(suspenseful sound) - Sometimes I just feel invisible.

(suspenseful sound) Like I can see the whole world, (suspenseful sound) but the world can't see me.

(suspenseful sound) Probably one of the most talented athletes in the whole state of Arkansas.

(engines revving) But where I come from probably though will be the reason I don't make it.

(suspenseful sound) I walk through the streets everyday, just looking over your shoulder, cop cars, addicts, just like I used to run touchdowns.

(snapping sound) First thing I do is look in the stands to see who came to my game.

(indistinct murmurs) I didn't really care about the touchdowns.

I just wanted somebody to clap for me.

I want to feel appreciated.

(suspenseful sound) Parents can't give you nothing that they don't have.

Whether that be money, emotion, positivity.

They just don't have it for you.

You go home and it just feels empty.

As a kid you're not even accepting the things that, you can get at the age of 10.

You're accepting the things that you can't get.

I know that I'm talented.

I know that I'm intelligent.

But I don't think the world see that.

Maybe it's the way I talk or the way I look.

Where you come from, where I come from, you just can't walk around with a happy, smiley face.

You learn to put on another face.

And you make sure nobody can see through your eyes.

(suspenseful sound) (door creaking) (upbeat music) - I remember the first time I ever flew in an airplane.

As we flew across the country, I remember looking out the window the whole time, my nose just pressed against the glass, sort of surveying the land below me.

I remember having this strange sense of duty to dedicate myself in some way to helping.

- [Announcer] Opioid addiction reaching epidemic levels.

- [Narrator] Fast moving fires in parts of California.

- [Announcer] Breaking news, at least nine people killed overnight.

- As I grew older, I ended up raising a family and becoming a lawyer and ultimately becoming CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Mine is a vision to change food culture.

One of the things I liked best was interacting with thousands and thousands of people over the years, and really getting to know them.

Loads of different people from very different walks of life.

(upbeat music) The more I got to know the more convinced I was that man, we're all very much the same in so many ways.

And you wouldn't know that from what we see on TV or hear on the radio.

All that stuff suggests that we're very divided.

That we're not united at all.

That we're all about disagreement.

That we're all about arguing.

That we're all about fighting.

(upbeat music) But I think the truth is just the opposite.

There's a great deal more that unites us.

(upbeat music) What I wanna do with this docu series is to tell the stories of people who might never be seen or heard, and to help bring the wisdom from many people from many different walks of life so that everyone has access to it.

(upbeat music) In some ways I'm still just that small boy with my nose pressed against the glass, looking down at this beautiful place we all live and wanting to do some good, wanting to demonstrate that there's a lot more that unites us than divides us.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) In 1993, Little Rock, Arkansas had the highest per capita murder rate in the country.

(upbeat music) Most of the deaths were young men caught up in gang violence, a war mostly between two of America's largest gangs, the Bloods and the Crips.

(upbeat music) Back then a documentary was filmed that some felt left the city with a bad reputation, driving away business and causing many people to leave the area.

But still today violence, shooting and murders are all too common.

(gun cracking) - [Man] Give me my gun, give me my gun.

- Is this recent violence a result of increased gang activity or is there some other cause?

(upbeat music) I'm eager to learn from the residents of Little Rock, many of whom grew up with violence and criminal activity at the center of their life.

What can I learn about the Crips and Bloods, their past and ongoing disputes?

Are these gangs still to blame for the countless tragedies on the streets of Little Rock, that drive people to fight and even kill each other?

(upbeat music) Leifel Jackson is a little rock native that spent some of his young life in Los Angeles where his brother introduced him to the gang life and he was soon initiated into the Crips.

- Back when we were banging, the OGC Crips, we would meet down here for our gang meetings.

- What's OGC stand for?

Original Gangster Crips, yeah.

We were 20 Crips off of the four block.

This is where we would come to discuss our business.

- [Monty] Yeah.

- [Leifel] I had.

- [Monty] What was your business?

- Our business was drug trade.

- Okay.

- We wanted to make sure that where we were selling drugs, that there was no one from any other community coming in there and selling drugs where we were.

- [Monty] Were there people who wanted to shoot you back then?

- [Leifel] Oh, yes, yes.

- [Monty] Because you were the head of the Crips?

- For the territory and the money, a lot of people lost their lives.

A lot, and I mean, to the extent that Little Rock per capita had more murders than LA and Chicago.

- Wow.

And this is what?

20 years ago?

- No, it was over 30 years ago.

- 30 years ago.

- Yeah.

- And so did you have a gun at that time on you?

- Multiple.

- Oh, okay.

- Oh yeah.

Yeah, Well that was the thing about it.

- But so did all the young guys.

- But so did everybody else have guns.

- Yeah.

- But here's the thing that was different.

Back then, we still had rules.

You walk up on somebody and they had their babies or are old people, they get a pass.

That used to be the rules.

Now it has changed a lot.

These younger kids, they don't care.

Wherever they see you at, they start shooting.

So that puts children at risk and older people who had nothing to do with it.

- Who made up those rules?

- Those rules actually descended all the way from California.

They were part of the rules, you know.

And a lot of the gang members that set up here, a lot of them was descending, came from California, more or less.

- You did, didn't you?

- Well, I went to California and I stayed in the projects in Imperial Court with my brother Dewitt.

- Yeah.

- And my father would tell me at an early age, he would say, "A man shouldn't hug another man."

But when I got to Southern California and I'm sitting in the yard and a dude got out and he walked over to the other dude, he put his arms around him and he hugged him and he said, "I love you cuz."

