to get my hair cut
before God became my barber.
[chuckles] You know?
And...
I used to tell the barber,
"Rich, never turn me around when you're doing my hair.
"Always get me
facing the door."
And he'd have that cloth over you in the barbershop.
And I would sit there with my gun
waiting for them to come in.
[hammer clicks]
So they got me, I got them.
somber music
[phone buzzing]
[automated voice] You have a prepaid call.
You will not be charged for this call.
[Supreme] We were the type of dudes that were respectful.
Like, we stayed out the way of the police.
It was a grudging respect.
I mean, like, you know, they the police.
Don't fuck with them.
And hope they don't fuck with us.
[phone beeping]
dramatic orchestral music
[Bing] See, we were way over on this side of town.
And at the time, can't nobody know our whereabouts.
[Supreme] We were in, like, a little suburbs in Queens.
That was like a nice area. All houses.
[Bing] '85. September 10, 1985.
We was all inside there, TV on,
probably counting some money, doing whatever in that joint.
And then all of a sudden, we hear a boom.
-Like, what the fuck? -[indistinct radio chatter]
Look out the window,
they had this whole shit surrounded.
The whole, entire-- seemed like the whole block.
[siren wailing]
Search warrants had never really
been issued in the first place,
but just how badly they just wanted us off the street.
At that time, the DA was Sterling Johnson,
way from Manhattan.
[Sterling] I'll give you a little about my background.
I grew up in the era of Plessy vs. Ferguson,
when segregation was legal.
Racism was always abound.
I had no political ambitions. Just to be a prosecutor.
McGriff was a charismatic guy and people look up to him.
He dressed very well.
He had a lot of women. Lot of young girls, you know?
He's very visible.
[Supreme] Mind you, my case is in Queens.
But somehow or another,
they was able to get me out of Queens
and in front of the special narcotics prosecutor,
Sterling Johnson.
[siren wailing]
[Sterling] The ironic thing about it,
McGriff lived on 231st Street.
I lived on 229th Street.
dramatic drumroll plays
He never knew it.
Oh, shit.
Wow, wow.
No. For real?
Two blocks away? That creep.
That's why he was on our body.
'Cause we was in his neighborhood.
Oh.
[Nas] After that raid, Supreme went away.
downbeat jazz music
The figurehead of the team was locked up.
[Supreme] I-I-I wouldn't say I was surprised
because it's part of the process.
So if you're in the game,
at some point, you know, you're gonna go down.
[Sterling] I never met a drug dealer who retired.
Never.
But it's like going into combat.
You know there are gonna be casualties,
but you say to yourself,
"It's always gonna be the other guy.
It's not gonna be me."
dramatic music
[Bill] There is the first, I guess,
era of the Supreme Team where Supreme is in control.
He goes away to jail for about eight years
and his nephew, Prince Miller, takes over.
[Prince] When Preme went away, yeah,
everything fell under me then.
But I would always try to listen to him.
The only thing I didn't listen to was when he said,
"Man, leave it alone."
[reporter] On the streets of New York,
it's called crack, and the deals go down quickly.
You've just witnessed a buy.
This form of cocaine comes concentrated.
It is smoked, rather than sniffed.
It produces an intense high within five to ten seconds
that lasts only five to ten minutes
and leaves the user craving for more.
And this is the most addicting thing
that probably ever existed in the world.
You know? It will make you a slave.
They're moving a lot of drugs, but there's a lot of problems,
a lot of violence on the street.
tense orchestral music
[Nas] Word is that when Prince took over,
some of the team's tactics changed.
[sirens wailing]
[Gary] Prince is a little bit younger,
but when he came,
he staked his claim on who he was.
He was just like his uncle.
There are some differences, but they both are go-getters,
they both were super smart,
and they both didn't want to be denied.
Here it is, bam
And you say "Goddamn, this is a dope jam"
But let's define the term called dope
And you think it mean funky now, no
Here is a true tale
[reporter] While Carmen Ortiz clutched pictures
of her dead son this evening,
David Rosario's friends played outside
on a street infested with crack dealers.
Are you afraid when you go out on the street at night?
-Yes. -[reporter] Why?
There a lot of crack dealers. They be shooting.
Sniffing, riffing
[Mark] Everyone became addicted
to this unholy energy on the streets.
You know, whether it was kids or the cops or reporters.
I'm talking about bass
[Mark] I got to the Daily News in the summer of '88.
I was a general assignment reporter
covering crack and crack dealers.
And I fucking loved it.
I never rolled up to news scenes that were that intense.
[reporter] Police figures confirm that without doubt
the 1980s was the bloodiest ten-year period
in New York City history.
And those that sell to Black
Shame on a brother
[Shannon] Prince got all of us together
and we made a lot of money.
From a corner from a brother to keep another below
[Shannon] We were branching out all over.
