The MS-13 gangster leans toward a Plexiglas window in the Glenn E. Dyer Jail in downtown Oakland, speaking loudly over the desperate sounds of a man roaring and beating on the wall a few rooms down. His skin: pale from lack of sun, tinted almost a sickly green. His hands: cuffed to a chain fastened around his waist over a red jumpsuit. His profile: shaved head, pretty-boy face. He's 29 years old. It has been just a week since a judge in a nearly empty federal courtroom sentenced him to 10 years in prison for having pled guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges. With little fanfare, he (let's call him David) begins to tell how his gang life began the day the feds stuck him in detention with a conniving confessed murderer named Bad Boy...[continued]
