Yts Inmates They Treat Us Like Animals
Gladiator School: Stories from Within YTS (Ep 9)
"Lost in the Halls"
Edited and photographed by David William Reeve
Editor's note: This is Function 9 of "Gladiator Schoolhouse: Stories from Inside YTS" — an oral history of life inside California'south most notorious juvenile prison. Youth Training School (known formally as Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility) had a reputation for mayhem, violence and murder that earned information technology the name Gladiator School. It closed in 2010. Children were hardened for survival at YTS, only to be returned to the streets.
Since publishing the story The Closing of California's Well-nigh Tearing Juvenile Prison , survivors of YTS have come forward to tell stories of daily life within. This series relays and respects their stories: Juvie told by those who were there.
In this episode, Joseph Copeland lurks in the backstreets of Torrance — a middle-class beach city on California'south Southern Coast. It's here that the 15-twelvemonth old begins his career of criminal offense, accelerating through the ranks of local jails, juvies, camps, and rehabs, earlier earning a formal teaching in survival at YTS.
"Lost in the Halls"
I was watching my neighbor'southward house. They would go out for months at a time. I started going inside when they weren't in that location. I went to my freshman loftier school orientation drunk on some wine that I found there.
I had nowhere to stay, so I lived in a tent in my mom's lawn. At night I would run effectually and exercise whatsoever I wanted, and then come home and sleep in the tent. I could go inside the house to shower, then go to schoolhouse. My mom was okay with information technology. I started jimmying machine doors at night. I figured it was safer than breaking into houses. I could get auto stereos and a picayune coin. I was a kid — I didn't demand a lot of money, but for beer and weed.
My mom found a stolen car stereo in the garage and turned me in to the cops; my neighbor reported the break-in, and all of a sudden the cops had my fingerprints. I was sent to the Torrance Diversion Programme, where I'd run into one time a week with other kids at the police department.
At Inglewood Courthouse, I was charged with first-caste residential burglary, marijuana cultivation, and trespassing. I only had a little marijuana in a Dixie Loving cup, and got all these charges. Robert Babb, my piece of shit counselor, said I was "big on drugs," and my juvenile probation officer said I "looked like a big doper." At the time, I had done mushrooms and acid a few times. I smoked crack in one case, merely I smoked weed and drank a shit load of times.
I got processed into Fundamental Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles and sent to Phoenix House to complete an 18-month drug program. I was just this white kid who smoked pot, and now I'm with all these gang bangers and crack heads. This dude, Andy, shows up. He's from Redondo Beach, and all he had washed was smoke some weed, likewise.
Andy was a year older than me, 16. He was scrawny with long, shaggy hair. They had Andy pegged as an intravenous meth user, but he'd never used needles earlier.
"Dude, I'm getting out of hither this night," Andy said. They had just yelled at him actually bad earlier that day. Nosotros were in the kitchen of the Phoenix House, and there was a door we could open up, then we merely decided to leave. Then an alarm went off. We violated probation by leaving, and they put the cops out on us. Nosotros jumped a debate and were running in the middle of nowhere through Lakeview Terrace at dark. We found a gas station where Andy'south buddy Shane picked usa up, and we got high. He let us sleep in his truck. When we woke upwardly in the morning, we smoked more weed.
Nosotros were homeless together in Torrance for a week or two, scrounging money, eating fast food and smoking cheap weed, but it was meliorate than Phoenix Business firm. Our buddy Tony fronted united states of america half a canvas of acid and cut the tabs in half so nosotros could sell it and make money.
At the corner of 166th and Crenshaw, we crawled inside a storm drain to sleep.
"Fuck this, I'chiliad going to my mom'due south," I told Andy the next morning time. "When she goes to piece of work, I'one thousand getting inside."
We got to my mom's house, but the window wouldn't open — it was nailed shut. The cops arrived, and we still had half a canvas of acid on the states. They patted united states of america downwardly merely didn't notice it, and then we fed the acid to each other in the dorsum of the cop motorcar. We ate the whole half sail. They figured out who nosotros were and put us in the holding tank of the Torrance Police force Department. My mom pressed charges against me for trying to enter the window.
They sent Andy and me to Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall and and so transferred us to Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles.
They were doing 23 and one in the Halls, but I was lucky — I was a day room sleeper. In juvenile halls, it was oftentimes then overcrowded they had no beds available, then I'd sleep in the twenty-four hour period room on these mats and sentinel TV all the fourth dimension. If yous're a 24-hour interval room sleeper, about of the time, you're stuck in a fucking chair rather than beingness in a cell.