- Yo, Black, yo - We are willing!
[Shannon] He was good at structuring things,
you know?
He was very good at that.
Day to day, to day, they say no other way
[Shannon] If he seen a spot where it would be--
he think it might produce some money,
he would give out samples to all the different,
you know, fiends.
And once he gets everything structured, it builds.
dramatic orchestral music
[Prince] I'm very, very good at chess.
I watch my opponent while I'm playing them.
I see his moves he's making,
and I try to think, like, five to eight moves ahead.
Next thing they know, they look up.
Damn! Checkmate.
When I play chess, I'm not in prison.
You moving your pieces and, you know,
you organizing, you know?
And you beat the guy to the punch
and then you gotta be able to see the whole board.
It's like life.
[Corey] When he took over,
it was the most violent time in the Supreme Team.
I was happy for a little while
until I started seeing people disappearing.
I'd be like, "Yo, what's up with--where's such-and-such?"
It's like, "Nah," you know, "He's gone."
"Where's this one?" "Gone."
Or I'd be in the park
and, you know, one of the big bosses come in the park,
take one of his workers,
and, like, beat him down like, black eyes, everything.
And he looks at the rest of us and was like,
"Y'all want some of this?"
And it's like...
"Nah.
"We don't want none of that.
I'm going back over here to finish this package."
Man, it's just-- in that way,
I heard of people getting thrown off of roofs,
thrown out windows.
[Mook] It just came a time when certain people feel like
certain people didn't deserve a block, street, or a corner,
so that's like anything, you know what I'm saying?
Only the strong survive, especially back then.
[indistinct chatter]
[Prince] First of all, what I'ma do
is I'ma take some of that perception
because there's no question about it.
I was a criminal. I was selling drugs.
You know what I'm saying? I was a drug dealer.
That's a past that I can't erase.
In regards to how much I've changed,
that's my past.
You know what I'm saying?
But that being said,
a lot of stuff they said was false.
soft piano music
I lot of people wanna hear these myths of this,
the myth of that.
They wanna know if this was true,
that was true, all this bullshit.
But nobody asked, um...
about home or, you know,
what happens when this man go home?
Nothing.
Dinner's on the table.
The dogs are fed.
We watch a movie, maybe even sometimes.
You know?
Just come down to my room, sit down with me,
and just talk about nothing for 20 minutes.
Just wanted to make sure my mind learn something today.
You know?
Needed that shit.
Everybody need that.
So if this was the--
they call him a kingpin, some shit?
He was the kingpin of the family.
[chuckles]
That family. Fuck all this street shit.
[Suzette] We got married in December, like,
little before Christmas.
The wedding was-- it was small.
It was my mother, his family, my sister.
It was a really, really small wedding.
Everybody cried.
But it was-- it was memorable.
Money?
Money was ridiculous.
Money was, like, garbage bags of money.
If I was bored, I would go and buy the Salmon's furniture.
Because I was bored,
I would just change everything in the house.
And then I'll see a fur commercial on TV.
I was like, "Oh, look at those coats."
"All right, go get the coat." Like, yeah, it became normal.
It was. It was like, "Whatever."
I wasn't out and about, like, a whole lot.
But when I did, you know, people acknowledge you,
they respect you a lot because you're Prince's wife.
And everybody kind of looked out for me.
We were pretty safe. It felt safe.
Sometimes when we went out, someone had to come with us.
But for the most part, we were good.
[Prince] That is a fact.
You know, what it was then,
whole bunch of money and it was a fast life.
And, uh, it was deep, man.
[Suzette] Home was home. Literally.
No work came home.
It was one incident.
[sirens wailing]
Prince was taking the kids, Tuff and my son
to buy bikes.
And they were going to this store
on Jamaica Avenue named Bellitte's.
So they went, picked out the bikes,
but they had to put the bikes together.
And so they came home for a few minutes,
they took the kids, and they left again.
When he went back out the door,
you just hear gunshots.
-[gunfire] -[tires squealing]
suspenseful music
[Prince] We was living right off of Linden Boulevard.
What happened was we came, got in the car,
we was driving,
and it just so happened I'm looking down
and a van's on the wrong side of the street.
So the van makes a U-turn, pulls around,
tries to cut us off.
And before it can even get there,
I said, "Yo, yo! It's a hit, it's a hit!"
[Tuff] I think three gentlemen jump out that van,
two and then the driver, end up jumping out.
You get strategic is what he told me.
Told me you don't panic.
You either gonna live or you gonna die.
But you don't panic.
[Prince] The dudes in the van,
they were so spooked at the reputation,
but they shooting over the car.
Not one bullet hit the car. Not even one.
And they lucky I wasn't strapped.
They would've been down right there.
It would've been self-defense.
[Suzette] I was in the shower.
The door was closed, but I hear my sister yelling.
