Former Compton Mayor Talks About Harsh Realities of His Prison Term

By Leiloni De GruySpecial to the NNPA from the Los Angeles WAVE COMPTON (NNPA) – As a young man surrounded by original gangsters, crooked cops, death and violence, a young Omar Bradley once dreamed of putting an end to the ills of Compton. To his many supporters, the man who served as mayor of the city from 1993-2001 was well on his way to doing just that – before political enemies orchestrated his ouster, and eventual imprisonment, on charges of misappropriating city funds by spending them on such personal pleasures as rounds of golf, clothing and airline tickets. To an equal number of detractors, the charismatic figure once dubbed the “gangster mayor” represents an ugly political past the people of Compton would rather forget – as a new group of leaders at City Hall, led by Bradley’s nemesis, Mayor Eric J. Perrodin, puts a sharp focus on cutting violent crime and attracting economic development. In an exclusive interview, Bradley discussed a wide range of topics including the charges that led to his conviction, the harsh realities of his prison term and the newly-published memoir, “The King of Compton: The Assassination of a Dream.” NNPA: Tell us about your new book. BRADLEY: Well, it’s basically an autobiographical sketch of my life from 1958 where I was born in Compton, California and to … 2003 where I was imprisoned and charged with embezzlement. It details my experiences as an African-American growing up in a city that was becoming a very violent place, growing up with the original anti-Crip organization, which was the Pirus. It talks about being shot at, losing friends to the gang war. It talks about going to college and expecting things to be different, then having my colleagues who were in college murdered by police, and that impacted my vision of life. It talks about why I wanted to become mayor, the seminal point when I saw a three-year-old boy murdered in his father’s arms. Living in Compton touched me in such a way that I thought I should do something about it. So, it deals with various vignettes that went together to shape who Omar Bradley was, and to some extent still is. NNPA: What were your goals before becoming mayor? BRADLEY: Well, I wanted to be a movie producer and I wanted to be a broadcaster. I wanted to go into mass media because I felt that was an avenue by which African-American people could communicate the black experience in a precise and yet vast way. I grew up loving Malcolm [X], I grew up loving Martin [Luther King, Jr.] and Medgar [Evers]. I would read Abraham Lincoln’s works when I was nine. My mother encouraged me to expand my thought. So, I always wanted to be a leader – and I always wanted to be a black leader, specifically. I never wanted to be a white leader or a leader in the white world. So, that emboldened me in a lot of ways as a black person, to know I’ll never go past where black people went, but I can tell the truth because I’m not counting on white folks to believe what I have to say, I’m speaking from an experience that is common to my people and they know what I’m saying is true because they’re living it. On my way to my ultimate discovery, I found out some things. And one of the greatest things I learned was that evil black people are just as bad as evil white people and there are a lot of evil black people and one of the things that the black power movement did not discuss to us and for us to the generation that was becoming behind Marcus [Garvey], coming behind Medgar, coming behind Malcolm and Huey [Newton], what they didn’t tell us is that you gotta watch the black folks too and that’s I think probably what led to my demise as a politician. NNPA: What were the charges? BRADLEY: The most egregious charge was that I spent $2,700 in a hotel room in Las Vegas unauthorized, when the manager of the hotel came and said, “No this is not Omar Bradley’s, this is another council person.’ I was still found guilty … but I wasn’t guilty of the crimes, I was guilty of what I’m doing right now – articulating a vision for black people that’s real enough for us to feel. … So then in my desire to be the men that I read about growing up, I ended up becoming the “gangster mayor.” Two bachelor arts degrees – gangster mayor. Master’s degree – gangster mayor. Honorary Ph.D. in philosophy – gangster mayor. I’m a gangster because I am not what you want. Since I’m not that, then I’m a gangster and that’s what the book talks about. The book talks about the fact that Eric Perrodin, who was a D.A. prosecuting a Death Row [Records] artist, had his campaign against me funded by Death Row – nobody went to jail. Eric doesn’t get in trouble. So what you’re saying is, it’s okay for a D.A. who is prosecuting a Death Row artist to take money from Death Row while the D.A.’s office is investigating Death Row, because we’d rather have crooked Negroes on the street free, than an enlightened one talking about their crookedness. You’d rather put me in the pen and make me a hated villainous individual because my crime is I’m controversial … I’m against the prominent story that you tell about us. No, I’m not gonna allow you to make black women hoes and bitches; I’m not gonna allow you to make every black man a Crip or a Blood or a gangsta. No, I’m gonna stand up and tell you that this is a different time and place for us to live in. NNPA: What are you doing now? BRADLEY: What I’m doing right now – nothing. I have not had a job in seven years. I haven’t had a paycheck in seven years. I’ve lost my home, my cars, both my retirements when I was worked as a teacher and I was ultimately the assistant superintendent of schools in Lynwood – nobody ever brought that up, that I was an educated person, poet … and I quote Shakespeare backwards and forward. … Retirement – gone, from both my jobs. My credentials, worthless, revoked. But I can tell the truth when they can’t, and for that, to be able to sit here and tell the truth and not worry. NNPA: So, do you think it was a setup? BRADLEY: [Sarcastically] Do I think it was a setup? Am I living? Was I in solitary confinement for six months? No lights. Was I chained everywhere I went