Leroy Smith is 48 and he has a story to tell. It’s not one that makes easy reading, especially if you are unfamiliar with the south London estates in which he grew up or the prisons he came to know at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Smith’s life was a rampage of crime and guns, robberies and jailbreaks, drugs and women – until it all came to an end in the US in 1994 when he was arrested by an FBI Swat team. “The game and the party were finally over,” he says.
Now out of jail, he is trying to start again from nothing, knowing that the forces that drew him into a life of violence in the first place are – in some respects – even stronger than before.
He believes he can resist them – but he can see the pressures that pushed him into a nihilistic life doing the same to a new generation of black kids.
So he has written a book, Out of the Box, and he hopes to speak to community groups and schools about the mistakes he made, and how to avoid repeating them.
But finding a new role is tough, and the message he has is as brutal as the life he once lived. As he says in his book: “That was my life – fast and very reckless – a road that I would not advise anyone to go down, because it is very addictive and it can only end badly.
“It hurts me to see that after 20 years, a large majority of young black guys still think the road is paved with gold,” he says. “Let me tell you brother, from the heart, you are only fooling yourself. These are not the words of a broken man, these are the words of a wise man.”
It is a wonder Smith is alive at all. His mother was murdered when he was two and by the age of 12 he was bunking off school, driving stolen cars, thieving and smoking weed.
Things took a more serious turn after he started carrying a gun. “One one occasion I pulled it on somebody as a joke and I was totally surprised at the fear in the person and the power that I felt. This was a turning point in my mindset.”
Out of the Box describes in a matter-of-fact way his spiral into ever more serious crime. It is neither glamorous, or glamorised. The gun wasn’t just a weapon, it was his everything: a tool for work, a passport into certain circles, the thing that kept him alive but constantly close to death.
Smith had access to large amounts of cash from drug deals, so as long as he kept one step ahead of the law, and any rivals, he was succeeding after a fashion.
But it couldn’t last, and it didn’t. On the run after shooting two police officers in Brixton’s Coldharbour Lane in March 1994, he fled to Holland and then the US, where he was eventually arrested and brought back to the UK for an Old Bailey trial.
The judge told him that “dreadful crimes must attract dreadful sentences” – and he was given 25 years. He now lives in west London, his home surrounded by CCTV cameras.
He wants to get away from his old life, but there are people out there who’d still do him harm. “My friends from back then? They are all gone. They have either washed up dead, or they don’t know themselves anymore. Yeah, I’m surprised I am still alive. I was a BAD man. Was it really worth it? It was not. I never sailed into the sunset.”
His message is directed at young black men who, like him, see themselves at a bottom of a pile and believe a shortcut to equality in an unfair society can come through crime.
“I can stand in front of kids and tell them I learned the hard way. I have been through all these different situations, all these different scenarios, and it has taken its toll.
“I did not get an education. I was too eager and willing to do things my way. I look at these street gangs in London and they are worse than ever.
“I say to them, why are you killing your brother? Why are you killing him over a postcode? The white man is laughing at you, and at the end of it all, you are going to get killed.
“Go to college. Live your life in a non-violent way. Don’t get confused, don’t get caught up in it. I say to people, empower yourself. Going down that route, you cannot win.”
Smith does not ask for sympathy, nor does he try to blame anyone for his predicament.
The stories he tells of what goes on behind bars are remarkable; an ecosystem of criminality that the prison service cannot challenge because it has neither the resources nor the appetite.
“Be shocked,” says Smith. “It’s shocking. I don’t mind if you are disgusted. It’s disturbing.”
What he wants is an opportunity to try again.
“All I am doing is putting my life story out there in the hope that it prevents anybody else, especially underprivileged black young men, from taking the same path.
“Because I am an observer of mankind, I am able to translate my life story into a book, so I can die as an author and not as a gunman, or criminal, with no redeeming features. I deserve another chance just like anybody else.”