I'm like, "Oh, my God, open the door.
"They gonna kill him, they gonna kill him.
Open the door."
And Prince kind of ran in.
And so to this day,
I don't shower with the door closed,
'cause I need to hear what's going on outside.
[tires squealing]
[Prince] And then, you know, at that time, not gonna lie,
we chased the van and the van got away.
You know what I'm saying?
And that was that.
[engine revving]
The police come and yeah, they kinda--
they stayed outside for a really long time.
Like, I guess, just investigating.
But Prince really didn't talk to them.
He didn't.
[Nas] When you on top of the game,
everyone's trying to come for your spot
either as rival gangsters,
up-and-comers, or the cops.
[siren wailing]
[reporter] Police say it was just before 3:30 a.m.
when a brown car pulled up to the corner
of 107th Avenue and Inwood Street here in Jamaica.
That is where Officer Edward Byrne
was sitting alone in his patrol car.
[reporter] As he sat in his patrol car
guarding the home of a witness in a drug case,
rookie policeman Edward Byrne was shot to death.
[reporter] One man reportedly got out of the car,
fired five rounds from a high-caliber weapon.
Three of those shots hit Byrne in the left side of his head.
[reporter] Edward Byrne followed his father,
a retired lieutenant, into the NYPD.
He only joined the force last July.
This week, he celebrated his 22nd birthday.
'88, I was a police officer four years in.
I remember the assassination of Edward Byrnes.
It was something that changed policing.
[Sterling] If he's sitting in a patrol car in uniform,
you know, comes up behind him and boom, boom, boom.
Shoots and kills him.
That's the arrogance that the drug dealers had.
[Eddie] That one pisses me off.
I don't understand
assassinating a young kid like that.
That stuck with me.
That stuck with me, that one.
That was a outright "eff you" to the police department.
"We don't care."
No father should have to bury their son.
[Matthew] If our son Eddie, sitting in a police car,
can be wasted by scum,
then none of us are safe.
And I don't care where you live.
[Eric] It was an open assassination
of a police officer while on duty.
And it concerned me because
it became a personal fight.
These bullets go right through a police officer's vest.
Makes you think twice about everything.
You know, doing your job out there.
It definitely was a personal vendetta
of NYPD against every drug dealer in the city.
They wanted 'em all done.
They wanted to lock them up, their mothers up,
their fathers, everybody they could get their hands on.
downbeat music
[Bill] We were shocked, we were angry.
That anger wasn't going away ever.
And we hold, to a certain degree,
the people of Jamaica, Queens, responsible for it.
Eddie Byrnes' death was a turning point
in the federal attention to crack
and to the Black neighborhoods.
[reporter] Mayor Koch spent almost $13,000
of his re-election fund money
to buy a full-page ad in The New York Times
begging people to send telegrams to President Reagan
urging that he cut off U.S. aid
to drug-trafficking countries.
We've got to get our own country, the president,
to, as commander-in-chief, to protect us as he would
if the Russians were coming here with terrorists.
So it became a political football and political benefit.
George Bush seized upon Byrnes' death
to grab his shield and go around campaigning
during the presidential campaign.
[President Bush] You read about the execution
of Officer Edward Byrne.
You've read about the drug-related violence
that's turning sections of our cities
into combat zones.
[Robert] And George Bush was saying,
"We're gonna solve the problem.
"We're gonna prosecute those people.
We're gonna make what used to be state cases federal cases."
[President Bush] Here, the rules have changed.
If you sell drugs, you will be caught.
And when you're caught, you will be prosecuted,
and once you're convicted, you will do time.
Before the Eddie Byrne homicide,
there was a very limited number of, you know,
street narcotics cases being made, if any.
And all of a sudden, you know, that murder woke everybody up.
[Mark] 'Cause now all of a sudden,
these kids had fucked with the power.
And in this particular age,
everyone became a target.
Right here. Take 'em. Right here, right here.
[reporter] Police have turned up the heat full-blast
in the search for Byrne's killers,
and there's a $30,000 reward for information
leading to their arrest and conviction.
A special police unit, the Tactical Narcotics Team,
was created to battle drug dealers
after the murder of Officer Byrne.
[reporter] The police saturation
in the Jamaica Houses last March was the first example
of the Tactical Narcotics Team program in action.
In the past year,
there have been more than 8,000 arrests
in the $110 million program
that will soon be expanding to all five boroughs.
The game changed
as far as narcotics investigations
in New York City.
They established a unit called TNT
and they were very aggressive in trying to, you know,
stop the sale of drugs in projects, et cetera.
[Prince] The Tactical Narcotics Squad
swept things up and tore things up.
It put so many poor people of color in prison.
They didn't just devastate South Jamaica.
It swept through all states, all hoods,
California all the way to Chicago.
