Pictured: Joker & Lil Wayne
I smoked blunts with Joker the Bailbondsman. Hell, I
smoked a lot of blunts with Joker the Bailbondsman. I smoked so many blunts
with Joker one time at his bullet-pocked crib in Mountain View that I convinced
myself he was going to shoot me. Part of my problem was classic stoner
paranoia. Part of it was that I was wearing a San Bernardino County Sheriff‟s
Deputy uniform in a roomful of poseur gang bangers. The rest was that Joker
had just pulled a pistol and half-jokingly threatened to bust a cap in my ass.His
exact words were, “You put any of that shit I just said in my article and I will most
definitely bust a cap in your peckerwood ass.”Before I explain the sheriff‟s
uniform allow me to break down the context and meaning of the above
statement.“My article” as Joker put it, was a cover story about him later published
in the December 7-13, 2000 edition of the Anchorage Press, a feature length
character sketch of an aspiring hip-hop mogul who rapped about shootouts on
Boniface and selling drugs to “clients in Deadhorse.” Technically it was my
article, not his, since I was the one reporting and writing it. But I don‟t quibble
over semantics when there‟s a gun in my face, so I let it slide.“That shit I just
said” referred to a 20-minute long, rambling, heavy-lidded soliloquy in which
Joker detailed his purported masterminding of a multi-city narcotics trafficking
operation along with his designs to become “the kingpin of coke in Anchorage,
A-K.”Mind you, this was during an interview with a journalist whose microcassette
recorder was positioned amidst marijuana stems, a half-full 40-ounce bottle of
Olde English and three hollow-point bullets on a side table not six inches from
Joker‟s elbow.Homeboy was on the record, bragging about dealing drugs. And I
was sitting there in my cop suit. I‟d purchased it and put it on at Value Village on
my way to interview Joker, thinking it‟d make a sweet Burning Man costume. And
it does. But for interviewing the self-designated godfather of Anchorage gangster
rap it was less than idealWhich brings us back to my peckerwood ass.I‟m pretty
sure the Society of Professional Journalists has a rule or two against smoking
blunts with interview subjects, which is one of many reasons I don‟t belong to the
Society of Professional Journalists. Yet by all but the most conservative ethical
standards of journalism I could have virtuously quoted every single word Joker
said about slinging this and chopping up that.Instead, I wussed out. I didn‟t print
a word of that shit he said. I just hinted at his criminality.Joker has fashioned
himself into [a] Dr. Dre for the 49th state. He owns his own record label, his own
recording studio… He drives a white Mustang packed with boxes of CDs and
posters and stickers and fliers and T-shirts [Uzis on the front, name on the
back]…If you‟re wondering where the money for all this paraphernalia is coming
from, well, don‟t even go there. —“Joker the Bailbondsman: The Blunt Truth,”
December 2000.I didn‟t go there, simply because I didn‟t think bringing the heat
Pictured: Cal Worthington (Appeared in a Joker The Bailbondsman video)
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down on Joker would be such a triumph of investigative journalism that it justified
the risk, having already learned the hard way that antagonizing wannabe
gangster rappers is a risky business. But that‟s another story. Not long after I
finished my story on Joker I moved out of the state and more or less forgot about
him, except for a few occasions over the years when I channel-hopped past one
of his videos on BET (the best of them depicts Joker and his posse cruising with
Cal Worthington in the driver‟s seat of a Lincoln Continental). Then came April 14
of this year, when I was alerted by several friends to a news brief in the
Anchorage Daily News headlined “Local rapper gets 10 years for dealing drugs.”
It reported that 33-year-old local rap artist Sean Sullivan had been sentenced to
a decade in federal prison after being convicted of two counts of distributing
crack cocaine and one count of attempting to distribute crack cocaine. The final
sentence read: “Prosecutors say Sullivan also is known by his recording name
„Joker the Bailbondsman‟ and has recorded songs and videos including „Money
in a Ziploc Bag‟ and „Sex Money Murder Drugs.‟”Subtlety has never been one of
Joker‟s strong points. A few weeks before I interviewed him in 2000, he called
the station line at KFAT and threatened to “bring the pain” if KFAT didn‟t start
playing his tracks. Later that year he showed up for a photo shoot carrying five
handguns, which he insisted on posing with for images to accompany “his”
story.He wanted to be known as a gun-toting badass, a ghetto superstar, a hood
from the hood. But he wasn‟t from the hood. Not even close. Before he
transformed into Joker the Bailbondsman, Sean Sullivan was a privileged kid
growing up in a safe neighborhood. He didn‟t have to deal drugs to survive.