These kids in the room next to me tried to AWOL and stab a fellow member of the staff. I remember that dark they beat the living shit out of those kids, and I could hear the cops stomping and beating on them for hours.
Me and Andy stayed together — they didn't know we were crime partners at the time. Eventually, they split united states of america up and sent united states into different units before I was sent to Camp Gonzalez.
At campsite, I got more than hip to the gang shit. As a 15-yr-old, I was getting educated on all of this. There were a lot of gang bangers fighting in the bullheaded spots, like fighting in the bathroom on their knees. There were places you could fight and not get caught, simply I wasn't involved in whatever of that.
At Camp Miller in Malibu, I thought I was close to going home. I thought this nightmare was going to exist over, and I could become my life together. I wanted to get back into high school. My mom and her fellow Larry, who was a existent slice of shit, came to visit me. She told me that I hadn't learned my lesson, that I was out of control and not coming abode when I got out.
My mom was wiping her hands of me once more.
I felt so crushed. My whole world died. I was crying, so the staff let me stand outside to compose myself — I couldn't believe information technology.
My time at Campsite Miller was done, but I became a ward of the court considering my mom didn't want me.
I was lost in the Halls…lost in the organization. I was playing a waiting game until the bondage come up and get me and take me to wherever I needed to go. In the Halls, you lot're just a paycheck for someone.
My parole officer collection me to St. John School for Boys in the desert nigh Whitewater. St. John School for Boys was fucked up. The staff was old, the kids were all gang bangers, and nothing could be controlled. I knew about gang banging but wasn't into it. I was the simply white kid there, and I was the only kid from Los Angeles.
"Fuck LA!" they would say and jump me.
All those kids were there considering they were wards of the courtroom. It was a depression-lockdown placement, but I could leave because they weren't holding me for a law-breaking. I went AWOL and hitchhiked home to Torrance in the middle of the night, wearing my socks on my arms to stay warm.
I met up with some friends, only Andy was not around — he was still busted in the Halls. I went to see my mom a few times but didn't get any assist because I was AWOL. She gave me some of my clothes simply wouldn't permit me stay.
Eventually, my friends went domicile at dark. Information technology started raining, and I got all moisture. I went to an apartment circuitous where they had a storage shelf to a higher place the parking spaces. I found one unlocked, and I crawled inside. I took off my apparel and hung them to dry out. I was shivering all nighttime. This was the first fourth dimension I had suicidal thoughts.
To pardon an 8-year conviction for the break-in accuse, I was sentenced to the PHASE program at Camp Scudder. I had earned my GED earlier when I was in Camp Onizuka, so I didn't have to go to high school classes anymore at Scudder. I was able to fuck around, fight in the blinds, and practise impaired shit. I made myself the office orderly, passing out mail to the other wards.
This nurse gave me these blue pills when I was sick — cold medicine. The pills made me drowsy, but I liked it considering of the head change. I told this kid to say he was sick, as well, so he could get some blueish pills. He was a big child, just he was immature — like 13 or 14. I told him where the pills were, and he went into the office and stole the whole pocketbook.
The staff took a few of the states out of the campsite to speak in front of all these correctional officers and parents. My mom and Larry were in that location. They gave me a conform to wear and prepped me to give a speech. Information technology was John F. Kennedy'due south oral communication, "Ask not what your country can do for you…" After I gave the spoken communication, anybody was clapping for me. This cholo dude from Lynwood was with me, and he had some coke. We would sneak off into the bathroom to become coked out.
As soon every bit I got back to camp, they threw me into handcuffs.
"What the fuck?"
"You stole some pills!" they said.
Some kid had overdosed on blue pills and was taken to the hospital. They chosen my mom and raided my bunk.
"How did that child get all of these pills?" they asked me.
I had no pills in my bunk, merely they knew I had access to where the pills were kept because I was an office orderly. My bunk had all kinds of contraband — kites, pens, messages from chicks, and they said there was gang writing in my letters.
I went AWOL again past jumping out of a worker van, along with the dude who brought in the coke. Our escape was reported to the La Cañada Sherriff every bit a prison escape — non ii dudes who jumped out of a worker van — and they sent a helicopter to track u.s.a. down. We were out for possibly fifteen minutes and tried to steal a car when this cop shouted, "FREEZE!".
They send me back to Sylmar Juvenile Hall. I was an escape risk, so I was put in a new building that was super secure — a building within a building.
My councilor was overlooking my case:
"You got arrested for the kickoff time on January 19th, 1997, and you've never been officially released. Now you're 18," he said. It finally donned on me that I'd been in the organization the whole time. In his report, he wrote that I was "securely entrenched in the white supremacy mentality" and that I will "never change" and was a "hardcore white supremacist."
