Danny Jones Podcast - #194 - Police Officer Wrongfully Accused of Trafficking $750 Million in Cocaine | Raymond Hicks
Aired: 2023-07-17
Duration: 02:15:50


=== A Family's Tragic Past (15:00) ===

[00:00:08]  First of all, to all the people listening, I apologize.
[00:00:12]  I lost my voice two days ago, so that's why I sound like I do.
[00:00:17]  But hopefully we won't have to listen too much to my voice.
[00:00:19]  We'll be able to listen to you tell your story today, which is a gut-wrenching story.
[00:00:26]  For people that don't know who you are, why don't you go ahead and give yourself an introduction and explain your background and where you came from and all that stuff?
[00:00:33]  Yes.
[00:00:34]  First and foremost, I want to thank you for this opportunity, Danny.
[00:00:37]  You know, you and so many other people have allowed me to come on and speak about the tragedy.
[00:00:42]  And the triumphs that my family and I have gone through.
[00:00:45]  My name is Raymond Hicks.
[00:00:46]  Of course, I grew up in Gifford, Florida.
[00:00:49]  I was born in Vero Beach, but I grew up in Gifford, Florida, as well as Fort Lauderdale.
[00:00:54]  And I decided at a young age that I wanted to go into law enforcement if I didn't play professional football.
[00:01:01]  So, of course, I had an opportunity to work out with the Miami Dolphins in 1990.
[00:01:06]  I left the Sheriff's Department in 1990, pursue a football career with the Dolphins.
[00:01:10]  It was unsuccessful.
[00:01:12]  Eventually, I went into Law enforcement.
[00:01:16]  And here I am, you know, speaking about the different things, the triumphs and the tragedies that me and my wife and kids have experienced.
[00:01:24]  What made you want to go into law enforcement?
[00:01:25]  Because I remember when I was about eight or nine years of age, you know, the cops used to come to my home when they were stabbing, cutting, my mother was shot, my dad went to prison, and I decided, you know, that at that point, you know, because they put me aside from the tragedy that was going on.
[00:01:41]  And they was like, here, come here, let me talk to you.
[00:01:43]  And when they put me away from the scene where my mom and dad just finished plunging knives into each other's body, They began to talk to me about the importance of the handcuffs, the gun, you know, and just being a law enforcement official.
[00:01:55]  And I said, if I didn't play professional football, then I would go into law enforcement to make a difference.
[00:02:00]  And of course, 1117, 1986 is when I went into law enforcement.
[00:02:06]  So you felt like the police officers that you dealt with as a kid made a positive impact on your life?
[00:02:13]  Absolutely.
[00:02:14]  They made a great impact on my life, and I will never forget them the longest day I live.
[00:02:18]  There are so many men and women that put on a uniform that makes a difference, Danny.
[00:02:22]  You know, these people put their lives on the line each and every day.
[00:02:26]  And they do what?
[00:02:27]  They serve and protect.
[00:02:28]  But you have a lot of these clandestines that's actually wearing these uniforms that belittle and degrade people just because they feel like they have the authority to do so.
[00:02:36]  You know, you give someone arrest powers, and all of a sudden they act like they're God.
[00:02:40]  When in fact, they should be inspiring and, you know, pushing people in the right direction instead of belittle and degrading them.
[00:02:47]  So the neighborhood you grew up in, was that in Broward County?
[00:02:51]  Yes.
[00:02:51]  Well, I grew up in Gifford.
[00:02:53]  Gifford, okay.
[00:02:53]  That's close to Broward, though, right?
[00:02:54]  Well, it's actually like two hours away from Broward County.
[00:02:57]  But then I also grew up here in Fort Lauderdale, which is in Broward County, off of Sunrise and 22nd Avenue, a place called Lennox Apartments in Franklin Park, which is one of the worst areas in Broward County that anybody could ever grow up in.
[00:03:11]  Really?
[00:03:12]  Absolutely.
[00:03:13]  What's so bad about it?
[00:03:15]  It's drug infested.
[00:03:16]  There's always shooting, there's always killing, there's always stabbing, there's always robbery, strong arm robbery, burglary.
[00:03:23]  I mean, this area is notorious, it's notorious for illegal activity.
[00:03:28]  And it goes on on a regular basis.
[00:03:30]  As a matter of fact, the store that my mom used to send us to, which is friendly, we used to go to that store.
[00:03:37]  And the reason why they called the ARAP, who was actually operating the store, who owned the store, friendly, is because he used to take my mom's name and put her name on the books.
[00:03:49]  So we could go there, get a dollar worth of bologna and a loaf of bread.
[00:03:52]  And my mom was telling me, hey, put my name on the books.
[00:03:55]  So Friday, You know, she would go there and, of course, you know, pay the tab or whatnot.
[00:04:00]  Oh, wow.
[00:04:00]  That's amazing.
[00:04:02]  When you were young, growing up in that part of town, did you ever get wrapped up in any trouble or anything?
[00:04:07]  No, I've never been in trouble in my entire life.
[00:04:09]  No.
[00:04:09]  No, up until I started working with the Briar Sheriff's Office.
[00:04:14]  Okay.
[00:04:15]  What was your relationship like with your father growing up?
[00:04:18]  I didn't really have a personal relationship with my dad.
[00:04:23]  But ever since I was like six years of age, my dad always taught me how to fight.
[00:04:28]  So I've been fighting ever since I was about six.
[00:04:30]  And my dad was the kind of person, man, that I never understood him.
[00:04:36]  Because, I mean, my mom is like four foot 11, maybe 120, 130 pounds.
[00:04:42]  And my dad was like maybe six foot, six foot one, 250, 260 pounds.
[00:04:47]  And he would beat my mom to a pole, man, you know?
[00:04:50]  And there was times that he ran.
[00:04:51]  In front of you?
[00:04:52]  Oh, absolutely, in front of me.
[00:04:55]  And there was times that he would run us out the house.
[00:04:58]  You know, we had to stay out the house until like maybe three or four o'clock in the morning, you know, until he actually fell asleep.
[00:05:05]  You know, my dad, he was just that kind of person.
[00:05:07]  But, um, But my mom just kept praying.
[00:05:10]  You know, she'd always been a praying woman.
[00:05:12]  And of course, when these triumphs and trials and tribulations that, you know, we were experiencing, I just watched my mom just stretch her arms out towards heaven and she just began to just pray, you know, and just ask God to intervene in a situation that me and my other siblings and my mom was experiencing.
[00:05:32]  It wasn't until my dad actually came into the church that things began to turn around for us.
[00:05:37]  You know, it was no more fighting.
[00:05:40]  Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you know, and I think my dad walked out of my life about maybe 12 years of age.
[00:05:47]  He walked out, where'd he go?
[00:05:51]  Him and my mom separated.
[00:05:52]  Oh, okay.
[00:05:53]  But my dad came back whenever he wanted to come back.
[00:05:56]  You know, he was just that kind of person.
[00:05:57]  My dad was straight vicious, man.
[00:05:59]  But when you look at me, Danny, you're looking at my father.
[00:06:05]  Do you ever talk to him anymore?
[00:06:08]  He's deceased now.
[00:06:08]  Oh, is he really?
[00:06:09]  Yeah.
[00:06:10]  Okay, I'm sorry to hear that.
[00:06:11]  But I was able to take care of my dad, even though he wasn't there for me.
[00:06:21]  I was there for him.
[00:06:23]  I bathed him, I changed him, I fed him.
[00:06:26]  And one of the things he wanted to see was me in uniform.
[00:06:31]  And of course, he hated cops.
[00:06:37]  My dad hated cops with a passion.
[00:06:39]  He always said that.
[00:06:40]  You know, he would blow a cop's brains out.
[00:06:43]  So, if there was stabbing, cutting, my mother was shot by my dad.
[00:06:48]  My dad shot his best friend because they said he touched my mom's leg.
[00:06:52]  And when my dad saw him under the tree, according to the information that was given to me, you know, the tree is a place where they go and play cards, dominoes, and that sort of thing.
[00:07:04]  They drink and whatnot.
[00:07:05]  So, of course, my dad went looking for him.
[00:07:07]  And when my father found him, according to what the information my mom gave to me, is that he asked him, he said, Hey, not, did you touch my wife's leg?
[00:07:16]  He said, if I touch it, what are you going to do?
[00:07:18]  So my dad said, if you tell me you touched my wife's leg, I'm going to shoot you.
[00:07:23]  And he said, yeah, I touch it.
[00:07:24]  And of course, my dad pulled out a Chrome 32 with a pearl handle.
[00:07:30]  And I know from being in law enforcement that he jerked the trigger when he went to shoot.
[00:07:34]  He didn't squeeze the trigger, he jerked the trigger.
[00:07:36]  So the first round went past him.
[00:07:39]  He said, you didn't shoot me.
[00:07:40]  He said, no, I didn't get you that time, but I'm going to definitely get you this time.
[00:07:45]  The second shot hit him up in his neck area.
[00:07:48]  My dad served eight years in prison for that.
[00:07:52]  Wow.
[00:07:53]  How old were you when that happened?
[00:07:55]  I was young, man.
[00:07:56]  I was a young kid.
[00:07:57]  Like, I don't know how, maybe 9, 10, 11, 12.
[00:08:02]  I don't know, somewhere around up in there.
[00:08:05]  Wow.
[00:08:06]  So from a young age, your personal experience with law enforcement, with cops, was just dealing with your parents and kind of intervening in what was going on inside your home.
[00:08:15]  That's correct.
[00:08:16]  They had like four or five carloads.
[00:08:18]  Every time they came to my house, there were four or five carloads of cops coming to my home for my father.
[00:08:24]  There was a gentleman by the name of Mr. Leon Foster.
[00:08:27]  He was a deputy sheriff for the Inner River County Police Sheriff Department.
[00:08:32]  And he always came with other cops because he was the only one that could really calm my father down.
[00:08:39]  My family fought with the cops.
[00:08:41]  Danny, between 11 and 13 years of age, I watched my family engage in a physical altercation with the cops.
[00:08:48]  And I said, Why are they beating up on the cops, man?
[00:08:50]  The cops are good people.
[00:08:52]  You know?
[00:08:53]  This is what I'm saying to myself.
[00:08:54]  And I know, forget it, they had my cousin handcuffed in the backseat of the car.
[00:08:58]  Her name is Christine, but we call her BAP.
[00:09:01]  And of course, my family had water holes that they were beating the cops with the water holes and everything.
[00:09:07]  You know?
[00:09:07]  Good Lord.
[00:09:08]  And I'm saying to myself, You know, why are they fighting with the police, man?
[00:09:11]  The police are good people.
[00:09:12]  Because I just remember them coming to my home at eight or nine years of age that I can recall when there was complete chaos in my home.
[00:09:20]  And how they pulled me aside and began to counsel me and saying, hey, listen, Ray, you know, come here, little man, let me talk to you.
[00:09:28]  And I'll never forget that the longest day I live.
[00:09:30]  And I said, if I didn't play professional football, I would go into law enforcement to make a difference.
[00:09:35]  And I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, Danny, I can show you on my phone where I've had inmates contact me via a messenger.
[00:09:43]  From the former two podcasts that I've had with Matthew Cox and Mr. Mark Later.
[00:09:50]  And they called me and said, Man, you was one of the best.
[00:09:53]  You changed my life.
[00:09:54]  You inspired me.
[00:09:55]  Some of these individuals have gone on and became successful citizens out in society.
[00:10:00]  Some of them making $150,000 a year driving 18 wheeler trucks.
[00:10:05]  The last person called me, this brother was Kevin.
[00:10:09]  And he called me with tears.
[00:10:20]  He said, man, I saw your podcast and I just want to reach out to you.
[00:10:25]  And of course, you know, I'm good, man.
[00:10:30]  Okay.
[00:10:31]  You know, it's just a shame.
[00:10:33]  It's a disgrace, Danny.
[00:10:35]  You know, I'm not one of these cops that go out there and belittle great people, man.
[00:10:41]  I'm not that person.
[00:10:43]  I'm not a cop that's doing all these criminal acts that they accuse me of.
[00:10:48]  That's not me.
[00:10:49]  What is it, do you think?
[00:10:52]  That is wrong with law enforcement today.
[00:10:56]  What is what the type of people that become cops for the most part?
[00:11:02]  I feel like they want to do good.
[00:11:04]  But what do you think is going on with the few bad apples that get involved in law enforcement?
[00:11:10]  Well, one thing is for sure you got so many men and women that put the uniform on each and every day.
[00:11:15]  I love law enforcement to this day.
[00:11:17]  I still love law enforcement.
[00:11:19]  There's a lot of great men and women that wear that uniform to make a difference.
[00:11:24]  The answer to your question is that you have to have accountability, transparency, but I'm very optimistic that when you got the right people in place who can order, you know, look at certain situations and assess these situations.
[00:11:37]  But one of the problems that I've seen is that the pay grade, I think that law enforcement officials should be making over six figures a year.
[00:11:46]  And the reason why I say that is because it would keep you from working paycheck to paycheck, you know, trying to take care of your family, trying to pay your bills, when in fact, you went into a drug dealer, you know, who was out there in the street.
[00:11:58]  This person making so many hundreds and thousands of dollars per second per day, and you come in contact with this individual.
[00:12:06]  If you're not a strong person, and if you don't believe in your craft in reference to the oath that you take, you know, to uphold the law, you know, these people, they revert to things that they shouldn't do.
[00:12:17]  Right.
[00:12:18]  They run into people who are doing whatever sort of illegal activities, whether it be trafficking drugs, and they see these guys that are making crazy amounts of money.
[00:12:29]  It's tempting when you see a giant pile of cash or a bunch of drugs.
[00:12:33]  If you're an underpaid law enforcement guy and your life is on the line every day and you want to, it's not that hard to bend the law a little bit and maybe take a little bit of something here, take a little bit of something there, whatever it may be.
[00:12:48]  Is that sort of what you're getting at?
[00:12:49]  Yes, but that's the problem.
[00:12:51]  That's the problem because when you do that, then you're going against the oath.
[00:12:58]  You took an oath to uphold the law.
[00:13:01]  If you're going to break the law, then you continue to break the law.
[00:13:04]  But understand there are circumstances and consequences and repercussions when you do that.
[00:13:10]  But a lot of these people, why would you do that?
[00:13:12]  Now you just subject your family to a harsh punishment.
[00:13:17]  Because whatever happens to you, it happens to your family.
[00:13:20]  So at the end of the day, what are you benefiting from?
[00:13:23]  And then you also have to keep in mind that number one, when you take drugs and money from these individuals, guess what?
[00:13:31]  They're going to let you take the money and drugs.
[00:13:34]  But those are the same people who actually become an informant.
[00:13:38]  So the first thing they say is that, hey, you know what?
[00:13:41]  On such and such date and time, this cop stopped me.
[00:13:44]  He took $100,000.
[00:13:46]  He took how many kilograms of Coke?
[00:13:51]  And they're like, really?
[00:13:53]  Yes.
[00:13:53]  And all of a sudden, guess what they do?
[00:13:55]  They set you up.
[00:13:57]  Now they have you under strict surveillance.
[00:13:59]  DEA, FBI, your department, everybody else is watching you now, you know, and every move.
[00:14:05]  Right.
[00:14:06]  Why?
[00:14:06]  Because they have these informants that come, because at some point, that person's gonna get arrested again.
[00:14:12]  And when that person gets arrested, they're gonna say, hey, listen, I got some pertinent information that I can give you in order for you to give me a reduction in sentence.
[00:14:22]  Right.
[00:14:23]  And this is what happened.
[00:14:24]  Right.
[00:14:25]  So you gotta ask yourself, why did you take on the uniform?
[00:14:29]  Well, I didn't take on the uniform to belittle and degrade people.
[00:14:32]  I took on the uniform to inspire people, to let them know that I come from the gutter.
[00:14:37]  I come from the hood where they were stabbing, cutting.
[00:14:39]  My mother was shot.
[00:14:40]  My dad went to prison.
[00:14:43]  I was a highly decorated officer.
[00:14:44]  I was a gold cross recipient, silver cross recipient, two time deputy of the month.
[00:14:48]  Never been in trouble in my entire life up until this situation when I began to work narcotics for the Broward Sheriff's Office.
[00:14:55]  What does that mean, gold cross recipient?
[00:14:57]  The gold cross recipient is an award that a man or woman will receive without getting killed.
[00:15:02]  That's the highest award without getting killed in the line of duty.
[00:15:06]  And how I won that award, Danny, is that.