The Senate today
put the deadly force of the death penalty
behind this country's battle against drugs.
[reporter] Any drug-connected killing
of a law enforcement officer
or a murder on behalf of a drug organization
could lead to the death penalty.
dramatic music
[Nas] TNT wanted the Supreme Team bad.
[Prince] Neither Preme nor I
or anybody that was part of the so-called Supreme Team
approved of killing cops, point blank.
It was illogical, it was immoral,
it was the dumbest shit in the world.
[Supreme] That's one of the first rules
of a organized group.
It's, you know, you leave the police alone
if you wish to continue to make money.
But if you notice, I said organized.
Unlike a group of wild dudes with no objective
or long-term goals.
soft dramatic music
We're here this afternoon to announce
a federal grand jury indicting
a Howard "Pappy" Mason for the murder
of police officer Edward Byrnes.
Pappy Mason was a lieutenant to "Fat Cat" Nichols.
[reporter] They call him "Fat Cat."
At the age of 28,
Lorenzo Nichols controls the major portion
of the $100 million crack operation
in South Jamaica, Queens.
[Prince] Preme, Cat, and Corley were the main dealers, right?
They were the main ones
that mainly stood out on 150th Street.
Fat Cat had his own crew and Supreme had his own crew,
so that's how they got to know each other,
Fat Cat and Supreme.
[reporter] Lorenzo Nichols is accused of running
the biggest crack operation in Queens
and perhaps the city.
[Robert] And although he took orders
from Fat Cat for a time,
Pappy had decided he was his own boss
and it was he who arranged
for Byrnes' killing.
The sources who are familiar with the case
say Mason thought murdering a New York City cop
would please his friend Nichols
because Nichols was angry over receiving a 25-year sentence
on the weapons charges just a day before.
The sources say that the murder,
in fact, angered Nichols
because he believes that was the event
that brought down the full weight
of both the state and federal governments
on his organization, his family,
and ultimately, himself.
[Prince] That changed a lot of lives.
It changed the lives of the Byrne family,
it changed the lives of those in the street,
and it changed my life.
After the killing of Edward Byrne,
that whole lifestyle of hustling,
definitely selling drugs, was completely obliterated
if you ask me.
I'm not saying it didn't stop,
I'm saying that it stopped for 150th Street.
[Supreme] But as far as Ed Byrnes,
I thought that was a tragedy.
I would never condone such a detrimental act.
That was a big disaster right there.
'Cause it fucked up everybody's money.
Once they started moving everybody,
that's when things just started
going in different directions all over the place.
It fucked up everything.
At that point, you knew that a major shift was happening
and everything was gonna be shut down.
It would never be the same.
upbeat music
There it is!
The New Year's Eve Ball in Times Square,
the Big Apple, New York City, USA.
We are live!
[party horn toots]
[person] Two, one!
Happy New Year, everybody!
Meli'sa Morgan's "Fool's Paradise" playing
[reporter] Nelson Mandela walked out
of Victor Verster Prison today like a chief of state.
[kid] Now that I've gotten on the internet,
I'd rather be on my computer than doing just about anything.
[announcer] Cats at the Winter Garden Theatre!
I'm taking out this time
I know that all Americans took great joy
in the liberation of Kuwait City.
[gunfire]
I experimented with marijuana a time or two
and I didn't like it.
This was a managed and controlled use of force.
[sirens wailing]
[reporter] Fires are burning in both towers
of the World Trade Center.
[reporter] The City of New York at this point
could be compared to the Titanic,
and the customers of this city
are seeking a man of his talent and direction.
And that is why we're supporting Rudy Giuliani.
-Thank you. -[applause]
The Giuliani era, it's interesting when
you talk to white New Yorkers and Black New Yorkers,
how we remember it so differently.
-How are you? Good morning. -[reporter] Good to see you.
Good morning. Feels terrific this morning.
[Joy] You know, I think for a lot of white New Yorkers,
they remember it as, you know,
when Times Square turned into Disneyland, right?
Because he basically sold all of Times Square
to big corporations and made it really pretty.
And for Black New Yorkers, it was a terrifying time.
Fool's paradise
You better think twice
'Cause it's not very nice
Ooh
[Nas] I remember growing up and all on the news,
we were criminalized and demonized all the time
to create this fear
that Black people were the only criminals in America.
[Eric] We still had pockets of communities,
the Brownsvilles, these 40 Projects,
these South Bronx.
We had pockets of communities that were left behind
during those '90s.
What we didn't do
as we allowed the popularity of our New York brand
to continue to grow, we did not ensure
that popularity turned into prosperity for everyone.
Urban renewal was Negro removal.
Why?
Because in large cities,
the people who government displaced,
buying out their buildings, forcing people out,
were largely communities of color.
It destroyed communities instead of building them.