I'm like, "Oh my goodness, you got me.

I'm gonna hug my brother."

(Monty laughing) You know, and there's nothing strange about that.

It didn't make me feel like, oh, I liked him.

So what they had there in California, I wanted it.

(hiphop music) Right when I came home, all of us Crips, we rolled together then.

The comradery was just so good.

- [Monty] And were you in charge of everybody?

- I wasn't in charge of everybody, but a lot of them looked up to me.

- But you were the most senior in the whole town, weren't you?

- We had my brother, Dewitt.

And then we had one of my homeboys, Big O.

He's actually older than me.

It's just that I was the money.

(hiphop music) - Was it that much money selling drugs?

- Yes, it was.

- Millions?

- Yes.

- Many millions.

- Yes.

The young guy you're gonna meet, Charles, he used to work for me.

- Yeah.

- And he'll tell his story.

A really good dude, but Charles was a seller.

(hiphop music) - I went to college up in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

It didn't last at all.

- Why?

- When I came home, I saw my young brother, my baby brother, he was selling dope here in the neighborhood, in the hood here.

And so then I watch him make about a $1,000 in a couple hours.

- And you thought college isn't for me?

- It ain't for me.

- [Monty] Was that what it was?

- Yeah, I want some of that.

It looked easy.

You're making $1000 or $2,000 in two or three hours.

You don't make that on a job.

- Right.

- You know.

And so I said, "Man, you know, I wanna do this."

You see these drug dealers, they behind the scene.

You know, they got these young boys and these young people out selling the dope, right?

But you never see the man behind the scene.

And I had an opportunity to meet Leifel.

I go into the house and immediately I go in, he locks the door.

And he said, "What do you want?"

I say, "Hey man, I just wanna get on, you know.

I just wanna get on, you know."

And he said, "What you got?"

I said, "I have about $100."

So he gave me an $80 double up.

You know what a double up is?

- No.

- I paid $80 for it, but he gave me $160 worth of dope.

So that's a double up.

- [Monty] Okay.

- [Charles] I drove from Little Rock back to Stuttgart.

- [Monty] And sold it.

- [Charles] Sold it in an hour.

- And went back up.

- Went back up.

- You're an ambitious man.

- I was.

(laughs) - [Monty] Oh my God.

- He started buying packages from me.

He was going and coming back too much.

And I'm like, "Hey, we can't do that there."

So that's when I was like, "Here you take the pound.

Take the pound, you know, go down to Stuttgart and you blow it up."

So after that he started getting like really blowing it up.

- I was constantly bringing it in.

I was his number one man.

You know, we're in the game here.

- He was one of my best sales people then and I put him down with Crips.

And after that day he became Crips by himself.

- [Monty] When you say you put him down with Crips, you initiated him?

- Yeah.

I took him under my wings.

And to the extent to one time he got shot one time and they took him to the hospital.

I'll never forget that time.

When I walked in the hospital, his mom coming to me and she said, "Please don't kill my baby."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

She said, "They said that the OG guy was gonna come over because Charles got shot and he giving them money."

She said, "Please."

I said, "No, I've come to see my little homeboy, you know, he's shot."

So she was like, "So you didn't come to do."

"No, no, no."

- The gang show you love, they're your fellow family.

- And it's real love.

- It's real love.

If you call them, here's the thing, their loyalty.

- But it's beyond loyalty, right?

They care about each other, right?

- They care about you, whatever they're gonna see about you.

They will come to your rescue.

They're gonna make sure that you've got everything that you need.

You know, these are your family.

And the thing is though that a lot of these young men they joined the gang because the love ain't there at their home.

(sirens wailing) - Growing up on Wolfe Street was just a place of gang banging and drugs, you know, Crips and, you know, gang members to the world.

They were like, "Oh, that's a bad person and he's a villain.

Or, you know, he's a liability to this community."

But to me, they were actually heroes.

You know, these were the people when I walked to school they were like, "Oh, don't mess with little man."

They protected me going back and forth from school, you know, and some of them were my family members, you know.

So to me it was the community that I had regardless of what the nation deemed it or identified it as.

Wolfe Street was, of course it's historically known to be one of the worst neighborhoods in the nation we live in because of the influx of violence and crime and drugs and things of that such.

My biological dad was in prison, he was a very high ranking gang member.

My mother, she has the name rough rider tatted on 'cause she's a survivor.

There was a small absence of my mom in the beginning.

- Why?

- She was a Crip.

She kinda got into the street life, you know, kind of trying to as an adolescence, trying to figure out her place in the world.

However that place happened to be on Wolfe street.

- Right.

- So I was raised with my grandmother.

- [Monty] Do you remember that happening?

- I hear so many stories about it that I can feel it.

Sometimes it wasn't 4th of July but at nighttime you can hear the fireworks.

You can hear the gunshots right outside the house.

We would just be on the floor for about 10, 15 minutes until it passes.

And I would find myself crying for my mom.

Like I want my mother, like I want my mom.

- And that was a big absence.

- That was a big absence.

That was a huge absence for me.

(gentle music) I wanted to imitate whatever I could to fulfill a sense of identity.

So in the first grade we're having a career day at the school and it was interesting because all the kids were lining up.

We were probably like little 30, a lot of 30 of us ready to go on stage and tell firemen, police officers, staff, students and teachers what we wanted to be when we got older.

And so I'm like third in line, you know, and I'm just waiting, swinging, you know, not a thought in my head.

You know, and I remember vividly.