=== The Path to Prison (14:28) ===

[00:15:09]  There was an armed carjacking that took place that I didn't even know about.
[00:15:13]  So, what happened was, I was coming down the street in civilian clothing, and I saw this taxi at the red light.
[00:15:20]  And when the light turned green.
[00:15:22]  You were off duty?
[00:15:23]  Yeah, I was off duty.
[00:15:24]  I was in civilian clothing.
[00:15:26]  And when I saw the light turn green, the taxi merged into the fence.
[00:15:30]  So, I saw these two black guys fighting.
[00:15:33]  So, I said, let me just stop and break up the fight.
[00:15:35]  So, in the process of breaking up the fight, I discovered that they were wrestling over 357 Magnum.
[00:15:42]  So, of course, one round went through the roof of the car.
[00:15:45]  And, of course, the subject took a chunk out of the victim's eye.
[00:15:47]  They both said, He's robbing me.
[00:15:49]  He's robbing me.
[00:15:50]  But my whole thing was to take that weapon.
[00:15:52]  And I can show you a report once we finish with this interview, where you can see it with your own eyes.
[00:15:59]  And you'll see that I got on the phone.
[00:16:01]  I called communication.
[00:16:02]  I advised a senior 041, which is an armed robbery.
[00:16:06]  And I told him to set up a perimeter.
[00:16:08]  Well, they arrested this 18 year old kid.
[00:16:10]  And I found out later, but when the deputy arrived, I was there with the victim and also the gun.
[00:16:17]  So, when I read the report, I came to realize that the subject actually got in the taxi cab off of Sistrunk.
[00:16:24]  And he had the taxi take him over to 21st and Oakland Park.
[00:16:28]  He went upstairs to an apartment complex.
[00:16:31]  And when he came down, he actually made the taxi cab driver get in the passenger side.
[00:16:38]  So he was robbing the guy.
[00:16:41]  And as they were coming down the street, you know, when the light was red, we both were there.
[00:16:47]  And when the light turned green, that's when the car merged into the fence and the two of them was fighting.
[00:16:52]  And I won the Gold Cross Award for that.
[00:16:54]  Wow.
[00:16:54]  That was in 1999.
[00:16:56]  The very next year, 2000, I'm faced with natural life imprisonment without possible parole.
[00:17:03]  By the same sheriff that gave me the Gold Cross Award.
[00:17:09]  Juan, let's explain to people how you got sentenced to life possible.
[00:17:15]  You almost got charged.
[00:17:17]  To get to life, how does that work?
[00:17:20]  Let's explain what was going on when you realized that you were being set up for something that you didn't do?
[00:17:27]  Well, first of all, they pulled me out of the jail back in 1990.
[00:17:32]  And as I mentioned to Matt.
[00:17:33]  Oh, yeah, you were a correctionals officer first?
[00:17:35]  Yes.
[00:17:35]  Okay.
[00:17:36]  And as I mentioned to Matt, and I also mentioned to Matthew Cox and also Mark Later and yourself, Danny, is that when they pulled me out of the jail, you got to have street.
[00:17:49]  Street knowledge mentality.
[00:17:51]  You know, like you would tell a person, yo, my nigga, I got them parlays.
[00:17:54]  A lot of people who are from the street, they know what parlays mean.
[00:17:56]  Parlay, like a bet?
[00:17:58]  No, parlays mean like the size of the drug.
[00:18:01]  That's what they mean by the cocaine rock.
[00:18:03]  It's the size.
[00:18:04]  So when they say, yo, yo, my nigga, I got them palais, meaning that I got the fat rock, you know what I mean?
[00:18:10]  Okay.
[00:18:11]  Yeah, so the rock is probably about the size of my thumb.
[00:18:13]  I listen to Gucci Man, so I know some of the slang.
[00:18:16]  Yeah, so that's, you know, the slang talk is real in the hood, you know?
[00:18:20]  Right, right.
[00:18:21]  It's just like if the cops is coming, yo, they go 5 0 99.
[00:18:25]  Right, right, right.
[00:18:26]  You know, these are the type of things that criminals say, you know, to alarm somebody else and say, hey, man, you know, you got police saturating the area.
[00:18:35]  Right.
[00:18:35]  And of course, you know, we used to do buy buses.
[00:18:38]  So when they pulled me out of the jail in 1990, I'm out there working with these guys.
[00:18:42]  And the cocaine rock is only $10.
[00:18:45]  But they were in this particular area where they were selling the rocks at, they were actually selling for like $40, $50, $60 a rock, you know.
[00:18:53]  And on top of that, the rocks that my commander gave us had a ziplock, it had a serial number on the ziplock package.
[00:19:02]  And also, the money was marked.
[00:19:04]  So, There were times that we took informants and we send them in a particular location and that informant would go in there and they would come back and give us the intel.
[00:19:14]  Hey, the person wearing a red and black shirt, you know, with a black hat, this and that, whatever the person is wearing.
[00:19:21]  So the informants would be going in to buy drugs?
[00:19:23]  Yeah, we would send informant in, you know, to purchase drugs because to be honest with you, a lot of time they try and use officers, right?
[00:19:30]  They're going to these type of locations.
[00:19:32]  And really, to be honest with you, lately they have not been doing that.
[00:19:38]  And the reason being is because you're putting that law officer, he or she life is at stake.
[00:19:43]  You know, because if these guys find out that you, I mean, you're a cop, they may kill you right on the spot.
[00:19:49]  Really?
[00:19:49]  Absolutely.
[00:19:53]  So we use informants and we send informants in.
[00:19:56]  And the reason why we do that is because that person is familiar with that particular area.
[00:20:01]  So that person could go in there and, you know, because they don't know if that person was arrested or not anyway.
[00:20:07]  They don't know that the person is working.
[00:20:08]  Right, right.
[00:20:09]  You know?
[00:20:10]  And some of the informants, they give a control number to.
[00:20:13]  So, meaning that they get paid, you know, in order to give over information.
[00:20:16]  Okay.
[00:20:17]  Along with getting a reduction and a sentence.
[00:20:20]  So they come back and they tell us, they give us the intel, and what we do is we move in, we back up, move in, they take these guys into custody, and once they take them into custody, we got out and posed as undercover sellers.
[00:20:33]  These informants, do they ever get caught, like, or busted trying to inform on people?
[00:20:40]  Yes, that's how they get caught.
[00:20:42]  See, first of all, you got to think, you know, there's a difference between a snitch.
[00:20:48]  And really telling the truth, you know?
[00:20:51]  And a snitch is a person who goes out and commit a crime, and all of a sudden now they want to get a census reduction and they become an informant.
[00:20:59]  Right.
[00:21:00]  And they become a paid informant.
[00:21:02]  Right.
[00:21:02]  So, of course, what that person does is the agency will pay them to go and make deals with, you know, the drug dealers.
[00:21:11]  And I'm sure, though, what I'm saying is I'm sure those guys get whacked all the time if they get caught.
[00:21:15]  Well, you know, I mean, that's up to them because.
[00:21:18]  You know, you tell them, hey, listen, so you're going to risk your life.
[00:21:21]  You went out there, you committed a crime, but now all of a sudden, you know, you don't want to do the time for the crime that you committed, but now you want to say things about these other people that you know about to get a sentence of production.
[00:21:34]  Right.
[00:21:34]  To cut someone else's throat to save your own self.
[00:21:36]  Right.
[00:21:37]  But they put them right back in that same environment.
[00:21:39]  Right.
[00:21:39]  And that's how some of them, you know, there's a possibility they may lose their life.
[00:21:44]  Or they may get, you know, beaten at it.
[00:21:46]  You know, I mean,.
[00:21:49]  You know, in the streets, they say snitches get stitches.
[00:21:54]  Right.
[00:21:55]  So, you know, that means that you go out there and you say things against these guys and they put you back in that same area, you know, it could become detrimental for you and your family.
[00:22:04]  So, when they pulled you out of being a correctional officer in the prison and you went to the streets, what was the biggest problem that you guys had to deal with on a day to day basis on the streets?
[00:22:20]  Drugs.
[00:22:21]  Drugs was the number one thing selling drugs, crack, cocaine, drugs, robbery, you know, home invasion, strong arm robbery.
[00:22:29]  Burglary, you know, because it depends on what area you work in.
[00:22:35]  Right.
[00:22:36]  And you were in.
[00:22:37]  I was working in District 5.
[00:22:39]  District 5?
[00:22:40]  Yes.
[00:22:40]  What is District 5?
[00:22:41]  District 5 is an unincorporated in Broward County, you know, where they control over so many different areas within that jurisdiction.
[00:22:49]  So, District 5 is the area where I grew up at.
[00:22:53]  Like Franklin Park, Lenox Apartments, they patrol that particular area.
[00:22:57]  Okay.
[00:22:58]  You know, and it's an area that.
[00:23:01]  You know, cops really don't want to patrol, man.
[00:23:03]  You know what I mean?
[00:23:04]  Because it's crazy.
[00:23:05]  As a matter of fact, I even spoke about it on Mark Layton as well as Matthew Cox's show.
[00:23:11]  Is that one of my friends, his name is Gasson Aikens.
[00:23:14]  We call him G Fresh.
[00:23:16]  And G was out at the park selling drugs and, you know, doing a lot of other things.
[00:23:20]  He went to prison like two or three times.
[00:23:22]  And I used to always tell him, man, when he came into the jail, I'm like, G, the recidivism rate is constantly growing by a vast number, bro.
[00:23:28]  When are you going to change your life around?
[00:23:30]  What about your wife and kids?
[00:23:32]  And he's like, man, I got to take care of my family.
[00:23:34]  Like, well, how are you going to take care of your family, G, when you're in here?
[00:23:37]  Who's taking care of your family now?
[00:23:39]  So, of course, I used to get on these guys.
[00:23:41]  I used to also tell the inmates, listen, man, I love you guys, man.
[00:23:45]  I'm no different than they are.
[00:23:46]  We bleed the same color blood.
[00:23:49]  My job is not to belittle, degrade them.
[00:23:51]  And going back to G, I told him, I said, listen, man, get your life straight, man.
[00:23:55]  He said, but you made it.
[00:23:56]  I said, yeah, but I was determined to come out of the hood.
[00:23:58]  I don't want to become a product of my environment.
[00:24:00]  I want my environment to become a product of who I am.
[00:24:04]  And this is who I am.
[00:24:06]  And of course, you know, he went to prison like two or three times, came home, he became a foreman of a construction site, okay, where he was actually operating the backhoe.
[00:24:17]  And when I came home from being incarcerated, guess who gave me a job?
[00:24:20]  He did.
[00:24:21]  No way.
[00:24:21]  Yeah, he became my boss.
[00:24:23]  Wow.
[00:24:24]  You're going to read it in this book titled, I'm Still Standing by Raymond Hicks.
[00:24:29]  It's in here.
[00:24:30]  It started construction.
[00:24:32]  That's amazing, man.
[00:24:33]  You know?
[00:24:33]  Yeah, man.
[00:24:34]  I mean, Look, like, I don't know, but from what I can, what I can guess from the problems with some of the neighborhoods, like some of like the worst neighborhoods or the, like the worst inner cities in different states or in Florida, for example, is that like, if you're a kid and you, and you're growing up, you're a baby and, and you're brought up in this environment and everybody you know, all your friends, your relatives, your parents, they're, they're friends.
[00:25:02]  They're all, you're surrounded by crime, right?
[00:25:06]  Everybody is just like.
[00:25:09]  Everybody you know, you don't know anybody outside of this circle who's on some crazy positive trajectory, right?
[00:25:16]  Everyone's sort of on this like negative feedback loop of whatever it is.
[00:25:20]  Like you see burglary, you see crime, you're growing up and you're seeing it everywhere.
[00:25:23]  You're seeing your parents fight.
[00:25:25]  That has to make it so much harder to escape that environment if that's all you know when you're growing up.
[00:25:33]  Well, see, that's the thing.
[00:25:34]  That's why I always fought bullies.
[00:25:49]  I always fought bullies, man.
[00:25:51]  Always.
[00:25:52]  You know?
[00:25:53]  Because, you know, when you're growing up in the hood, a lot of people don't understand the hood.
[00:26:01]  It's like my mom was making a dollar an hour.
[00:26:05]  My dad was making like a dollar an hour working for Hogan and Son Packet House in Vero Beach.
[00:26:12]  How do you take care of your family?
[00:26:16]  You know?
[00:26:16]  My dad had a third grade education.
[00:26:18]  He couldn't read or write.
[00:26:19]  Couldn't even spell his own name.
[00:26:21]  My mom dropped out in seventh grade.
[00:26:25]  So I was getting D's and F's.
[00:26:27]  So many kids in the hood.
[00:26:40]  There are so many kids in the hood, man, Danny, that's growing up the same way I grew up.
[00:26:49]  That's why I've always wanted to inspire them.
[00:26:52]  I don't want to become a product of my environment.
[00:26:54]  I want my environment to become a product of who I am.
[00:26:58]  Nobody would not, you don't understand.
[00:27:01]  The only way you would understand a person growing up in the hood is if you grew up in the hood.
[00:27:05]  Right.
[00:27:07]  Like what you just mentioned.
[00:27:10]  You know, you see somebody get shot, that's common.
[00:27:13]  You see somebody get robbed, that's common.
[00:27:16]  You see burglary, that's common.
[00:27:19]  You see stabbing, that's common.
[00:27:22]  You ain't got to take my word.
[00:27:23]  Get my mom on here.
[00:27:25]  She'll tell you.
[00:27:27]  It's just like my sergeant.
[00:27:28]  He called you a brother that I love, man.
[00:27:32]  You know?
[00:27:34]  Always inspired me, Ray.
[00:27:39]  But he'll tell you, Danny, I fought with the best, man.
[00:27:45]  There's nothing coward about me.
[00:27:48]  I'm humble as a dove.
[00:27:50]  I'm vicious as a lion.
[00:27:52]  And I'm like an eagle.
[00:27:54]  I don't run away from storms.
[00:27:55]  I go into storms.
[00:27:58]  But I thank God.
[00:28:00]  I thank God today.
[00:28:02]  I'm that same kid that came out the hood, that made it out of Gifford, out of Fort Lauderdale.
[00:28:08]  And look at me today.
[00:28:11]  21 years.
[00:28:14]  My wife and kids, we've lost everything.
[00:28:17]  Home, cars, finances.
[00:28:18]  I couldn't even feed my family.
[00:28:21]  But guess what?
[00:28:22]  I went to bed when I was a young kid growing up.
[00:28:25]  I went to bed with a ketchup sandwich, a mayonnaise sandwich, drinking sugar water, eating macaroni and cheese out of the can.
[00:28:36]  So, to be honest with you, listen, I've already been there.
[00:28:41]  So, people ask me, man, how is it that you were able to get through this situation?
[00:28:46]  How?
[00:28:49]  It's because of my upbringing.
[00:28:52]  It's because of my upbringing.
[00:28:55]  Because, Danny, to be honest with you, you can't take a kid who's lived a lavish lifestyle and put them in the hood and expect that kid to live.
[00:29:02]  Right.
[00:29:04]  So, to be honest with you, listen, the triumph, the trouble, the trials and tribulation that they put us through, I've seen it.
[00:29:14]  I watched it from eight years of age.
[00:29:18]  You ain't got to take my word.
[00:29:19]  If you ever talk to my mother, ask her.
[00:29:22]  I had a friend of mine named Travis, and Travis spoke to my mom on the three way.
[00:29:27]  And I remember when I was 12 years of age, right?
[00:29:30]  I had this gentleman that actually I got into a fight with.
[00:29:32]  He was 17.
[00:29:34]  We were on the school bus, and we were cracking on each other's mother.