The official narrative is
that all of the problems with public housing
have to do with criminals,
and the solution is, for them, policing.
[cheers and applause]
[Rudy] I have seen our people in every community.
They're all saying the same thing.
"Please help us reduce crime.
"Please.
"Please help us.
"Please help us reduce the scourge of drugs
that is destroying us."
[Tom] When our dear friend Rudy Giuliani became mayor,
this is what he tried to do,
and the system was not geared to public safety.
It was really geared to maintaining control
by almost an occupying force.
There's a war goin' on outside
No man is safe from
You can run, but you can't hide forever
From these streets that we done took
You walking with your head down, scared to look
You shook
'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
[Eddie] Well, there was a big difference
just when Dinkins left office and Giuliani took over.
I'm gonna be honest with you. We were able to do our jobs.
Under Giuliani, the police department was back.
It was a whole new ballgame.
[Bill] He trusted two people at the time,
which was Bill Bratton as his police commissioner
and Jack Maple as his deputy commissioner of operations.
And the two of them had devised a management plan
that would hold precinct commanders accountable.
They expected the police to go out and engage.
[Derrick] Giuliani said, "Look,
"we have the broken windows policy
"where it's we leave the windows broken
and nobody's fixing them, so now we're gonna fix them."
So they went after the squeegee guys,
the graffiti guys.
The low-level crimes would lead you to bigger crimes,
and it did work.
However, the public saw it as a problem
'cause the stop-and-frisk part of it,
it would stop many, you know, minorities.
[Bill] And it worked.
I mean, it cleaned up the streets of New York.
It took about five years
and New York City was a different place.
[Supreme] The local police, the detectives,
they held a grudge.
When they lose one of their owns,
they fault everybody,
whether you had something to do with it or not.
[indistinct radio chatter]
In New York City,
officials have taken a big bite out of crime
and the mayor is now claiming
that New York is the safest big city in America.
The New York City Police Department, last year,
did, I think, the best job it's ever done in his history.
[Joy] I never really feared Black people, right?
I knew where to avoid, I knew where not to go.
You couldn't avoid the police.
They were everywhere.
They were pulling over the gypsy cab you were in.
[siren bleeps]
Amadou Diallo was shot like 41-something times.
His mother, Kadiatou, was, like begging for justice,
and nothing happened.
We are here for this
and we will come back again until justice is done!
[Joy] Abner Louima is the one
who gets dragged in to the police
and, you know, sodomized and brutalized.
[Joy] And Giuliani does nothing.
He goes right to the cops, he sides with the cops.
It's basically a free-for-all.
[overlapping shouting]
Police could do whatever they want
in New York City in that era.
[officer] Hands behind you.
[Prince] You know, I wanted to make sure
that my stepson and my daughter
wouldn't be around the ghetto environment of drug-selling
and watching those things that I saw coming up,
'cause it wasn't inside my household
that made me revert to the streets,
it was the streets itself
that was always constantly in my face.
[birds chirping]
[Tuff] This was home.
Lot of memories right now.
You know, my mind is going a lot of different places.
We just lived really out of the way, under the radar,
and, you know, nobody could find us back here.
He made this for us to live in,
to have and to be safe.
That's what he did for us, for this.
And we went through everything over there, the Southside,
and this is where we landed and this is where it ended.
Right here.
[Suzette] It was a mixed neighborhood.
Kids could play outside.
You don't have to worry about it.
Pretty quiet. Everybody got along.
It's a good neighborhood.
Until one day, it was chaos.
dramatic music
Me and Prince was knocked out, sleeping in the bed.
[loud crash]
Like, 5:00 in the morning they came,
kicking the door in.
[screaming and crashing]
He literally took me and, like, put me behind a door.
Like, "Stay down," because we didn't know what it was.
[police radio chatter]
I literally thought it was somebody coming to kill us
until they announced themselves.
[officer on PA] This is the police!
[Prince] Before they came, actually,
around 3:23 in the morning, [bleep] called the house...
[phone ringing]
He asked, "Is Prince there?"
She said, "Yeah, Prince is there.
You want me to wake him up?"
He said, "No, don't wake him up.
"Just open the door, keep the door unlocked.
-I'm on my way home." -[pounding]
And when the police came,
they walked right through the front door.
[officer] You're under arrest!
[Suzette] We didn't even notice
that they were in the house
until they pushed our room door open.
And then Prince was so-- I think I had on a t-shirt
and we were sleeping and Prince was fussing like,
"Let her put her pants on." That's all he cared about.
[sirens wailing]
[Tuff] I was butt-ass naked.
I don't even know what they grabbed.
My skin? I don't know how the fuck they got me up.
Oh, that big-ass motherfucker tossed me.
And he just commenced to, you know, whipping my ass.
He started asking me about some money.
"Where the money? Where's the guns?
Where's the drugs?"
