“I believe that prevention is much greater than intervention.” – The Real Freeway Ricky Ross
This is the third in our series of posts from The Heat’s exclusive interview with the Real Freeway Ricky Ross. He dropped some knowledge in Part 1 and Part 2 and he has some practical advice on how we can save our youth from the streets.
Check our Part 3:
THE HEAT MAGAZINE: Something to me that’s especially important – there have been a lot of federal, state and especially local budget cuts – of programs that help the youth. There have been cuts in after school programs. There have been cuts in the donations to mentoring programs that are so important to keep the kids off of the streets, especially after school and during the summer which is when they usually tend to get into trouble or fall into something that leads them to trouble. What do we need to do to stop them because obviously our leaders don’t care or they’re just not hearing this, and something has to be done about it? What’s your suggestion?
FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: I think that one of the most important things is that we can’t count on anybody else to come in and save our community. You know, one thing my lawyer told me when I was in prison – I’d just gotten my life sentence – he told me that you can’t depend on someone else to do something for you. You should be doing something for yourself and if you can’t, you’re in trouble. I think the first thing that needs to happen is for us, as a people, to first recognize that we have a problem and the second thing, is to understand that we must fix it ourselves. We don’t have to wait for nobody to come in here. We don’t have to wait on Obama. We don’t have to wait on the Bushes. We don’t have to wait on one individual person to save us. We can save ourselves.
THE HEAT MAGAZINE: I was watching one of the interviews that this young man did with you for Case Closed and you’d stated in that interview that you felt like drug sales – the drug business – was the hardest business to ever be in, for so many reasons. With that being said, what advice would you have for someone who’s already in the midst of it, who may be trying to get out of it?
FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: Well, first thing I’d let him know that he’s a genius. If you can sell drugs and beat the DEA, the FBI, narcotics agents, and all these informants at their game, then these other people out here don’t have a chance. The only reason you’re not making it in a legitimate business, is because you haven’t given yourself a chance. The first thing that needs to happen, is you need to have confidence in yourself to know that you can do something else. It’s crazy that the first businessmen that most young, black people see are the drug dealers. Those are the first business people we see most of the time in our community, so it’s only natural that they’re driven to those fields. When you look at the drug dealers’ difficulties, you’ll see that they’re very, very hard. The drug dealer has to deal with the guy that’s called the “jacker”. That’s the worst case scenario, because when he gets to you, you don’t know how it’s going to come out. You don’t know if he’s going to kill you, if he’s going to beat you, or if he’s going to torture you, or if he’s just going to take your money and let you go. Then you don’t know who he is, because he could be your friend. I’ve known people to get robbed by their own family members – by their brothers, their cousins. Then after him, you’ve got to deal with the police. You know he’s coming after you with the whole force – the whole force of the United States government. So with those two elements alone, it makes the job very, very difficult. Then you have to deal with the normal activities of any business – marketing and accounting. So when you look at it, the drug dealer is up against it.
THE HEAT MAGAZINE: You’re right about that. Now Ricky, something we didn’t talk about before but I’m very, very curious about is, I personally feel like the drug war is a joke. I think it’s set up for so many different reasons that it should not be set up for. I don’t think that there’s anything they can do to stop it, as long as it’s not decriminalized or legalized, but how does it make you feel to know that for one man, they set up a task force that they actually called “The Freeway Ricky Task Force” – how many millions of dollars were spent on this so-called task force and all the while 9/11 and some of these other attacks were being planned. That’s where they should have been putting the focus and they were putting it on one man. It’s mind boggling. What are your thoughts on it?
FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: Well, like you, I think the drug war’s a joke. I think it was a setup from the beginning. I think it backfired on them because I believe when they first set it up, it was just to disrupt the black community with drugs and you know drugs can’t be controlled like that. You can’t just put them in one area. Drugs have a way of moving around. I look at the drug war as a mockery. A lot of the agents started dealing drugs, planting drugs, selling drugs – they became no better than the guys that they were put together to catch. They say they were doing it for the good of the community, but who really knows? They bought houses and cars and everything else, just like a normal drug dealer did. So when you take the drug war as a whole and you put it together, it is a joke. You can’t have a war against drugs. The war is really against the people. I believe that prevention is much greater than intervention.
THE HEAT MAGAZINE: Definitely. How do you propose to bring about prevention? What are your thoughts on that? What do you think needs to happen?
FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: The first thing we have to do is educate our children. The way I look at it is, we don’t have a problem with our kids taking rat poison and drinking battery acid and things of that nature, in a large number, so the reason that happens, is because the kids know what would happen to them. With drugs, it’s not the same because on one end, you have guys on the radio rapping about selling drugs all day, every day. I mean, you turn on any radio station, the first thing you’re going to hear about is these guys bragging about how much drugs they’ve sold, how big they think they are as a drug dealer, and here’s what really kills it – is that these guys never go to prison. So now kids see a false sense of stability. They think, “Oh I can sell drugs and never go to prison.” They don’t want to listen to me because I tell them, “If you sell drugs, you’re going to prison.” Then they say, “Well rapper Rick Ross hasn’t been to prison,” or “Lil Wayne hasn’t been to prison for selling drugs.” They’d rather listen to a rapper on the radio talking about selling drugs, rather than a guy who’s been there. They don’t want to hear from somebody who has been there. They want to treat him like he’s the bad guy.
THE HEAT MAGAZINE: Something else too, and I’ve heard this especially from speaking with one of your close friends – you’ve been known as a Robin Hood type and you’ve been described as a great guy and an all-around good friend who is loyal. What do you have to say about that? What are you doing for your community now to carry on that legacy that people really know you for?
FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: What I try to do is, I try to go around and share my story with as many people as I can who sell dope, who have been through what I’ve been through, and tell them how I see the drug game – how I see the outcome of the drug game – and just basically give them information.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out Part 4 of our exclusive with the Real Freeway Ricky Ross coming up next. He continues to drop some knowledge on us on a very important topic – our youth and their future.
(EXCLUSIVE) THE REAL FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: The Evolution of Redemption (Part 1)
https://theheatmag.com/exclusive-the-real-freeway-ricky-ross-the-evolution-of-redemption-part-1/
(EXCLUSIVE) THE REAL FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: The Evolution of Redemption (Part 2)
https://theheatmag.com/exclusive-the-real-freeway-ricky-ross-the-evolution-of-redemption-part-2/
(EXCLUSIVE) THE REAL FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: The Evolution of Redemption (Part 4)
https://theheatmag.com/exclusive-the-real-freeway-ricky-ross-the-evolution-of-redemption-part-4/
[…] (EXCLUSIVE) THE REAL FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: The Evolution of Redemption (Part 3) http://theheatmag.com/exclusive-the-real-freeway-ricky-ross-the-evolution-of-redemption-part-3/ (EXCLUSIVE) THE REAL FREEWAY RICKY ROSS: The Evolution of Redemption (Part 4) […]