=== School Bus Conflicts (02:38) ===

[00:29:38]  And all of a sudden, I got the best of them.
[00:29:42]  And the 17 year old was going to tell me.
[00:29:44]  Well, you guys are like yo mama jokes?
[00:29:48]  Yeah, yo mama got, you know, yo mama used a straightening comb to comb my hair.
[00:29:55]  You know, we came up with like mother jokes and stuff, and then, you know, we laughed.
[00:29:59]  So I got the best of him that day.
[00:30:01]  So here comes the 17 year old going to tell me, man, legit, go sit down.
[00:30:04]  I said, who are you talking to?
[00:30:05]  He said, I'm talking to you.
[00:30:06]  I said, you can't be talking to me, man.
[00:30:09]  He was like, what?
[00:30:10]  Man, I slide.
[00:30:11]  You ain't going to do nothing to me.
[00:30:14]  You ain't going to do nothing to me.
[00:30:16]  And of course, he came, he hit me, and we started fighting.
[00:30:19]  And we fought until the bus stopped.
[00:30:22]  And when I got off the bus, I went home.
[00:30:25]  I thank God I didn't tell my dad.
[00:30:27]  But I told my mother, and you know what my mom did?
[00:30:31]  My mom went into the kitchen and she got the biggest butcher knife, okay, which we refer to as a steak knife now.
[00:30:38]  She went and got the biggest butcher knife with a brown handle that she can find, and she wrapped it up in a towel.
[00:30:45]  And she said, You come on.
[00:30:47]  And we went to his house and knocked at his door.
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[00:32:24]  Back to the show.
[00:32:26]  When his mom answered the door, my mom said, Is your son John Thomas here?
[00:32:31]  She said, No, ma'am, but how can I help you?
[00:32:33]  My mom said, You can't help me.
[00:32:35]  I want to talk to your son.
[00:32:37]  Well, I'm glad he wasn't there that day because had he been there, trust me, my mom would have put that knife in his body and I'd have been put foot in his butt.
[00:32:47]  So let's go back to.
[00:32:50]  After you became a deputy and you were working the streets, District 5, and what happened when you realized?
[00:33:03]  Walk us through the day that you got arrested.
[00:33:06]  On June 15, 2000, well, first of all, they told me that I couldn't work out on the streets anymore because I kept getting on them.
[00:33:15]  I said, the same guys that we just arrested, y'all taking money, you planting drugs, and you're beating innocent offenders to the ground.
[00:33:21]  I said, you know, you guys are no different than the ones that we just arrested.
[00:33:24]  They told me to mind my business.
[00:33:26]  I said, What the freak you mean, mind my business?
[00:33:27]  So, this was a common thing.
[00:33:29]  You were seeing the cops that you were working with, they were literally stealing from the drug dealers.
[00:33:34]  Absolutely.
[00:33:34]  No, they're taking money from the drug dealers, yes.
[00:33:37]  Money and drugs.
[00:33:38]  After they arrested them, they were taking money.
[00:33:40]  After they arrested them, yes.
[00:33:41]  And that money is supposed to go in a manila folder that says, with a red tape that says evidence.
[00:33:47]  And the supervisor signed the signature where you can't break the seal.
[00:33:52]  Well, they were leaving with thousands and thousands of dollars each night.
[00:33:55]  Wow.
[00:33:56]  I told him, I said, you guys are no different than the ones we just arrested.
[00:33:59]  You should be in the petty wagon.
[00:34:01]  And that's when they told me to mind my business.
[00:34:02]  I said, what the freak you mean, mind my business?
[00:34:05]  So, of course, they decided, you know what, you can't work out here no more.
[00:34:08]  I said, oh, and what?
[00:34:10]  You're going back to the jail.
[00:34:11]  Okay, so put me back in the jail.
[00:34:15]  So I go back to the jail.
[00:34:16]  I'm working on the sixth floor, and I was working for 73.
[00:34:21]  And, of course, when I came home, around about 3 30, I guess 3 30, I took a shower, I lied down, and, of course, That's what I always do.
[00:34:32]  I take a nap.
[00:34:33]  And when I got up to go work out in my backyard, I look across the street.
[00:34:37]  I see either the SWAT team or the drug task force mounting up.
[00:34:41]  So when they saw me, they all jumped in their cars and sped down the back street.
[00:34:46]  So I told my neighbor, I said, man, let's go to the front of my yard and see where they're going.
[00:34:52]  Granted, my wife had gone to Winn Dixie.
[00:34:54]  So it was just me, my neighbor, and my 12 year old daughter and my seven year old daughter there in the yard.
[00:35:02]  And all of a sudden, when I go to the front of my yard, they jump in the back wall and everything.
[00:35:07]  60 some cops stole me at gunpoint.
[00:35:09]  60?
[00:35:10]  60.
[00:35:13]  60 some cops stole me at gunpoint.
[00:35:16]  Had me and my kids at gunpoint.
[00:35:19]  So my oldest daughter got on the phone and she called my wife, hey, mommy, they got daddy here.
[00:35:25]  The police got daddy.
[00:35:27]  So when my wife came back from.
[00:35:35]  When my wife came back from Winn-Dixie, she was patting her chest like she was having heart palpitations.
[00:35:41]  And she was asking questions.
[00:35:43]  But prior to my wife coming, they done gone in my house, searched my house and everything, looking for drugs and money.
[00:35:50]  But they never told me what they were arresting me for.
[00:35:53]  They come telling me, Ray, we got a one for your arrest.
[00:35:55]  I said, a one for who arrest?
[00:35:57]  A one for your arrest?
[00:35:58]  I said, for what?
[00:36:01]  So here comes this dude, Ricky.
[00:36:02]  He patting me at my shoulder.
[00:36:04]  Hey, Ray, calm down.
[00:36:05]  I said, man, what you mean?
[00:36:06]  Ricky, calm down.
[00:36:07]  What the freak you mean?
[00:36:10]  Calm down?
[00:36:11]  What do you mean, calm down?
[00:36:13]  What did I do?
[00:36:14]  So then, Dave Ropshaw from Internal Affairs, hey, Ray, we're going to place you on suspension depending on the outcome of this case.
[00:36:20]  I said, what case?
[00:36:22]  What case are you talking about?
[00:36:25]  What did I do?
[00:36:28]  So all of a sudden, the same guy I just showed you earlier, right, Bernard Brown, he was the one who actually put me in the MARC unit and transported me to District 5.
[00:36:40]  But I'm still asking questions.
[00:36:41]  Because had they told me what they were arresting me for that day, they probably would have killed me that day.
[00:36:47]  Because I ain't never been in trouble in my entire life.
[00:36:49]  I never tried a marijuana cigarette in my entire life.
[00:36:51]  I never took a drink a day in my entire life until after the incident.
[00:36:56]  So I get down to booking, and I'm like, what am I here for?
[00:37:01]  Ray, we can't discuss it.
[00:37:03]  I said, what do you mean you can't do?
[00:37:04]  So nobody can discuss it.
[00:37:05]  So you guys can tell me that you got a warrant for my arrest, you know, but you can't discuss it.
[00:37:11]  So, all of a sudden, I'm still asking a question.
[00:37:14]  So, they book me and then they take me over to the city jail.
[00:37:18]  When I ride to the city jail, they put me in solitary confinement.
[00:37:23]  So, I stay there till the next morning, 24 hours.
[00:37:27]  All of a sudden, the marshals come.
[00:37:30]  I'm like, whoa, man, the marshals?
[00:37:32]  What's the purpose?
[00:37:33]  I said, what's the purpose of the marshals?
[00:37:35]  Oh, Ray, we're here to take you to court.
[00:37:37]  Take me to court for what?
[00:37:40]  Well, we can't discuss.
[00:37:41]  I'm like, what do you mean you can't discuss?
[00:37:43]  I said, what did I do?
[00:37:45]  Ray, we're just here to take you to court.
[00:37:46]  They handcuffed me and shackled me, put me in an unmarked car, and transported me over to the federal court.
[00:37:56]  I get over there.
[00:37:58]  My mom and my wife are sitting there in the courtroom.
[00:38:02]  The prosecutor said, when Mr. Ray is at work, he's in the top 10% of his department.
[00:38:08]  But when he's not at work, he's into other curricular activity.
[00:38:13]  And she proffered to the courts that I went to various states to live in 350 kilograms of cocaine.
[00:38:18]  That was equivalent to $750 million.
[00:38:23]  The magistrate judge said, You're not a flight risk.
[00:38:26]  She said, But you're a menace to society.
[00:38:31]  A menace to society?
[00:38:37]  So they said they found 350 kilos of cocaine?
[00:38:41]  No.
[00:38:42]  No, there was no drugs.
[00:38:46]  So what exactly did they say about the 350 kilos?
[00:38:49]  She said, I went to various states, delivered 350.
[00:38:52]  Kilograms of cocaine.
[00:38:53]  Delivering.
[00:38:54]  Yes.
[00:38:54]  That was equivalent to $750 million.
[00:38:57]  But I had an interview with an awesome young lady by the name of Miss Jane Turner.
[00:39:03]  She was former FBI.
[00:39:06]  She was a supervisor for FBI and she was also a SWAT member.
[00:39:10]  And when she interviewed me, it was titled Mind Your Own Business.
[00:39:15]  And she says, Ray, she said, I know you're telling me the truth.
[00:39:18]  She said, because if you were moving that kind of weight, the DEA, the FBI, ATF, the marshals, and everybody would have been on you.
[00:39:27]  You would have never been arrested by the Briar Sheriff's Office.
[00:39:29]  You'd have been arrested by DEA.
[00:39:31]  All of this stuff was fabricated.
[00:39:36]  Every bit of it was fabricated.
[00:39:39]  And it's been 21 years now that I'm allowed to tell my story with the help of Matthew Cox, with the help of you, Danny, with the help of Mark Later, with the help of Bobby Latigar, Miss Jane Turner, Mr. Tom Devine, Mr. Terry Watson, Mr. Robert Ward, Miss Anna Popovich.
[00:39:59]  I could just go on with the list.
[00:40:01]  Miss Sarah, all these people have given me a platform to speak about the same thing.
[00:40:07]  You know, Clee Tillman, all these people have allowed me an opportunity to talk about it.
[00:40:12]  I've been talking about it for 21 years now.
[00:40:15]  I've been saying the same thing for 21 years.
[00:40:20]  Now, all of a sudden, everybody calling me from everywhere.
[00:40:23]  I can't tell you all the people that I reached out to before me talking on you guys' podcasts.
[00:40:30]  It's a shame.
[00:40:31]  It's a disgrace.
[00:40:32]  The judge said I'm a minister of society.
[00:40:38]  But when you look at these documents, you'll see I'm a gold cross recipient, silver cross recipient, two time deputy of the month.
[00:40:48]  So, how do you go from being a holiday decorated officer to a minister society?
[00:40:52]  This is what the judge told me.
[00:40:56]  But you know what?
[00:40:58]  And she signed the gavel.
[00:41:00]  Get this man out of here.
[00:41:03]  I was already handcuffed in shackles.
[00:41:05]  They took me to the holding cell.
[00:41:07]  And when they took me back there, there were five.
[00:41:09]  Five other individuals back there that the bar sheriff's office had picked and arrested with me.
[00:41:17]  And literally, I want to tear all their head off their body.
[00:41:20]  I looked at every last one of them.
[00:41:22]  I said, Man, I said, Which one of you?
[00:41:23]  I said, Which one of you niggas said something about me, man?
[00:41:27]  Which one of y'all said something about me?
[00:41:30]  They're like, Man, big hitch, you tripping.
[00:41:32]  Listen, I'm ready to fight with all of them.
[00:41:35]  Every last one of them.
[00:41:36]  It was five of them in there, and trust me, I'm ready to fight with every last one of them.
[00:41:40]  Because one thing is for sure about me, I ain't never been in trouble in my entire life, ever.
[00:41:47]  And I want to tear their head off, Danny.
[00:41:48]  They were like, man, you're wrong, man.
[00:41:50]  This is your department doing this to you, man.
[00:41:53]  We ain't did nothing to you.
[00:41:54]  And you know what?
[00:41:55]  They were telling the truth.
[00:41:56]  Right.
[00:41:57]  These guys, how many of them were in?
[00:41:58]  Five of them?
[00:41:59]  Five.
[00:42:00]  And they, what were they saying when you confronted them?
[00:42:03]  They said, you're wrong, man.
[00:42:04]  Big hicks, you're wrong, man.
[00:42:06]  You know, this is your department, man.
[00:42:08]  We haven't said nothing about you, man.
[00:42:11]  And they were telling the truth.
[00:42:14]  And the marshals came, they gave us a bag sandwich, you know, that had like an apple, banana, and a sandwich in the bag.
[00:42:24]  And from there, they transported us down to the federal detention center in Miami.
[00:42:30]  And at this point, you still have, all you know is basically what, who was the person who told the judge about the $750 million worth of cocaine?
[00:42:41]  The district attorney.
[00:42:42]  The DA said that.
[00:42:43]  Yes.
[00:42:45]  And that when the DA said that, that was the first time you'd ever heard that.
[00:42:48]  Yes.
[00:42:50]  So, what is going through your head now?
[00:42:51]  Like, what are you thinking?
[00:42:52]  I'm looking at my mom and wife, like, what the freak are they talking about, man?
[00:42:55]  Right.
[00:42:55]  So, my mom is telling me, calm down.
[00:42:58]  I'm looking at my mom, like, calm down.
[00:43:01]  You know, I'm saying to myself, this is crazy, man.
[00:43:05]  Yeah.
[00:43:06]  350 kilograms of coke, $750 million.
[00:43:10]  I've never even seen that amount of coke and drugs before, ever.
[00:43:17]  So, when they put you back, when they shipped you back, so they took you back and then they put you in a federal prison?
[00:43:24]  Yes.
[00:43:25]  What was the process after that?
[00:43:27]  I get there, and of course, they took all my belongings, they put it in a box, and they shipped it back to my home to my wife, according to what my wife told me.
[00:43:35]  And of course, it's a certain way that you strip search an inmate.
[00:43:38]  The way that they strip searched me was inhumane.
[00:43:42]  They treated me like I was a low scum on the face of this earth.
[00:43:46]  You know, it's a certain way that you strip search an inmate, you know?
[00:43:52]  And the way that they treated me, it's crazy.
[00:43:54]  If you got hair in your head, they have you run your fingers through your hair.
[00:43:57]  They have you lift up your tongue to see if you're not concealing anything under your tongue.
[00:44:02]  If you got hair, they run their fingers through your hair to make sure you're not concealing anything in your hair.
[00:44:07]  Then they ask you to turn around, you bend over at the waist.
[00:44:10]  When you bend over at the waist, you know, they make you cough to see if you're concealing anything in your anal.
[00:44:16]  Then they have you raise your feet, you know, each foot.
[00:44:20]  They check the bottom of your foot.
[00:44:23]  And all of a sudden, you know, it's just a shame, it's a disgrace, man.
[00:44:26]  How these people treated me.
[00:44:27]  And then they came and gave me an orange jumper.
[00:44:30]  And they gave me an orange jumper and took me up to the 13th floor, which is called the shoe, the hole.
[00:44:38]  And I saved up for five months.
[00:44:39]  God.
[00:44:43]  You were in a room by yourself for five months.
[00:44:44]  Five months.
[00:44:48]  Five months.
[00:44:52]  Did you talk to anybody during that five months, like attorneys or anything?
[00:44:56]  I talked to the court appointment attorney every now and then.
[00:45:01]  But you know, it's crazy, man.
[00:45:04]  I don't think no one should ever have to spend two or three days in the hole.
[00:45:10]  Because if you're not a strong person spiritually, physically, and mentally, it would destroy you.
[00:45:17]  I know.
[00:45:17]  I've heard stories.
[00:45:18]  I don't know what it is.
[00:45:20]  Trust me.
[00:45:21]  It's like going in that bathroom you just allowed me to use and close the door and envision you being in there for 24 hours a day.
[00:45:29]  Well, 23 hours a day.
[00:45:30]  You come out one hour a day for recreation.
[00:45:34]  That's what it feels like.
[00:45:37]  And most people, you know, when you're in there for so long, you start hallucinating.
[00:45:42]  It's like the walls are talking and everything else, man.
[00:45:48]  And then the officer was nasty.
[00:45:51]  They were jigging at me every day.
[00:45:52]  You, that crooked cop.
[00:45:54]  I hope you're gone for the rest of your life.
[00:45:56]  I'm like, I'm not a crooked cop.
[00:45:57]  I was a highly decorated officer.
[00:45:59]  I said, I'm in here for something that I didn't do.
[00:46:02]  You know?
[00:46:04]  People are treating other people when the fact that it's not your job to judge me.
[00:46:09]  Your job is to remain as a professional.
[00:46:12]  You represent a brand.
[00:46:13]  That brand is your name and it's that company that you work for.
[00:46:17]  You shouldn't belittle degraded people just because you're wearing a freaking uniform.
[00:46:21]  If that be the case, then take the freaking uniform off.

=== The Brutal Arrest (03:06) ===

[00:46:27]  Take it off and give it to somebody who's going to take pride in what they're doing.
[00:46:38]  It's heart-wrenching, Daddy.
[00:46:49]  They took something from me that I love, man.
[00:46:52]  I didn't like my job.
[00:46:53]  I love my job.
[00:46:55]  Anybody that'll tell you, my sergeant called you the other day and told you.
[00:46:58]  Right.
[00:47:01]  I don't like my job.
[00:47:01]  I love my job.
[00:47:03]  I took pride in my job.
[00:47:05]  I inspired so many people from the administration, from the inmates to the citizens, you know, because I never, listen, if I got a fight with you, if I got a fight with you because of something that you did, I broke both of my hands.
[00:47:22]  I lost my knuckle there.
[00:47:23]  And I lost my knuckle here fighting with a guy.
[00:47:27]  I won a civil cross award.
[00:47:30]  And I'm going to show you the document for coming to the aid of a sergeant who was punched in the face by this black dude, this huge, big black guy.
[00:47:38]  He didn't want to go down the general population.
[00:47:41]  The sergeant told him he had to go downstairs.
[00:47:43]  He called him a cracker, told him, No, I'm not going down there.
[00:47:48]  And the next thing you know, he punched the sergeant and literally knocked him out.
[00:47:51]  Really?
[00:47:52]  Yeah.
[00:47:53]  And he hit me.
[00:47:54]  But the deputy that was there with the sergeant, he panicked.
[00:47:58]  And I'm saying to myself, so one of the sergeants in Claire said, Ray, go, go, go.
[00:48:03]  So I run into the unit, and there he is trying to throw the sergeant over the rail.
[00:48:08]  So when I get up there, the inmates, you can hear all the inmates saying, man, Big Hicks don't beat you to death, man.
[00:48:16]  And I told myself, yo, man, listen, the sergeant already talked to you.
[00:48:20]  Bro, you're going out of here.
[00:48:22]  He hit me.
[00:48:24]  Bro, he hit me so hard, Danny.
[00:48:26]  It's like back in the old days, I used to see my mom take a straightening comb and put it on the fire.
[00:48:32]  They call it a hot iron.
[00:48:34]  And that's how they straighten their hair.
[00:48:36]  And he hit me so hard, I swear to God, it felt like somebody took a straightening comb and went from the front to the back of my head, man.
[00:48:45]  But when I got my equilibrium back, listen, man, I hit him so hard, the bone, I hit him so hard with my left that the bone came through the skin.
[00:48:56]  What?
[00:48:57]  They had to take bone fragments out right here, and you can see where they had two pins crisscrossing each other to hold the bone in place.
[00:49:04]  And I lost my knuckle here.
[00:49:06]  I literally, I tried to tear his head off.
[00:49:09]  We both went to the hospital that day.
[00:49:15]  And that's where you got the Silver Cross Award?
[00:49:17]  I got the Silver Cross Award for coming to the aid of a sergeant.
[00:49:22]  And it's in that folder right there that I have.
[00:49:26]  So I don't want the Gold Cross Award.
[00:49:28]  I don't want the Silver Cross Award.
[00:49:30]  I'm named Deputy of the Month in 1997, Deputy of the Month in 1999.