And so the person before me I think they said they wanted to be like a doctor or something like that.

And so I was getting on stage, I was really short so they was fixing the mic for me and they bring it down.

(Monty laughing) And I just leaned up and they was like, "What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

And I'm like, "A Crip."

And everybody, it was no applause, it was no.

- Crickets.

- It was crickets.

I just felt an arm come and grab me off the stage and just starts walking me to a direction.

- You were done.

- I was done.

- Your presentation was over.

- So here I am in this back room like what's the problem?

Like, I don't get it.

You know, like I don't understand what the outcry is about because what I was doing was I was expressing what I've seen as safe.

I was expressing what I've seen as ideal.

I was expressing what I've seen as heroic.

- The people you admired, the people who took care of you, the people who protected you, the people you knew best, the people, the Crips.

- Higher on the hierarchy in the neighborhood, you know.

- Including your own mother.

- Yeah.

I'd never met a doctor, Monty.

I'd never met a lawyer.

I'd never met these great examples, you know.

I just knew what I knew.

Just imagine as a child, you're at seven, eight years old and there's a plate of cocaine in the house.

You see it and everybody's passing it around.

It goes from your parents to your grandparents, to your nephew, to your niece.

Everybody's passing it around and you're just sitting there and looking at them.

- Normal.

- Normal.

- Did you ever think that you'd probably end up going to jail?

- I knew I was.

- Like if I got in trouble at school, my excuse was, probably going to be in jail anyways.

- Gang life is death life.

Some survive and some don't.

Period.

I got affiliated when I was 12.

- Like initiated?

- They all took me, it was about 12 of them.

They took me outside and beat the out of me and initiated me.

See.

- And that's it, what does it say?

- Psycho GD.

- Was that your kind of nickname?

- Yeah.

- People thought that I was a Blood first, then they thought I was a Crip, but actually I'm not.

I'm a gangster disciple, a GD is what you call it, 74 gangster disciple.

So you get beat in, the only way out is to die.

It ain't no walking away.

You either going to die trying to get out.

If you're gonna, they gonna kill you.

So whatever they asked me to do, I did.

If I had to be the getaway driver for them robbing the bank, that's what I had to do.

If they wanted to go do a drive-by, that's what I had to do.

It was either drive or get shot your damn self.

Part of my gang thing I had to do was to set something on fire.

So I burned down the junior high.

- You burned down what?

- The middle school.

- You burned down the middle school.

- Yeah.

- That was one of your initiation rights?

- Yeah, I had to.

I was told to do it and if I didn't do it, I would get violated.

So, I set the school on fire.

- What does it mean to get violated in the gang?

You were already in the gang at that point.

- Yeah, that means they'd whoop your ass, is what they're gonna do, and beat the hell out of you.

- So that was when you were already in the gang.

So why did they make you set the school on fire when you were in the gang?

- They thought I was weak so I had to prove myself, and I did.

(upbeat music) - I never joined a gang, but I've always, everybody I dated was always in a gang.

My grandmother was a bails bonder here.

She was actually the first black bails bonder here in Conway in Faulkner County.

So I kind of grew up seeing her able to relate to the streets because she was a bails bonder.

- So she's meeting a lot of people.

- She's meeting a lot of people.

- [Monty] Accused of crimes.

- Exactly.

So I watched her all my life and I was infatuated with some of the people when I would notice that she would go get out of jail as a little girl.

You know, a lot of them was probably drug dealers or, you know, just all kinds of different crimes.

- And you were what?

Five, six years old.

- I was a little girl.

So by the time I was 15 years old, I wanted, I was so curious.

I wanted to, instead of not being like those people she was bonding out, I was kinda of caught up in those people that she was bonding out.

I ended up starting to date one of the guys that she bonded out at one time.

He was a little bit older than me.

- Was he in a gang?

- He was in a gang.

- [Monty] Which gang?

- Crip gang.

- [Monty] Crip gang.

What was so exciting about being around him?

- The selling of drugs, the money, the cars, just all of the flashy things that come with that, the toughness, he was pretty tough.

So I think a lot of it more was, I didn't have a father.

I wasn't raised at home with a father so he protected me, you know.

- I see, so all of a sudden you're in this world where it's exciting and you felt valued 'cause you were the right hand of someone who's tough.

- Right.

- Smart.

- Right.

- You could buy jewelry and flashy things.

And all of that all of a sudden sounded, it was pretty appealing.

This is good life, this is fun.

- Yeah, this is fun.

You know, it was fun then at that time, once again, I was 17 years old.

You know, I had no idea that eventually it was gonna grab me like it did.

(slow music) - When I was in the third grade, my mom, she met this guy named Demetrius.

And wow, they had a rock and roll relationship.

He was a Crip from College Station.

He was in the streets.

And I had a lot to learn from this dude.

Like I had so much to learn from him.

And like I said, one of those heroes that didn't appear heroic to the outside world.

- To the outside world.

But to you he was.

- To me, he was a hero.

So I would be in a lot of different positions to see things.

I've seen someone get out of a car before and say, "I'll be right back."

And they go burn up a whole house in front of my eyes and get back in the car.

And light a cigarette and be on the way to the house.

- If I was into it with any female, I used to go knock on their door and whoop their ass right there on their front porch, I didn't care.

That's how bad it was.

I didn't care.

- Our life expectancy is not long.

For everything I did, I did daily.

Maybe really dangerous because at the end of the day, okay, well, I could be dead tomorrow, let me do this.

