[gears winding]
[rhythmic ticking]
[whirring gears stop abruptly]
[garbled voices]
- Kalief Browder, thrown in jail
as a 16-year-old high school sophomore.
Now, more than three years later,
this young man is free.
[cell door buzzes]
Criminal charges completely dropped.
- They dismissed the case.
2:00 in the morning?
They release him.
They just give him a MetroCard.
He got nothing.
- He had been away for so long,
and finally he was home.
It was a stranger.
It wasn't like my son was home.
- It was a troubled spirit and soul with him.
- They actually took over three years of my life.
I'm never gonna get those years back.
Never.
- You brought civil suit against the city.
- There was such a reckless disregard for his rights.
- Court delays, solitary confinement.
Every single thing that's wrong with the criminal justice system
is in Kalief's story.
- Someone needs to pay.
- I just grabbed him, and I said,
"You, my son, are a hero."
- It was like one step forward, two steps back.
- Now I'm on TV.
People in my neighborhood think I have money.
- Some guy on his block chased him with the knife.
- He didn't trust anybody.
He felt the police, the government,
everybody was after him.
- He just wasn't all there.
- The paranoia, the memories,
it was just too much.
- He was already a cause,
but people forgot he was a kid.
- 911, what's your emergency?
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[gears whirring]
[tentative music]
♪ ♪
[music builds dramatically]
♪ ♪
[mechanical whirring]
[radio tuning]
- When I first came home from jail,
I felt relieved.
But I feel like I lost my childhood.
You know, I could've graduated back then.
I lost a lot of proms.
I lost a lot of celebrations with my family.
I lost-- I lost a lot, you know?
I feel like...
I don't know.
Like, I know what I feel like, but it's hard to explain.
- Like you're grown-up all of a sudden.
- Yeah.
It's just the transition is crazy.
- When he got out, there was really nothing there
to help him transition.
- People were being left
pretty much stranded once they're released,
not getting the help that they need
to rinse away that trauma of being in jail.
- We drove him to psychosis and then kicked him out the door
and basically said, "Deal with it on your own."
- When Kalief came home, I couldn't believe it.
I was so glad to see him.
He had been away for so long, and finally he was home.
It was a stranger.
It wasn't like my son was home.
The torture he went through at Rikers came home with him.
You--you can't--
You can't escape stuff like that.
- I called my mom and said, "Mom, let me speak to him!
I want to hear from him."
I was like, you know, "How you doing?
How's everything?"
"I'm all right. I'm okay."
That wasn't my brother.
I literally looked at my phone, and I said,
"This is not him. This is a joke."
- I decided to invite, like, a couple people over,
have a little get-together to make him feel love,
to, like, relax, chill.
I tried to bring him as much company as I can
so he could have fun.
[laughter]
He wouldn't talk to nobody.
He wouldn't even come downstairs.
He would just stay to himself.
Sometimes he would be just zoned out.
- Young men who are really damaged,
they're coming home to really damaged environments
having a very difficult time
finding their space in the world
that's traditionally said, "We don't want you."
- I was trying to get a job.
Nobody was giving me any job interviews.
Nobody was giving me any call back.
- Many of these young men are not employable.
- Coming home, you know, I was very discouraged
and sometimes I'm still discouraged.
I don't really think I could make it
like these guys out here.
It's sad to say, you know, I don't really tell
too much people about this, but it's like,
sometimes I talk to myself.
And it's like, it's--it's-- it's actually embarrassing.
Sometimes on the train, and you know,
I have a whole conversation with myself
for like, for 5 to 10 minutes.
The day I caught myself doing it,
I was like, "Wow, like, you're really crazy.
You really talk to yourself."
And people look at me, and they look at me weird,
and it's embarrassing.
You know, before I went to solitary confinement,
you know, I didn't have problems like this.
- He came home, and he would shut the blinds.
He would shut the curtains,
and we would just be in darkness.
- He just acted really strange.
The driveway: he would just walk four corners.
I said, "Kalief, what's wrong with you?"
"Ma, you don't understand.
That's all I was allowed to do."
I said, "Yeah, but you're home now."
- It was not that he just was a troubled child
when he was a kid.
He wasn't.