I knew I was going to be sent to Youth Potency adjacent.
I'd heard well-nigh Gladiator School, simply information technology was a weird concept for me. I didn't really know the Youth Dominance system yet. When I first got to YTS, I call up getting in the cages before they'd rack the doors shut…smash! I recall looking exterior my prison cell at the baby-sit towers. This wasn't camp… this was serious. I was scared shitless. For the first 3 months, I didn't come out at all. So I was sent to a drug plan in S and T unit of measurement, doing 23 and one lockdown, not coming out except to shower.
The light plate in my cell was loose. I could wrap toilet paper effectually a newspaper clip or staple — any footling slice of metal and touch the edge of the light switch to the metal box and create an arc. If information technology arcs too far, it blows the low-cal switch, and they would have to reset the breaker. I would twist some toilet paper tightly to make a wick and light it. Then I was getting kites and cigarettes from people wanting a light.
YTS was segregated, and so I got a white roommate who called himself Woody. We were getting kites from Crazy Jay in the adjacent jail cell, who I was trading food and commissary items with. Crazy Jay shot the states this radio.
"What do you lot want to listen to?" I asked Woody.
"Rap," he said, but I didn't want to listen to rap.
"Come on, dude, we're not gonna listen to rap," I said, only Woody kept pushing the issue.
"You hang out with niggers in the street listening to rap?" I asked, "I DON'T LISTEN TO RAP!"
We get in this cell fight. I was in my sandals at the time and went to punch him, but I slipped, busting my head on the bed rack. I was bleeding. I become pissed and catch Woody past the pilus. I vanquish his head against the sink, cracking him open up. It's all bloody in in that location, nasty. Finally, we come up to a common stop and clean upward the prison cell the next day.
The guards racked us for showers. Woody wore a durag on his head to hide his injuries; I put grease over my open up wounds because I didn't want to drain. The guards were non dumb; they saw our wounds and separated us, moving me to the cell next door.
Shotgun, as far every bit white dudes go, was 1 of the main dudes at the institution. He was 24 or 25 years old and big as fuck — a 6'4" redneck from Bakersfield who grew upwards hard. Nosotros called him Shotgun because his arms were like guns. He has done time as a kid and went through all the Youth Authority facilities up due north.
"Where the fuck is Woody and Piddling Joe?" he said as he was coming downward the hall. That's when I started calling myself Little Joe.
Shotgun comes to the door of my cell and leans in. He looked similar a grown man, I remember. Woody and I were scared; this dude was hard-core.
"What the fuck are you doing down here?" he asked. "You lot're making us expect weak correct now."
YTS had some crazy games being played. White dudes getting jumped by black dudes, race riots, whites on Mexicans, Southsiders … y'all had to wait stiff. The whole thing well-nigh YTS is that you never show weakness of any kind.
"You brand the states wait actually weak," he said. "You knock this fucking shit off! I don't want to come downwards here once more. Are nosotros good?"
Shotgun'south cellie had a dirty drug test, so they took him away. They needed to fill up the empty bunk, so they put me in the jail cell with Shotgun instead of going dorsum with Woody. I was scared shitless.
Shotgun beat the shit out of me every fucking day! When the cell door was airtight, it was slaps to the face and socks to the body until one of us couldn't go.
"I like you lot, dude, but you gotta exist tough," Shotgun would tell me. "You think you lot're tough? Yous're non gonna brand it!"
I felt like he didn't want to do it, only I'd be bruised so fucking bad. My forearms, my face!
I call back one time he had me against the door, and I was blocking his punches. He left himself open, and I fucking rang his bell. I slapped him so fucking difficult, and I dazed the shit out of him. He came back at me and fucking bankrupt my ribs. He fucking hit me in the ribs so fucking hard. I layed on the floor, and I could tell he felt bad.
"I'g sorry Joe, I'1000 distressing," he stood over me and said, "Get upwardly!"
I couldn't breathe.
"Get up, Joe, I'm sorry! Become upwardly!"
Shotgun wanted to fight every twenty-four hours except when he was tweaking. When he was on dope, he never wanted to fight. He didn't practice it because he was an asshole. He was like my large brother. I learned to fight. This went on for months, and I got better at fighting. We'd smoke a lot of weed together. He would kind of protect me. Information technology was a weird thing we had.
