"White Boy Rick" Wershe [To be Released July 20]

[Django]

OMG. Yeah, he'll mentor them into a life in crime which they don't need any more inspiration to do in Detroit. Warsaw you really are brilliant. Maybe he'll get out and rent the flat next to you and run his business out of it. A couple of stray bullets through your bedroom wall in the middle of the night might change your mind. You should find some of the people who lived in the 7 and Gratiot neighborhood that he and his tribe destroyed and ask their opinion.

So you think Rick Wershe would automatically go back to selling drugs if he was let out of prison, I think thats a bunch of BS. The guy has no reason to go back to dealing cocaine and would be the stupidest things a man could do. He has Hollywood looking into his story for a movie, he wont have a hard time making a comfortable living. What he will be worried about is retribution from people that are keeping him locked up and are afraid of what he's going to say if and when he gets out, worried for his life. This kid at the time was used by the DEA and Detroit cops and then screwed. Ive been in touch with the man through letters and I can say he is no hardened gangster but just a kid who took a wrong path because he happened to have connections that offered easy money. If you want to point a finger at why 7 and Gratiot and many other places in Detroit are in ruins look a little harder because the real reason things are so shitty is because of the war on drugs. Drugs are a commodity that will always be for sale one way or another, legal or illegal. When they are illegal they flow through the black market unregulated and causing violence. Street thugs are not a responsible bunch and will do what they have to distribute them to make fast money at a huge markup. Locking non violent people up has done nothing, the war on drugs has caused more problems than its solved. "There is no war on drugs because you cannot war on inanimate objects. There is only a war on addicts. Which means we are warring on the most abused and vulnerable segments of society" Dr. Gabor Mate.

[detroitsgwenivere]

OMG. Yeah, he'll mentor them into a life in crime which they don't need any more inspiration to do in Detroit. Warsaw you really are brilliant. Maybe he'll get out and rent the flat next to you and run his business out of it. A couple of stray bullets through your bedroom wall in the middle of the night might change your mind. You should find some of the people who lived in the 7 and Gratiot neighborhood that he and his tribe destroyed and ask their opinion.

Just how long is someone supposed to sit in jail for selling drugs when they are 15-16 years old? Glad you weren't my judge when I got busted as a teen. Now, I'm an elected person [[not that important though), gainfully employed and financially supporting other Detroiters, participating in my community and trying to mentor my family's teens to go a different route than my friends and I did. It's been almost 20 years since that happened and if it were up to you I'd still be sitting in the clank next to Rick. What if Rick is given the same opportunity I got and takes off running with it? Helping to save the lives of young people who look up to him whether you like it or not? Worst case scenario, he violates parole and ends up back in jail. Or he ends up dead for doing the one thing many on this forum support, snitching.

[Danny]

No thanks to White Boy Rick most of Northeast side Detroit is turn a desolate urban prarie. He will not be released! His prison will be his tomb!

[Django]

Danny, read my post #101 and then respond. I thought I had a pretty clear argument as to why the streets of Detroit are the way they are. Supply and demand. Your not going to stop it, its something that needs to be dealt with. I have faith he will be released, as he should be. No good is coming of keeping him locked up or the other thousands of people in prison for non violent crimes. Legalize, regulate, distribute responsibly, and tax. On top of that with all the money saved and made we could offer treatment on demand instead of just throwing them in a cage and throwing away the key, thats just barbaric.

[Wheels]

Danny, read my post #101 and then respond. I thought I had a pretty clear argument as to why the streets of Detroit are the way they are. Supply and demand. Your not going to stop it, its something that needs to be dealt with. I have faith he will be released, as he should be. No good is coming of keeping him locked up or the other thousands of people in prison for non violent crimes. Legalize, regulate, distribute responsibly, and tax. On top of that with all the money saved and made we could offer treatment on demand instead of just throwing them in a cage and throwing away the key, thats just barbaric.

How can you and others here call this a non violent crime? Thousands died life's were ruined and there are still Crack Babies from that era causing violence on the streets of Detroit!

[Meddle]

Can somebody lock this thread and end this nonsense?

[Dbest]

Danny, read my post #101 and then respond. I thought I had a pretty clear argument as to why the streets of Detroit are the way they are. Supply and demand. Your not going to stop it, its something that needs to be dealt with. I have faith he will be released, as he should be. No good is coming of keeping him locked up or the other thousands of people in prison for non violent crimes. Legalize, regulate, distribute responsibly, and tax. On top of that with all the money saved and made we could offer treatment on demand instead of just throwing them in a cage and throwing away the key, thats just barbaric.

