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“My father was dead five hours after being released from the hospital with the simple instruction ‘get some sleep’. The same hospital was now preparing to send his body to the morgue” (14).

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Tony would say “Rule number one; If someone disrespects you, you send a message so fierce that they won’t have the chance to do it again” (33).

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"My mother decided soon after our move to the Bronx that I was not going to public school. She wasn't a snob, she was just scared" (47).

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“I learned the realities of gang violence not from after-school specials but when my boy Mark got jumped and beaten down for wearing the wrong color jacket. And I learned that cops were smarter than I thought on the corner of Laconia Avenue”(79).

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“My entire chain of command eight large and angry teenagers entered the room and without saying a word, picked up my mattress up off the top bunk and turned it over, dropping me five feet to the cold, hard, green-tiled floor” (99).

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“Wes didn’t understand why, but he felt a tension in the room. Mary looked down at her son and uttered the words she never had to say before and never thought she would have to say. ‘Wes, meet your father’”(25).

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“I heard my grandparents talk about how drugs and violence had slowly crept in. Fear and apathy had become the new norm in what had once been a close-knit community. They also talked about something I’d never heard before. Crack” (40).

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"As Wes rummaged through the closet, moving clothes and boxes from one side to the other, he came across a small see-through bag packed with a green substance" (59).

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“She took the boxes into the bathroom, lifted their tops, and emptied the continents into the toilet” (73).

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“Seconds later, Wes was being pushed face down onto his own bed, his hands locked in cuffs behind his back” (106).

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“With the support of people like Cadet Captain Hill and the others in my chain of command and on the faculty, I’d actually started to enjoy military school. They made it clear that they cared if I succeeded, and eventually so did I” (115).

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“I wanted to stay at Valley Forge and attend its junior college, which would allow me to go through the early commissioning process, receive my associate’s degree, and become a second lieutenant in the Army. I wanted to lead soldiers” (133).

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“Teachers already dealing with overcrowded classrooms didn’t have time to teach Wes the basics that he’d missed” (110).

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“As the baking soda swirled in the rapidly heating pot, Wes held the plastic bag with both hands and poured in nine ounces of cocaine” (145).

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“As the heard of the foreman begin, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. ‘On the charge of first-degree felony murder, the jury finds the defendant….. Guilty’” (156).

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“What I found was a black man with a warm disposition and a booming voice, who bristled energy and was constantly in motion, his hands swooping like birds in flight to accentuate his points” (160).