YTS is all about programming and tradeline. Tradeline was our rehabilitation — they were teaching us a trade so that we could practice something when nosotros got out. But information technology's but anarchy and fights. We were preying on each other. Tradeline was a row of "L" shaped classrooms. Sector one was GED classes. Sector 2 was welding, building maintenance, carpentry. Sector iii, around the corner, was masonry, gang, and drug counseling classes, which you had to do in social club to be released. Tradeline is where everyone wanted to be, especially sector three in masonry, where at that place was access to weapons: shovels, hammers, and trowels. All the fights, stabbing, drugs, tattooing was all going down in sector iii. If you were a disrupter, this is where you lot wanted to be. Shotgun was at that place with all the big Southsiders.
Shotgun would tell me all the shit that he heard would become down in masonry. He told me that this white dude disrespected all of the Southsiders, and so the Southsider's threatened to kill Shotgun and a bunch of other dudes over what this white guy did.
If you guys don't whack that dude, we're going to impale you, they said.
The Southsiders threatened to attack all the white dudes on a specific date if this white dude wasn't removed from YTS. He had to be an instance, taken out haemorrhage. Shotgun felt information technology was of import to maintain race relations with the Southsiders at YTS, since it could have an impact on whites upwards north, who were outnumbered by Northerners.
If no 1 volunteered to practise information technology, it would fall on the lowest YA number to practice the dirt. But this dude, Tom, volunteered to do it — I don't know why. I recall Shotgun making the shank — it was sharp. They gave the shank to Tom, and he fucking stabbed the guy in the neck three times on tradeline.
It comes time for me to parole. I completed all my gang classes, my drug classes. We rolled up a fat joint to celebrate that I was getting out.
"Hey, piffling bro, yous made it. You lot're gonna parole," Shotgun said. "I'm gonna miss you."
The next morning, they announced the parole lath had been canceled, and they were doing drug tests. Shotgun's caseworker was the one running the drug tests. I don't know what Shotgun said to him, but I got a pocketbook of pee from this kid and walked away with a clean test.
My mom never visited me at YTS, but my grandma picked me up and we got pizza.
That was the last time I saw Shotgun. As fucked up equally he was, he was like my large brother. I was never tough — just some white child from the beach — only him beating me in that fucking cell made me able to physically fight and be tough.
I finally see Andy once more at this hotel. There were girls, people, beer, but I didn't like the whole scene. I didn't like beingness effectually people.
"Andy, I gotta get…"
I went back to my grandma'southward house, where I was living. I wouldn't come out of my room afterwards that. I couldn't watch TV; I couldn't concentrate on movies. I'd be scared at night when it was quiet and I was lone. I had nobody, again. People tell me to get a chore, but I'grand scared to go outside, to be in public around big crowds of people. I wanted to just sit down in my room. I remember Shotgun would call me:
"You got to live your life and go outside," he'd say.
"I can't. I'm fucking scared!"
"You're a fucking YTS gladiator, and now you're scared of the street?"
"I don't know how to human activity!"
I was and then institutionalized; I was scared to become outside. Finally, I would get drunkard with my buddy Jacob. It would aid me function if I could drink when I went out. I'd buy these cheap bottles of Vodka and Sunny Delight, and I'd go to the Redondo Beach Pier and fish, like when I was a kid.
I had friends, only I couldn't relate to them. I wanted to do offense and gangster shit, and I didn't know why. I got along with gangsters better than people that were my friends. I didn't have any life skills or coin. I didn't want to work. It was and so hard working. Ane minute, I was a child, then I did all this jail time, and I was dorsum on the streets expected to perform as an adult!
We sold so much weed out of Andy'south house in Redondo Beach. There were guns, too. One mean solar day, Andy'southward dad found a quarter pound of coke that we were using to cutting meth and an SKS assault rifle. I in one case shot out Andy's window while showing him how to cock-back a pistol. I was lucky his parents weren't home. We idea this shit was normal.
Andy'due south mom kicked him out of the firm, and I couldn't let him be exterior alone. I had this mentality that Andy was the only dog I had left.
Andy and I moved into this apartment. We were dealing weed, and Andy got sloppy, letting anyone into the business firm to deal.
I wake up with a .45 in my face. These cholos were in our apartment. They robbed u.s., took our weed and our money. They took my wallet, and I was fucking pissed because it had my Youth Authorization ID in it. I had a moving-picture show in my wallet of Shotgun and the whole car from masonry. They took it. They took all my shit. It injure.
I was really strung out on drugs, hanging out with Andy, and playing video games. All I wanted to do was get loftier. I didn't want to think or remember. I didn't want a task. I started carrying a knife with me everywhere I went. I got pulled over by the cops, and I had this dagger on me, which is a deadly weapon — a parole violation.
