MESSAGES FROM THE AUTHOR
I’ve always had problems with authority. Police from Southwest division in Los Angeles shot and killed my best friend (Laris Price) in 1979. Inglewood Police pulled me over on a traffic stop with four other passengers one night. We were told to exit the car then made to lay flat on a dirty ground. At this time an Inglewood Police Officer said, “So you’re Hilton Booker, I should kill you.” This Officer then pulled the trigger back on his 357 Magnum handgun and put it to my head, for no reason other than racism.
I’ve carried a grudge for police officers since. And up to this day my feelings have not changed towards police.
Do not let your feelings get in the way of a successful future, and do not allow the hate you have for others lead you into trouble with police.
When police kill someone in your neighborhood, I say get thousands of people together and protest, hold a Martin Luther King like march and demand justice!
I have a message for gang members. Recognize the streets – you’re tattooing on your bodies, then ask yourself has your street or neighborhoods given you a job legally? Then look at your criminal police files and then you will find your answer. All the fighting and killing that has taken place inside your neighborhoods was not worth those lives at all. As for those bandanas (colored handkerchiefs) you are wearing, add up all the people who have given their lives for these bandanas, also count the people who got killed just for having the wrong color bandana.
My message is go to your city halls in your city with all the people from your gangs, have a meeting with the city-councilman. Let them know the people who have died over the streets they were representing, and demand the city to now give you all jobs. Also find the company who designs these deadly colored bandanas. Then protest to band them from making deadly products. This place should really be put out of business and a lawsuit filed for their part in peoples lives being taken! For wearing the product!
Instead of gang banging against your own race why not represent something that is real, like protesting in marches against the police who kill (innocent people) in your city, hold boycott rallies and stop buying products in the city from merchants where they are not giving up jobs to the Mexican and Black People.
I’m in prison serving an indeterminate sentence. I do not know where my life is headed to – living in these prison war zones.
My parents may not live long enough to ever get to see me become a free man. I could even be killed in prison. These are things you don’t know.
So stay away from crime. I may never get to my parents and other family members again. There’s no future in going to jail and prisons, stop crime while you have a real chance, all parents should read this book and show your kids what my book presents to them, the do’s and don’ts, there is nothing hip about prison life hanging around criminals for the rest of your life. There is nothing good about prison food, prison clothes, and doing the same things everyday and being told when to do things. Who wants to live forever like this in prison? Think about it, prisons and jails are bad for your health.
Consequences of crimes are never thought about once crime is committed, this is why we have repeat offenders, no one thinks of the consequences until they get caught by the Law!