(suspenseful sound) - [Monty] After only two days in Little Rock, I heard a local news report which said there were seven shootings in 24 hours.

Stories like this have become the norm for these kids.

It's no wonder that in the inner city neighborhood, kids often don't have the luxury to think about preparing for their future or making the most of themselves.

Their needs are too desperate and immediate to allow the privilege of advanced planning.

Instead, they do what they need to do to survive the day.

Living quite literally as if there were no tomorrow.

(suspenseful sound) - I have seen hundreds of deaths.

Okay, and I'm telling you in, some of them like two, three, four days, just bam, bam, bam, bam.

I have seen more death than any war person can go to a war and see.

(suspenseful sound) - [Monty] You become desensitized.

- [Leifel] Yeah, it was so much of that.

- [Monty] You did a lot of shooting?

- So much shooting, so much blood back then.

- Did you usually do that yourself or did you have someone do it?

- There was times when I would have people do stuff, but most of my stuff, I did it myself.

- [Monty] Did you have a lot of anger back then?

- No, I just had a zero understanding.

That was probably the scariest part about me.

There's this one guy, I was going over and kinda in a Blood neighborhood, but my family was there and I was going to take them a pound.

So as I was pulling up, I get out of my car.

I got a blue rag on, I'm in a blue van and I'm walking with it.

Immediately when I pull up, the guy started walking from over there and he started shouting, "Say, you C-rat, what are you doing hanging over here?

You're in the wrong neighborhood whatever."

So I was just smiling and walking.

So I wasn't angry with him.

But when he got like this close, he did his hands like that.

To me, that was aggressive, totally aggressive.

- He put up his hands like to grab you?

- Yeah, and that's when I shot him.

And I shot him first in his mouth.

And when he turned, I shot in the side of his head.

And then when he fell down, I shot him in the back of his neck and his back and his butt.

- Five shots.

- Yeah, and then I stepped over him and I gave the dude the package and then I turned around and I said, "Same price."

And walked back into my car and left.

- You didn't feel bad?

- I didn't feel bad at all.

- It was just a logical decision that this is what you needed to do to keep your turf, you needed to teach him a lesson.

Did you ever feel bad after some of the shootings?

- [Leifel] Well, maybe a few times.

- What would've made you feel bad versus not bad?

- When I just had to shoot somebody that I didn't wanna shoot.

This one guy, he was a really good dude, funny as heck.

But he started getting high and he ran with my package.

And I told him to come talk to me and we'll work it out.

But he kept running and I came to find out he had then went into another neighborhood and was kind of working for this Blood dude selling his stuff.

- So he's crossing you.

- Yeah.

If I would've let him get by completely, then somebody else would have did it.

- Yeah, someone else finds out you're lenient.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So you had to take a hard line.

- And I just happened to see him come out of the store, a little hardware store one time and I shot him.

Never underestimate what I'm saying.

I'm not boasting.

- Yeah.

- Those were some good times.

But there was some horrible times.

I got to choose to meet so many good people who got killed.

- Yeah.

- So many good people who are not here.

I would find myself sitting, thinking, you know, wow.

You know, I wondered, did that person make it out?

I wondered if they had kids like I had kids, you know.

(gentle music) - Having a mom that was, you know, closely tied to the streets, I couldn't focus in school at all.

I had really, really bad learning disorders, speech disorders.

And, 'cause I was so worried about home life, you know.

It takes you out of an innocent child space and puts you in this space of the responsible one very, very early.

It's different when somebody calls your home and say, "Hey, your mom is in the hospital.

She got stabbed up at the club and she has 36 stitches in her back and they don't know if she's gonna make it."

And I'm just sitting at home with my little sister like, holding her, trying to figure out what's next overnight.

- How old were you when that happened?

- I was nine.

- Nine years old and your mom got stabbed.

- Yes.

- Almost killed.

- Yes.

- And you were in charge of your sister at that point.

How old was she?

- She was like two.

At that moment, you can't be a boy.

You have to be a man even if you don't know what that looks like.

You have to grow out of this nine-year-old, I love Pee Wee Football, I love to draw and you have to grow into this protector within a second.

I didn't get to go to sleep overs or to, nobody could come to my house obviously.

I didn't get to go to Magic Springs, to go to the waterpark or go to, you know, camp or to be a boy scout.

I'm trying to figure out problems and solutions that I have to have the answer to.

'Cause if I don't get an A in this class and the streets, my life can be at risk.

It's just like, looking back at it, it's just like I had to grow up a lot faster than the average kid.

(gentle music) I have the documents from the nurse when I was born, I went and got those documents.

It says that my mom was telling the Department of Human Services that my biological dad was in prison.

And she had at the same time had an older friend that, you know, was gonna take care of me.

His name is Louis.

- [Monty] Did your grandmother accept him as your father?

- Yes, definitely.

- She liked him and they got along well.

- Yeah.

- Did he know you were not his biological child?

- We never had a discussion about it.

- But to him, you were his child.

- Absolutely.

- And to you, he was your father.

- Absolutely.

- And that was the end of it.

- That's the end.

- At my grandma's, we were so much so in a low income state, we were poor, you know.

And I can remember my dad leaving Wendy's at the door at night.

He would call and say, "Well, this is for him.

I can't feed everybody in the house but this is for him."

I can remember that vividly.

- And so he took great care of you.

- Great, great care of me.

But the issue came when my dad ended up, you know, having a girlfriend named Veronica, which I would call my mother.

Took care of me, bathed me, all you name it.

So I can remember Louis, Veronica going to church.