[hinges squeak]
The torture that he suffered on Rikers,
you can't reverse any of this.
[door clicks shut]
- I got a call from Kalief's brother Akeem.
He called me and said,
"My brother was in Rikers for three years,
and they just released him on a robbery charge."
So that doesn't make sense at all.
Kalief showed up, and he just started talking.
He was really soft-spoken, but you could sense his anger
and his resentment and his pain.
The goal was to go forward
on some type of lawsuit against the city.
And there were a plethora of civil rights violations
in Kalief's case:
the false arrest, the malicious prosecution,
denial of medical needs,
the denial of the right to a fair and speedy trial,
the torture that he endured in solitary confinement.
And that's what we filed
in our lawsuit against the city.
♪ ♪
It was unfathomable that this could happen
to this kid in New York,
not some obscure developing nation
or somewhere you've never heard of.
And then to just let him out
without even any sort of apology.
I reached out to the media.
♪ ♪
- It is an outrageous case of justice derailed.
- Kalief Browder has now filed a civil rights lawsuit.
- You brought a civil suit against the city, the NYPD,
Department of Corrections.
- There was such a reckless disregard for his rights.
- What was bad about this case?
- Hmm. Pretty much everything.
- Claims he was starved and beaten, which prompted him
to try and commit suicide several times.
- And I was missing a lot.
I was missing school.
I wanted to be out there working.
I wanted to be around my family and friends.
And I was getting abused by the COs.
- He filed a civil lawsuit against the NYPD,
the Bronx District Attorney,
and New York Department of Corrections.
- He was suddenly freed with no explanation.
- No apology, no nothing.
They just said, "Oh, case dismissed.
Don't worry about nothing."
What do you mean, "Don't worry about nothing?"
Y'all just took over three years of my life.
I didn't get to go to prom, graduation, nothing.
Those are main years; I'm never gonna get those years back.
Never.
I spent three New Years in there.
- He wanted to tell what goes on there.
And I'm proud of him for doing it.
I worried, though, at the same time
that people would come after him.
That was a fear to me:
somebody there would get angry,
and they all know where he lives.
I have seen cop cars parked down the street
cruise by and look this way.
- At first I didn't believe him
'cause I thought it was just all in his head.
So one day I was like, "Let me go outside with him
to see if he's telling the truth."
And I went outside with him, and I seen it for myself.
I seen the parked car down the block on the corner.
I seen the unlicensed car up the block towards this door,
and I'm like, "Wow, they're really following him."
- He said they were watching him
and listening to everything we say.
And sometimes I'd talk, and he go,
[whispers quietly] "Shh.
Outside. Outside."
Now, with the paranoia setting in,
Kalief didn't trust nobody anymore.
There were times he didn't trust me or anybody in this house.
- It was really, really bad.
- He went through an episode.
He was peeing on the floor.
- He had all of these bottles lined up.
He was talking to them.
- I said, "Ma, call 911.
Kalief is gonna try to kill himself."
[rapid footsteps, phone dialing]
- 911, what's your emergency?
- He's barely breathing. How many times--
[sirens wailing]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- When I first came home,
you know, I tried to kill myself.
It was just a matter of all the stress
and everything I was going through, you know.
The transition of not worrying about bills and having fun,
to just coming home
and just being strictly business is--
I feel like I'm losing my sanity.
I never even got to have my fun.
And it's like--
I don't know. It just brings me down.
- I went to see Kalief.
I spoke with the doctor and said,
"Can I see what kind of medication you're giving him?"
♪ ♪
The doctor sat him down, I was in the room,
and he asked Kalief,
"Well, how does the medication make you feel?"
So Kalief said he don't like it
'cause it makes him feel, like, spaced out.
- They told me, "If you don't take your medication,
you're not going home."
So I guess I have to take my medication.
It was like reality check. You know?
I did all this, I stayed in jail
just to prove I was innocent,
and to just to come home and take your life,
that's when it hit me.
It just woke me up.
I wanted to live.
♪ ♪
I just wanted more for myself.
I feel like I deserve more, and I should've--
I don't know.
Right now, this is Broadway.
I like the environment.
Everybody has a sense of purpose out here.
Everybody that you see out here, they either going to
or they coming from work. You know?
