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Ya know, I really can't understand writers nowadays. They talk all this shit about bombing and writing graff forever and then someone says, "Yo, you better slow down with those clean trains and telling people your business," and you['re like, "Fuck that, I ain't never gonna get caught hitting trains." But then one day the vandal squad comes to your house and arrests you and all of a sudden, all your thugness and Hot 97 realness starts to drain from your body, and you're like, "But, but, but I didn't do do do anything." Since you're so fucking shook at that moment, all you can do is try and plead for your life. Now you're begging, "Please, can't we work this out somehow? Here take my tv, vcr, or here take my mom's jewelry or these naked flicks of my girl," but your pleading doesn't work and now you have to be locked up. The funniest thing about the whole situation is that they had no real reason to lock you up, but instead of denying everything you sign a statement.You did what they say you did. To top it off, they tell you to write your tag on this piece of paper the way you do it on the walls, so now they tell you, "If you ever write anywhere ever again, we can and will arrest you." Now, after you get your shoelaces and dignity back, you tell your boys this big bullshit story about what happened. You're like, "Yo son, cops came to my crib son and raided it son, but I was lucky because I was blazin' a el out the window, and I saw them coming. So I took the three keys of coke and was able to stash them shitsÉyo son, they was even sweating me about two bodies son. Oh word, but I played it off like I didn't know what they was saying. I just let them know that I'm a thug."
I'm sitting in my room trying to stop my dog from wrecking things and I hear my mom yell, "Robert, pick up the phone." So I pick it up to find out who it is, turns out to be my brother. He starts by saying, "Just to let you know, the Daily News has been calling my house all day looking for you." So I'm like, "Yeah, okay. You have nothing better to do than mess with me?" He says, "I'm not messing with you. I'm very serious. They are running a story about you in a few days, and they want to get your side of the story." "Story, what fucking story?" "They said that they know you've been painting walls again, and they want to know if it's you or a copy cat." "Well, what did you tell them?" "I really didn't tell them much, except that you were dead. You got hit by a train last month. But I don't think that's going to stop them from running the story, so I suggest you stay away from anyone or anything that could get you into any trouble because once that story comes out, you're going to be extremely hot."
So after getting off the phone, I say to myself I can't believe this is happening again. Why can't they leave me alone? Oh well, it's not like this hasn't happened before. No sense stressing it. A couple days passed, still no story. I start counting the days since they called my brother. That was on a Thursday, so FridayÉ SaturdayÉand so on. Now it's Monday morning, and that makes four days. So far so good, but little did I know that this was the day the story was in the paper.
Now I'm walking to get the train, trying not to think about that dumbass story coming out. I'm sitting on the train reading my book, and I glance over and see some guy reading a newspaper. I notice "Graffiti" in big black letters on the page he was reading. Holy shit, I think. That cannot be about me. I stand up to see if the article is about me, and now I'm standing over this guy pretending IÕm reading the subway map. At that moment, I get my answer as I see a picture of myself. I'm standing there saying to myself, this cannot be happening to me again, but I remember that this is the Daily News that's written this bullshit about me and has been doing it for the past ten years. These reporters from the Daily News make it seem like I did something to them personally, and now this reporter is running around the city trying to find out anything negative about me.
Just because someone never notices something for ten years does not mean that it wasn't already there. Now there is this jackass reporter playing Colombo and trying to get any little thing on me, and calling the Vandal cops. Of course he gets in touch with Steve Mona, one of the cops that really hates me, who is ready and willing to make me look like the punk that I was when I was on the cover of the Daily News in 1994. I'm looked at as the guy who started the whole graffiti cancer that is all over the place. Right away everyone says that I'm the kid responsible for ninety percent of all the damage, 'Hey don't get us wrong. We know other people do it too, but Robert Morrissey is the Osama Bin Laden of graffiti bombingÉhe doesn't just paint his name on a building, he bombs a building.' Now everyone reading that whack story about me who doesn't know me thinks IÕm some insane person out to destroy everyone's property.
For ten years I've been the only person who has really been put awayÑI mean locked up in real jails, not some fake graffiti jails and not central booking. Seeing how fucked up jail life is, why would someone want to put me in a place where there is so much evil and where I could be killed over a phone or my sneakers. Just because I wrote on some walls and subway cars? Now when I end up getting arrested after getting out of jail the first time, I can't understand why so many people are shocked. If they wanted to teach me a lesson, they would have sent me to school.
There hasn't been any large amount of graffiti around certain hoods in a long time now. The only reason there was so much graff around there anyway was because of the train yards, so in the '80's graff was something they had to deal with. It was a part of NYC up until the MTA declared graff dead in 1989 and now all of a sudden, graff is a problem in certain neighborhoods. You had all these people complaining about graffiti on the subways, but they didn't stop and think if they chase kids from the train yards, they're just going to end up somewhere else. Within a year or so, most of the space on the streets started getting taken up. Now everybody's doing fill-ins, and these same people who were so happy that the trains were clean began to realize that when they came out of their homes in the morning to go to work, their houses were all tagged up.
There are all these people out there saying they are trying to make a difference in the community. Just like the ones who rallied to put me away. In the their same community lived a very likeable and extremely popular kid named James Conte, but the rest of the city would know him by his second name VE ONE. June of 2002 marks five years since he was murdered and there has been no one arrested for it. There's never been any news article about his death, and he was a kid that grew up in the same community where these people say they are trying to make a difference. How come they haven't called any Daily News reporters about looking into his murder? His mother lives in that communityÉwhy aren't they helping her with this?
So here's some advice for all of you people that don't know any better or who are too busy thuggin' it to realize. If you're being arrested for something, you DO NOT have to sign a statement. If the cop sits there and keeps on saying they know you did such and such, that usually means that they can't prove ANYTHING. Also, everyone that goes out bombing a few nights a week should not be going to these "art/graff" shows. All you're doing is letting the V-squad know who you are. If you didnÕt know, they stay outside every show and take flix and videos of you. All of you people doing this are killing graffiti by letting the cops know your moves. It's time for you to realize that you are committing a "crime" by doing graff. You need to start standing in the shadows and not posing for pictures with make-up on. If you just robbed a bank, you wouldn't be showing off your mug while you're robbing the place. Wake-up. The cops are watching, listening and they ain't playing fair. Take it from, the-most-talked-about.
The United States as the world knows will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has now already had enough. More than enough of war and hate and oppression. -JFK 1962
Thank you to those who took the photos I post (if they're not mine) and of course the writer(s) themselves.
For ten years I've been the only person who has really been put awayÑI mean locked up in real jails, not some fake graffiti jails and not central booking. Seeing how fucked up jail life is, why would someone want to put me in a place where there is so much evil and where I could be killed over a phone or my sneakers. Just because I wrote on some walls and subway cars? Now when I end up getting arrested after getting out of jail the first time, I can't understand why so many people are shocked. If they wanted to teach me a lesson, they would have sent me to school.
Re: N E W Y O R K C I T Y -
03-12-2011, 04:58 PM