And I'm like, "Dude, we don't do that in here."
[Suzette] They stayed in the house,
putting holes in our walls.
So they--literally, we had big holes in the walls.
They was just, like, busting the walls out.
Put our minks in the water in the bathtub.
We was all kind of face-down on the floor
in the living room for hours.
[Tuff] We in that goddamn living room
on that pastel pink carpet.
He over here handcuffed, I'm over here handcuffed.
And we just eye-communicated.
And I nodded my head. I know what we're doing.
And he was just making sure that I was still in tune.
soft tense music
[Suzette] I think they kinda got upset after a little while
'cause they was like,
"Okay, what are y'all hiding in here?"
And I'm like, "Search. There's nothing here.
This is our home."
And Prince literally said that.
Like, "This is my home. There's nothing here."
But they stayed for literally--
I'm gonna say, like, maybe five or six hours?
And then they finally took him.
We was, like, in tears.
And he kept reassuring us, "I'm okay, I'm okay."
Handcuffed while he's walking out,
he's like, "Don't worry. I'm okay,"
trying to calm us down.
And we just kind of watched them take him away,
put him in the car, and they took him away
and he kept looking back just saying,
"It's okay. I'm okay."
So that day was pretty memorable.
Crazy.
[Prince] Oh, man. Let me tell you, man.
It was-- looking back at everyone
cuffed behind their backs like that broke my heart, man.
It was the worst feeling I had, man.
They was taking me out. Man, I was hurt.
Nah, I wasn't even thinking about myself.
I was thinking about them, man.
You know, I didn't realize
that that would be the last day
that I would actually be a free man.
[indistinct radio chatter]
That was the worst day of my life, man.
[phone beeping]
[Nas] Prince had been in and out of the system
for years, but always made it out.
Why would this time be different?
He knew what he needed to do.
[Joyce] My first introduction to the Supreme Team
was through Gerald Miller, who is known as Prince.
And he was considered
the head of the Supreme Team at that point.
[Prince] Ms. London tore the case up.
So she helped prepare the case
before it end up going to trial,
and she did a good job of it.
I go to see Gerald.
He seemed fine with my representing him.
Whether it was the best of a bad deal or whatever it was,
but he and I got along well,
and he felt we could work together.
soft dramatic music
[Prince] There's so many things I wanted to be growing up.
And I wasn't stuck on just one thing.
I wanted to be several things, you know what I mean?
I definitely wanted to be a lawyer,
and that's because I watched Perry Mason.
I watched that joint 24/7.
And I loved it. I just loved it, man.
I don't know what.
It just clicked in my head,
and I said, "Man, I want to be a lawyer."
[Joyce] For Judge Dearie, he was a former prosecutor.
I would say that this case was troubling to him.
I think he always felt that it was--
there was a push-pull situation where he was determined
that Gerald would not exert any control
over the trial or the case.
He wanted him to sit quiet at the table
and not say anything.
That's not Gerald's MO in life.
It was a great experience as a lawyer.
Gerald knew every fact about his case.
He knew the discovery inside-out.
That was tremendously helpful. It became crucial later on.
[Prince] What happened was after that arrest,
I get locked up, we go to court,
and we start getting documents.
And the documents, we get the wiretaps.
Turned out my phone was wiretapped.
He understood that with the wiretaps coming in,
the chances of getting convicted on the drug charges
were pretty high.
I mean, he had heard the tapes, he had read the transcripts.
He was charged with four murders
in aid of racketeering, and we both believed that
if he could not get acquitted on those murders,
he would face a life imprisonment,
so his recommendation was always,
"Do whatever you can.
Focus on that. We have to work on that."
And we did.
The circumstances around it
were that four Colombians
were going to come to the projects involved
and deliver a fairly large amount of cocaine.
And the government's theory of the case was that
they never walked out of the place alive.
They took the drugs and didn't want to pay for them.
It wasn't their theory of the case
that Gerald committed the murders,
but it was their theory of the case
that he ordered them.
And we got old court records that showed Gerald was
in court on that day, in state court,
and I remember arguing to the jury,
"They're saying that he called up and said,
'Knock off these guys'?"
The jury-- "Can you imagine him right now
"walking up to the judge's phone,
picking it up, and giving an order?"
Picture it.
And the judge is sitting there?
You know, "Knock off these four guys
and keep the drugs"?
[Prince] It was not a hard case to beat,
because the only thing that tied me
was his testimony about a phone call.
It turned out that the wiretaps were illegally got,
so Judge starts thinking, looked at everything and said,
"Hey, man. I'ma suppress these taps.
It's illegal. Y'all didn't have to use these taps."
And I will say, to our credit,
he was acquitted on the murder charges.
[Nas] Ever since Ed Byrnes,
the cops had been looking for a way to lock Prince up.
