean, it's, to me, it was an instant story.
Someone leaked it to the Post
and the Post. . put it out there.
It's like finding out that, um, somebody in the, um,
in the B'nai B'rith or a Jewish organization
was a former Nazi.
Or finding out that somebody in the, uh, in the NAACP
was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.
I mean, it was incomprehensible
to all of the cops at that time.
My phone was going crazy, and I'm sleeping.
I, I worked all night, and there's like,
"What is your nigger partner doing?"
Like, "What are you talking about?"
"Look at the newspaper. "
If what he said is true,
that raises even more troubling questions as to how could he. .
Where is his moral compass? Who is he?
I mean, why should there be this sense of forgiveness?
Jack: So you was on the streets when it was really like. .
'Cause that was during that regime that the cop Edward Byrne was killed.
Pegues: Yeah. Right after I got out.
Jack: Okay! So you didn't, you didn't even. .
But my man Dave McClary was one of the people that killed him.
Jack: Right.
That's one of the stories
I didn't mean to tell on Combat Jack.
Reporter: NYPD cops are most enraged about Pegues' admission
that he was friends as a teen
with the guy later convicted
of pumping five shots into the head
of rookie police officer Edward Byrne
on February 26th, 1988,
as Byrne guarded the home of a drug witness
in crack-riddled South Jamaica.
He was saying, like, he was there
when Jesus got crucified on the cross.
You know what I'm saying? You just don't do that.
You don't say that.
That's why I don't want to elaborate on it.
I don't wanna talk about it. I just wanna let it go.
It was a very, very famous case in New York
that he was affiliating himself with.
One that changed Queens, that changed Narcotics,
that changed the police department relations.
Um, so when he started talking about his affiliation,
we knew those guys.
I knew Supreme, I knew Corley.
In fact, we all knew those guys, but we were not those guys.
I knew it was gonna be a lot of backlash
and that he was gonna be in for it.
-Mm-hmm. -So that was where the shock was.
The whole family felt it.
Yeah. Like, oh boy.
Yeah, here it comes.
Reporter: Did Pegues bamboozle the NYPD
by not revealing a sordid past?
Police union president Patrick Lynch wrote a letter to the New York Post
after it put Pegues on its front page Monday.
He's hoping the NYPD will do an extensive
and thorough investigation of Pegues' past.
If he were to associate with drug dealers then,
what was he doing when he was wearing a uniform in between
and what will he do now that he's retired?
I called up a friend of mine, uh, that Corey was close to,
and I asked, I said, "Dina, is there anything we could do to save him?"
He says no.
'Cause he was already, he was already burning the bridge
with the police department.
This has been a big story in New York City, right?
People are calling you the drug-dealing, former drug-dealing cop.
You've seen your picture on the cover of the paper, in the headlines.
Some people are saying you should never have been a police officer.
And you know what I say to those people?
I should never have a second chance in life?
Should I have been stuck in the street where most people want you to be
where you're on the lower end of the totem pole
and not given a second chance.
They basically turned on him in a very, very harsh
and unrelenting way,
and they basically put a curtain down
on him and them, you know.
It's like the end of The Godfather
when they close the door and, like, Kay is like looking in.
She's no longer part of Michael's world, you know what I mean?
Like, you know, when Corey gave that interview,
he, like, basically allowed the door to close.
Mari: I don't know.
I don't know what to say.
I just wish he would stop talking about cops
and let it be, you know.
Uh, next up is Corey Pegues.
He's representing Law Enforcement Alliance.
Pegues: A few weeks before the podcast,
I was going on the news, like, almost every other day
talking about the Eric Garner incident.
Reporter: Pegues recently talked about the Eric Garner death
on a Pix11 webcast.
You put your arm around somebody's neck
and squeeze it, it's a chokehold.
Don. . so don't bamboozle the public.
The chokehold in Staten Island,
the man didn't have to die.
He died. So guess what? Somebody's culpable for it.
The NYPD, there's got to be some checks and balances.
Every, everything can't be right.
An illegal chokehold that's prohibited,
the only thing happened to the cop was
you took him off the street and put him on a desk.
A lot of times, you have Al Sharpton
and all of them that do the marches an-an-and do everything like that,
uh, and speak out against the issues,
but one main thing, they're not law enforcement.