My mom would stop us at the gate 'cause she's on Wolfe Street, this is her area.

And say, "Where are y'all going?"

And it was all, "No, not today."

And I can remember Veronica and my mom fighting in front of the yard.

- Physically?

- Yeah.

- Tangling.

- Tangling, no on the ground punching, like I can see, I'm looking at it.

- Oh, really fighting?

- As a child, yes.

- Not arguing.

- Not arguing at all.

- Punching.

- Punching, yes.

I'm screaming stop.

"Like stop, stop."

You know, because I don't know what else to do.

I obviously don't got the physical strength to break two angry women apart.

So I'm like, "Just stop, stop," you know.

So I went through this battle as a child of, "No he's mine."

"No, he's mine."

"No, he's mine."

It was confusing.

I think being in vulnerable situations, like seeing my mom behind a glass or, you know, my two moms fight or seeing some places where my mom was actually very nurturing, very much so there, but couldn't pull it all together because of her environment.

This stuff was numb to me at the time, but very much so building anger the entire time that I did not see.

I started playing the drums as a child.

And that was the first.

- [Monty] Who got you the drum set?

- [Tim] My dad.

- [Monty] Yeah.

- Yeah, my dad got me the drum set and I would beat on it all night.

And I think now looking back, maybe that was a way of me getting that anger.

- For sure.

- Out.

- You think your dad might've recognized that?

- I think he maybe recognized it.

And my dad did a great thing, he put me in football at the age of six.

If I was angry I didn't know it because I played it out of myself everyday, you know, rumbling and knocking and you know.

And I was very small, you know, so my helmet was really big, I was very small.

- [Monty] Big helmet.

- Yes, but I would bring the fire.

Any football match we had as kids, they knew, okay, that's the one to look out for.

Even though they looking down the line like, "Oh, that one?"

You know.

(crowd cheering) My head coach at the time was Coach Gary Gilmore, which he passed away now but a very significant role model in my life.

- Why, what was he like?

- He always used to tell me, "It's not about who the best player is," he'd always tell me this.

He says, "It's about how many games you play."

And I never understood what he was saying.

He would always say that, but when I got into the 10th grade he was on his death bed.

I called him, I said, "Coach Gary, I just got MVP.

I'm in the 10th grade of one of the high school games at central."

He's like, "Oh, that's good."

He was kind of rambling, "Oh, that's good."

He's on his death bed.

And he said it again.

And this is the last time we're talking, he said, "Like I always tell you T, it's not about how good you are, it's how many games you play so I'll allow you to play with the six and seven year olds as a six year old.

And now I'll make you play with the 9 and 10 year olds in the next game.

I'll put you in as many games as I can because it's about the experience that matters."

And this life lesson took me many places.

I knew that if I enter in the room with academia or I enter in a room with an African or I enter in a room with a politician, I knew my experience and the games of life that I've played would put me above stereotypes with no problem.

The experience.

And my experience is something that nobody can take away from me.

(country music) - When you live in this type of life, everybody gonna know who the man is.

Well, guess what though?

When you're the man, you're the target.

(country music) - I knew how to go and make money, whether it was selling drugs, stealing, however I had to go and do it, I knew how to go do it.

- [Monty] So you were good at this?

- I was sharp.

- [Monty] Yeah.

- In this game, you gotta be sharp.

- You became pretty savvy, I suppose.

Good at not getting caught.

- I never thought I could get caught.

They never thought I would be able to get caught.

(country music) - So this guy, he was close to me.

Yeah, so you got people close to you.

- You trusted him?

- I trusted hIm.

He got busted and went to prison.

He called them and said, "I'll get Charles Banks."

And so I had just got in town.

I got over to the set and this guy walks up.

He says, "I have $40 from my unemployment check.

He says, "I want two stones for $35."

He said, "I want you to serve me," talking about me.

- But that's not what you did anymore.

- No.

So I told the guy that was selling dope for me, "You give it to him."

But they gave me the money and when I served him, someone said, "There's the taskforce."

(sirens wailing) I jumped in the car.

I had a Sunbird GT five-speed.

I did a high speed chase.

(sirens wailing) I come from set over here, and I ended up back over behind the mill over there.

And threw out about $5,000 worth of dope.

When I got to the end there I stopped, I thought that I was clean.

I got out of the car.

I mean, I feel I'm good now, you know.

And when they went in my pocket, they pulled the money out, it was marked money.

- $40.

- $40 and they gave me 10 years, first offense.

(gentle music) - I got into a car wreck and I met this attorney, I'm not gonna say his name, and he introduced me to a doctor.

And the doctor kind of had a little crush on me.

Yeah, and he prescribed me unlimited rounds of opioids.

And he introduced me to a pharmacist.

And the pharmacist, we all kind of worked together.

And that's how I got into the pill game.

(gentle music) Some of my loved ones that I introduced pills to, they became addicted to them.

And just watching them go through it.

- Fall apart?

- Fall apart.

And I knew that it was all because I was, you know, a part of even introducing them.

- Did you feel guilty?

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

- How did that feel?

I mean, did you like feel a lot of heavy, heavy?

- Buried it.

- Then you buried it.

- I buried it.

- More pills.

- More pills.

That's when I started getting in trouble.

'Cause I wasn't as slick.

I was kind of losing that 'cause I was more of turning into an addict.

I was always high.

And in my mind I'm thinking I'm still normal, but I wasn't.

And so I did things that.

I was cool with things that I probably wouldn't have been cool with before.

- [Monty] Were these pills having a physical effect on you?