This is so true, not to mention the numerous examples of our government/military facilitating large shipments of narcotics into this country. Baton Rouge, Nena[[Arkansas), L.A. and who knows where else? Or the explosion of poppy production coming from Afghanistan post U.S. invasion, they went from exporting 20% of the world's supply pre invasion to 80% in the year following.

BTW...Your figure of 3o,ooo cartel related deaths in Mexico is no doubt astounding. This whole thing is ridiculous.

[Django]

How can you and others here call this a non violent crime? Thousands died life's were ruined and there are still Crack Babies from that era causing violence on the streets of Detroit!

Of course there is no perfect answer to addiction other than treatment. Locking people up has done nothing in the 40 years of the drug war, we have only become the most incarcerated country on earth. Like Ive said, supply and demand of drugs will always rule. Locking people up does nothing except drive the price of illegal drugs upward. Drugs should be regulated, dispensed properly, taxed and with the money saved from not arresting, prosecuting, and jailing people we could be offering substance abuse treatment on demand. This could all be done while taking away the violence that occurs because of the drug war between cartels and street thugs fighting over territory. Surely anyone these days can see the mistakes we have made keeping drugs illegal. If you do not you will soon. Times are finally changing. Obama has made some strides in reducing mandatory minimum sentences and is expected to release possibly thousands of non violent offenders, many of whom are women caught up in the drug business of their then boyfriends, often time not even knowing what they were doing. Wheels, drugs will always be a scourge but its the addiction that needs to be tended to not the supply. Drugs will always be available, addiction will always be a problem, we will never be able to jail our way out of the problem. Did locking Rick Wershe solve anything? Did locking up a million other drug offenders solve anything? The issue is addiction, and prevention, again we will never jail our way out of the problem of drugs. Its time for everyone to start looking at a different solution. Should I start in on privatized prisons? Dbest, you are correct, from heroin coming in from Asia through Air America to Cocaine through the CIA in the Reagan 80s to fund the Contra war, and most likely now heroin from Afghanistan, at the very least our troops protecting poppy fields. Drugs are a solid commodity that will not be ignored.

[Danny]

Danny, read my post #101 and then respond. I thought I had a pretty clear argument as to why the streets of Detroit are the way they are. Supply and demand. Your not going to stop it, its something that needs to be dealt with. I have faith he will be released, as he should be. No good is coming of keeping him locked up or the other thousands of people in prison for non violent crimes. Legalize, regulate, distribute responsibly, and tax. On top of that with all the money saved and made we could offer treatment on demand instead of just throwing them in a cage and throwing away the key, thats just barbaric.

Everyone on the northeast side of Detroit from Mohican Regent to the 5 Richvilles knows about White Boy Rick. Everyone fear that kid. Just as other tribes in South Africa feared king Chaka Zulu. He was indeed a drug kingpin working for the Curry Bros. and the Best Friends, 'Murder to hire gang'. Anyone living in the area fears White Boy Rick will die! I'm glad the FBI got rid of him and he's in prison. The FBI will never let him out for fears that his sell drugs again, or get himself killed for snitching against his friends. White Boy Rick wanted to be a thug for he sees criminal acts in the his hood before it became a wreck ghetto. He is broken kid, coming from a broken home and hanging with the wrong crowd and getting to those cliques and start selling drugs from Harper Ave. to Kelly Rd., Whittier St., up to E. 7 Mile Rd. and Gratiot Ave. He destroyed parts of Morningside and turn certain parts of what it used to be Detroit's Little Italy into an urban prarie. Now its a mess no thanks to him. Let his prison be his tomb forever!

[Django]

Oh yeah, "Everyone fear that kid" Rick Wershe was some kind of dangerous white thug at 16 years old? Give me a break. Now you just pointed yourself out as a troll. For the rest of you heres a clip of the next story at 11 pm tonight. http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/w...olice/31094404

[Dbest]

i watched the first part of the series. What i find unconscionable is hiring a MINOR[[14 yr old) to do your dirty work. The records of payment were shown. I'm pretty sure it's against the law nonetheless... This is how the DEA seems to work, break tons of laws to get drug convictions. This being a glaring example with them pimping out a 14 yr old. The reasons for White boy still being in jail look to be far ranging unfortunately...

Django your link came back 401, heres a fixed link to part 1...
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/w...olice/31094404

[Django]

Thank you Dbest, Ill edit the link. I believe Ricks father was already an informant and gave permission to the Feds to use him. But no doubt that he was used and thrown away. After Rick was shot apparently the Feds backed off of him, I would imagine for fear of a lawsuit for using an minor to make drug busts. Could you imaging being that young and handling millions in cash and drugs, being told to do it by people you should think of as mentors, people who are supposed to set a high standard.