We make mistakes, doctors make mistakes, lawyers make some mistakes,
but guess what, in Staten Island, last week in The Hive,
some cops made a mistake.
They made a big mistake.
And somebody must pay for it.
The ironic thing, I think about Eric Garner
getting murdered in Staten Island. .
For the record, you heard what I said. Murdered.
I'm a cop of 22 years. Eric Garner was murdered.
-Jack: And I, and I wanna get. . -That's what it was.
The backlash from it was that,
you know, he became, uh, he put a bull's-eye.
The end result is. . is that Nassau County, where, uh,
which is a suburb of Long Island, uh, bedroom community
just outside of New York City where Corey was living,
when they found out that this happened, they put the gears in motion.
They came like that night when the newspaper came out.
Like, 17 cops came stomping my house to take my guns.
Is it wrong? I mean, I don't know if it's wrong.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not the head of the Nassau County Police Department.
I asked the detective, "Well, why are you taking my firearm?"
And he said, "NYPD called us and told us to take it. "
The person there, I had somebody that quoted him to me
as saying that if Corey Pegues doesn't like
what we've done, he can sue us.
Reporter: Nassau County Police took several guns away from Pegues,
but he's still got the city pension.
Can you talk to me, Inspector?
Inspector, can you talk to me for one minute?
This was retired NYPD deputy inspector Corey Pegues
speeding away in his Mercedes SUV.
That's when I got worried.
When the police went to his house.
Stuff like that.
I was in North Carolina.
I felt like I had to come home
to be a part of protecting my brother.
I was so mad and hurt
and fearful, like they were going to set him up.
I didn't know what was happening next.
Interviewer: Were you worried about the police hurting him
or. . some of the connections from his past?
Police.
The past. . that's the past.
I was more worried about the police.
I mean, is it, is it salacious, the story? Was it a salacious story?
I guess it was a salacious story.
But people don't talk about, um,
you know, they don't wanna read about or hear about, uh,
you know, an economic report on soybean futures.
I mean, they wanna read about something that's gonna re. . re. .
you know, resonate with them in a, in a visceral fashion.
For 21 years, I had to hold all this stuff in.
And I knew I had a story to tell.
I was just talking and telling the story,
and, uh, I don't know how they wanted me to inflect my story.
It's hard to, to inflect putting a gun to somebody's chest
and pulling the trigger two times and the gun not going off.
I don't know whether they wanted me to start crying when I said that.
It's a part of my life.
It's something that happened. It's something I'm not happy about.
It's something that could have ruined my entire life.
But, uh, I just told the story as it went down.
It's done. There's nothing else I could do.
It's out there for the world to see.
I can't change it,
and it's actually all true.
All I'm gonna say. Hey, yo, Ren, all I'm gonna say is, listen,
y'all know I did the story, you know what I'm saying?
They put me in the paper. They tried to dirt me out like I was. .
Thug cop! Thug cop! Thug cop!
Yo, Kurt, that was the title, but they forgot to put the slash.
Man: They didn't put no slash.
If they were to put a slash, I used to be a thug,
then I became a cop.
But they tried. . When you say thug cop, it's like,
"Yo, what's this dude, he robbing people?"
Due: Derek Jeter over there.
There's a lot of people in this community, man,
that's, that's Police, Correction, Fire, Sanitation.
There's a lot of people in this neighborhood, right?
Not me. I can't toot my own horn.
But my little brother,
there's no police officer in this community
that did it like he did it.
-Man: Hear, hear! Hear, hear! -Due: Nobody.
Man: Respect, baby. Respect, baby.
(indistinct chatter)
(cheering)
But you know what? Y'all already know how it is.
It's just like the hustle. It's a marathon. Whatever.
I'm gonna just keep trucking along. I'm gonna do what I do.
If I don't go no further than where we at right now,
I got my family, I got decades here.
There's family, friends, we good.
Yo, got that package in the mail today.
Let's see what's inside.
You see that tag.
Atria Books.
Let's see what's inside.
Excited. Y'all thought it was a game.
Yo!
Once a Cop.
We here, baby.
We got books.
(applause)
Everything I said was true.
It's just maybe
some stuff I should have left for the book and just wrote it.
We all have a past. . you know.
I can't say I've. .
I haven't done or been involved with that myself.
You know.
Just because I didn't write a book.