When he went to Wendler Junior High in 1990 he sported a high-top fade, like
Kid from Kid „n‟ Play. That‟s not gangster. Earlier this month I spoke by phone
with Brandi Alfaro, who grew up in Anchorage but now lives in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. She was friends with Joker throughout his adolescence and dated
him for about a year when they were both in their early teens. She told me that
he used to hang out at Skateland, always carrying an album he‟d recorded,
showing off the picture of himself on the cover, talking about how he was going to
be a big hip-hop star when he grew up. That‟s not gangster either.Somewhere
along the line from Skateland to Mountain View, Sullivan invented, and then
became, Joker. And by inhabiting his own hype, he engineered his own
downfall.Joker was born and raised in Anchorage, but he‟s a product of the urban
jungles in his mind, described to him in bedtime stories by Tupac and Biggy and
Ice-Cube, et. al. He was 10 years old when Straight Outta Compton went
platinum. Now he emulates. —“The Blunt Truth”Given our history together, I
wasn‟t exactly shocked to learn that Joker was going to prison for dealing crack.
But I was curious to find out just how close he‟d come to achieving kingpin
status. So I looked up the indictment, pre-sentencing memos, Anchorage Police
Department reports, FBI interview transcripts and various other court and law
enforcement documents related to United States of America vs. Sean A.
Sullivan.From them I drew four conclusions:1) Joker never rose to higher than a
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mid-level dealer.2) Joker should have spent less money on rap videos and more
on lawyers.3) Joker is no snitch.4) Joker is one of the unluckiest crack dealers
ever to sling a rock.The last of these findings I based solely on the outlandish
story of how Joker got busted. It begins on the morning of January 29, 2004,
when a man named Allen Busey showed up at Tyson Elementary School to
confront several children about a fight they‟d recently picked with Busey‟s
children. The school administrators called the cops. Busey, who was wearing a
dark hooded sweatshirt, fled the scene. The responding APD officer at first
decided to locate Busey and issue him a trespass warning. But then APD
dispatch advised that Busey was the subject of an outstanding arrest warrant for
assault and trespassing, information which turned out to be inaccurate. Planning
to arrest Busey, Officer Luis Soto rendezvoused with a second officer outside an
apartment complex on Price Street in Mountain View where Busey lived. They
were about to go in when they received an emergency call and started returning
to their patrol cars.Right then Joker exited the building wearing a gray hooded
sweatshirt.He was 26 years old, 5‟11” and weighed 190 pounds. Busey was 45
years old, 5‟9” and weighed 191 pounds. Beyond the color of their skin, and their
heights and weights, the two men shared little resemblance.Even so, Officer Soto
approached Joker yelling “Allen, Allen!”Despite all the time and money Joker had
spent trying to get famous, he was about to get popped because a police officer
couldn‟t tell one black guy in a hoodie from another.It‟s his life and he‟s starring in
it. The props are all here…even the bullet hole in the wall over his head. There‟s
another in the kitchen and two more in the bedroom. Someone shot the hell out
of Joker‟s place, firing through the windows from the street below…Joker says
the list of suspects is long. “The higher you climb, the more people you leave
behind, and the more jealous they get.” —“The Blunt Truth”According to
police reports and court documents, this is what happened next:Ignoring Officer
Soto, Joker hopped in his car, which was parked on the street. Soto drew his
service revolver. Joker raised his hands but did not comply with Soto‟s orders to
step out of the vehicle. Soto then used his nightstick to break the window. Joker
took his foot off the brake and began to pull away. Officer Soto opened fire,
shooting five bullets into the car. Somehow Joker wasn‟t hit. But he got the
message. He killed the engine and stepped out with his hands up.If Joker had
just said, “I‟m not Allen” and produced identification to prove it, or even if he‟d just
gotten out of the car the first time Soto ordered him to, he might still be smoking
blunts in his recording studio. But his split-second decisions that fateful day were
guided by the unsettling fact that he was in possession of 50 grams of crack
cocaine and 80 grams of powdered cocaine, which the police were about to
find.Joker‟s lawyer tied up the case for a year and a half by challenging the
legality of the search. Then in June 2005, according to a sentencing
memorandum, “the defendant indicated he wanted to cooperate with the United
States.”In other words, Joker offered to become a confidential informant working
for the federal government. “During a debriefing, the defendant provided the
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names of numerous individuals in the Anchorage drug world, including names of
individuals then under investigation,” the sentencing memo reveals. “However,
the defendant stated that because these individuals knew that he had been
charged in federal court, they were hesitant to deal with him.”To provide Joker