- Oh yeah.

I was physically, mentally drained to where I didn't even wanna care if I even lived anymore.

I was just that tired.

The last of the last is me actually taking a whole bottle of pills and I drove off from where I lived and I fell out.

- You fell out.

- I fell out at a gas station and someone picked me up.

- You took the bottle of pills?

You ate them?

- I ate them.

I was tired.

- Like profoundly exhausted.

Mentally, physically, emotionally.

Okay.

- So I woke up and I was in jail.

And that's when I knew then that, hey, for me to wake up after taking that many pills, there's gotta be a reason why.

- There are parts of your situation that you could pick out, hold so tightly that it will take you out of the inner city.

Mine just happened to be the football.

- That was your ticket.

- That was my ticket.

My mom didn't finish eighth grade.

My grandma, she didn't finish high school.

And here I am the first to graduate high school.

But I couldn't tell you nothing about college.

One of my best friends, he said, "Hey bro, we're going down to Pine Bluff."

And he didn't know anything about college either.

So I said, "All right."

He had already got accepted so he was showing me the rooms and stuff.

And I'm walking around like, okay, I can do this.

Like this is not as intimidating as the name of college, you know.

And so while I was down there I end up doing the application.

Getting in, I knew then that I had to make a different change.

When I got to school I'm like, "Okay cool, I can do this."

So I went out for football and that didn't last long at all.

So my football career was clipped.

- No, why?

- The environment I had surrounded myself with in Pine Bluff was not a positive one because I was looking for people that had, that thought the way I thought, you know.

Okay, survival minded, you know.

Maybe, you know, into a little drugs.

I'm looking for people that make me feel safe.

- Yeah.

- So when I started to hang around them, they also had an effect on that as well.

You know, so I'm one of the guys that's not going to class and just kinda hanging out.

You know, and I hit a low, I ended up dropping out for a semester just living on the campus.

So I would start being very much so by myself, alone.

And I still was dealing with anger 'cause it would come out.

But see, I had a privilege on the football field because I could take it out on anybody and nobody would know it was that.

- It was all good.

It was like, "The kid's aggressive, good for him" - Yeah.

- But now you're in life where that doesn't make you a star.

- I can't just go run into people with helmets anymore.

So, I gotta figure out a way to socialize myself.

So I was Googling, I was really looking up like something to do or go out of the country.

Like, that'd be cool, like go on a ship ride or something, a cruise or something like that, right?

Or to just go and experience another culture.

So in the midst of that I see Peace Corps pop up, very prestigious, you know, organization.

And they want the best of the best to represent America in different countries.

- Yeah.

- I throw an application out there.

You know, you just throw it out there and see how far it goes.

And they actually emailed me back.

And it was just like, "Hey, we're missing these XYZ documentation from you."

I didn't know where to get my immunization records.

I didn't know where to get that stuff but immediately I got on it.

And it was April the 28th, I wanna say.

And they came out and I got an email saying, "Hey, you have been accepted to serve in The Gambia, West Africa, Peace Corps."

And next thing I knew I was crying on this plane, breaking down, I'm finally getting out of here.

This sense of, I made it, finally hit me.

Wolfe Street will forever be with me, but this was the time I get to see it from the sky because I'm actually leaving it.

(gentle music) - There was a guy in the city by the name of Charlie Holton.

I was his kids' nanny.

And so I used to take them back and forth to the ball practice.

- This is while you were dealing?

- Well, I would deal a little bit too but I worked for him also.

He went to the sheriff here in Arkansas County and he said that he'd put his store up, whatever he'd need to do to get me out of prison.

And he said, "Because Charles just made a mistake."

And he said, "I'll get Charles out of prison to go to work for me, right?"

And he got me out of prison.

- He risked his business to get you out?

- He risked his name.

- His name and his whole business.

- Correct.

And he said, "Charles, ain't gonna run off.

I trust him."

And he saw something in me beyond Charles Banks, a black guy.

He knew that I was a great young man.

- [Monty] But even after time in prison, Charles hadn't fully given up on his previous life.

Sometimes people can be stubborn to surrender and allow a new life to begin to unfold.

- I was driving home from Little Rock and I had got stopped by the police.

They ran my name.

The chief of police said, "Hold him there, I'm on my way."

As I was sitting there when they had me.

I said, "Lord, if you get me out, I'm gonna do right."

The chief of police came.

He said, "Charles, I know you got the dope, let me get it."

I said, "I ain't got no dope."

He said, "Oh yeah, I know you, you got the dope."

So I gave him the dope and he said that, you know, "Your mama Ruthie wouldn't appreciate this, you ain't gonna go for this."

He said, "You won't take a dope charge, take a ticket."

And he said, "I'ma write you a ticket for driving on suspended driver's license and I'ma send you on your way."

And they let me go.

(upbeat music) As I'm headed back to Pine Bluff, my van stops and says out of gas.

When I stopped and got the van, I couldn't get out of the driver's door.

So I got out of the van through the double doors.

And when I got out of the van through the double doors, the holy ghost hit me.

I threw my hands in the air and said, "Lord, I surrender.

I'll do whatever you want me to do."

Bam, March the 23rd, 2004, I've been clean ever since.

♪ It's because of your mercies ♪ That we are not consumed ♪ Because God Well, I went to church, told the pastor that I wanna set my call.

And he told me the Lord had told him I was coming.

- [Monty] Did you know your calling was to be a minister?

And did he tell you that?

- I knew it.

I knew it.