And just because other African-American or minorities
or even. . white officers
have not disclosed certain things doesn't mean it didn't happen.
It's just that Corey has been and always been courageous enough
to kind of, you know, be vocal about it.
My name is Corey Pegues.
Born and raised in Queens, New York, right around here.
I came to share my story with you guys.
And I know that all of you young men are good men,
but, uh, I want to share my story with you anyway,
so you never stray off.
'Cause sometimes good guys go bad.
You in. Like, you had to live it. I lived it. Like, I was all in.
To the point that I was getting ready to murder somebody.
I just did the speech up in Brownsville High School.
-What up, y'all? -Boy: What's good?
What up? What up? What up?
Mari: If Corey would have stayed on the job,
he probably would have made chief 100 percent.
And if he would have not made that book, which I told him not to do,
the city would have probably hired him back
as a deputy commissioner of something with the city.
He's not gonna have someone scare him into being quiet.
He speaks his mind. He's always been like that.
There's no discretion here.
We're just locking people up, locking 'em up,
and giving them violations. .
-Guess who runs the police department. -Reporter: Who?
Seventy to probably about seventy-eight percent male white.
So what does a cop have to do in New York City
to get fired to. . not getting fired.
How about suspended without pay?
They all need to go, 'cause what happened last night was a travesty.
It made. . it was a mockery of policing.
I want to defend these cops. A lot of these cops are good cops.
They're not all just jumping out on people.
I did 21 years as a police officer.
Many of you don't know, my daughter's a cop.
My nephew's a cop. I love the police.
I just hate bad police.
And I'll tell you what, I really hope your voice is needed,
because, um, you say both sides.
And tha-that's really rare.
Proud of him.
'Cause he's doing something with his life.
You go to the old neighborhood, some guys still sitting there ain't doing shit,
you know, and nobody talking about them.
I think he just always wanted to be better than,
than himself, not even better than anybody else.
I think he always wanted to be better than himself.
He always wanted to be a better Corey. He wanted to be a better Life.
A better Boobie.
A better father.
Pegues: My grandson. He's a big boy, right?
Hey, big boy.
Chris: I can't get none. I can't get none.
Due: He ain't giving no fives to anybody. .
(indistinct conversations)
Give me five, big boy.
When I went to the book signing and I was like wow.
I seen the people, and I seen all the crowd,
and there were people from the, that he worked with in the precinct.
So it's like, you got the precinct crew, and you got your crew.
So it's like both stories.
And when I seen him, I was like, Oh my God,
15 years, I ain't see this dude.
But with the Facebook, you know, talking, all that.
So when I seen Boobie, Sean, I was like, I lit up,
'cause it's like we're still here.
(indistinct conversations)
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
(indistinct conversations)
Pegues: Our bond, it never broke.
It never broke.
And we're all 50 years old,
and we're still, we're still the same.
It's just like we was back on the block every time we see each other.
Every time we see each other.
(indistinct conversations)
That night was historical. It was epic, that night.
(cheering)
We got a brother right here, came up with us.
He going all the way, and we gonna go all the way with him.
I went over there and when I found him,
hugs and kisses and blesses.
Just because I don't make it,
that don't mean somebody else can't make it.
There's always a promising something for somebody else.
(indistinct chatter)
Quiet please!
(indistinct chatter)
Woman: Action!
Cut!
Pegues: Got the swag.
Swagged out.
Yeah.
Woman: Let's go please.
Pegues: Having my son being the star of the reenactments was
a really proud moment.
This my first boy.
So, to see him do this was mind-blowing.
Ah! Start over.
(indistinct)
Pegues: But the most compelling part of this for me was
just watching him try to get my walk down.
He gotta get this walk down.
People don't know about it say he was really,
he was just walking around the whole neighborhood
everywhere he went, like, trying to walk like me.
And I'm pretty sure people was like, "Yo,
what's going on with you, man? Why are you walking like that?"