[DaveyM]

No thanks to White Boy Rick most of Northeast side Detroit is turn a desolate urban prarie. He will not be released! His prison will be his tomb!

Rick will be released. Rick dealt drugs on his own for 11 months after he stopped working as an undercover operative for a drug task force. While his actions didn't help Detroit he has hardly responsible for the downfall of the east side. "Criminal defense attorney Steve Fishman wrote this column in response to a column by Deadline Detroit's Allan Lengel, who insisted that the Michigan Parole Board is committing a crime by keeping Richard "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr. behind bars for 26 years. Wershe was convicted of cocaine trafficking as a teenager and was sentenced to life without parole under a law that mandated the unparolable sentence if caught with more than 650 grams of cocaine. The law was later changed and he was re-sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
Fishman authored a letter to the administration of Gov. Jennifer Granholm on behalf of a group of people pushing for clemency for Wershe. Wershe was never a client, and Fishman did not know him while he was on the streets. Fishman said it was just the right thing to do to advocate for his release.

By Steve Fishman
To my knowledge, Rick Wershe is the only person in Michigan still serving a life sentence for possession of over 650 grams. Everyone else, including at least one of my clients who was also a teenager at the time of the crime, has received parole since the drug statute changed.
Those of us who are old enough can recall the media hoopla when a 17-year old white kid with the media-friendly nickname "White Boy Rick" was alleged to be the capo di tutti capi of all the drug lords in Detroit in the mid-to late 80s.
As a lawyer who represented many of the guys who were in fact the top dogs in the drug business in those days, the notion that a 17-year old kid - black, white, or purple - could have been the boss of those grown men is so ridiculous as to deserve no further comment. And to suggest, as the Parole Board spokesman did in the article, that Rick Wershe's situation is comparable to other lifers - most of them serving sentences for violent crimes - is an insult to our collective intelligence.
Given the number of people supporting parole for Rick Wershe, including police officers, federal agents, prosecutors, and lawyers, the only possible explanation for his continued incarceration is a lack of guts on the part of the Parole Board.
It is long past time for the Board to recognize, as so many people involved in law enforcement already have, that the time has come to grant him a parole." - http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/artic...k#.VJNVpWYo7IU

[DaveyM]

How can you and others here call this a non violent crime? Thousands died life's were ruined and there are still Crack Babies from that era causing violence on the streets of Detroit!

If you want to use that analogy then we may as well senf those who sell booze to prison for life. Rick hasn't sold or touched an illegal drug in almost 3 decades. He's not responsible for the actions of others.

[DaveyM]

So you think Rick Wershe would automatically go back to selling drugs if he was let out of prison, I think thats a bunch of BS. The guy has no reason to go back to dealing cocaine and would be the stupidest things a man could do. He has Hollywood looking into his story for a movie, he wont have a hard time making a comfortable living. What he will be worried about is retribution from people that are keeping him locked up and are afraid of what he's going to say if and when he gets out, worried for his life. This kid at the time was used by the DEA and Detroit cops and then screwed. Ive been in touch with the man through letters and I can say he is no hardened gangster but just a kid who took a wrong path because he happened to have connections that offered easy money. If you want to point a finger at why 7 and Gratiot and many other places in Detroit are in ruins look a little harder because the real reason things are so shitty is because of the war on drugs. Drugs are a commodity that will always be for sale one way or another, legal or illegal. When they are illegal they flow through the black market unregulated and causing violence. Street thugs are not a responsible bunch and will do what they have to distribute them to make fast money at a huge markup. Locking non violent people up has done nothing, the war on drugs has caused more problems than its solved. "There is no war on drugs because you cannot war on inanimate objects. There is only a war on addicts. Which means we are warring on the most abused and vulnerable segments of society" Dr. Gabor Mate.

Well said!

[DaveyM]

Thank you Dbest, Ill edit the link. I believe Ricks father was already an informant and gave permission to the Feds to use him. But no doubt that he was used and thrown away. After Rick was shot apparently the Feds backed off of him, I would imagine for fear of a lawsuit for using an minor to make drug busts. Could you imaging being that young and handling millions in cash and drugs, being told to do it by people you should think of as mentors, people who are supposed to set a high standard.

True but I just want to clarify that Rick was not handling millions of dollars in case and/or drugs. He didn't even make 1 million dollars in the few short years he was involved in drugs. After he stopped working as an informant he continued to dealing drugs for 11 months before being arrested for the charge that sent him to prison for life.
I also want to point out that the police and Feds started meeting with Rick with his father present but then started meeting with him alone. The last part is illegal.