Where I come from, you know, there's not too much of that.
So when I come here it motivates me.
It motivates me to do better.
I have to catch up on my life.
I didn't have anything to my name.
So I enrolled in school so I could get my GED.
- He wanted to change his life.
He wanted to do good.
- Kalief had it in him.
He wanted to go places.
[metallic clattering]
These were some of the books he had read.
And I just assume it was when he was in jail.
"Organized Crime and American Power,"
"48 Laws of Power,"
"House of Bush, House of Saud."
- Now, he's reading that in Rikers Island.
What if he had read that in the 11th grade?
- He was very curious,
very bright.
He wanted to feel normal.
He wanted to feel in control and empowered, you know,
like everyone else making decisions in life.
- Took his GED and passed it on the first try.
- He was trying to make the best of his life.
I said, "What is the next step for you?"
It was really a journey
bringing him to Bronx Community College.
- He started going to Bronx Community.
They became like a family to him.
- I'm majoring in business management,
and probably maybe running my own business one day.
- And he was happy there.
- The first time I met Kalief, he was sitting in the hallway.
He had a notebook and he was writing things down.
I always thought he was very humble, very quiet.
Basically very consistent.
Kalief always--
When Kalief said, "I'm gonna be there," he always was here.
- This...
is his famous bike.
This is how he used to get to BCC every day,
and he was so proud of his bike.
♪ ♪
And everybody used to say, "Oh, here come Kalief,
him and his bike."
He was determined.
When he first started, he didn't know how to write.
He'd say, "Ma, will you help me with this?
Ma, check this for me."
And I would proofread it and everything.
Next thing I know, I felt bad.
He didn't need my help anymore.
He did everything on his own.
That was like a dream come true.
- That was a proud moment for her,
to figure out that one child that had that hard life
is now in college and doing very well.
- When he went to BCC, it was like a new life.
- It's not about what happened in Rikers.
It's what can happen now, and your life can be different.
- Kalief was the humble soul,
very dedicated
to what he wanted to accomplish in life.
But he told me one day, "I don't know myself.
I don't know who I am."
And my only response was,
"Your memories are not serving you.
"You need to re-create new memories.
You need a vacation."
♪ ♪
Go somewhere and just try to
take your mind away from everything.
- Coming out of incarceration, you're confined.
You've got no freedom;
you're not getting much respect.
So I've spent the last two years
developing a program called Rewilding
that's focused on taking formerly incarcerated guys
on life changing adventures.
I flew into New York from Colorado
and spent a week meeting with young men
who were interested in coming on the adventure with us.
- The first person that came to mind
for the director and myself was Kalief.
- [indistinct].
- No, you're cool. Cool.
All right. Sweet.
- Kalief.
- Glad we got that through, the beginning part.
So essentially what I'm gonna do is just
chat with you about, um--
So I sat down with Kalief, you know,
and just, you know, tried to have a conversation with him,
get to know him.
- I would describe myself as,
I don't know; I guess I would say I'm driven.
I just-- I don't know what to say.
- He was just a sweet kid, you know?
Thoughtful.
- As a person I want to grow,
but it's just hard to talk about when, you know,
there's just a lot of stuff I've been through.
I'm trying to get over that stuff.
It's hard. I go to counseling,
and I take medication now.
But I'm just trying to--
I don't know. I don't know.
Stuff is personal.
- Yeah. [indistinct].
There was so much going on inside of him.
And he needs help, and he's asking for help,
and he's looking for help,
- I just feel like me leaving and going somewhere,
maybe I could just, you know,
let it out and leave it there.
[waves crashing]
I would love to learn how to climb rocks.
I would love to learn about everything involved in nature.
I've never did anything like that:
fish, swim, um, make a tent.
I might come back with a whole nother personality,
a whole nother me, or a whole nother outlook on life.
- I immediately knew that this is
probably the guy we needed to bring.
But there is this caveat that we expressed to him
and made clear that, you know,
"Even if you do end up
"getting selected to come on this trip,
"it's not gonna happen for, you know,
six to eight months."
There was disappointment.
I think his need for relief was more immediate.
♪ ♪
- I used to watch movies and TV.