=== Refusing the Guilty Plea (15:23) ===

[00:49:34]  And all of a sudden now I'm faced with natural life imprisonment without possible parole.
[00:49:42]  Who told you, who was the first one to tell you that you were facing natural life in prison?
[00:49:49]  That's what they said in court.
[00:49:51]  Oh, they said the DA said that.
[00:49:52]  Yeah, you're facing natural life without possible parole.
[00:49:55]  And then the court appointed attorney came and told me the same thing.
[00:50:01]  He says, Ray, you know you're faced with natural life imprisonment without possible parole.
[00:50:06]  I said, I'm not faced with nothing.
[00:50:08]  He said, if FAIRS got a 98.8% conviction rate, I said, God got a conviction rate of 0%.
[00:50:13]  I'm not going to admit to something that I didn't do, man.
[00:50:16]  I'm going to trial.
[00:50:19]  So, when he saw that I was very, you know, solid on what I was going to do, he actually said, You know what?
[00:50:27]  I said, Furthermore, where are the drugs?
[00:50:30]  Right.
[00:50:31]  Well, I don't know.
[00:50:32]  I said, Well, then you need to go check and get back with me.
[00:50:37]  I said, Because there is no drugs, there is no money.
[00:50:41]  There's no evidence whatsoever.
[00:50:42]  No evidence whatsoever.
[00:50:45]  I found out later that Ansel Pratt, the same guy I just showed you, who the Broward Sheriff's Office tried to use as an informant, right?
[00:50:53]  He had just gotten arrested on January 11th, 2000, okay, for chasing a man down the street, Mr. Eddie Frazier, for dumping his trash.
[00:51:04]  So, him and the detective, Richard Posante, was the one who actually came and went to the DA's, the grand jury.
[00:51:15]  They were the ones who went to the grand jury.
[00:51:17]  And that's another problem.
[00:51:19]  You don't get a chance to defend yourself against the grand jury.
[00:51:23]  What the cops do, they go and present the case to the grand jury, and the grand jury formulates an opinion about what they've been informed or what they've been shown.
[00:51:35]  So you can't defend yourself.
[00:51:38]  Because if I had an opportunity to talk to the grand jury, I could have proved to them that everything these people said was a lie.
[00:51:45]  Right.
[00:51:47]  They never had no drugs.
[00:51:48]  They had never had no drugs or no money.
[00:51:50]  It was all based on fabrication.
[00:51:54]  Now, explain to me why you can't defend yourself in front of the grand jury.
[00:51:59]  Because you're not allowed to go in front of the grand jury.
[00:52:04]  And the grand jury, they basically come up with an indictment.
[00:52:11]  That seems ridiculous.
[00:52:12]  Yeah, it is ridiculous.
[00:52:13]  Because how do you defend yourself?
[00:52:16]  Because you know what?
[00:52:17]  The Internal Affairs Division, they never even called me in for a Garrity statement.
[00:52:22]  You can ask anybody in law enforcement.
[00:52:25]  Anyone that works in law enforcement will tell you that internal affairs has a fiduciary duty.
[00:52:32]  That if a man or woman goes out and commit a crime, and if there's a complaint that's brought up against that person, you have to go in, you have to swear in, and as you begin to swear in, they ask you to state your name, your CC in them, and everything else.
[00:52:46]  It's audio and video.
[00:52:48]  At no time did the Broward Sheriff's Office ever call me down there and ask me if I had any association.
[00:52:54]  With any type of criminal activity.
[00:52:56]  Not one time did they do it, but they lied and said that they did.
[00:53:01]  So, to be honest with you, it's a shame.
[00:53:03]  To answer your question, I think it's inhumane that you can't go to the grand jury and say, hey, listen, my name is Raymond Hicks.
[00:53:10]  I didn't commit these crimes.
[00:53:14]  When these people said I was going to these various states, Danny, I'm going to show you.
[00:53:18]  I got records to show you that I was at work.
[00:53:22]  And if that be the case, then how is it that they don't have evidence to show that I was going to these states?
[00:53:28]  Right.
[00:53:28]  Because if I was going to multiple states, right, I had to have gone to the tolls.
[00:53:34]  Exactly.
[00:53:34]  Okay.
[00:53:35]  They had to have some type of surveillance pictures.
[00:53:40]  They had nothing.
[00:53:42]  Zero.
[00:53:46]  But their means was to destroy me.
[00:53:47]  Zero and no money trail whatsoever.
[00:53:50]  None.
[00:53:50]  No proof that you had this money or made any money at all.
[00:53:53]  There was never any money of drugs.
[00:53:55]  Right.
[00:53:55]  So you and your public defender, your first public defender, what were you guys doing?
[00:53:59]  What was your plan?
[00:54:00]  Well, my plan was to go to trial.
[00:54:02]  And what did he say?
[00:54:03]  He said, You know what?
[00:54:04]  I'm getting off this case.
[00:54:05]  Really?
[00:54:06]  He said, On a manuscript, I'm going to.
[00:54:09]  He said, Ray, on a manuscript, write down everything that happens because one day this could possibly be a bestselling book, maybe a movie.
[00:54:16]  Well, you know what?
[00:54:16]  I took his advice and I began to write.
[00:54:19]  And here it is the book, titled I'm Still Standing by Raymond Hicks.
[00:54:24]  And he got off the case.
[00:54:25]  And then they gave me another court appointed attorney, Mr. Ruben Garcia.
[00:54:30]  He comes in and tells me, Well, Ray, you know the fair's got a 98.8% conviction rate.
[00:54:35]  And I told him the same thing.
[00:54:37]  I said, God got a conviction rate of 0%, and I'm not going to admit to something that I did not do.
[00:54:42]  Just like I just told this other attorney, Mr. Marty Fagenbaum, I'm telling you, Mr. Garcia, I'm not going to accept something that I didn't do, man.
[00:54:49]  I'm going to trial.
[00:54:51]  So all of a sudden, my wife was able to go through her thrift savings.
[00:54:56]  And when she went through her thrift savings, we got an attorney by the name of Michael Bloom.
[00:55:03]  He was a federal prosecutor, never lost a case in 15 years.
[00:55:07]  And Mr. Bloom came to see me.
[00:55:08]  He said, if I'd never seen an innocent man, You've wanted them and you shouldn't be here.
[00:55:14]  The $15,000 or $30,000, whatever it is that my wife took out of her savings to retain this lawyer, that's money that we could have saved up for vacation.
[00:55:26]  It's been 21 years now, me and my wife and kids haven't taken a vacation.
[00:55:30]  You know why?
[00:55:31]  Because I've had to work paycheck to paycheck.
[00:55:35]  So to be honest with you, you know, listen, I'm not excited by money.
[00:55:40]  As I told Matthew Cox, as I told Mr. Mark Lator, And I'm telling you, Danny, I truly thank God for you, Brother Platform, as well as Steve and Kobe, because to be honest with you, man, it's stories like mine that need to be told.
[00:55:55]  I can't tell you how many people have come in contact with me.
[00:56:00]  I can't tell you how many people I reached out to state politicians, the sheriff, and everybody else.
[00:56:07]  Nobody would talk to me, nobody would help us.
[00:56:12]  So to be honest with you, it's a shame, it's a disgrace.
[00:56:15]  I've had cops come to me and tell me, man, I would have taken my own life.
[00:56:18]  What do you mean, taking your own life?
[00:56:22]  Man, I've lost everything.
[00:56:23]  I say, no, you haven't lost everything.
[00:56:24]  You haven't lost your life.
[00:56:26]  You haven't lost your family.
[00:56:29]  You haven't lost those close friends of yours, like Anthony King, Sergeant Booker, Miss Fagan, some of these other people, man, that have helped me and my wife and kids.
[00:56:42]  So, to be honest with you, again, you know, but.
[00:56:46]  As a cop, you can't tell a cop to go through.
[00:56:49]  Listen, I wouldn't tell a cop to go through a fraction of what I've gone through.
[00:56:56]  So, Michael Bloom was the name of your new attorney?
[00:56:59]  Yes.
[00:57:01]  When you guys first met and he agreed to take it to trial with you?
[00:57:06]  I have been praying, Danny.
[00:57:08]  I have been praying and fasting.
[00:57:10]  I fast for three days and three nights.
[00:57:13]  Matthew 6 and 15 says, When you fast, do not walk around with a sad continuous.
[00:57:19]  Continuance on your face to appear to man that you're fasting because your reward has already been given to you.
[00:57:26]  But when you do it in secret, then God will reward you openly.
[00:57:30]  And I fast for three days and three nights.
[00:57:33]  I ate no food.
[00:57:34]  I drank no water.
[00:57:35]  My pee looked like yellow, like I don't know how yellow it was.
[00:57:41]  It was yellow?
[00:57:42]  Yes.
[00:57:42]  Oh, because you weren't drinking water.
[00:57:43]  No, I wasn't drinking anything.
[00:57:45]  But I was reading the word of God.
[00:57:48]  Yet though they slayed me, I'm still going to trust God.
[00:57:52]  I'm still going to trust God.
[00:57:55]  And to be honest with you, I thank God every day.
[00:57:58]  Every day, I thank God for sustaining me, for giving me the endurance to be able to put up with these tragic situations that me and my wife and kids have experienced.
[00:58:10]  My mother.
[00:58:13]  It's a shame.
[00:58:14]  It's a disgrace, man.
[00:58:16]  It is, man.
[00:58:18]  So, what was the trial like?
[00:58:21]  Man, trial.
[00:58:23]  When he came to see me, I knew that he was sent.
[00:58:27]  I knew that God put him in my life.
[00:58:30]  Because he said, if I'd never seen an innocent man, you've wanted them and you shouldn't be here.
[00:58:37]  He went to visit my mother, my wife, and he told him, he said, you know what?
[00:58:40]  I know a drug dealer when I see one.
[00:58:43]  Your son or your husband is not a drug dealer.
[00:58:47]  And he shouldn't be there, and I'm going to help him get home.
[00:58:51]  But you know, if I just back up for a second, Danny, you know, going back to the hole, man, When you take a person and you put them in this hole, let me tell you something.
[00:59:04]  You're destroying human beings, man.
[00:59:07]  Because they would never be, some of them would never be the same again.
[00:59:11]  If you don't have a relationship with God, if you're not strong physically and mentally, then it would destroy you.
[00:59:20]  Right.
[00:59:21]  Literally destroy you.
[00:59:23]  But then they took me, and before we went to trial and everything, they put me down in general population.
[00:59:31]  GP.
[00:59:33]  How do you take a cop and put him in GP?
[00:59:37]  And everybody knew who you were?
[00:59:39]  Bro, I'll never forget it.
[00:59:42]  When the officers kept jigging at me, you're that effing cop.
[00:59:45]  I hope you're gone for the rest of your life.
[00:59:47]  All these things, right?
[00:59:49]  So finally, I go to Mr. Fernandez's office.
[00:59:52]  And I hope, when God bless me, I'm going to go find that brother.
[00:59:55]  Trust me.
[00:59:56]  And I'm going to bless him and his family.
[00:59:59]  I'm going to bless him and his family.
[01:00:01]  Because I'll never forget the phone call that he gave me to talk to my wife and kids.
[01:00:06]  And on top of that, he says, Ray, he said, listen, man, he said, you know, the only other way you're going to have an opportunity to talk to your family is by going down to general population.
[01:00:16]  I said, I don't care where you put me, I'm going to hold my own.
[01:00:22]  So he took me and put me down in general GP.
[01:00:25]  And when he put me down in general population, I was there with eight guys that I had arrested or I was over when I worked in the jail.
[01:00:34]  Eight of them.
[01:00:35]  Wow.
[01:00:37]  Every last one of them gave me the utmost respect.
[01:00:39]  No, man, not you, Big Hicks.
[01:00:42]  No, man.
[01:00:43]  No, you was a good one, man.
[01:00:45]  And all of a sudden, this dude named Maurice, we call him blind because he got these really thick, thick, thick glasses that he wears.
[01:00:54]  And here comes this one inmate who saw my picture paraded over the newscast talking about, oh, that's that effing cop.
[01:01:02]  So Maurice told me, he said, man, you know who that is?
[01:01:05]  Man, that's Big Hicks, man.
[01:01:06]  You tripping, man.
[01:01:07]  He comes from where we come from.
[01:01:08]  He's going to thump, man.
[01:01:10]  Man, F him, I hate effing cops.
[01:01:13]  So I go to put my bedroll down in my room, and there's 122 inmates in the unit, one officer.
[01:01:22]  So all of a sudden, they all gathered around the door.
[01:01:25]  You got an upper tier and a lower tier, there's upstairs and downstairs.
[01:01:28]  Right.
[01:01:29]  And of course, I go to put my bedroll down in my room, and there he is standing in the door.
[01:01:36]  He was about 6'2, 6'4, 270.
[01:01:39]  I was about 6'1, 290 some pounds back then.
[01:01:42]  I was doing 1,500 push ups every other day.
[01:01:48]  Every other day.
[01:01:49]  Because I'm conditioning my mind and my body because I know at some point I'm going to have to go to war.
[01:01:53]  Well, guess what?
[01:01:54]  I told this freaking moron, I told my son, you got a problem with me, man?
[01:01:58]  Come on in here.
[01:01:59]  We can handle this like men.
[01:02:03]  And all the inmates were like, yeah, man, you running your mouth going on in there.
[01:02:08]  And let me tell you something Danny, I literally tried to kill him.
[01:02:11]  He tried to rush me.
[01:02:13]  He tried to rush me.
[01:02:14]  When he tried to rush me, listen, I've been, like I said, I've been fighting ever since I was six years of age.
[01:02:20]  My whole family would tell you that.
[01:02:21]  My wife would tell you that.
[01:02:22]  My mother would tell you.
[01:02:25]  And I put them hands on him when he hit that floor.
[01:02:27]  I literally tried to kill him.
[01:02:32]  I tried to put my fist through his brains.
[01:02:36]  Blood gushing from his face like a faucet.
[01:02:41]  And all of a sudden, the inmates were like, come on, big homie, big homie.
[01:02:44]  Come on, man, you're going to, you know.
[01:02:46]  And to be honest with you, I was literally trying to kill him to make an example out of him.
[01:02:51]  But that set the tone for the rest of them that was actually in the unit where I was to let them know, listen, you try me.
[01:02:56]  If you try me, I'm going to make you pay.
[01:03:00]  And his fans used to give us sardines.
[01:03:04]  And I took that lid from the top of that sardine can and I kept it in my jumper.
[01:03:09]  We wore a green jumper and I kept it with me.
[01:03:12]  Because I really wanted to finish him, to be honest with you.
[01:03:16]  I'm certainly glad you didn't.
[01:03:17]  Because you might not be here today.
[01:03:19]  Well, you know what?
[01:03:20]  But guess what?
[01:03:21]  That's self defense.
[01:03:22]  Right.
[01:03:23]  True.
[01:03:25]  I wasn't bothered with him, I never said nothing to him.
[01:03:28]  He came at me.
[01:03:29]  Right.
[01:03:31]  That's another thing.
[01:03:33]  Don't put your hands on me.
[01:03:34]  Right.
[01:03:35]  Don't put your hands on me.
[01:03:41]  My wife will tell you.
[01:03:44]  She'll tell you.
[01:03:47]  Don't put your hands on me.
[01:03:50]  Because if you do, I'm going to make you kill me.
[01:03:53]  That's the way my dad was.
[01:03:56]  I watched my mom take potash and throw it on my father.
[01:03:59]  It's almost like taking batter acid and tossing it on a person.
[01:04:05]  Where the freaking skin melted off his body.
[01:04:07]  My dad came back again.
[01:04:10]  Were you looking at Raymond Lee Hicks?
[01:04:15]  You looking at Raymond Lamar Hicks?
[01:04:20]  There's nothing different about us.
[01:04:22]  Nothing.
[01:04:25]  My mother would tell you that.
[01:04:27]  The only difference, I'm not plagiarizing to my wife's body.
[01:04:31]  I'm not stabbing her.
[01:04:32]  I haven't never shot my wife.
[01:04:36]  I don't do these things, man.
[01:04:38]  You know, these freaking people, man, it's a shame.
[01:04:40]  It's a disgrace, you know.
[01:04:43]  And like I told him, I know one thing that set the tone for the rest of them.
[01:04:48]  I tell you that.
[01:04:52]  Yeah, I can imagine.
[01:04:55]  I'm not afraid of nothing, man.