[DaveyM]

FYI - The 3rd report [[out of 5) on Rick's case will air on Channel 4 during their 11 pm tonight [[Wednesday, Feb. 11th). Their website will put up a video of the segment after it airs.

"Hear from a new voice in the White Boy Rick story - Tonight at 11 p.m. - A retired parole board member is breaking his silence to Defender Kevin Dietz." - http://www.clickondetroit.com/statio...story/31196854

[DaveyM]

Part 4 http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/w...arole/31343512

[DaveyM]

"Jeff Robinov’s Studio 8 has acquired White Boy Rick, a spec script by Logan and Noah Miller that is inspired by the story of Richard Wershe Jr. At the age of 14, Wershe became an undercover informant for local and federal law enforcement agencies in the mid-80s, and grew in that role enough to establish himself as a major drug dealer. He went from being an asset to an eyesore for law enforcement in the drug trafficking wars, and he was brought down in 1988–found with 17 pounds of coke at age 17–and sentenced to life without parole. The baby-faced felon has been in jail 27 years. The questions: how culpable was law enforcement in turning out a youngster who dropped out of ninth grade to provide intel to law enforcement, and why is he still serving time when the law he was convicted under is no longer on the books? This becomes the second major studio project on Wershe, as Universal Pictures, director Joseph Kosinski and Scott Stuber’s Bluegrass are developing a drama on the same subject." - https://deadline.com/2015/02/white-b...al-1201375066/

[DaveyM]

"Richard "White Boy Rick" Wershe Jr., who was convicted of cocaine trafficking as a teenager, and has been behind bars for 26 years, says he can't get paroled because he cooperated with authorities and went up against Detroit's power structure, helping put away dirty cops and relatives and friends of former Mayor Coleman A. Young, WDIV reports. He also cooperated in an investigation against former homicide cop and City Councilman Gil Hill.


"I think that there's no doubt that it's related to my cooperation about Gil Hill and about police corruption in Detroit," Wershe , 45, tells WDIV's Kevin Dietz in a prison interview in northern Michigan.


"I thought any mayor would love to have corrupt cops off of their force, but to Coleman Young I was a stool pigeon," he adds.


WDIV reports that Wershe has served more prison time than any juvenile offender in Michigan history and he can't get paroled for some unknown reason. He was given a parole hearing in 2003 and hasn't been given one since.


Wershe cooperated with federal and local law enforcement before and after his arrest in the late 1980s, and was a key player in an FBI sting in the early 1990s while in prison.


The sting resulted in the arrests of several crooked cops and Mayor Young's common-law-brother in law Willie Volsan and Young's niece, Cathy Volsan. Charges were eventually dropped against the niece, who Wershe had dated before going off to prison.


Wershe says he was promised by law enforcement that he would get out of prison early for his cooperation.


"I embarrassed a lot of people. But all I did was what I was asked and all I did was tell the truth," he told WDIV.


He said he also ruffled feathers when he cooperated against Gil Hill, who was under investigation for allegedly covering up a murder of a 13-year-old boy who was accidentally killed in a drive-by-shooting. Hill was the head of Detroit Police homicide at the time, and authorities suspected a drug gang, headed by the mayor's niece's husband, was involved. Hill was never charged.


Wershe was convicted under a state drug law at the time that required he be given life without parole. The law was eventually changed and he was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.


Many current and former people in law enforcement and attorneys think it's time for Wershe to go free.


Mike Cox, the former Michigan attorney general, told WDIV:


"GIven the change in the law, his age, when he was convicted and the 26 years he has served, I don't see the point of keeping him [[locked) up any longer, unless he has been a discipline problem in prison."


WDIV couldn't reach Gil Hill for comment." - http://deadlinedetroit.com/articles/...g#.VNIBbdwzrcf

[DaveyM]

"The fight to free former teenage drug dealer and underworld prodigy Richard [[White Boy Rick) Wershe will take to the television airwaves starting this week.


On Super Bowl Sunday, WDIV Channel 4, Detroit’s NBC affiliate, will begin running a five-part expose asking the question why Wershe, 46, remains incarcerated after over 27 years on a single state drug-possession charge spawning from a routine police traffic stop on May 22, 1987.


Award-winning reporter Kevin Dietz will helm the piece. Dietz, a native Michigander, grew up in Bloomfield Hills and has been WDIV’s investigative ace for the last two decades.


The iconic Motor City drug boss, rapped about by a young Kid Rock [[“Back from The Dead”) and a proud Detroiter who has staged holiday food drives in the area from behind bars, was just 17 years old at the time of his arrest.