(both laugh)
(hip-hop music playing)
♪ Sean "Due" who introduced me to the block ♪
♪ Located in OCP, we had it hot ♪
♪ Getting them loosies off a buck a pop ♪
♪ I'm focused so I could never serve a cop ♪
♪ Sean "Due" who introduced me to the block ♪
♪ Located in OCP, we had it hot ♪
♪ Getting them loosies off a buck a pop ♪
♪ I'm focused so I could never serve a cop ♪
♪ Shit you couldn't believe, half of these cats out here couldn't be me ♪
♪ Put in work in the system and been in the streets ♪
♪ Really been through the heat ♪
♪ On the block out in Queens with the team ♪
♪ 'Bout the cream making swaps green ♪
♪ From the streets to the chief left 'em both in the past ♪
♪ Only Fam is my team ♪
♪ Shit you couldn't believe, half of these cats out here couldn't be me ♪
♪ Put in work in the system and been in the streets ♪
♪ Really been through the heat ♪
♪ On the block out in Queens with the team ♪
♪ 'Bout the cream making swaps green ♪
♪ From the streets to the chief left 'em both in the past ♪
♪ Only Fam is my team ♪
♪ 3 bands on Le Tigre shorts and Fila suits ♪
♪ Bimmy blew them band, I'm down with the crew ♪
♪ I hit up the hood in my uniform soon ♪
♪ Post up by the courts and my package was blue ♪
♪ I'm easily getting 3 K for the day ♪
♪ Few hundred to flip make them all go away ♪
♪ I got a deuce-five but I keep it away ♪
♪ It's shooters round here, I can't get robbed today ♪
♪ From Murdock to Baisley, this shit got real crazy ♪
♪ I'm thankful to say I survived in the 80's ♪
♪ Especially since I made them sales on the daily ♪
♪ Sometimes worked the night shift them hours was crazy ♪
♪ Got hit with a pistol and had to come back ♪
♪ Tried taking his life but God ain't want that ♪
♪ We both better thank higher power for that ♪
♪ 'Cause once you pull triggers it's no going back ♪
♪ Shit you couldn't believe, half of these cats out here couldn't be me ♪
♪ Put in work in the system and been in the streets ♪
♪ Really been through the heat ♪
♪ On the block out in Queens with the team ♪
♪ 'Bout the cream making swaps green ♪
♪ From the streets to the chief left 'em both in the past ♪
♪ Only Fam is my team ♪
♪ Shit you couldn't believe, half of these cats out here couldn't be me ♪
♪ Put in work in the system and been in the streets ♪
♪ Really been through the heat ♪
♪ On the block out in Queens with the team ♪
♪ 'Bout the cream making swaps green ♪
♪ From the streets to the chief left 'em both in the past ♪
♪ Only Fam is my team ♪
♪ Seed on the way, had to change my ways ♪
♪ Was just on the block but can't do it today ♪
♪ I'm through with the streets, you could die any day ♪
♪ I crept off the block in a whole different way ♪
♪ Avoiding the system, now joining the system ♪
♪ 'Cause I had to make me some coins in the system ♪
♪ Was living too wild, thank God I'm not a victim ♪
♪ Can't take me from the fam, I swear I'mma miss em ♪
♪ Can't hustle ya whole life so it made me figure ♪
♪ I'll let the streets go and work for the figures ♪
♪ I miss the money, yeah my pockets was bigger ♪
♪ But it's the drama I don't wanna remember ♪
♪ Put the story out got cold as December ♪
♪ I should be honored, this is one to remember ♪
♪ I transitioned from me being a sinner ♪
♪ To showing the youth you could be a good winner ♪
♪ Shit you couldn't believe, half of these cats out here couldn't be me ♪
♪ Put in work in the system and been in the streets ♪
♪ Really been through the heat ♪
♪ On the block out in Queens with the team ♪
♪ 'Bout the cream making swaps green ♪
♪ From the streets to the chief left 'em both in the past ♪
♪ Only Fam is my team ♪
♪ Shit you couldn't believe, half of these cats out here couldn't be me ♪
♪ Put in work in the system and been in the streets ♪
♪ Really been through the heat ♪
♪ On the block out in Queens with the team ♪
♪ 'Bout the cream making swaps green ♪
♪ From the streets to the chief left 'em both in the past ♪
♪ Only Fam is my team ♪
♪ Can't forget about my crew, you know that I'mma ride with 40, Will, and June ♪
♪ Now we all at the top, you know that I'mma ride with Ren and Sean Due ♪
♪ Can't forget about my crew, you know that I'mma ride with 40, Will, and June ♪
♪ Now we all at the top, you know that I'mma ride with Ren and Sean Due ♪
♪ ♪