=== Civil Case Fallout (15:07) ===

[01:04:58]  Nothing.
[01:05:00]  If it's my time, it's my time.
[01:05:04]  I can't avoid it.
[01:05:07]  But you're not.
[01:05:08]  But you won't punk me.
[01:05:10]  No.
[01:05:11]  And anybody that knows me will tell you that.
[01:05:15]  What did they do to you after you beat the shit out of that guy?
[01:05:18]  They did nothing.
[01:05:19]  Nothing?
[01:05:20]  No, because they couldn't determine who it was.
[01:05:22]  Right.
[01:05:23]  But typically, isn't it true that when there's big fights, they put both people in the shoe?
[01:05:29]  Well, what they do is that officers come.
[01:05:32]  Right?
[01:05:33]  And when they come and they see you fighting, then yeah, they take both of you to the shoe.
[01:05:36]  Yes.
[01:05:39]  But that didn't happen again.
[01:05:40]  They didn't put you in the shoe after that.
[01:05:41]  No.
[01:05:42]  Because everybody scattered.
[01:05:43]  Right.
[01:05:43]  Okay.
[01:05:44]  Everybody started running.
[01:05:45]  So who are you going to grab?
[01:05:46]  Right.
[01:05:49]  What is he going to say?
[01:05:51]  He started the fight.
[01:05:53]  Right.
[01:05:55]  I didn't start it.
[01:05:56]  He started it.
[01:05:57]  I didn't come in his room.
[01:05:58]  He came in my room.
[01:06:02]  You know?
[01:06:03]  The law says that if there's an imminent threat, if there's an imminent threat, you have the right to do what?
[01:06:09]  Remove that threat.
[01:06:12]  You can't hit a person and think that person is not going to hit your back.
[01:06:18]  That's self defense.
[01:06:21]  You hit me first.
[01:06:21]  Why you hit me?
[01:06:24]  So when the cop come and investigate the case, hey, Danny, did you hit him?
[01:06:29]  Yeah, I hit him.
[01:06:30]  Okay, what did he do?
[01:06:32]  Well, he knocked me out.
[01:06:33]  Okay, well, you hit him first, right?
[01:06:37]  So how are you going to take me to jail?
[01:06:39]  Right.
[01:06:39]  Now, there is something called simple battery.
[01:06:43]  I didn't batter nobody.
[01:06:45]  He came to me.
[01:06:47]  No, man.
[01:06:48]  No, no, no, no.
[01:06:56]  So after this, and Michael Bloom became your attorney, can you explain to me what it was like, the process of going to that trial?
[01:07:08]  And obviously, there was a jury.
[01:07:10]  It was a jury trial, correct?
[01:07:11]  Yes.
[01:07:12]  So they had to select a jury.
[01:07:13]  Yes.
[01:07:15]  And explain the process.
[01:07:17]  How long did it take?
[01:07:19]  Well, on August 27th, 2001, they came to me, and Mr. Bloom said, Hey, we're going to go to trial.
[01:07:26]  Which is what I wanted to hear.
[01:07:27]  Because they had offered me a 5K1, which is a downward departure in immunity.
[01:07:34]  Also, immunity is when, if they give you a 5K1, it's for you to testify against somebody else.
[01:07:40]  And if that person chooses to go to trial, right, then now they're going to offer you immunity, which is another reduction in your sentence.
[01:07:51]  I told him, I'm not taking nothing.
[01:07:53]  And I told Mr. Bloom, man, I'm ready to go to trial.
[01:07:55]  And we went.
[01:07:57]  So, September 27th of 01, we went to trial.
[01:07:59]  They were gonna let you walk in exchange for cooperating against some other people?
[01:08:04]  Yes, by code of fitness.
[01:08:07]  So, I had been incarcerated for 11 and a half months, and they told me, You're gonna do 16 and a half months and you'll go home in three months.
[01:08:15]  I told them, The devil is a liar.
[01:08:16]  I'm gonna trust God and know that God's gonna deliver me.
[01:08:18]  I'm going to trial.
[01:08:20]  So, they wanted me to allow these other six people and send them to prison for natural life.
[01:08:26]  I told them, If they did wrong, you go get them, but you definitely not gonna use me.
[01:08:30]  So they offered me 16 and a half months, even though I was faced with natural life imprisonment without possible parole.
[01:08:36]  I told them I'm not taking nothing.
[01:08:38]  I'm going to trial.
[01:08:40]  And on October 27th of 01, Mr. Bloom and I went to trial.
[01:08:45]  And during the course of trial, let me tell you something Danny, when the marshals take you to court, they have your hands in front of you like this in a box.
[01:08:56]  And they have a change intertwining with the shackles.
[01:09:00]  And I'm telling you, it's like somebody taking a razor blade, cutting my ankle as you take steps to get to the courtroom.
[01:09:14]  And of course, when I got there, they listen, I had a chill that came over my body that I can't even describe to you.
[01:09:22]  It felt like I was in Alaska with no clothes on.
[01:09:26]  It was so cold.
[01:09:28]  In the courtroom?
[01:09:30]  It's just a chill that came over my body.
[01:09:32]  They chose an all white jury.
[01:09:34]  Really?
[01:09:37]  Yes.
[01:09:39]  God.
[01:09:39]  They chose 11 whites, one black, and one black alternate.
[01:09:42]  All business people.
[01:09:46]  And I just began to recite the 23rd song The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
[01:09:50]  He made me lie down on green pastures.
[01:09:53]  He prepared the table before me and the presence of my enemies.
[01:10:00]  But I continue to trust God.
[01:10:03]  I continue to trust God.
[01:10:06]  Most people would have taken a plea.
[01:10:08]  Yes.
[01:10:09]  Whether they're guilty or not guilty.
[01:10:10]  Absolutely.
[01:10:11]  Not me.
[01:10:13]  Not me.
[01:10:15]  I told my brother to take life imprisonment.
[01:10:17]  I'm not going to admit to something that I didn't do.
[01:10:23]  So, what was the district attorney saying once you got to court?
[01:10:28]  The same thing she said in the magistrate court.
[01:10:31]  Prophet to the court that I went to all these states to live in all these kilograms of cocaine.
[01:10:36]  Okay.
[01:10:37]  That was equivalent to $750 million.
[01:10:40]  So the judge said, What are drugs?
[01:10:42]  Right.
[01:10:42]  She said, We have no drugs.
[01:10:44]  He says, Where are the money?
[01:10:46]  We have no money.
[01:10:48]  Judge Wrecker, this man got a mustache that's curled up at the end.
[01:10:53]  Yeah, his mustache like curled up at the end, right?
[01:10:58]  Man, he'll give you a million years, I was told, if you found guilty.
[01:11:03]  And, of course, he slammed the gavel so hard and called for sidebar.
[01:11:09]  When they went to sidebar, he said, For impeachment purposes, everything y'all said to bring this man in the courtroom, you better come back and hear with the same information.
[01:11:19]  And he says, Why is this man here?
[01:11:22]  Oh, he gave confidential law enforcement information, FCIC, NCIC.
[01:11:27]  That's a document that I was showing you, Danny, before we start the podcast.
[01:11:32]  Well, the communication operator testified, Captain Munez.
[01:11:36]  She said, I went to check.
[01:11:38]  Mr. Hicks has not ran this information, it's controlled by your social security number.
[01:11:43]  And she said, furthermore, there's a certificate of completion from FDOE, there's a sign in sheet, and she said, Mr. Hicks has not ran this information.
[01:11:51]  Then they lied and said, I was on audio tape.
[01:11:54]  When they played the tape for the jury and the judge, I just showed you where it says missing documents turn up in deputy lawsuit.
[01:12:01]  Where the same person who arrested me at my home, it was him on the tape, given the information they said I gave.
[01:12:05]  What was his name?
[01:12:09]  Bernard Brown.
[01:12:10]  Bernard Brown.
[01:12:13]  Internal Affairs called him down there.
[01:12:15]  Sergeant Joseph Fitzpatrick called him down there and interviewed him.
[01:12:19]  Next thing you know, he admitted that it was him on the tape.
[01:12:23]  He was promoted to a detective.
[01:12:26]  After they found out it was him on the tape?
[01:12:28]  Yes, after they found out that it was him on the tape.
[01:12:30]  The same tape I let you listen to, I let Mark listen to, and I let Matthew listen to is the same tape that they called him in there from Eternal Affairs.
[01:12:40]  And guess what?
[01:12:40]  He admitted that it was him on the tape.
[01:12:44]  And they promoted him to detective.
[01:12:46]  Did he have to leave that department and go to another department?
[01:12:49]  No, he stayed with the Broward Sheriff's Department.
[01:12:50]  He stayed with the Broward Sheriff's Department.
[01:12:51]  Absolutely.
[01:12:56]  Everybody was promoted.
[01:12:59]  They still work over there right now to this day.
[01:13:01]  There is no accountability.
[01:13:04]  There is no transparency.
[01:13:06]  But I'm very optimistic that when the right people and the right person hear this situation, I can promise you that they're going to know that Raymond Lamar Hicks was not a criminal.
[01:13:21]  And that's why I thank God for Miss Jane Turner.
[01:13:23]  I love this lady.
[01:13:25]  I love this lady.
[01:13:27]  Miss Sarah.
[01:13:29]  Yourself, Danny, Matthew Cox, Mark Later.
[01:13:33]  Man, I love you guys, man.
[01:13:35]  It wasn't by coincidence.
[01:13:38]  God knew.
[01:13:40]  Because I've been praying for 21 years.
[01:13:42]  I've been fighting for 21 years.
[01:13:45]  And that's after losing everything my home, my cars, my finances.
[01:13:49]  I couldn't even feed my family.
[01:13:52]  I was applying for food stamps and unemployment.
[01:13:55]  I couldn't get it.
[01:13:56]  And the person I told you gave me a job as a laborer, gas naked.
[01:14:01]  Making $9 an hour, working 13 hours a day.
[01:14:05]  The same person who went to prison two or three times was the same individual that gave me a job as a laborer.
[01:14:16]  Now, he guess what?
[01:14:17]  His son worked out with the Miami Dolphins, Jonathan Akins.
[01:14:22]  His other son, Marquise Aiken, worked out with Jacksonville Jaguars.
[01:14:26]  He owns his own construction company right now.
[01:14:28]  Wow.
[01:14:31]  So people can change.
[01:14:32]  Who's this?
[01:14:33]  Is that Bernard Brown?
[01:14:35]  That's Bernard Brown.
[01:14:37]  So Bernard Brown was the person behind all of this.
[01:14:41]  Bernard Brown was the person who arrested me.
[01:14:44]  That guy right there.
[01:14:49]  But was he sort of like the spearhead behind this whole thing against you?
[01:14:58]  No.
[01:14:58]  Okay.
[01:14:59]  No, it was Joseph Damiano, who still works at the Brown Sheriff's Office right now.
[01:15:04]  Okay.
[01:15:06]  Richard Passanti, Ricky Clark, William Kene, all of these people.
[01:15:18]  And they all wanted to do this because they feared that you were going to expose some of the stuff that they were doing.
[01:15:25]  Well, absolutely.
[01:15:26]  In 1999, my wife and I bought a Mercedes Benz.
[01:15:30]  You're going to read it in the book.
[01:15:32]  The car was 1993.
[01:15:36]  We bought the car in 1999.
[01:15:38]  It cost us $37,000.
[01:15:42]  I got the documents and everything.
[01:15:44]  But BSO tried to use an informant, Ansel Pratt, that I just showed you.
[01:15:48]  Right.
[01:15:49]  Who was arrested?
[01:15:50]  He was the one telling all these lies.
[01:15:52]  He, the one, came up with the $750 million.
[01:15:54]  He, the one, came up with 350 kilograms of coke.
[01:15:59]  He came up with, I was given confidential law enforcement information.
[01:16:04]  This, that, that, that guy.
[01:16:08]  And you said they paid him?
[01:16:09]  Yeah, they paid him.
[01:16:10]  They paid him $20,000 and $15,000.
[01:16:13]  That's documented?
[01:16:14]  Absolutely.
[01:16:15]  Wow.
[01:16:18]  Absolutely.
[01:16:21]  So they went in my car.
[01:16:22]  My brother was washing my car.
[01:16:24]  And when they went in the car, they said, How could your brother afford this car?
[01:16:27]  He must be selling drugs.
[01:16:30]  So when my brother called me, I went to the location where he was.
[01:16:33]  So I called communication.
[01:16:36]  And when I called communication, I said, Can you have the sergeant 56 me at my 1020?
[01:16:40]  Which means have the sergeant meet me at my location.
[01:16:43]  Well, the sergeant never showed up.
[01:16:48]  So when he didn't show up, I called my lieutenant, Ron Thompson.
[01:16:52]  And I said, Sergeant Thompson, the drug task force just went in my car because they call them the Raiders.
[01:16:59]  In the hood, they called the drug task force the Raiders, the Jump Out Boys.
[01:17:03]  So, of course, that's the same group that I was working with.
[01:17:06]  So, of course, he said, Ray, when you get to work, go down to Internal Affairs and file your complaint.
[01:17:15]  I went down to Internal Affairs, I spoke to Sergeant Charles Take.
[01:17:20]  And when I spoke to Sergeant Charles Take of Internal Affairs, he said he had other complaints from the community.
[01:17:25]  Where those same individuals were misusing their authority and he was going to conduct a thorough investigation.
[01:17:31]  Well, even though my investigation wanted an investigation, my complaint, they never did a thorough investigation.
[01:17:41]  And you're going to see in this book how Sergeant Tate took my 911 tape from communication and he gave it to the sergeant who arrested me.
[01:17:53]  And Sergeant Tate, right now, Sergeant Charles Tate, he's deceased.
[01:17:59]  He just died recently.
[01:18:02]  As well as Bernard Brown, right?
[01:18:04]  And Bernard Brown is deceased.
[01:18:06]  So I don't think we got to it, both.
[01:18:08]  Let's go back to your first trial again.
[01:18:10]  Yes.
[01:18:13]  Where do we leave off?
[01:18:15]  You asked me about being in court, and I began to tell you about how there were chills all over my body, and I began to recite the 23rd song.
[01:18:23]  And the judge called for a sidebar?
[01:18:25]  He called for a sidebar.
[01:18:27]  And he asked them, Where were the drugs?
[01:18:28]  Where were the money?
[01:18:30]  They had no drugs and money.
[01:18:31]  He said, So why is this man here?
[01:18:33]  So that's when they said I was giving confidential law enforcement information.
[01:18:36]  And then you proved that it wasn't you.
[01:18:39]  What happened was my attorney, the communication operator, Captain Munez, Yes.
[01:18:43]  And she proved that it was not me.
[01:18:45]  Okay.
[01:18:45]  Then what?
[01:18:46]  And then, of course, they said I was on audio tape.
[01:18:51]  So when they played the tape for the jury and the judge, they found out that it wasn't me on the tape, but in fact, it was Bernard Brown.
[01:19:00]  And this was played for the jury?
[01:19:02]  It was played for the jury and the judge.
[01:19:04]  Then what?
[01:19:05]  Then that's why it's titled Missing Documents Turn Up in Deputy Lawsuit, because all of a sudden the jury, right?
[01:19:12]  The case went to the jury for deliberation.
[01:19:14]  Okay.
[01:19:14]  The jury came back with a not guilty verdict within 30 minutes.
[01:19:20]  Wow.
[01:19:20]  And they say they could have come back within 10 minutes.
[01:19:24]  And the judge, he was so infuriated that the two people who took a plea, right, he gave them time served.
[01:19:32]  Really?
[01:19:33]  Yes.
[01:19:35]  Did any, what were the repercussions for the officers that arrested you?
[01:19:40]  They were promoted.
[01:19:41]  They were just all promoted.
[01:19:43]  That was it?
[01:19:43]  Yes.
[01:19:46]  How is that possible?
[01:19:47]  Your guess is as good as mine.
[01:19:49]  Did you seek damages?
[01:19:50]  Did you sue the shit out of them?
[01:19:51]  I sued them, but it went nowhere.
[01:19:53]  They had to disqualify the judges.
[01:19:58]  That's why you're going to have to read the book, Danny, because I'm going to tell you right now, it's literally going to blow your mind.

