Ramses Barrios

Photo Credit: Joe Budd

“I thought, oh, my God, I'm going to jail”

I'm 37-years-old, I grew up in Visitacion Valley, and my parents are from Panama  

I was around 16 or 17, I got pulled over and I had a zip of weed on me. So I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to jail.

It sounds crazy, but this is the honest truth. The cop’s like, “If you guys don't come up with the weed you all going to jail.”

We was looking at each other like, “Let’s just give him what we got.” It was probably just a little more than a twenty sack.

When we handed it over he asked, “That's all you guys got?” And when I said “yeah” he just took it and walked away. He said he was giving us a warning and we better not be over there again.

We was shocked. We all had weed, all of us. We would have went to jail. I don’t know if he just didn’t want us in that neighborhood, or he was taking other people’s weed like that and selling it or whatever, but it could have been so much worse.

Obviously not a lot of people have been as fortunate. For decades, certain segments of the community have been targeted by the police, and weed is an excuse to stop them and look for other things, or lock them up.

I had a buddy of mines, his uncle had a house in Encino where he used to grow flowers and all that stuff. He had a permit. He took us down there, showed us how to grow the stuff, all that.

My buddy, he started bagging it, and he was moving it, and he got caught with...I think like ten pounds. He went to the Feds for like at least ten years. He wasn't wanting to get high a lot, or hurt anybody, but he was like man, this stuff is money. When you see money like that, especially where we come from, it’s hard to pass it up. But he’s out now,  we’re so happy to have him home.