When he straight-up beat their fake murder charges in court,
it only added to the man's mystique.
He was saying they was calling John Gotti the Telfon Don.
In my opinion, Gerald Miller is the Teflon Don.
The Black Teflon Don.
rhythmic thrumming
[Shannon] It was a state case first.
Everything was state.
Prince went to trial for the murders,
the four murders...
and he beat it.
Once he beat it, then the state pressured the government
to come and take the case over.
They-they had nothing for us,
and so they had to holler at the big boys.
You know who the big boys is.
[Prince] But what they did was then,
they shot the case over to the feds.
Took the same wiretaps, used them in federal court,
and filed different name of charges,
but using the same evidence.
I didn't know that they can even do that,
know what I'm saying?
I thought not guilty was not guilty,
you know what I'm saying?
But it's called dual sovereignty.
They let their illegal wiretaps in because they said,
"This is the feds. This ain't the state."
Know what I'm saying?
They had different laws, they said.
They let 'em in.
When that happened, I was like--
I said, "I can't believe this."
98% conviction rate.
There's not so many people that go to trial
that they be so scared just to face what they be facing
in the federal as opposed to the state.
It's just totally different.
The mandatory minimum is ten years in the feds.
You're down ten.
What's fair about that?
We knew it. We was prepared for it.
That's why we went to trial.
suspenseful music
[Nas] The feds knew that locking up Preme in the '80s
didn't stop the Supreme Team.
This time, they wanted to finish the job
by locking up Prince and his associates
all at once.
[Bing] It was Prince, C-Justice,
C, Pookie, Shannon, me, Tucker,
Teddy, Ace.
We was all on the same indictment.
We all charged with RICO racketeering.
So those are called acts which you do inside the RICO,
certain acts you get charged with.
[Derrick] RICO's really what they like to get you on,
'cause that's the
Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization.
And once they get you on that,
now, they can put pieces together
and identify you as a gang, an organization.
And what happens is that when you have an organization
that commits violent acts by killing competitors,
by shooting rivals, by distributing drugs,
by intimidation and fear,
now you have a case that's a recipe for the feds to say,
"Now we have a big case here
that we can take out several people in this organization."
And all you have to do is identify them.
You identify who the lieutenants are,
who the workers are, who the bosses are,
and you take them out one by one.
[reporter] Prosecutors refuse to comment
about a possible indictment,
but it is clear under RICO,
authorities have a new weapon they are willing to use
to try and nail defendants
local prosecutors have been unable to touch.
[Supreme] And then everybody got tied to--
everybody got smeared with this.
And, like, that's what the police do.
They like to attach as many bad things as possible
to your name just so that they can vilify you
and demonize you so that they can get rid of you.
[automated voice] This call is from a federal prison.
[Shannon] That was their way of cleaning up the hoods now.
And all the Blacks and Hispanics in Manhattan,
Brooklyn, Queens, all over New York.
But that charge was mainly for the mob.
soft dramatic music
[Nas] Queens has a long history of mob and mafia activity.
RICO charges are nothing new in Queens.
[reporter] Gambino crime boss John Gotti
and his co-defendant Frank Locasio
guilty on a host of felonies that could send them to prison
for the rest of their lives.
[Prince] They put me in the cell,
and right across from us,
it was John Gotti.
People took us as drug dealers,
but the reason why Supreme Team kind of stood out
against other people is because we were organized,
and we was actually charged with organized crime.
Same as Gotti. RICO. Same thing.
[Shannon] We would go back and forth to court with Gotti
and different big-time, you know, Italians.
They were cool.
So my wife, she had got arrested with us.
And, um, they put all the men in the back of the bus.
And um,
Prince had told my wife that I was in the back,
so go in the back, and the guard told her not to.
So then Gotti said, "Listen. That's his wife.
Let her go back there with him."
The marshal said, "Okay, she can go back there."
And we just chilled in the back
till we got back to MCC New York.
[Joyce] It was an adventure in the surreal every day.
I mean, Gerald was always focused.
He knew what witnesses are coming,
what they would say,
he would have questions he would want me to ask them.
He had one set of charges of intimidating a witness
and the government played some tapes of phone calls
and after they had played them, in one of the breaks,
Gerald said to me,
"We're playing the two tapes they didn't play.
So I'm like, "You sure you want this?"
And he was like, "Play them. Please play them."
And he was right.
When we played them,
I remember sitting down saying--
and saying to him, you know, "You were right."
Didn't sound so bad after all.
And he did get acquitted on that.
His knowledge of those wiretapped materials
were probably the greatest treasure I ever found
in criminal defense law.
All of the defendants
were acquitted on the murder charges,
murder in aid of racketeering.
Gerald was acquitted on the witness intimidation charges
and convicted of the drug charges
and the racketeering.
[Bing] I forgot how many days
the jury deliberated on our case.