I'd see people in Paris
or London
or Africa,
and I see pyramids.
When I see it in the movies like that,
you gotta get stressed out.
I just be like, "I'll never be able to do that stuff."
Like, sometimes I think like that.
But I don't know.
[siren wails distantly]
[clock hand clicks]
[ominous music]
- We were possibly on a track to settle the case,
getting some of the discovery from the city,
and obviously, we were in shock by what was saw
in terms of the records
and some of the stuff that the city had turned over.
He wanted to get out there and tell the story.
He thought that was important.
- I meet lots of people whose lawyers tell me,
"You gotta hear my client's case."
When I actually met Kalief Browder,
my entire world changed.
You're a better man than me.
You made a decision that you were gonna fight this.
- That's correct.
- How'd you come to that conclusion?
- Because I know deep down inside in my heart,
I didn't do it.
But a lot of people aren't strong.
They would take the plea deal and take it
knowing that they didn't do it.
And that happens every day.
Happens every day, so I just--I don't know.
- Jennifer, could you tell us how it is
that you came to write the story about Kalief Browder
and how that story unfolded?
- Kalief filed a civil suit against New York City
and got a tiny bit of press. And in early 2014,
I thought maybe I would write about him.
But I ended up meeting him and sitting down with him
and at this point, he was 20, about to turn 21
and told him I wanted to write a story about him
and asked him if he wanted to be written about,
and, uh, and he did.
[mysterious music]
♪ ♪
- Jennifer Gonnerman, it was a blockbuster story--
a really important story.
- He spent three years on Rikers Island
trapped there without having been convicted of a crime.
- A "New Yorker" profile is not just any kind of journalism.
It's the top of New York investigation.
- How did he become the face of this story?
- Almost everything that could go wrong
in the criminal justice system had happened to him.
- Jennifer, how does this happen in America?
We have a constitution.
You have a right to a speedy trial.
- Reality is that the media has a very tough job
of telling big stories.
You think about what's going on in Syria.
You have, you know,
hundreds of thousands of people that get killed;
it's just a number.
Then you see one baby wash up on a beach,
and the whole world goes crazy.
In some ways, Kalief was
the baby that washed up on the beach.
- I read a piece in "The New Yorker."
I just felt compelled to meet with him,
have a conversation with him,
tell him I'm proud of him
and I'm sorry that this happened to him
and just encourage him to keep moving forward.
[camera shutter clicks]
He walked in the door,
and I'm like, "How you doing? How you feeling?
I'm really proud of you for everything
that you went through in this ordeal
and standing up for yourself and what you believe in
and having your fortitude to continue on.
[camera shutter clicks]
- I read the article in "The New Yorker"...
[camera shutter clicks]
And it blew my mind.
What's the worst thing you could ever think
that could happen to a child?
That is it.
[camera shutter clicks]
And I looked at the picture of his face,
and I was like, "Oh, I gotta help this kid."
I called Paul, and I said, "I wanna help him.
How can I help him?"
He started telling me about what he was planning to do,
and eventually, we booked him.
Please welcome Kalief Browder.
[applause]
That's right.
[applause continues]
How are you?
Excited about this show or a little nerve-racking?
- A little nerve-racking.
- Right.
I went into the dressing room,
and I just grabbed him
and I held his face in my hands
and I said, "You survived the unsurvivable,
"and you are here to talk about it.
"And there are people like me who you don't know
who will do everything they can to help you."
You found it inside of you to say no.
- Right.
- Where do you think that came from?
- It came from within.
It's like, that's my feelings.
And it's--
You know, everything I've been through in there, and it's like,
"You want me to just walk away like it's okay?"
It's not okay. - Yeah.
- You know, that's not okay.
- You are really a hero,
and I wanted you to know that and to feel that.
[applause]
And you're going to college now?
- Yes.
[applause]
- We got you a little something.
[applause] We knew you didn't [indistinct].
Got you just a little laptop for you
so that you can work your way up.
Just to get what you need to get.
- Thank you. Thank you.
- And we want you to keep in touch
because, uh, we care about you.
I love you; I'm gonna give you a kiss.
[applause]
- There'd be so much stuff going on,
so many people trying to contact him,
so many people trying to ask him to interview.