♪ As I look back over my life God saved me.

You know what I'm saying, he kept his hands on me.

When I went to prison.

When I got shot, I could have died, but God has a plan for me.

And the plan is to try to help these young men and young women survive, try to make it, you know.

I know my purpose.

I know my calling.

♪ And he kept on blessing me - God picked me back up, gave me a new walk, gave me a new talk, he restored everything that the devil took from me.

And I encourage you, just stay with God.

♪ Great is thy faithfulness - When I first got to Africa, I'm like, this can't be real.

'Cause I'm in this hut every night, there's no street lights or anything like that.

So from eight to six in the morning, I had nothing but time to think about things.

No phone, no TV.

I'm just sitting there in a dark room.

But I think I was glad to be there because I wanted to evolve a lot of who I was and who I was becoming.

So I was kind of happy about, you know, being away.

My kitchen area.

It kind of switched how I see life.

Because over here we will say, "Are you sick?"

And you'll say, "Yes, I'm sick."

Over there, they don't associate themselves with sickness.

So they'll say.

- Is there a sickness in you?

"Is there a sickness in you?"

Or you'll say, "Sickness is with me."

- Yeah, it's like a visitor.

- It's like a visitor instead of you're owning your state of being.

So it's like you won't say, "I don't have money, I'm broke."

You'll say, "Money is not with me."

That means, it's a mind flip.

(singing in foreign language) You know, they don't have phones and TVs and stuff like that.

So you have to interact with people all throughout your day.

Kids, adults.

(speaking in foreign language) My consciousness was like sharp.

- [Monty] Yeah.

- It was different.

Like, I mean, when I got back, Monty, I was looking people in their eyes and the entire time I was talking to them.

That experience ripped me up and tore me out and spit me out and put me back on like land with no shoes on.

Like I was completely different coming back, but it was a good difference.

- [Monty] Leifel was arrested and went to federal prison.

10 hard years in prison provided a lot of time for reflection.

And Leifel thought about the many lives cut short by the lifestyle he led in the streets of Little Rock.

- I tore my neighborhood up and other neighborhoods and played a big part.

And so me, my thing is I try to do things to balance out for my past.

After prison, me and my wife got a divorce when my daughter was two.

She took my van and the house, and I ended up with my baby.

And so I raised her as a single parent.

Raising her was one of the hardest things I've ever did in my entire life because I wasn't really mushy and all of that.

I didn't have all of that.

- You weren't ready for that.

- And so, but she broke that down.

I wanted to change, not only my life, but I wanted to change a whole lot of people's lives.

I wanted to change the young dudes that look up to me lives.

A lot of the kids nowadays, they're only talking to kids, you know.

So the only other person that they're talking to about real life things is other kids that don't have no.

- When the gangs were stronger and more prominent, there was leaders in the gangs.

- There was leaders.

- So you had people you looked up to as friends.

You had people you could get advice from.

- And so if they looked up to me, how could I come home and continue to bang and then want them to do better.

- So without any leadership, then it's just a bunch of young kids talking to a bunch of young kids without anyone guiding them.

- That's right.

And that leads to.

- Murders, deaths, shootings.

With kids getting hit, old people getting hit in the house, all of that.

They're on Facebook waving guns and with money like this here.

And I was watching a Tik Tok thing the other day.

And this one kid was sitting in his car and he was like, "Yeah, I got this money."

And these guys walked up and started shooting him and killed him.

He was sitting in the car like, you know, on the Facebook.

- It was on Tik Tok?

- Yeah, you see a lot of that on Tik Tok.

So that more than anything bothers me because I think that we need other things for our youth to do.

When I was in federal prison, myself and another crew, we were sitting there talking about what were we gonna do.

And I told them, I said, "Man, when I get out, I'm gonna start a program and start getting some of those kids out of the street and start doing some positive things."

And I never forget he said, "They'll never follow you OG.

They'll follow you to shoot, but I don't think they are gonna follow you for something good."

I said, "I'ma prove it to you."

(upbeat music) - [Monty] Leifel now spends his days with inner city youth, teaching them a better path than gang life.

Many people I met now look at Leifel, a former ruthless killer, as a loving father figure and life coach.

When Sannecia got out of prison, she changed her life.

She started Blessed Gals and her Fire on the Runway fashion show with a goal to empower young black women and raise awareness for issues such as mental health and domestic violence.

- I work with about 75 girls.

- Wow.

- Each one of them, all of them have kind of been through something.

So they're able to go on the runway and express and let it out and be themselves.

- Are all 75 of them in a position where they can call you anytime they want?

- Oh, yeah.

- And you expect them to if they need you?

- Right.

Yeah, a mentor, a big auntie.

- So where are we going now?

Do you know these guys?

- Yeah.

This is the park, this is the Pine Street Park.

This is where a lot of them grew up at.

And the guy that's talking, he would kind of hold them, he's their OG.

So he's talking to them.

- Okay, and this is in their neighborhood?

- Yeah, this is their neighborhood.

- Was this their meeting place?

- Yeah.

- It has been for a lot of years?

- Yeah.

- I see.

- And when they hear our story, they won't believe who we are today.

You see what I'm saying?

But the whole message is, man, you can change.

I don't care how rough you had it.

I don't care who you were.

I'm gonna say this, if him and him can change, anybody in the world could change.

I don't care how much of a menace you were, I don't care how much you went through trials and tribulation, how many stints you did in the penitentiary.

I did six stints in the penitentiary, five in the state and one in the fed, 23 years all.

Everybody wrote me off before I came home.