But ultimate, they came with the decision
that wasn't in our favor, but we respected it
'cause we know who we's are,
what we was involved in.
That's part of it.
But when you got that DNA,
can't break you.
I told that to the judge in the courtroom.
"You can't break me. You got some more?"
I got 19 years.
[Shannon] They was trying to give me life,
but the judge said he seen something different in me,
so he said he's just gonna give me 360 months.
[Prince] My father once told me, "Man,"
he said, "Listen.
Fast things don't last."
And he was telling the truth, man.
When I lay in bed at night,
that's when my thoughts start to drift back
to the early days of my youth.
You know, and I ask myself, I say,
how was it that I developed
a criminal mind acquired character?
If certain things hadn't happened when I was young
and I wouldn't have saw certain things,
would I have turned this way or not turned this way?
Or...
You know, I've been in jail since March 21, 1990.
My thing is that, man, I put myself in here
because for real, man,
I shouldn't have been out here doing that.
I haven't been home since then.
[Nas] It was a different world.
It was no longer the '80s.
So things are different on a major level.
Things are changing.
Kool & the Gang's "Slick Superchick" playing
Yo
[Nas] Hip-hop jumped off,
and artists were making real money.
That's right.
[Nas] The drug game no longer seemed like the only way out.
It was just go time, you know what I mean?
Like, it was no longer just about the five boroughs.
You know, Dre and them started getting in the game
and it was like a whirlwind.
-How easy is this? -[cheers and applause]
[reporter] Music has power, all right.
The advertising industry
is betting rap music has selling power.
[reporter] Time Warner alone made early $4 billion
selling music last year.
As for rap music,
it made up about $1 billion of all music sales.
[cheers and applause]
[Nas] Even though the Supreme Team had been put away,
Prince, Supreme, and the rest of the guys
had left an impression on hip-hop
that was built to last.
[Prince] We was hip-hop for real.
You know what I'm saying?
We was living that life,
and they turned the life we was living
into a rap story, man.
They emulated us.
[Robert] The reason I believe that McGriff
and the Supreme Team have longevity in the community
is because of rap.
I didn't realize we had influence back then,
but I realized it once I got locked up.
[Nas] Preme left Queens in the early days of rap.
Things had changed.
This was now the golden age of hip-hop.
Big business.
Around the time, it seemed like
every other song on the radio had a Supreme Team reference.
It's the world-famous Supreme Team show
Supreme Team show, show, show
My team's Supreme, stay clean
Self-esteem make me super superb and supreme
Supreme Team, America's Cream Team
Redeemed, Vidal Sassoon
[Prince] A lot of times, young guys come in,
and they say, "Oh, you that person
I heard Nas rap about."
And then one time, somebody say, "Hey, man,
I remember Biggie said, 'My team Supreme, stay clean.'
Was he talking about y'all?"
And I laughed, they laughed, you know what I'm saying?
It happens a lot.
[Robert] During that time,
McGriff studied very hard in prison,
developed a vocabulary,
understood something about entertainment.
He didn't want to be a drug dealer anymore.
And he didn't want to be an enforcer anymore,
and the entertainment business was the next step for him.
[Nas] In the '80s,
Prince had taken over while Preme was in prison.
Now things have flipped.
Preme was about to get out
just as Prince went back in.
[Bill] When Prince goes in and McGriff comes out,
this is a whole new game.
It's, you know, eight years in prison,
the whole music scene changes, you know, fashion changes.
This industry with rappers
is, like, shooting off the charts.
Everybody wants to buy these albums, kids in suburbia.
So it must've been kind of a shock to Supreme
when he came out
to see how the world changed so rapidly
and how he was gonna reinvent himself in the game.
soft orchestral music
[Nas] I remember people feeling like Preme had a second shot.
I think all eyes was on him, so to speak.
I think people waiting to see
what mastermind move he was gonna make.
[Supreme] You can't plan to leave the game.
You just gotta leave. You just gotta get out.
It's like war.
You don't wanna fight a war forever,
so the longer you stay in that war,
the greater the chances you get killed.
Who wants to stay in a war forever?
[phone beeping]
-Yo, fight! -Yo!
-What's up, man? -Hey, man.
-I was at this friend's house. -And what was you doin', man?
-What's up with that? -Man, I was doing the ooh.
And he was there the other night...
-Yeah? -And I seen Chet, man.
-Chet? -Yeah, Chet, man.
-What's up with Chet? -Hey, man.
-You grab the street vibe. -Oh, man.
-Ooh-wee! -Ooh-wee!
Hey, baby, come here. What's up with you?
-Where's the baby? -It's okay.
-What's up? -Hey, what's up, Herc?
Jamaica funk, that's what it is
Let it get into you
Come on, I've got a groove
You know where I'll be
Funkin' for Jamaica
If ya feel it...