It felt surreal.
- This is a letter to Kalief.
"Dear Kalief,
"I want to encourage you
to continue pursuing your dreams."
"As Michelle Alexander points out
"in her book 'The New Jim Crow,'
what happened to you is not unique."
- Kalief's story was not terribly unusual,
but I was moved because
it's impossible not to be moved if you really listen
and really open your heart to stories like this.
[leaves rustling]
- Somebody told me, "Can you please go to 'The New Yorker'
and read the story about him?"
[deep breath]
That was hard.
He asked that we didn't share it with the school,
you know, which was difficult to contain,
you know, because now it's in the public eye.
- I'm in the public eye.
You know, when your name's in the newspaper,
your face is on TV, it's stressful.
All the sudden, you feel very exposed;
you feel vulnerable.
- The people on campus would have him come
meet with the presidents and vice presidents,
and he would be aggravated.
He didn't like the attention.
And he didn't want the attention.
He didn't want fame.
He wanted justice.
♪ ♪
- I don't really think Kalief understood.
And I was just like, "It's gonna be a lot of questions.
"They have to take this testimony from you.
'Cause all they've seen is the Kalief Browder on TV."
He was nervous.
He wasn't sure what to expect.
And then, like, almost immediately,
she got into asking him, like,
what his attendance record was in kindergarten.
You know, which was like, "What?"
- Who was your math teacher?
What was your favorite subject in ninth grade?
Did you cut classes?
Tell me one thing you learned in sociology.
What kind of sports do you like to play?
Tackle football?
What kind of Bible study was it?
Do you want to tell me about that?
I see you're wearing beads around your neck.
You're not Catholic, are you?
- He started having this paranoid delusion.
- Yesterday I just felt like everybody was watching me.
They're trying to put me back in jail.
- He went off about people on Facebook that weren't real.
- I talked to some of my friends, and it's not them.
The whole time I'm talking to them thinking they're real,
and they're not real.
- Now, he just wasn't all there.
- Some days he would question who I was.
He would say, "I know who you are.
You're working with the FBI."
And I'm like, "What are you talking about?"
- He said, "Miss, I know who you are.
I know who you are."
- I didn't notice at first,
but I believe honestly they are cops.
- "Miss, are you bringing the police to my house?
"Miss, where are you?
Miss Frida, where are you?"
- Even in my classroom.
I know they're in my classroom.
I feel it.
I can tell.
They stand out.
- He goes to his neighborhood.
People look at him like, "Man, you're fronting.
We know who you are."
- Now I'm on TV.
People in my neighborhood, they think that I have money.
- Some guy on the block,
he approached Kalief in an offensive way.
Kalief approached back,
and I think they started fighting.
And then he just shot Kalief.
[gunshot]
[siren wails]
- Kalief got shot in the stomach.
It was a train wreck.
[siren wails]
- After "The View," we stayed in touch.
One day I hadn't heard from him in a while,
and I kept saying to Paul, "What's going?"
And then he called me up and said he was shot.
And I said, "What?"
♪ ♪
- You know, there was just a trail of bad luck,
bad people, demons.
You know, he always said he was cursed.
Like, tormented.
♪ ♪
- So then he came home, and he went Christmas shopping.
And he went shopping to buy his mother a Christmas present.
He said he bought, you know, a set of pots and pans
'cause he knows I like to cook.
And he was downtown.
He had a lot of bags.
And he said "Mommy, nobody would stop to give me a ride."
He said he tried to get a cab.
- Let's see how long it takes a black to get a yellow taxi.
Hello? Hello?
You drove right by me. - I didn't see you, sir.
- No, you did see me. How come you didn't pick me up?
You didn't see me waving at you?
- Something would trigger him,
then he would go into that dark place.
He ended up in a building and he went to the top floor,
and he was preaching about cops and the internet
and how they're watching; you gotta be careful.
Somebody called the cops.
The cops came and he wouldn't stop rambling on,
so they took him to the psych ward at Harlem Hospital.
[mysterious music]
♪ ♪
The doctor called him in and he asked Kalief,
"Well, Kalief, how does the medicine make you feel?"
So Kalief said he didn't like it
because it made him walk around like in a haze like a zombie.