when I was in prison? From head-to-toe chained, everywhere I went – chained. One time I was in solitary confinement with [former Compton city councilman Amen] Rahh before they let him go home and they put us in cells that were literally underground, we were under the ground, subterranean; they call it deep-seg – deep segregation underground and they didn’t give us anything but a set of underwear and I remember, you know, we didn’t have light bulbs in our cells, so it’s just dark, the only thing in there was a metal bed and a toilet. NNPA: How has all this changed you? BRADLEY: It just made everything that I ever thought about this country true. I mean, I wondered what it would be like to be Malcolm, to have to sleep with a rifle. You know, I wondered what Martin used to think about when he was at home alone by himself, knowing that they’re going to kill him. Fortunately they didn’t kill me, but they killed Omar Bradley, you know? They killed my identity, my reputation, my credibility – they murdered that. NNPA: What did you accomplish as mayor? BRADLEY: What did I do as mayor? I invented a … program called Operation Redirection to get gangbangers, prostitutes, dope dealers, ex-convicts and got them off the street and taught them construction skills, I was the first person to tell [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] that if you give me your HUD properties that are boarded up, I’ll take em, refurbish em, put em back on the market but [I will] do the refurbishment with gangbangers, the [drug-addicted prostitutes] – and the same people that were out there gangbanging were six months later rebuilding houses from the ground up. … Operation Redirection was the first thing Mr. Perrodin killed when he became mayor because he hated everything I did. I, along with my council, helped provide and build the first hotel/casino in the state of California in its history, it’s still there. That’s the first hotel/casino in California history that was owned by a little 33-year-old black boy out of Compton – nobody says that. He [Perrodin] talks about the jobs he created, I created 4,000 jobs with that one move, all the shopping centers that were closed after the riots, I reopened them, all the streets that were torn up, I had ’em done over, the first inter-mobile bus transportation system for a city under 100,000 people and training, I would take okay we gonna put 12 buses out here, okay I want you to go get 12 sistas out the county building, get em right out of line, come on, you ain’t gonna be with the county, you gonna be a bus driver, you can make $18 an hour, you don’t have to do this, you can do this [bus drive], you know and it’s still operating. NNPA: Do you find that things have changed? BRADLEY: No, it’s worse now because African-American people are morphing as cyborgs and they are becoming very dangerous. … The sacrifices that black women made to not be whores and bitches. You know, we now have young black men who say it and they end up winning the NAACP Image Award. I mean, how could Snoop win the Image Award? How could that be? In what world is that possible? If Snoop hears this or reads it and I want you to print that part, I’m not attacking Snoop, I’m saying brother I couldn’t say bitch in the presence of my mother, I couldn’t even call a girl that my mother didn’t like a name. If my mother didn’t like a girl I was dealing with I couldn’t disrespect her, not with my mother there. So, now to put it on a record and to promote it around the world as black culture in the disguise of hip-hop, we’ve gone too far in the wrong direction and people who speak like this and talk like this, we are the enemies of mass culture because mass culture is dictating the sub-culture that becomes the main culture of black people, mass culture, people that own the radio companies and distributing companies, they are selecting our identities for us and we are following suit and that’s why when I was young I wanted to go into media because I saw the power of it. [For example] Orson Welles, “The War of the Worlds,” they play it on the radio, five million people leave New York because they think it’s actually being invaded by Martians, it’s a pervasive, powerful media. So, that was my original goal but I thought as a politician that by bringing forth practical and applicable kinds of programs that I could impact the quality of life. I did, I was very successful but I greatly underestimated the need of the mass culture to put people in prison. I mean these prisons are multi-million and trillion dollar businesses and if you come up with programs that stop them from having their stock, which is human flesh, that’s their stock, human flesh, when you come up with programs where the judges don’t have cases, so who do they judge? Because putting people in prison is a business, the bailiff is getting paid, the courthouse has got a budget, [and] the judges are getting paid. Look at this, the longer the sentence is, the greater the guarantee that the prison will be open. So, you come up with three strikes, right, and then the same guard imprisoning puts the money in the pockets of the judges so that they can get re-elected and keep sending you here and nobody’s talking about that, Barack’s [Obama] not talking about that, not even Maxine [Waters] or Dianne [Feinstein], they’re not talking about that so here comes an Omar Bradley whose willing talk about it and say ‘if you kill me, Imma tell the truth’ but [the people who put him behind bars] not gonna kill you, but we’re gonna kill the image of you, we’re gonna put you in prison for eating a bowl of oatmeal. I was literally found guilty of a bowl of oatmeal and people don’t even know it. [The Wave] ran out the courtroom when we were discussing what those charges actually were – four golf balls. NNPA: Are you still in Compton? BRADLEY: Where else am I gonna be? I lost everything – my home, my cars. I don’t even have a bank account. NNPA: Where do you live? BRADLEY: I live in the back of a house that I grew up in – in a bedroom. That’s my house. NNPA: How do get yourself back to a normal standing? BRADLEY: I’ll never be normal. I’ll never be normal. I’ll never be normal.