=== Stripped Down and Sued (10:26) ===

[01:20:05]  The first judge who was involved in my case was directly involved in my criminal case.
[01:20:10]  He wound up with my civil case.
[01:20:13]  Really?
[01:20:14]  And his brother was a high ranking official at the Broward Sheriff's Office as a major over human resources.
[01:20:19]  Mm hmm.
[01:20:20]  So there was an attorney that called my attorney, you know, and told me, he said, Hey, if I'm not mistaken, this attorney was directly involved in Hicks' criminal case, where he signed off on the penny register, which is a wiretap, with the detective who arrested me, Richard Passanti.
[01:20:36]  So all of a sudden, the judge said, Well, I thought you guys knew that I had a brother who was a high ranking official at the sheriff's office.
[01:20:48]  And all of a sudden, he signed a letter accusing.
[01:20:51]  Recusing himself, but how do you?
[01:20:53]  How do you?
[01:20:53]  How do I don't understand it.
[01:20:55]  How is it that the judge is directly involved in my criminal case where he signed off on a pen register wiretap with the detective who arrested me and then ultimately he wound up with my civil case?
[01:21:07]  How, right?
[01:21:09]  Yeah, that's odd.
[01:21:11]  Well, I never got a dime from everything that I went through.
[01:21:17]  Did you get your job back?
[01:21:18]  No, they offered me my job back within two weeks.
[01:21:21]  They didn't give me my job back, they continued with harassment.
[01:21:25]  How did they harass you?
[01:21:26]  After I was exonerated, the jury came back with the not guilty verdict.
[01:21:30]  I went home.
[01:21:31]  And when I went home, I don't know how to even describe to you just to be there with my wife and kids, man.
[01:21:38]  And of course.
[01:21:40]  After how long total were you gone?
[01:21:42]  16 and a half months.
[01:21:43]  16 months, you finally went home.
[01:21:44]  Yeah.
[01:21:45]  But my wife and kids, and I have to mention, you know, my wife stood up in the pink.
[01:21:51]  You know?
[01:21:52]  She stood up in the pink.
[01:21:55]  And she did everything she could to make sure that she took care of the family while I was gone.
[01:22:01]  But can you imagine, Danny, if somebody stormed your home right now at gunpoint and tell your wife, you get the freak back and tell your kids, shut up, or you could go with them?
[01:22:13]  Or, hey, get DCF out here and get these kids out of here.
[01:22:20]  Your wife is asking questions what is going on?
[01:22:26]  I can't imagine, man.
[01:22:27]  I can't fucking imagine.
[01:22:27]  And all of a sudden, they drag you out of your home.
[01:22:29]  They drag you out of your home in front of your kids now.
[01:22:33]  Handcuffed and shackled.
[01:22:34]  Your two boys.
[01:22:38]  I can't fucking imagine, man.
[01:22:40]  I can't fucking imagine.
[01:22:41]  And they tell you now you're going for natural life, they say.
[01:22:47]  Your wife is asking a question What do you do?
[01:22:56]  All of a sudden, while you're incarcerated, your wife tells you, Hey, Danny, I just want to let you know our home.
[01:23:02]  It's been foreclosed on now.
[01:23:06]  Hey, Danny, I just want to let you know the ring that you bought me, I had to pawn that to the pawn shop for $700.
[01:23:17]  Your kids are asking you questions.
[01:23:18]  Hey, Dad, when are you coming home?
[01:23:22]  Now, your wife, she's asking you questions.
[01:23:25]  What do I do?
[01:23:28]  You watch them stand in this long line.
[01:23:32]  Where's.
[01:23:33]  Unpleasant weather.
[01:23:34]  It's raining.
[01:23:36]  It's sunny.
[01:23:39]  It's cold for hours to come and visit you for one hour.
[01:23:46]  And she comes in and tells you, hey, Danny, I'm sorry to tell you, listen, all the money and everything that we have is gone.
[01:23:52]  The cause has been repossessed.
[01:23:54]  The house has been foreclosed on.
[01:23:56]  And listen, I don't even have money to get a snack out of the vending machine for you, I don't have a couple dollars to get a snack.
[01:24:10]  What do you do?
[01:24:16]  I don't know what I would do, man.
[01:24:18]  I mean, I got to imagine that's got to be the lowest point in your life.
[01:24:23]  But that's what I'm saying.
[01:24:25]  I talked to a brother the other day, Alex, from China.
[01:24:32]  He went through a situation.
[01:24:33]  I don't even know his situation.
[01:24:35]  But he said, man, my hat goes off to you.
[01:24:37]  He said, because if someone ever tell you that they know what you've been through, they don't know what you've been through.
[01:24:42]  No.
[01:24:43]  The words don't do it justice.
[01:24:46]  There's no words that could do it justice, man.
[01:24:48]  You're trying to take care of your family.
[01:24:50]  You know, you're faced with natural life imprisonment.
[01:24:52]  I want you to vision this.
[01:24:54]  You're faced with natural life imprisonment without possible parole.
[01:24:59]  Okay?
[01:25:00]  Right.
[01:25:01]  And your wife is telling you everything you guys work for is gone.
[01:25:13]  It's gone.
[01:25:18]  Why?
[01:25:20]  Because I choose not to take drugs?
[01:25:22]  I choose not to plant drugs?
[01:25:26]  Don't take my word, Danny.
[01:25:28]  Go to 1991 and Google, and you type in DEA state.
[01:25:33]  $200 million went missing.
[01:25:39]  And some of our people that worked at the sheriff's office were placed on death duty.
[01:25:44]  $200 million went missing in a year?
[01:25:47]  Yes, 200 million went missing.
[01:25:48]  Where?
[01:25:50]  That's a good question.
[01:25:51]  Oh, you're referring to your case?
[01:25:53]  No, this was in 1991.
[01:25:55]  Okay, okay, okay.
[01:25:57]  They said there was a DEA sting where $200 million went missing.
[01:26:02]  Two of our individuals placed on death duty.
[01:26:07]  These people sent me death threats.
[01:26:10]  They told me and my wife, they told me I'd be lying in my room in a pile of blood.
[01:26:15]  I'd be lying in my room in a pile of blood.
[01:26:17]  Who sent these death threats?
[01:26:18]  The Brown Sheriff's Office.
[01:26:19]  How do they send them?
[01:26:21]  They left it on my answer machine.
[01:26:25]  Yeah.
[01:26:28]  So I called communication.
[01:26:30]  And I called communication 911.
[01:26:32]  And I told him, I said, I need, my name is Raymond Hicks.
[01:26:35]  I'm a former deputy sheriff for the Broward Sheriff's Office.
[01:26:38]  My CC is 4693.
[01:26:40]  Can you dispatch a unit to my home?
[01:26:42]  Because I'm receiving death threats.
[01:26:47]  They left it on my answer machine, saying, I'll be lying in my room in a pile of blood.
[01:26:51]  You got that saved?
[01:26:53]  It's gone.
[01:26:54]  You know, everything is missing now because we were kicked out of the house.
[01:26:58]  Right.
[01:27:01]  So, what I did is this it's been recorded because when I called communication, they dispatched a unit to my home.
[01:27:08]  The guy's name was Rick Watson.
[01:27:10]  Deputy Rick Watson came to my house.
[01:27:12]  I said, Rick, listen to this audio tape.
[01:27:15]  Listen to what they left on my answer machine.
[01:27:19]  And when he listened to it, he said, Ray, be careful, man.
[01:27:21]  You know how these people play.
[01:27:25]  I told him, I said, the only thing I need you to do is a 98A alpha, which is a written report.
[01:27:30]  That's when I called my mom and I went and bought an AK with 180 rounds.
[01:27:34]  I told my mom, you might as well go get your black dress, man.
[01:27:38]  Because I'm not going to let these people come in and kill me and my whole family.
[01:27:41]  Right.
[01:27:42]  Right.
[01:27:45]  But my mom said, well, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, son.
[01:27:48]  But did not God deliver you?
[01:27:50]  Are you not there in your home with your.
[01:27:53]  And this is before I got kicked out the house.
[01:27:56]  And I took the gun back to the same people that I got the gun for.
[01:28:03]  It's a shame, man.
[01:28:04]  It's a disgrace.
[01:28:06]  But to this day, I still love law enforcement.
[01:28:10]  I'll tell anybody that.
[01:28:12]  When I wore the uniform, how about this?
[01:28:14]  Several people have watched the video that Matt put up and Mark put up.
[01:28:21]  And may God be my witness, some of them from the Brown Sheriff's Office.
[01:28:25]  Ray, I'm sorry, man.
[01:28:27]  Oh, really?
[01:28:28]  I'm talking about captains, lieutenants, sergeants, deputies.
[01:28:31]  Any of the guys involved in your case?
[01:28:33]  No.
[01:28:34]  None of those guys ever reached out?
[01:28:35]  No.
[01:28:38]  I bet you they've seen it.
[01:28:39]  Oh, absolutely.
[01:28:41]  Absolutely.
[01:28:43]  And they know I'm speaking the truth.
[01:28:48]  I'll never forget it, man.
[01:28:49]  My mother beat me one time.
[01:28:50]  Listen, I'm going to tell you something.
[01:28:52]  I took my mom's coconut pickle jar, and she put these coconut bar cookers in the jar.
[01:29:01]  And she told me and my brother and sister, she said, Listen, I'm going to give you guys some cookies, but don't go back in there and save some for another day.
[01:29:09]  And guess what?
[01:29:10]  Since my mom worked two jobs, she worked at John's Island cleaning people's homes, and she worked as a migrant worker.
[01:29:17]  Making a dollar an hour to take care of us.
[01:29:21]  When she went to work, I went in the cookie jar and I ate the cookies.
[01:29:24]  All of them?
[01:29:25]  No, I ate some of them.
[01:29:26]  Okay.
[01:29:28]  And my mom, unbeknownst to me, she counted the cookies.
[01:29:32]  So she said, Who went in the cookie jar?
[01:29:34]  I said, I don't know.
[01:29:37]  So she asked my brother and sister, Bobby, La Homa, who went in the cookie jar?
[01:29:41]  Mommy, I don't know.
[01:29:42]  So my mom said, I tell you what, don't get out of them clothes.
[01:29:47]  So we had to strip down to nothing.
[01:29:50]  And she said, Go get the extension card.
[01:29:54]  And I stripped down, went and got the extension card.
[01:29:58]  And she said, I'm going to ask you again who ate the cookies?
[01:30:03]  I said, Mom, I ate the cookies.
[01:30:07]  She said, Why did you lie?
[01:30:09]  I said, Because I thought you were going to beat me.
[01:30:11]  She said, I'm still going to beat you.
[01:30:14]  I'm not going to beat you because you ate the cookies, but I'm going to beat you because you lied to me.
[01:30:20]  I lied then.
[01:30:22]  But when I was faced with natural life imprisonment, no.
[01:30:26]  I'd rather take life.
[01:30:27]  Because I'm not going to ever admit to something that I didn't do.

=== Betrayal by a Friend (16:18) ===

[01:30:31]  If it costs my life, then guess what?
[01:30:35]  You're not going to convince me and tell me that I did something that I didn't do.
[01:30:38]  That's not going to happen.
[01:30:41]  Like I was telling you, though, before we started recording this, you have an undeniable will.
[01:30:49]  And I can't imagine.
[01:30:52]  The people i'm sure this has happened to many people besides yourself that didn't have that will and determination that you had to fight to the death for yourself and for your family.
[01:31:04]  And i'm sure there's people who are sitting in prison today I mean, there's definitely a lot of them who are completely innocent.
[01:31:12]  You absolutely that.
[01:31:12]  Took pleas yes, because you know what.
[01:31:16]  That's why I put in my book.
[01:31:18]  So many people are forced to plea bargain to avoid facing increasingly hard sentence because they cannot afford these high-powered lawyers, And that's one of the things that your deputy was telling me.
[01:31:31]  What's his name again?
[01:31:32]  Sergeant Booker.
[01:31:33]  Sergeant Booker, when I was talking to him last night.
[01:31:35]  Yeah, he was a sergeant.
[01:31:37]  He told me, he said, Danny, the federal prison system is a business.
[01:31:44]  And I think I could be wrong, but I think the number is like 70 something billion dollars a year is made through the federal prison system, which is.
[01:31:56]  Bananas.
[01:31:59]  that, I mean, it's the worst part of capitalism is what it is.
[01:32:06]  That we can have a system, a business in the United States that profits off keeping people in a box, that profits off putting innocent people in jail.
[01:32:19]  And it's just this destructive race to the bottom is what it is of locking up people.
[01:32:29]  No matter what, like get them to plea, get them in jail.
[01:32:34]  And it's not a system that is geared towards fixing a problem or fixing society or making our country better, right?
[01:32:44]  If you want to make your country better, you want to make your people better, not just profit off the people by locking them up.
[01:32:53]  So it's just, it's just, it's so sad to me to see, to hear stories like yours and just to see how corrupt and how it's really when you, it, When you boil it all down, it's all about money.
[01:33:08]  It's all about greed, money, and unfortunately, the worst thing, the worst atrocities happen when the people are the most desperate.
[01:33:22]  And unfortunately, these people don't make enough money.
[01:33:24]  These, like we said at the beginning of this podcast, a lot of the people that you were dealing with and you were working with, they barely make enough money to afford to live.
[01:33:33]  They're living paycheck to paycheck.
[01:33:35]  But you know, you gotta have jails, you know, because there are a lot of people that go out and commit crimes.
[01:33:43]  And those people should be incarcerated.
[01:33:46]  I don't care if it's me, my wife, my kids, or whoever.
[01:33:49]  You made your bed hard, you gotta lie down in it.
[01:33:51]  But there's a lot of innocent people that are facing time for crimes that they've never committed, like myself.
[01:33:59]  But how do you change the direction of the system?
[01:34:03]  The only way you can change it is by putting the right people in place.
[01:34:06]  And that's another thing.
[01:34:07]  You know, we vote these people in the office.
[01:34:09]  We put these people in the office, right?
[01:34:12]  And next thing you know, they get in there and they forget about who they are.
[01:34:16]  Right.
[01:34:17]  How do I know that?
[01:34:17]  Because that's what happened to me.
[01:34:20]  A good friend of mine, a personal friend of me and my family, turned his back on me and my wife and kids after I went out there and did everything I could to help him become, you know, the sheriff of Broward County.
[01:34:33]  But through it all, I don't wish him no ill feelings, but one thing is for sure.
[01:34:39]  I would never have nothing to do with him the longest day I live.
[01:34:42]  I mean that.
[01:34:43]  Why?
[01:34:44]  It's because of the fact that you showed me your true color.
[01:34:48]  I showed you my loyalty, me and my family.
[01:34:51]  But at the end of the day, and that's the only way we can change the system, is by changing the mindset of individuals who actually wear these uniforms.
[01:35:02]  How do you get people like the guys that are working in your department?
[01:35:09]  How do you get people, more people, Like yourself, who want, and when you're talking about stuff like this, you can't really just talk about like the country, right?
[01:35:21]  We should, you should distill it down to the communities, the individual communities, especially when it comes to police departments that live in the communities that they operate in.
[01:35:30]  Yes.
[01:35:30]  How do you get those people, the watchmen, to want to make their own community a better place and to do the right thing?
[01:35:39]  It's having the right people in place from the sheriff, all the way down to the deputy.
[01:35:45]  From the sheriff all the way down to the deputy.
[01:35:47]  My wife will tell you in 2020, I ran for sheriff.
[01:35:50]  You can Google it.
[01:35:51]  I was running as a Republican.
[01:35:54]  But I've always been Democrat.
[01:35:55]  But a friend of mine, Mr. Eugene Steele, who's deceased now, he actually was running the race with us.
[01:36:01]  And he read my book.
[01:36:03]  And he says, oh, my God.
[01:36:05]  He says, Ray, man, listen, I can help you.
[01:36:11]  I can get the Republican Party to run behind you.
[01:36:15]  I was getting endorsement by the Republican Party, Democrat, and nonpartisan.
[01:36:20]  And you know what they did?
[01:36:22]  They removed me from the race.
[01:36:25]  Why?
[01:36:26]  Because I was speaking the truth.
[01:36:27]  When we went to these debates, They found it to disqualify me.
[01:36:33]  I paid $11,357.84 and I qualified.
[01:36:39]  I can send you the documents showing that they, from the Broward County, the people who you have to pay the money to, you know, in Broward County.
[01:36:55]  I went down there for my campaign fund and everything.
[01:36:58]  I paid $11,354.87, if I'm not mistaken.
[01:37:05]  And I qualified.
[01:37:07]  And they found a way to disqualify me.
[01:37:08]  They had the judge remove me from the race.
[01:37:11]  So, this one guy who was running for sheriff also as a Republican, he joined ship with Alvin Pollock, who was running as Democrat, and he was Republican.
[01:37:23]  So, the two of them joined together and they filed a lawsuit to get me out of the race.
[01:37:28]  So, the judge removed me from the race.
[01:37:31]  But you know, to be honest with you, I didn't care about the fact of being a sheriff.
[01:37:35]  What I cared about was getting my information out there to the people.
[01:37:39]  And they let the people know that it's a nasty game that these people play.
[01:37:45]  But I can tell you one thing.
[01:37:47]  Just recently, just to show you, there was a brother who was sentenced by the Broward Sheriff's Office for 400 years.
[01:37:55]  You can Google the information, you can go to YouTube and see it.
[01:37:59]  I think his name is Mr. Harvey.
[01:38:02]  BSO sentenced this man to 400 years in prison.
[01:38:06]  After 34 years of incarceration, they found out that he was innocent.
[01:38:12]  They just released him just a few months ago.
[01:38:18]  Would you ever consider running for sheriff of BSO again?
[01:38:21]  You know, so many people have asked me, you know, but to be honest with you.
[01:38:27]  You think you can make a difference?
[01:38:29]  You can move the needle?
[01:38:30]  Oh, absolutely.
[01:38:32]  Absolutely.
[01:38:33]  Because with some of the attention that you've received online through these podcasts, I think you're already doing something in moving the needle.
[01:38:40]  But you got to think about it, though, Danny.
[01:38:42]  You know, what a lot of people don't know. is when you start campaigning, right?
[01:38:51]  When you start campaigning and these people see.
[01:38:56]  Oh, this is him.
[01:38:58]  Florida man given 400-year sentence, expected to walk free.
[01:39:05]  Yeah.
[01:39:06]  Sorry to interrupt.
[01:39:06]  Yeah, that's what happened.
[01:39:08]  He did 34 years in prison.
[01:39:11]  And with the new state attorney who actually have a public corruption department, right?
[01:39:16]  Which I'm waiting to go talk to them as well.
[01:39:19]  And, you know, they found it.
[01:39:23]  And the Innocent Project out of New York.
[01:39:25]  Yep.
[01:39:25]  I've had guys in here from the Innocent Project.
[01:39:28]  These guys gone free.
[01:39:34]  Oh, this is him?
[01:39:35]  Oh, he's from Tampa.
[01:39:37]  Oh, wow.
[01:39:39]  Well, there's a guy.
[01:39:40]  No, his name is Harvey.
[01:39:44]  The gentleman that I'm talking about.
[01:39:45]  Oh, that's a different guy.
[01:39:46]  They just interviewed a different guy.
[01:39:47]  Okay, cool.
[01:39:47]  Yeah, that's a different guy.
[01:39:49]  The one I'm talking about, his name is Harvey.
[01:39:52]  And it's in Broward County.
[01:39:53]  Wow.
[01:39:53]  Apparently, there were two people.
[01:39:59]  Yeah.
[01:39:59]  That's even worse.
[01:40:03]  So, to be honest with you, it's happening all the time.
[01:40:05]  It's happening every day.
[01:40:05]  If you go to YouTube and you type in Broward State Attorney, release man after 34 years, it'll come right up.
[01:40:13]  And it's a shame because how do you give a person 34 years of their life back?
[01:40:18]  You can't.
[01:40:19]  They sent us in 400 years for a murder.
[01:40:22]  And you have to go through like an excruciating lawsuit after this happens to a lot of people that spend, I had a guy in here that spent like 30 something years in prison too.
[01:40:30]  And they have to fight tooth and nail to get any sort of compensation for being wrongfully sentenced to prison for decades.
[01:40:37]  And, you know, the problem with that is even if you get paid a couple million dollars for spending 30 years in prison, is it really worth it?
[01:40:46]  Like if someone came up to you right now, this is how you got to think about it.
[01:40:50]  If someone came up to you right now and said, How much money would be enough money to spend 35 years in prison?
[01:40:57]  No.
[01:40:57]  There's no amount of money.
[01:40:58]  No.
[01:40:59]  No.
[01:41:00]  I wouldn't do it.
[01:41:00]  I don't want to spend one day in there.
[01:41:02]  No.
[01:41:02]  I don't want to spend an hour in there.
[01:41:04]  I don't want to spend a second in there.
[01:41:06]  Because from the time that you get arrested and you're booked in, your whole life changed.
[01:41:12]  Yep.
[01:41:13]  Your whole life changed.
[01:41:14]  Your whole life is just systematically dismantled.
[01:41:17]  Yeah.
[01:41:17]  Your family, your kids, everything.
[01:41:18]  Yeah, everything has changed.
[01:41:21]  Them kids, I'm telling you, my kids have literally watched me be drug out of my home and handcuffed and shackled.
[01:41:28]  Did you, so after you got back and after you got exonerated on the first sentence and you were getting harassed, you were getting these death threats, you bought the AK but then you returned it.
[01:41:38]  What happened after that?
[01:41:40]  Well, they came at me again.
[01:41:43]  On January 4th, January 6th, 2004, another 60 some cops stole my home at gunpoint.
[01:41:51]  Said I was shooting at someone in my backyard.
[01:41:55]  And my neighbor, his name was Sergeant McCorms.
[01:41:59]  He said, wait a minute.
[01:42:00]  I just saw Ray and Treese in the elevator.
[01:42:04]  They done roped off the house, yaller tape, everything.
[01:42:08]  And here comes this black dude that didn't know me from the department.
[01:42:12]  Apparently, he was a rookie, you know.
[01:42:14]  He's gonna tell me, put your effing hands behind your back.
[01:42:18]  I said, man, if you put your freaking hands on me, one of us gonna leave here today.
[01:42:22]  So my neighbor, Lisa, she came across the street.
[01:42:25]  She said, Raymond, come on, man, don't do this, man.
[01:42:28]  I said, man, this freaking dude, I said, this must be a repercussion of my silver case.
[01:42:33]  So, Dave Ropshaw, he said, You know who that is?
[01:42:36]  That's Hicks, man.
[01:42:38]  Hicks, one of our top deputies.
[01:42:41]  And he basically just ignored that.
[01:42:43]  He's telling me that he's going to make me.
[01:42:44]  I said, I eat Mace.
[01:42:48]  And all of a sudden, I'm there handcuffed in my backyard for almost six hours.
[01:42:54]  So, this white guy showed up in my yard.
[01:42:55]  I told my wife, I said, Go show him the documents showing that we were in court.
[01:43:00]  Who's the white guy?
[01:43:01]  He had to have been a lieutenant or a captain.
[01:43:03]  Okay.
[01:43:04]  So, of course, my wife showed it to him.
[01:43:06]  Within a second, they dissipated.
[01:43:08]  They were all gone in seconds.
[01:43:11]  Then they sent me a charge in the mail saying that I discharged a firearm.
[01:43:17]  So I take that case to trial in Deerfield before Honorable Judge Stephen DeLuca, and the judge said, Well, we're the victim.
[01:43:24]  We don't have a victim.
[01:43:25]  Did you do a belissa test?
[01:43:27]  No.
[01:43:27]  Where are the bullet cases?
[01:43:28]  None.
[01:43:29]  He said, So you mean to tell me you bring a holiday decorated elephant in my courtroom saying he committed these heinous crimes, but you have nothing to substantiate the charges?
[01:43:41]  So, my attorney presented documents to him showing that my wife and I had gone to court.
[01:43:47]  Within 10 minutes, I was tried by the courts and I was acquitted by the judge.
[01:43:51]  So, what did I do?
[01:43:53]  I began to fast and pray again.
[01:43:56]  I went into the community.
[01:43:57]  I won the highest award.
[01:43:59]  I won the African American Achievers Award.
[01:44:01]  You can go to Google and type in AfricanAmericaAchievers.com.
[01:44:04]  You'll see me there in 2004.
[01:44:06]  Raymond Hicks for winning education.
[01:44:08]  I helped 25 kids get their high school diploma and GED.
[01:44:13]  Wow.
[01:44:14]  And all of a sudden, guess what happened?
[01:44:18]  They come at me a third time.
[01:44:20]  What?
[01:44:23]  What happened the third time?
[01:44:26]  They said I committed child abuse.
[01:44:28]  I said, child abuse?
[01:44:30]  So when they came to my home, 15 cops stole my home, right?
[01:44:34]  So when they stole my home, and all of a sudden, there I am right there.
[01:44:43]  That's me.
[01:44:44]  Top left?
[01:44:45]  Yep.
[01:44:47]  Wow.
[01:44:49]  African American Achievers.
[01:44:51]  I won the highest award.
[01:44:53]  The only way you can win that award.
[01:44:56]  A philanthropist, Mrs. Jim Moran, is when you go out in your community and make a difference.
[01:45:04]  I helped 25 kids get their high school diploma GED.
[01:45:07]  I helped my mother at the age of 55, my brother at the age of 32, with the help of my wife and my oldest daughter.
[01:45:16]  And they came at me a third time.
[01:45:18]  This time they were looking to kill me, Danny.
[01:45:24]  But they didn't realize my oldest daughter, she was 18 years of age, and my son was four.
[01:45:30]  What year was the third time they came out?
[01:45:32]  How long was that?
[01:45:33]  October 10th of 2005.
[01:45:35]  Okay.
[01:45:36]  So this was roughly like three years, four years later, something like that, after the first trial.
[01:45:42]  Yes.
[01:45:43]  After the first trial.
[01:45:44]  Right.
[01:45:44]  And the second trial was 2004.
[01:45:46]  Right.
[01:45:47]  And then the following year, 2005, October 10th of 05.
[01:45:51]  So I'm assuming that you took this one to trial too.
[01:45:54]  Listen, I was taken to the trial.
[01:45:57]  And then all of a sudden, you ain't got to take my word.
[01:46:01]  I get Deputy Richard Lee to call you and tell you.
[01:46:04]  Because he was the one booked me in.
[01:46:06]  I get down.
[01:46:06]  First of all, the sergeant, it was a white sergeant and a black deputy.
[01:46:11]  So all of a sudden, the two of them engaged in a verbal confrontation.
[01:46:16]  And he said, the sergeant said, put the effing cuffs on him like I told you to.
[01:46:24]  So I couldn't get my arms in the back of me because I was too wide.
[01:46:29]  So Crum said, man, he's going to need a double set of cuffs.
[01:46:33]  F that.
[01:46:33]  Put the effing cuffs on him like I told you to.
[01:46:36]  So, of course, he saw that he was not going to back down.
[01:46:41]  So then they put me in shackles.
[01:46:43]  Don't take my word.
[01:46:45]  You get Deputy Richard Lee on the phone, and I guarantee you he'll tell you the same thing.