♪ ♪
- Please give our best regards to the young man.
We hope that he'll continue to heal.
- He's had setbacks.
He's been hospitalized since his, uh--
since his release from jail,
but he's making progress
and taking each day as it comes.
- Out here in New York City, you know, I'm struggling.
And just being in counseling, and--
I don't know.
- I mean, for the first two hours.
You know, 'cause you go in there
because you stressed or depressed,
so you talk your problems out.
And, you know, it's soothing
and it's comforting, but it after it's over,
you know, it's like you're walking right back into reality.
Talking doesn't solve your problem.
I just feel as if
me leaving and going somewhere
and getting some air
and instead of thinking about jail
and what was done to me
and what I saw and stuff like that in there is the--
you know, just an escape of what I see every day
and to do something new, I feel,
would be, you know...
a reliever to me.
It would be-- it would bring a relief.
That's how I feel about it.
♪ ♪
- Rock climbing, skylining, camping in general
was a golden opportunity
for Kalief to get his mind away from everything
and get a refreshed idea
of what life was supposed to be like.
- Reached out to Kalief, and, you know,
we had this conversation, you know, on the phone,
and he's like, "I do wanna go. I do.
"You know, but there's questions.
"I'm having this conversation with my lawyer,
"and he's making me concerned, like,
maybe it's not gonna be the best thing to do."
- What day is that?
You know, and he was going through a rough time.
I told him, like, "Look.
"Just keep yourself together.
"Just hang in there.
You can do any of that stuff afterwards."
- You know, his lawyer didn't want him
to go on this adventure.
I guess at the end of the day,
um, Kalief, you know, took that advice.
- He knew people supported him.
But until the city had took some accountability
and admitted wrongdoing,
he wouldn't get justice.
I didn't want her to keep jurying this through.
Ideally, a settlement would have allowed him
to put all this behind him
and maybe start fresh.
And all the bad things that were following him,
maybe there'll be an end
and some sort of closure and everything.
- Good morning, Mr. Browder.
- Good morning.
- Would you like for me to go over the rules again?
- I know you need his words under oath.
I understand that.
But talk to whoever you have to talk to,
and let's start discussing settlement.
- Kalief never really cared about money.
I asked him; I said,
"If you were a millionaire, what would you do?"
"Um...I don't know what to do.
What would you do?" was his response.
♪ ♪
He needed to get away from it all.
There was so much stuff going on.
Something told me to go check on him.
And I asked him; I said, "Are you all right?"
And he asked me, "Can I see your phone?"
And he said, "You wanna see something?"
- Jennifer Gonnerman and "The New Yorker"
recently released surveillance footage
showing some of the abuse that Browder endured.
- We turn right now to explosive video
depicting violence inside
New York City's Rikers Island jail.
- Footage like this never, ever comes out.
It's not as if this was shot by some kind of camera crew.
This is what goes on when nobody is looking.
- And by the way, how did you get this video?
- You know, I can't really get into how I got it,
except that--
- He explained every moment of that tape
as if he was replaying
that event over in his head.
I never saw no one shake as much as he was shaking
as he was watching that video.
The pain that he experienced is unique.
♪ ♪
There's no one that could identify
with someone who experienced
such an injustice
that the world
is affected by it.
[clock hand squeaks]
- I remember when we had a race on the campus,
and we had to be here at 8:00 in the morning.
He was here at 7:00 in the morning.
And he's like, "I'm ready."
He ran 5 miles, came first.
He couldn't even breathe.
Bent down, grabbed his knees and said, "Miss, I can't!"
[laughs] But he did it.
Even if it was going to kill him,
he was gonna finish,
and he was gonna finish first.
It was a happy day.
- Yep. - Yep.
♪ ♪
- Even though he had taken some steps forward,
he was constantly taking steps back at the same time.
- It was a troubled spirit and soul with him.
I asked about his neighborhood, and just--
we spoke about just being uncomfortable.
- He came to school with a big mark.
He explained to me it was some guy on his block
that asked him what happened with the case.
He told him, "I don't want to talk about it."
He said the guy ran upstairs, got a knife,
chased him with the knife; the guy came over him.
He literally had to hold the guy's hand
so that he won't stab him in his face.
