By Emmanuel Fashakin
Barry (not real name) disappeared from our practice two years ago, and nobody could reach him to schedule his physicals. He suddenly reappeared a few months ago, and when I asked him about it yesterday, he was all smiles and joking about it: “I went back to prison, mein!” From the look on his face, you would think he just said that he was just coming back from Disneyland, in Orlando, Florida. “So what landed you in prison?”, I asked him finally. He was quite open about his past.
“I used to deal in drugs. Those days I would come from New Jersey every day, buy drugs, bag them, and go back to New Jersey to sell them. It was quite easy. I made two to three grand every day”. “Why did you have to come all the way to New York to buy drugs?” I asked him. “They didn’t have good dealers up there in Jersey”, Barry replied. “It was much cheaper in New York, and you make good profit. I got caught and I was sent to prison.” “Did you rat on your dealers?” I asked. “No, hell no. I didn’t rat on no dealers.”
“And then I robbed banks”. “You robbed banks?”, I asked him incredulously. “Yeah, I robbed banks!” he said cheerfully, laughing all the time. “I robbed Banco Popular in Downtown Brooklyn”. “How did you do that?” “I had a fake gun under my belt (he flipped his shirt to show his thick leather belt), I showed it to the teller and she gave me money.” “So how much money did you make from that job?” “Oh, I made good. That was over twenty years ago. I got over $5000 and made a clean getaway”. “The next day, I came back and robbed the bank directly opposite, and that was my undoing.” “So how did it happen?|, I egged him on.
“I went back the next day and robbed that bank, got lots of money. Unfortunately, I got careless and the security cameras got a good look on my face. Two days later, I was walking down the street and passed a parked dark car. The occupants looked at me and started the car and made a U-turn to follow me. I sensed trouble and broke into a run, running as fast as I could. Soon I was surrounded by about five cops with guns drawn yelling: “get on the ground, put your hands up where we can see them, etc.” I got caught. The Judge gave me 15 years.” “Why didn’t you go far away from New York after the robberies?”, I asked him after his wild narration. “I wouldn’t have made it out — they had my pictures everywhere from the surveillance cameras.”
“So what was your latest offense that landed you in prison?”, I finally returned to where we started. “Oh, I got caught with a bag of marijuana. They would have let me go if I didn’t have my record. The Judge offered me a program to keep me out of prison, but I said nah, let me go do my time. If you go on the program and you make a little slip, you start all over. It never ends. When you go to prison, you do the time, that’s it, you’re done.”
I stared at him in disbelief. Disbelief that someone would actually prefer to go to prison than be in a rehab program in the community to get clean. What a wild world we live in!
Emmanuel O. Fashakin, M.D., FMCS(Nig), FWACS, FRCS(Ed), FAAFP, Esq.
Attorney at Law & Medical Director,
Abbydek Family Medical Practice, P.C.
Web address: http://www.abbydek.com
Cell phone: +1-347-217-6175
“Primum non nocere”