=== Shackles and Confrontation (02:27) ===

[01:46:50]  And when I get down to booking, they had 25 cops there with black gloves on waiting on me at the Sallyport.
[01:46:58]  They said I was violent.
[01:47:00]  So when Lee heard it, he said, Man, I know I can calm him down, man.
[01:47:04]  Because I'm the one who helped him get the job at the Briar Sheriff's Office.
[01:47:10]  And all of a sudden, you know, they saw that I wasn't violent.
[01:47:14]  I was talking to Deputy Figueroa.
[01:47:17]  She was a female that went through the crossover academy with me in Palm Beach.
[01:47:22]  We were talking about our family, we were talking about God.
[01:47:26]  And they all walked inside.
[01:47:28]  And I said, Reed, when he got ready to book me in, I said, What did they arrest me for?
[01:47:33]  He said, Child abuse.
[01:47:34]  I said, Child abuse?
[01:47:36]  I'm like, What child have I abused?
[01:47:38]  I don't even put my hands on my own kids.
[01:47:40]  What'd they say?
[01:47:42]  They said I paddled a female cadet, but they learned, Danny, it wasn't me.
[01:47:45]  You paddled?
[01:47:47]  A female cadet when I worked in the boot camp program.
[01:47:52]  And this female cadet was a child?
[01:47:54]  No, she was a teenager.
[01:47:56]  Okay.
[01:47:56]  But they said I paddled her.
[01:47:58]  Okay.
[01:47:58]  That was the biggest lie ever been told.
[01:48:00]  The administrators and everybody told them.
[01:48:03]  Drill Instructor Hicks never paddled nobody.
[01:48:06]  It was Eleanor Smith.
[01:48:07]  And they're saying that this happened when?
[01:48:10]  And I couldn't even tell you when they said it happened.
[01:48:13]  But they arrested me on October 10th, 2005, for it.
[01:48:18]  But they found out the prosecutor did a thorough investigation.
[01:48:22]  The state prosecutor did a thorough investigation.
[01:48:25]  She threw the case out, no props.
[01:48:27]  You're going to see it in the book.
[01:48:30]  Everything I'm talking about in this book, I take appendix.
[01:48:36]  I got court, I got the documents and everything.
[01:48:41]  Everything that I'm talking about here is in this little small book.
[01:48:44]  Okay.
[01:48:46]  Because the lady who edited my book, Miss Martha Moffitt, that I love, I've never even sat down with this lady not one time.
[01:48:53]  But she edited my book.
[01:48:54]  She was the former editor of the National Choir.
[01:48:56]  She's out of New Jersey.
[01:48:58]  The person who drew the cover of this book, his name is Mr. Dick Copple.
[01:49:02]  He drew a picture from a newspaper article, and these are literally my knuckles.
[01:49:07]  Because he had me hold up two broomsticks, and that's how he made the bars.
[01:49:14]  And I prayed and I said, Lord, what should the title be about?

=== Editing the Inspiring Book (08:52) ===

[01:49:17]  And God said, I'm still standing.
[01:49:21]  I'm still standing.
[01:49:23]  But you're in uniform.
[01:49:25]  So when you look at this book, that's why you see the star there.
[01:49:30]  That represents me being in uniform.
[01:49:33]  Hold it up next to your face.
[01:49:36]  That makes, as you can see, the star, it's like me in uniform, but I'm arrested.
[01:49:44]  Because that's what this symbolizes.
[01:49:49]  So to be honest with you, you know, as I told everybody, They took something from me that I love.
[01:49:54]  And let me tell you something, Danny.
[01:49:56]  Everybody that I've campaigned for, I brought in 99.9% of the votes for them.
[01:50:02]  I'm talking about Hispanics, Caucasians, as well as minorities, blacks.
[01:50:09]  I get mad love from the community.
[01:50:11]  You know why?
[01:50:12]  Because I'm always doing something in the community to inspire other people.
[01:50:16]  To this day, I'm still inspiring people, I'm still feeding the homeless.
[01:50:23]  My wife has been working with the Postal Service now for 35 years.
[01:50:27]  Oh, wow.
[01:50:27]  No way, really?
[01:50:28]  Yes.
[01:50:30]  Sometimes she worked 10 hour shifts.
[01:50:34]  I'm working now security.
[01:50:37]  I work 12 hour shifts.
[01:50:39]  What do you do for security?
[01:50:41]  I do special ops now for Apple.
[01:50:44]  So we look for any type of crisis situation.
[01:50:47]  You got to have certain credentials to do what I do.
[01:50:50]  You got to be retired.
[01:50:51]  And even though I fought to get my retirement, they gave me a partial retirement.
[01:50:58]  But I'm in the process of trying to get my full retirement.
[01:51:00]  I want my full retirement.
[01:51:02]  I want everything that's due to me and my wife and kids.
[01:51:05]  And that's why I'm going to continue to fight.
[01:51:07]  That's why I'm going to continue to speak.
[01:51:09]  I don't look for a dime from you or anyone else.
[01:51:12]  And I appreciate everything that you guys are giving.
[01:51:14]  You're giving me a platform for me and my family to be speaking about the things that we've experienced for the last 21 years.
[01:51:22]  And I hope and pray.
[01:51:24]  And I told Matt this, and I'm telling you the same thing.
[01:51:27]  And I told Martin that God is going to elevate you guys to that next level.
[01:51:33]  Not me.
[01:51:35]  Not me.
[01:51:37]  God.
[01:51:39]  And I hope and pray that the business and everything, your platform that you and Steve and all these other guys, Matthew Cox and Mark Latham have, that's in touch with people all over the world.
[01:51:53]  I hope and pray that your offspring, your kids, kids, kids, can live off of you guys and what you're doing.
[01:52:01]  Because to be honest with you, all this time we've been suffering.
[01:52:08]  But through it all, You know, I stand firm.
[01:52:14]  I go through so much, man.
[01:52:16]  I started drinking.
[01:52:19]  I never took a drink a day in my life.
[01:52:21]  I asked my wife.
[01:52:23]  We've been together since I was 18 years of age.
[01:52:25]  Wow.
[01:52:28]  I'm 58 now.
[01:52:32]  I never took a drink until after this incident.
[01:52:35]  I went into the liquor store.
[01:52:37]  And the guy's like, Big Hicks, what you doing in here, man?
[01:52:42]  I lied.
[01:52:44]  Oh man, I'm buying some stuff for the guys down the street, man.
[01:52:48]  You know why?
[01:52:49]  Because I was ashamed.
[01:52:53]  But I wasn't buying it for nobody down the street.
[01:52:55]  I was buying it for me.
[01:52:59]  So to be honest with you, people revert to those things that make them feel comfortable.
[01:53:06]  People revert to those things that make them feel comfortable.
[01:53:12]  You know?
[01:53:14]  If.
[01:53:14]  If drinking makes you feel comfortable, you're going to drink.
[01:53:17]  If smoking makes you feel comfortable, you're going to smoke.
[01:53:22]  If working out makes you feel comfortable, you're going to work out.
[01:53:25]  If running makes you feel comfortable, you're going to run.
[01:53:29]  With you being out on the water, if that's what makes you feel comfortable, that's what you're going to do.
[01:53:35]  Consider taking you away from everything else.
[01:53:37]  Yeah.
[01:53:39]  So people revert to those things that make them feel comfortable.
[01:53:41]  Yes.
[01:53:43]  So to be honest with you, what makes me feel comfortable is the fact that I got my family.
[01:53:48]  I got my closest friends that I could count on my fingers.
[01:53:55]  And most importantly, I got God, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[01:54:00]  And you know what I did?
[01:54:02]  So many brothers that have called me, they didn't think I was going to call them back.
[01:54:09]  They didn't think I was going to respond.
[01:54:11]  I just talked to a cop yesterday.
[01:54:13]  My wife would tell you, inspiring him.
[01:54:18]  Because he went through something not even remotely close to what I went through.
[01:54:26]  But what I told him was the truth.
[01:54:29]  And he's back on the force now.
[01:54:32]  So at the end of the day, you know, I spoke to another brother out of North Carolina who worked at BOP, Bureau Prison.
[01:54:39]  Brother Newton.
[01:54:42]  He's Caucasian.
[01:54:44]  He's blown away by my story that he reached out to me.
[01:54:47]  I called him.
[01:54:50]  I could just go on with the list.
[01:54:52]  Jason, he's another one from New York.
[01:54:56]  Straight redneck.
[01:55:01]  Lost everything.
[01:55:03]  But I told him you didn't lose your life.
[01:55:05]  But I also told him, I said, listen, it was predestined that God would bring us in contact with each other.
[01:55:12]  Because he knew that one day you'll need me and I need you.
[01:55:16]  So to be honest with you, Danny, the podcast that you all have, Matthew Cox, Mark Later, bro, I asked my wife, I've been speaking for 21 years now.
[01:55:30]  Saying the same exact thing.
[01:55:32]  Matthew Cox's short video is 3.5.2 million in two weeks.
[01:55:43]  That's wild.
[01:55:44]  Almost 600 and some thousand viewers within one month.
[01:55:51]  Over 280 and some viewers.
[01:55:53]  Mark Latham.
[01:55:55]  That's inspiring, man.
[01:55:56]  It's a really inspiring story.
[01:55:58]  And I'm hoping and praying that God takes you past millions, all of y'all.
[01:56:03]  May God be my witness because what you're doing, you allow me to speak the truth.
[01:56:09]  And you got some of these people that make comments.
[01:56:11]  How about this?
[01:56:12]  99.9% of the comments that have been made on these platforms have been positive.
[01:56:19]  Do you read them and respond to them?
[01:56:21]  Absolutely.
[01:56:23]  I can show you on my phone.
[01:56:24]  My wife can tell you, they can tell you.
[01:56:29]  I was talking to one of my brothers from California, Phi Beta Sigma.
[01:56:34]  He didn't think I was going to call him.
[01:56:37]  When I called him, he said, Oh my God, oh my God.
[01:56:42]  So, to be honest with you, listen, I won't stop.
[01:56:48]  I'm not going to stop.
[01:56:50]  They empowered me.
[01:56:51]  They made me stronger, Danny.
[01:56:54]  And you may say, Well, how did they?
[01:56:56]  And you know, and I have to give a shout out to Ms. Kirby.
[01:56:59]  Ms. Kirby was a teacher, Caucasian, 4'11, 100 pounds, soaking wet.
[01:57:06]  And every time she asked me to read a sentence, right, I got into a fight.
[01:57:11]  I got up to read a sentence, but I couldn't read or write.
[01:57:15]  But Ms. Kirby always tutored me.
[01:57:18]  So I went, and when I told her about the things going on in my home, I went from D's and F's to C's and D's to C's and B's to A, B's and C's.
[01:57:29]  Well, you know what?
[01:57:31]  Ms. Kirby would be proud of me today because guess what?
[01:57:34]  I'm the author of a book, but I couldn't read or write.
[01:57:40]  I went back to college.
[01:57:41]  I graduated with a 3.97 GPA from American Intercontinental University with my bachelor's degree.
[01:57:49]  I went and got my doctorate degree in theology.
[01:57:54]  But my ministry is not behind four walls.
[01:57:58]  My ministry is out here in the streets, letting everybody know when you're going through trials and tribulations, which is adversity, adversity builds character, makes you stronger, and brings you closer to a higher being.