♪ ♪
- Kalief just thought he was cursed.
♪ ♪
And he couldn't overcome his nightmares.
Even when he was back in the Bronx,
it might as well have just been Rikers.
- This dude, he had beef with Kalief.
And he said, "I know you have money.
Give it up, give it up."
I'm like, "What are you talking about, bro?"
One of them threw me to the ground;
another one took my wallet and ran off.
Kalief, well, he was like, "Show me where they at."
Like he wanted to fight.
So I told him, like, "Come on, Kalief,
let's go, let's go, let's go."
Next thing you know, the cops is coming.
They threw me to the ground.
My face on the pavement.
I knew Kalief was getting out of hand.
Once they tried to put the cuffs on him,
it just brought back flashbacks.
Well, they took us to the precinct,
and they charged us with resisting arrest.
Once we was in Central Booking,
he just started pacing back and forth,
and I could see it in his eyes, like,
Rikers is just flicking in his head over and over
like this is the first step.
It's like he's reliving his thing all over again.
All he kept worrying about was school, school, school.
"I gotta make it to school."
Once Prestia came and got us,
he just went straight to school.
♪ ♪
- He had a situation where he had to go back to court.
And, um, his demeanor just literally dropped
like his whole soul left him.
- Not too long after Kalief was arrested,
I had a call from one of the attorneys for the city.
I was just calling to follow up.
It wasn't their prerogative to settle the case.
This was the city that [bleep] him.
And now they were doing it again:
dragging this case out,
doubting him,
being cynical,
saying to me, "Maybe he wasn't a good kid.
"Maybe he did do something wrong.
Maybe he did rob that guy."
What?
Dude, they [bleep] dismissed the case.
It's not even an issue.
♪ ♪
He was frustrated.
He was like, "When can I move on from this?
Now they don't believe me?"
- Good morning, Mr. Browder.
So as you're aware,
this is our third day of deposition
in this matter.
- There were a lot of questions asked over and over,
as to the way that he actually hung a noose
around his neck in solitary.
- So which did you do first?
Did you tie it around your neck or around the ceiling first?
How many times did you knot it?
- About once or twice.
- Was it loose around your neck,
tight around your neck?
- The attorney was really hammering him
about these suicide attempts,
you know, almost as if she didn't believe him.
- And how did you tie it around your neck?
- I tied it around my neck in a knot...
- How did you do it?
- Wrapped it around my neck and then I made a knot.
- That's a really sensitive thing to question,
if somebody's actually gonna kill themselves.
- Kalief, I'm walking you through this step by step,
and you have said five or more times
that as soon as we looped it through you tied it
and then you tied it to your neck.
It's not making sense to me.
- I hadn't seen him that angry in while.
They were implying that he was lying
when all he's done this entire time is be truthful.
Maybe one day it'll all make sense.
[hissing, garbled voices]
- He was reading messages every 15 minutes.
He kept saying, "Ma, they after me."
Whatever it was, it terrified him.
And he tried showing a message to me,
but I didn't see what he saw.
Kalief doesn't cry,
but his eyes started to fill up with tears
and he was terri--
whatever these messages were.
He's, "Ma, they warned-- they said they warned me,
"and I didn't listen, so my life is over.
They're coming after me."
The next morning, I made breakfast.
Kalief don't turn down food.
But this particular morning, he said,
"No, I'm good, Ma. You eat it."
- He was like "Kamal, where you going?"
I'm like, "I'm going to orientation for a job."
He gave me a hug; he was like "Yo,
"I'm proud to call you my brother.
You're doing something with your life."
He never did that.
- Kalief came in the room.
He said, "Ma, are you all right?"
I said, "Yeah, I'm okay."
I heard all this moving upstairs.
All of a sudden, I hear...
boom!
[siren wails distantly]
When I opened the back door, I saw him hanging.
I screamed, and I called 911.
Before they took him away,
I asked them, "Could I at least give him
a last kiss good-bye?"
[sobbing]
And I kissed him on his cheek,
and his-- his face was all swollen.
[sniffles]
And that was it.
Then they took him away.
[sniffles]
[siren wailing distantly]
[sniffles]
[sighs]
[siren wailing]