"You tin't be around people," I remember beingness told.
I was angry and wanted to lash out. I wanted to hurt people. I didn't feel loved, and I didn't feel I deserved it. I felt like a piece of shit. I didn't belong out there because of the institutionalization that I felt. In YTS, I knew the games to play and the lines to walk. No one expected me to practice anything but lash out and be violent. I'thou similar an creature…like I needed to be in a muzzle. I was a disrupter, always looking for problem. I would make fun of the programmers who wanted to go home. I wasn't like that.
I was in county with these shot-out white dudes who were just doing their time. I still wanted to make trouble — the Youth Authority mentality. I was a YA baby. These Skinheads were the confusing ones, then I started to hang out with them, calling myself a Skinhead. I already had a swastika tattoo on my face and Supreme White Power across my neck, and then I fit right in.
When I was transferred to Delano Land Prison, I got this new cellie.
"I'chiliad a Jew, and I don't hide it from anybody," he says.
"Bro, you gotta get the fuck outta this cell," I threatened. "Yous got until dinnertime to get the fuck out of here!"
I punched him a few times and then he would know I was serious.
"You tin't be in this cell with me. I'm a Skinhead, and y'all're a fucking Jew. I'g being cool with you lot, but get the fuck out of this cell earlier I do something bad because I have to!"
He wouldn't exit, then when he went to sleep, I snatched him off his bunk and threw him on the ground, so stomped the fucking shit out of him.
Dudes in the other cells were screaming, "Knock him out!"
I think he had my shoe prints on his head.
I felt terrible but what other pick did I take? These Skinhead dudes were gonna get me if I didn't practice information technology. They would fuck me up. I had been in enough fights that I but wanted to beat out people up and be done with them and get them out of the way.
The guards snatch me out of my jail cell and throw me exterior into the birdcage wearing only my shorts. Delano in the winter. I thought I was going abroad for a hate crime all considering I had to play these games. Either it's him on the flooring haemorrhage, or information technology would be me. It'southward fucked that I have to do that to another human being beingness.
Nosotros were white ability, yet of all the fights I'd gotten into, almost of the fights were against other white people. Supposedly, nosotros were these racist, hardcore dudes, merely we were beating up our ain people the most. Information technology was really all about the gang. In prison, every white dude was protected by the gang. I don't come across it as white supremacy; I saw it equally a gang.
I try to be a better person today. I didn't learn, until I read Gladiator School, about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I figured I was a tough guy who made it through… I'yard not! It fucked me up, and I admit it. I fabricated it through YTS, and it didn't kill me, and it didn't break my spirit… and to me, that's enough. I deserve to be loved, and I tin can love people. For a long time, I didn't believe that. I thought that I was a soldier of war, and I had all this hurting.
Twelve years ago, I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and somehow got off dope and weed.
I take an astonishing life today. I can speak Spanish. I've lived in Republic of chile and Peru and traveled throughout Southward America. I've done some astonishing things in my life. I have iii kids and a beautiful wife — the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. I tin solve bug without getting violent and loud. I don't remember about hurting people, but I'thousand always on edge. I don't want my kids to e'er accept to go through the pain I went through as a child. The swastika tattoo on my face has been removed. This Hitler tattoo has been covered up. I've done things to distance myself from the person I was.
Joseph "Little Joe" Copeland grew upwards in California's juvenile halls, Youth Authorization, and land prisons. He says he had a "x-year prison career" beginning at age 15 and including time at Inglewood Court, Central Juvenile Hall, Phoenix Firm, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, Sylmar Juvenile Hall, Military camp David Gonzalez, Camp Scudder, Camp Onizuka, Campsite Fred Miller, St. John's School for Boys, SRCC, Youth Grooming Schoolhouse (YTS), Los Angeles County Jail, Wayside County Jail, Tehachapi Land Prison, Delano State Prison house, and Ironwood Country Prison. Today, Joe works as a structural welder and sheet metal worker. He lives near Torrance, where he grew upwardly, with his wife and three kids. At the fourth dimension of this interview, he was enduring chemotherapy handling for stage 3 cancer; his doctors say he is now "100% cancer-costless."
David William Reeve is an independent author and photographer who documents the lives of juveniles at risk. Visit davidreeve.net for more.
Contact: davidwilliamreeve (at) gmail (dot) com
Yts Inmates They Treat Us Like Animals
Source: https://gladiatorschool.medium.com/gladiator-school-stories-from-inside-yts-ep-9-125375fd0d91
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