=== Basketball on Asphalt (02:19) ===

[01:58:10]  So if you ain't got God in your life, Because some people say that I know God.
[01:58:17]  Do you really know God?
[01:58:20]  Do you really know God?
[01:58:22]  So when you're going through the trials and tribulations that me and my wife and kids have gone through, my mother, my mother is 73 years of age right now, and she's still trying to find a job at 73.
[01:58:39]  So, when you talk about people coming from the hood, this is one of the reasons why the young kids go out there and do the things they do.
[01:58:48]  This is why they go to robbery.
[01:58:50]  This is the reason why they're shooting and killing each other.
[01:58:54]  They don't have food to put on the table.
[01:58:56]  Right.
[01:59:00]  How could you take care of your family making a dollar an hour?
[01:59:04]  A dollar an hour.
[01:59:05]  My mom worked at the packing house.
[01:59:07]  It's impossible.
[01:59:10]  Man, listen.
[01:59:11]  I ain't got time to play no games, man.
[01:59:13]  Not me.
[01:59:15]  I ain't got time to play no games.
[01:59:16]  I don't.
[01:59:18]  Because there's a lot of Raymond Lamar Hicks that's coming up.
[01:59:22]  A lot of them.
[01:59:24]  In the hood.
[01:59:25]  That we call the hood.
[01:59:27]  Poverty.
[01:59:29]  My clothes came from the World Thrift.
[01:59:32]  My mom would go to the World Thrift and get the clothes from the Salvation Army and wash them up and iron them.
[01:59:42]  Shoes came from Woodworth.
[01:59:46]  She paid $3 for a pair of sneakers.
[01:59:49]  I go out there and play basketball on the asphalt, you know, because I was a great athlete football, basketball, and track.
[01:59:57]  I go out there and play basketball.
[01:59:58]  Next thing you know, the whole bottom comes out the shoe.
[02:00:02]  My mom says, I go to my mom and say, I said, Mom, listen, my shoes just broke.
[02:00:09]  Know what my mom tell me?
[02:00:11]  What do you mean, broke?
[02:00:12]  I said, Mom, look, the whole bottom is gone from the shoe.
[02:00:18]  She said, Well, you know what?
[02:00:18]  You're going to wear them to school, but you're going to school.
[02:00:25]  Listen, there's so many Raymond Hicks in the hood, man.

=== Noble Foundation Support (06:32) ===

[02:00:29]  And that's why I just want to inspire these young kids.
[02:00:32]  That's why my foundation, the Raymond L. Hicks Foundation LLC, you can go to sunbiz.org and look it up.
[02:00:41]  I give back to the community.
[02:00:44]  We have a book bag giveaway.
[02:00:47]  I have a big cookout.
[02:00:48]  It's a multicultural.
[02:00:50]  It's black, white, and Hispanics.
[02:00:52]  Fort Lauderdale cops out there.
[02:00:54]  The Broward Sheriff Officers, they used to send someone out there.
[02:00:58]  Last year, my fraternity brothers, the Phi Beta Sigma, Gamma Gamma Sigma, they came out and supported me.
[02:01:05]  And to be honest with you, I'm going to continue to get back.
[02:01:07]  I'm going to continue to inspire brothers.
[02:01:11]  I was just this morning telling my wife, I said, you know what?
[02:01:14]  We need to go get Danny Two Boys something.
[02:01:17]  I was getting ready to text you.
[02:01:19]  But the place, you know, they didn't have the place, it was closed.
[02:01:24]  Why?
[02:01:24]  To say, hey, you know what?
[02:01:25]  Hey, little man, you know, this is for me and my wife.
[02:01:31]  As a matter of fact, the little girl that we were going to get the tickets to, we were getting ready to go.
[02:01:37]  She told her parents, she said, oh, mommy, that's the guy.
[02:01:42]  Peers don't forget.
[02:01:44]  They don't.
[02:01:44]  No, they don't forget.
[02:01:46]  And that's why I say, man, you know, what are we doing to make a difference, Danny?
[02:01:51]  Right.
[02:01:53]  You're doing everything you can, man.
[02:01:56]  I really do believe that.
[02:01:57]  I believe that you're making a difference in all the work that you're doing and putting out your books and speaking on platforms like this one.
[02:02:05]  I commend you for that, man.
[02:02:07]  That's very noble.
[02:02:08]  And I respect you for that, man.
[02:02:12]  It's huge.
[02:02:15]  Where can people listening or watching find your book?
[02:02:19]  You have an audio book as well?
[02:02:21]  Yes.
[02:02:22]  There's an audio book on Amazon.
[02:02:24]  There's also, you can get the paperback book on Amazon, Bonds Noble online, Walmart online, Books of a Million online, you know.
[02:02:35]  And the only reason why my book is not in the stores is because I have not gone to the stores and I have not reached out to those channels in order to put the book into the stores like Barnes and Noble, Walmart.
[02:02:47]  But I truly believe that if whenever God for me an opportunity to have, yeah, the book is something everywhere, you know?
[02:03:01]  And I'm hoping and praying that, you know, One day, my books are actually in the stores because it's a very inspiring book.
[02:03:10]  It is.
[02:03:11]  You know?
[02:03:12]  And not only that, I talk about my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[02:03:17]  I talk about how God, He brought me through.
[02:03:20]  I told Matt, I say, Matt, I prayed with Matt.
[02:03:24]  And I'm hoping and praying that you allow me to pray with you guys because at the end of the day, this is what it's about.
[02:03:30]  And the reason why it's about that, Danny, is because of the fact that some people may not know God.
[02:03:36]  But I've known God ever since I was a little kid.
[02:03:39]  Where we didn't have food on the table, my mother would stretch her arms towards heaven and say, Lord, please send somebody to help me and my kids.
[02:03:50]  And Miss Maggie Wallace, she came down the street with three bags of groceries the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
[02:03:58]  And I'll never forget it, my mother cooked pork chops, rice, and gravy that day.
[02:04:04]  And from then on, I knew that there was a God.
[02:04:07]  I knew that there was a God.
[02:04:10]  Some people say, Well, where's God?
[02:04:11]  Well, God is the Spirit.
[02:04:14]  You know, it's just like you never knew me, Danny.
[02:04:17]  I never knew you.
[02:04:18]  But I could tell you that I love you, man.
[02:04:20]  And I appreciate the fact that you afforded me the opportunity to be here in your podcast with Steve and my wife talking about this nightmare that I've gone through for the last 21 years.
[02:04:33]  But guess what?
[02:04:34]  But I'm not bitter.
[02:04:36]  And I'm not angry.
[02:04:40]  And that's real.
[02:04:41]  And the reason why I'm not is because of the fact that I trust my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
[02:04:48]  It's not about me.
[02:04:51]  So, God chooses sometimes, He chooses individuals to go through a situation in life so that you can be a testament and a testimony to somebody else.
[02:05:01]  It's just like when I saw you interviewing Matt Cox and how you were dissecting each segment and Matt was speaking on each one of the things.
[02:05:12]  Oh, no, that didn't happen like that.
[02:05:15]  Yeah.
[02:05:16]  But guess what?
[02:05:17]  But I told him.
[02:05:20]  I said, let me tell you something, man.
[02:05:21]  God is going to take you to a level that you had never seen before.
[02:05:27]  Well, I'm going to tell you this.
[02:05:29]  Look what the numbers are right now with him.
[02:05:33]  Well, listen, Raymond, thank you so much for doing this, man.
[02:05:37]  I love you, brother.
[02:05:38]  I love you too, man.
[02:05:39]  Thank you for doing this.
[02:05:40]  Thank you so much, Danny.
[02:05:41]  You know, and I truly just thank God for you, man.
[02:05:44]  And I pray that the Lord continue to bless you and your wife and kids, you know, and each and every one, Steve.
[02:05:50]  You know, and each and every one else that you come in contact with, man, you know, and I pray that God take you, elevate you guys to levels that you hadn't seen before.
[02:06:01]  Because you don't know, like I told Matt and Mark, you guys are reaching people all over the world.
[02:06:09]  I've had people contact me from South Africa, Nigeria, UK, Toronto.
[02:06:19]  Worldwide.
[02:06:19]  Your story's worldwide now.
[02:06:21]  And you know what?
[02:06:22]  I never forget it.
[02:06:24]  Mr. Tom Devine said to me, he says, Ray, I'm going to take you and your family in front of Congress, right?
[02:06:31]  And I'm waiting on that day.
[02:06:33]  But he also said, I want your story to captivate the audience's attention around the world.
[02:06:41]  Well, you know what, Danny?
[02:06:43]  I can sit here and honestly say to you that I've read, and when I'm working at night, guess what I do?
[02:06:50]  I go back and read the comments.
[02:06:55]  99.9% of the comments are very positive.
[02:07:00]  That's instilled in disbelief.

=== Honors and High School (03:05) ===

[02:07:02]  Right.
[02:07:02]  He can't be telling the truth.
[02:07:06]  I don't believe it.
[02:07:07]  I don't this, I don't that.
[02:07:10]  One of the guys that did it, guess what?
[02:07:11]  I went back.
[02:07:13]  And I began to speak about some of the things that I know that happened.
[02:07:19]  So to be honest with you, I don't have anything to prove to anybody.
[02:07:24]  God knows.
[02:07:27]  And I must mention my kids, man.
[02:07:31]  Man, when you talk about the kids.
[02:07:52]  I never wanted them to grow up in the hood.
[02:07:55]  No?
[02:07:59]  Because not everybody's going to make it that.
[02:08:03]  I didn't want my kids to grow up to have four or five kids from different fathers like my family.
[02:08:13]  Shooting, robbing, dad.
[02:08:19]  My wife would tell you, when I got to college, I'm fighting every day.
[02:08:25]  I even had a 25 automatic in school at 18.
[02:08:35]  But them kids are doing so well, man.
[02:08:38]  My oldest daughter, Matrice, school teacher.
[02:08:53]  She's a school teacher.
[02:08:55]  My youngest daughter, school teacher.
[02:08:57]  My son, 20, worked for the Department of Homeland Security, TSA.
[02:09:03]  These kids were 12, 7, and 4.
[02:09:07]  Watched me drug out of my home.
[02:09:12]  Through it all.
[02:09:15]  And they graduated with honors.
[02:09:18]  High school with honors.
[02:09:20]  Don't take my word, I show it to you.
[02:09:23]  College with honors.
[02:09:25]  My oldest daughter getting ready to get her doctorate degree at Nova Southeast University.
[02:09:31]  She has a master's at Nova.
[02:09:34]  She got a bachelor's at FAU.
[02:09:37]  She won the Un American Society Award, maintained a 4.0 GPA when she attended FAU, Florida Atlanta University, in Boca Raton.
[02:09:47]  My youngest daughter graduated with honors from Fairview University, Florida AM.
[02:09:55]  My son graduated high school with honors.
[02:10:00]  20 years of age, worked for the Department of Homeland Security.
[02:10:03]  You should see his uniform.
[02:10:05]  I told him, if you do well in the academy, I got you.

=== Life Saving Award Story (03:27) ===

[02:10:07]  It's incredible, man.
[02:10:13]  You, your wife, and your kids are all an inspiration.
[02:10:16]  Thank you.
[02:10:19]  Not just to people like me, but to people that come from the communities that you come from.
[02:10:23]  And I hope that they're paying attention.
[02:10:25]  And.
[02:10:27]  Thank you again.
[02:10:28]  I really appreciate it.
[02:10:29]  I'll make sure I link your books below.
[02:10:32]  How can people get in contact with you if they want to reach out?
[02:10:36]  If they want to reach out to me, I'm actually on social media Facebook under Raymond Hicks, Instagram under Raymond Hicks.
[02:10:45]  I'm still standing.
[02:10:47]  Of course, I don't use Twitter as much.
[02:10:52]  They can reach out to me.
[02:10:54]  All of my information is right there on Facebook.
[02:10:57]  All of my information is right there.
[02:11:00]  And I just want to say to each and every one that's out there listening, man, you know, you may go through trials and tribulations in life, which is adversity, but stand firm.
[02:11:09]  You know, sometimes God has to bring you to your lowest point in your life, Danny, in order for you to see who everybody is that you're surrounded by.
[02:11:16]  Because a lot of times when you're doing good, you don't know who these people are.
[02:11:21]  And there's a possibility that those people can be so envious and jealous of you.
[02:11:25]  It could be your family members, your friends, associates, your co workers, your acquaintance.
[02:11:32]  But in the end, you just got to know who you are.
[02:11:34]  So I tell each and every last one of these people that's watching these podcasts, identify yourself.
[02:11:41]  Look in the mirror.
[02:11:43]  Know which way you're going at in life.
[02:11:47]  You know?
[02:11:48]  Because that's what's important.
[02:11:50]  Because one thing is for sure, when you can inspire somebody else, I know that God has used me now.
[02:11:56]  My sergeant told me, he said, Ray, if you had never gone through what you went through, how could you be an author of a book?
[02:12:02]  Right.
[02:12:02]  How could you have gone back to college?
[02:12:04]  How could you have gone back and got your doctorate degree in theology?
[02:12:08]  How could you have done all these different things, man, if you have never gone through what you went through?
[02:12:13]  So, to be honest with you, I thank God for what I've gone through.
[02:12:17]  And I say this and I shut up.
[02:12:19]  All the awards that I've won, I won a life saving award as a deputy sheriff.
[02:12:25]  When I was an inmate, Danny, I won a life saving award.
[02:12:29]  I saved a gentleman's life while I was an inmate and was given the award by the warden of the institution.
[02:12:36]  When I came home, when I worked at Chrome Processing Center in Miami, I won a life-saving award.
[02:12:42]  When a gentleman hung himself.
[02:12:45]  But I was able to push him up with two other individuals and saved his life.
[02:12:52]  Wow.
[02:12:54]  When I worked for the rail, I got a life saving award.
[02:12:58]  A young Caucasian gentleman, 32 years of age, OD'd on heroin.
[02:13:03]  I began to perform CPR on him until paramedics arrived eight minutes later.
[02:13:10]  They gave him Norken.
[02:13:12]  He sat up like nothing ever happened to him.
[02:13:15]  Within about two minutes.
[02:13:20]  And guess what?
[02:13:20]  I won a life saving award.
[02:13:22]  They promoted me to captain and I was named officer of the year.
[02:13:25]  But yet, still, my department that I work for, the Broward Sheriff's Office, is going to tell me that I'm a criminal.
[02:13:32]  I ain't never been a criminal.
[02:13:33]  I never will be a criminal.

=== Fighting for Total Vindication (02:15) ===

[02:13:35]  But one thing is for sure I stand firm, you know, and I'm going to continue to fight until me and my family are totally vindicated.
[02:13:43]  I'm going to continue to fight until we're totally vindicated.
[02:13:47]  I have a second book that I'm working on.
[02:13:48]  And you know what?
[02:13:50]  When the movie comes out, because I truly believe that at some point, God is going to put me in contact with the right people.
[02:13:58]  And I just hope and pray that my story, my family's story, can inspire other families to come together.
[02:14:11]  It will.
[02:14:12]  I'm sure it's already doing that.
[02:14:14]  So, man, if it's okay with you, I would love to pray for you and the platform and everything else, man, because to me, that's what it's about.
[02:14:24]  Let's do it.
[02:14:25]  Father God, I thank you for this day.
[02:14:27]  This is truly the day that you have made.
[02:14:29]  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
[02:14:31]  Father God, you say, Well, two or three are gathering your name.
[02:14:33]  Father God, you have to be in the midst.
[02:14:36]  And Father God, I thank you for the authority that you have given us in Christ Jesus.
[02:14:39]  And with that authority, I bind every demonic spirit, every principality, every spiritual weakness in high places.
[02:14:45]  I render them helpless, powerless, inoperative, and affected to come against or hinder our lives in any way.
[02:14:51]  I pull down every stronghold and cast down every work and doctrine from the enemy from our lives.
[02:14:57]  And Father God, I thank you, Father God, that you continue to raise my brother Danny to the level that he'd never seen before, Father God.
[02:15:04]  I pray that you bless his wife, his offsprings, his kids' offsprings, Father God, as they get older, Father God.
[02:15:10]  Don't forget about Steve, Father God.
[02:15:12]  I pray that you touch his hands, Father God, to operate these equipments, Father God, to get your word out to those around the world that need to hear, Father God, from you, not from me, Father God, from you.
[02:15:24]  We thank you, Father God.
[02:15:26]  We thank you for each and everything that you've done.
[02:15:28]  Lord, the things that you will continue to do, and we will give you praise and honor and glory.
[02:15:33]  We bless your name, Father God.
[02:15:35]  Lord, we ask these blessings, the other blessings, your name, Jesus, and your name, Jesus.
[02:15:40]  Amen.
[02:15:42]  Amen.
[02:15:44]  Thank you so much, Raymond.
[02:15:46]  You're welcome.
[02:15:46]  Thank you.
[02:15:47]  You're a good man.
[02:15:47]  Thank you, bro.
[02:15:49]  Good night, everybody.