They said, "He going to get back in the game."

That's what this whole segment is about.

It's to change.

We won't always say, "Man, this younger generation, they crazy."

But guess what?

We the ones that fumbled the ball.

We the ones that fumbled the ball.

So how is we going to talk about how they is?

You know why they like they is?

'Cause we all in prison doing time when there was nobody out here to guide them.

I felt responsible every time something happened when I was in a federal prison and had to hear about it.

I apologize to all the Crips and Bloods and the vice lords and the GDs.

And said I'll apologize for the negative influence that I've set out in this community for years.

I apologize but that ain't the way.

I have to show and prove by example.

Man, we gotta come up with programs for these youths out here.

We can't wait for somebody else to make up a program for them.

We gotta do that.

It starts with us.

Show the younger siblings or the younger nephews and nieces and cousins in your generation that hey, you don't have to go through all the trials and tribulations that we went through in order to change.

That's my key word today, is change.

But you want it like you said, you gotta wanna change.

If you don't wanna change, you're gonna stay in the same situation.

What do they say when you do the same thing over again and expect different results?

What is it?

- [Crowd] Insanity.

- You what?

- [Crowd] Insanity.

- Are you serious?

Boy, I need a check, 'cause I'm crazy as hell.

I did it so many damn times the same way and expected different results.

As soon as I filed for social security, they told me, "You get your ass out of here."

(audience laughing) Let's get going, I know it's hot, everybody ready to go.

I ain't gonna hold y'all up.

I'm about to have a stroke, but we gonna get these balloons up here.

Y'all come on.

Okay, who's gonna release the first balloon?

You're gonna release it?

Bumpy is gonna release it.

Who is the balloon for Bumpy?

Who are we gonna have this first one for?

- My brother, Shannon.

- The first one is for Shannon, Little Shannon, Little Shannon Gatewood.

- Be proud and let loose, rest in peace.

- Let loose, rest in peace.

- [Crowd] RIP, let loose.

- This is for Superloaf.

Stephanie gonna let go for Superloaf.

- [Stephanie] For Superloaf.

Superloaf, rest in peace baby.

Sean Smith, rest in peace.

(upbeat music) - All people, especially children desperately need leadership.

And they'll find that leadership wherever it's available, from parents, coaches, friends, and grandparents.

But if not from there, from gangs, social media or television, which often sends them astray.

- It's easy to know where to go if someone's telling you where to go.

- Sure.

- But it's a little hard to go a route that's unchartered and nobody's on it, but you have to travel it even when it's dark.

So it's like, you're not even traveling your way out of the hood as much as you're feeling your way out of the hood, because you don't know what's on the other side.

- There are solid reasons why very smart and capable youth all over our country decide to join gangs.

To find safety, love, a sense of belonging, money and security.

But maybe if we can find a way to give young people these things at the outset, the allure of joining criminal enterprises is greatly diminished.

- Give them the things that they don't have.

And I'm not talking material things.

We know these kids don't have father figures and mother figures because maybe the father is in jail, the mother is on drugs, you know.

That's where we suppose to step up and be that figure for them.

Give them that love that they're probably not given because it's hard for a young kid to love if he never knew what love was.

And I promise you at the end of the day, if you can save one child, you've done your job.

- [Monty] Those of us who have an opportunity to take a leadership role in another's life shouldn't hesitate.

To wait is to risk another young person lost.

When you release your judgment and take time to get to know people and connect deeply with them, you will find some of the most talented, smart and brilliant people.

People we can all learn from.

People who have learned to overcome great struggle and difficulty.

Their challenges have given them skills to become future leaders who can help others avoid a life of crime and violence.

- My idea of the inner city is just like this garden.

It's not always fed the right minerals.

It's not always watered, getting enough sunlight it needs to thrive.

However, if you put rose seeds under this concrete we're standing on, you will get roses from concrete.

Regardless of the environment you were in, the cement and it was packed down and it's been there for years, you grew through that.

- I think that really my message is to the young dudes who shot not knowing how that feeling was gonna be.

And then once they shot, those people don't never, they're gone.

I want the young people to know that it's not over.

You don't have to continue to shoot and kill.

There is a place after making that mistake and pulling that trigger.

You can't take it back, but you can do something different that will make a difference to balance your beams in your life.

I am living proof.

- Each of us will be rewarded based on our effectiveness and making the people around us better.

And I think both of you are experiencing now that you're being rewarded now.

- Sure.

- Based on making others better.

- God has saved us for a time like now.

We pray God upon today that those children will not walk in the steps of they fathers, they brothers.

That you would just rest your spirit all over this city, Little Rock, Stuttgart, all the areas God, where all the violence may be.

We thank you God and we pray.

- [Monty] When people get a chance to share their experiences and admit their weaknesses and faults, they feel seen, valued, understood and loved.

This disburdens them.

It lifts a weight from their shoulders and sets them on a course where they can feel the fulfillment of becoming a force for good in the lives of others.

(upbeat music) - We've got a young man here.

He got a blue flag in his pocket, a script.

And he told me on yesterday, "I wanna be a preacher."

(congregants applauding) - I've been in the streets 41 years.

I was raised in the streets, that's all I knew.

Since I met pastor, I just wanna live a different life.

(congregants applauding) - He said 40 years, that's a long time.

But I wanna share this with you, God can move quick.

(congregants applauding) Come on now.

God can turn that thing around son.

So what's your reason for coming today?

- To be saved.

(congregants applauding) - It's the best thing.

(upbeat music)