with the cover he needed to get back in the dope game, the feds dismissed the
charges against him on evidentiary grounds. “Once the defendant‟s case was
dismissed, he stated that he needed a „cooling off‟ period so that drug traffickers
would trust him again.”One year later, Joker had still provided no useful
information, despite having appeared in rap videos with drug traffickers targeted
by the federal government. Then in October 2006, the FBI cultivated a different
informant who admitted to buying half-ounces and ounces of crack from Joker on
more than 50 occasions since Joker had agreed to become a snitch.Joker was
trying to play the feds. That‟s not smart. But it is gangster.“I know if I‟m going to
make it in this game, I need to have both a business persona and a street
persona. I‟m a capitalist…I just want to be young and rich. That‟s my whole thing
in this.” —“The Blunt Truth”Last November 16 a squadron of federal agents
raided Joker‟s house. By that time, he‟d moved from Mountain View to a cookie
cutter two-story duplex on Mountainman Loop, just off Dowling Road near the
New Seward Highway. They busted down the door with a battering ram and
caught Joker as he ran out of the first floor bathroom. Agents found a wet plastic
bag on the floor of the bathroom next to the toilet. It tested positive for cocaine
residue.Next the agents searched the garage, which had been converted into a
recording studio. They found and catalogued six cell phones, two pagers,
“suspected marijuana,” boxes of video film, stacks of Joker the Bailbondsman
CDs, a box of .38 special blank rounds, two 12-gauge shotgun slugs and a
Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic assault rifle, fully loaded.In the downstairs TV
room, agents found two more cell phones and $4,062.55 in cash stuffed in a
pants pocket. In Joker‟s desk they discovered “possible marijuana blunts,” rolling
papers, a digital scale, and “Western Union receipts with the defendant‟s name.”
Elsewhere they came up with yet another cell phone, another baggie with
cocaine residue and a box of .45 caliber ammunition.According to an FBI report,
“After being arrested, the defendant ominously asked agents if the charges
against him would be dismissed if the informant who had made the purchases
was „unwilling or unavailable to testify.‟”But there would be no testimony or trial,
because Joker pleaded guilty early this year. Then he kept quiet about his
looming incarceration except for a single oblique reference in a February 27 post
to his MySpace page: “Did you know that the U.S. government is lockin up
niggas like they is crazy??? If you in HIPHOP you can make a difference. We
have to make our voices be heard. We have to change the laws!!! We ain‟t
powerless. We have to let Congress know we mean business. I‟m tired of
selective drug enforcement in this nation.”And the federal government was tired
of Joker the Bailbondsman selling drugs and rapping about it.Assistant U.S.
Attorney Frank V. Russo, the lead prosecutor in the case against Joker, says
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Joker “was on my radar screen” as soon as Russo arrived in Alaska in 2002.
“We knew he was a pretty significant street-level dealer,” says Russo. “We didn‟t
target Sean Sullivan because he was Joker the Bailbondsman. We targeted him
because of his associates and the amount of drugs he was dealing,” says Russo.
“But once we entered the sentencing phase, his music and his persona became
a relevant concern. Just as a criminal defense attorney will bring up a
defendant‟s good deeds before the sentencing judge, I brought up the fact that in
this case the defendant had been espousing drug propaganda to the
community.”One week before Joker was sentenced, Russo submitted a blistering
pre-sentencing memorandum. “The defendant‟s stable family history offers no
excuse or explanation for his criminal behavior,” he wrote. “Moreover, the
defendant had an opportunity rarely afforded to defendants charged in federal
court… He had the connections and the personality to be a successful
cooperator, and work off or down the charges against him. Instead he chose to
sell drugs in order to support his music career, favoring the drug traffickers that
appeared in his music videos over his own family. “Ironically, in these videos, the
defendant glorifies drug trafficking with provocative lyrics proclaiming its
profitability and bragging about carrying firearms.” When the judge gave him ten
years at the sentencing hearing, Joker freaked out and had to be subdued by two
Deputy United States Marshals.“Ten years came as a shock to him,” says Russo.
“The hearing finished with him pinned down on the floor. On his way out of the
courtroom he called me a chump. He said, „Are you happy now, chump?‟ I‟d
already told him it was nothing personal.”It‟s hard to understand how Joker
couldn‟t have known he was looking at ten in the pen considering one of the
videos he produced and circulated on the internet in 2006, when he was
supposed to be a federal informant. Titled “Product,” it shows Joker cooking and
sorting crack cocaine while foretelling his own bleak future.“When it‟s time for
sentencing, you know the judge won‟t bend,” he raps. “You‟re caught with crack
and guns, a mandatory minimum ten.”Word.
CREDIT: David Holthouse
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