During the late 1980s, his face was a fixture on the local nightly news and frequently splashed across the front pages of the city’s newspapers, as the press and public alike became fascinated by the charismatic fresh-faced juvenile Caucasian’s ascent in the treacherous and basically all African-American Detroit narcotics scene. The love affair he was carrying on with Mayor Coleman A. Young’s favorite niece, Kathy Volsan Curry, a woman almost ten years his senior and the wife of heavily-feared drug kingpin Johnny Curry, the man that mentored Wershe as he climbed the latter on the street, added fuel to an already scorching-hot media firestorm.


What they didn’t know was that Wershe was recruited into the drug game by a federal task force formed in 1984 and made up of members of the FBI, DEA and DPD, encouraged to drop out of high school when he was 14 and put to work as a mole – assertions made by Wershe and his family for years, but only recently confirmed by federal documents and more than one law enforcement official that was intimately involved in his use as an illegal underage informant.


In April 1985, he provided information on the accidental murder of a 10-year old boy named Damien Lucas, the nephew of a local drug dealer tragically killed in a drive-by shooting intended to strike his uncle and still unsolved to this day. FBI and DEA documents cite an alleged payoff between Johnny Curry and then-DPD Homicide Commander Gil Hill [[well-known for his movie role as Eddie Murphy’s boss in the Beverly Hills Cop franchise) to prevent charges from being filed.


Wershe’s relationship with the government was severed in the early fall of 1986, less than a year before he was arrested with eight kilos of cocaine and convicted under the now-defunct “650 lifer law,” former Michigan state legislation that mandated a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole if discovered possessing over 650 grams of a controlled substance. Upon the legislation being overturned in 1998, all people convicted under the law were immediately eligible for parole.


In 1991, Wershe agreed to cooperate with the government: he provided aid to several FBI investigations and gave testimony in front of multiple grand juries and over the next 12 years was integral in dismantling one of the biggest corrupt-cop rings in Motor City history [[1993’s Operation Backbone), preventing a high-profile mafia assassination on the east coast and gaining the convictions of numerous Detroit gangland figures.


As of February 2015, Wershe is the only person in the Michigan Department of Corrections still imprisoned under the 650 lifer law.


His next scheduled parole hearing is in 2017. He was denied parole in 2003, 2007 and 2012. Kid Rock spoke at his 2003 hearing, supporting his release.


Back in the early 2000s, Wershe was collared for a minor role in a car-theft scam while serving time in a Florida witness-protection unit. This past summer the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on a law suit filed by the Wershe family against the Michigan Parole Board ruling that the parole board wasn’t properly handling his file and kicked the case back to a federal court in Michigan for further consideration.


Last fall, Hollywood came calling and Universal Pictures optioned an EBook by New Yorker Evan Hughes, entitled “The Trials of White Boy Rick” for an intended future film, slated to be directed by Joe Kosinski [[Oblivion) and produced by Scott Stuber [[Ted).


Detroit-based rapper and hip hop superstar Eminem had previously been in talks to adapt Wershe’s life story for the silver screen.


“I just want the truth to come out,” said Wershe in an exclusive interview from prison in Manistee, Michigan Saturday, offering his take on the upcoming TV piece. “I don’t know what more I can do. I hope people can see the injustice. I’m doing all this prison time, but its not for the crime that I was convicted of. I’m not White Boy Rick anymore, that’s who I was when I was 17 years old. Today, I’m just a middle-aged man that wants a second chance.”" - http://gangsterreport.com/white-boy-...re-detroit-tv/

[Hypestyles]

... so is Eminem going to play Rick as an adult? Maybe at the beginning and the end of the film, plus the narrator?

[Dbest]

The picture of Rick in the Fila coat either walking in or out of court is haunting. He is so young looking and that was a few years after his work for the feds. I wonder about Rick's safety behind bars, its seems that quite a few people want him to stay where he's at...

[Django]

Im thinking the same thing Dbest, Im worried for his life in there as things are being ramped up for his eventual release. Its not hard to have someone shanked in there. I would really like to be there when he is finally released.

[DaveyM]

"Hello All—
My name is Vince Wade. I’m a former Detroit TV news investigative reporter and special projects producer. I spent over 25 years—a quarter century—on the streets of Detroit reporting on crime, mayhem and public corruption and I won a bunch of awards for my work. My first big scoop was reporting that Jimmy Hoffa was missing. He still is.

I’m starting a new weekly blog focused primarily but not exclusively on the plight of Rick Wershe, aka Richard Wershe, Jr. aka White Boy Rick. I will explore the story of other informants, too, to show just how much Rick has been given the shaft compared to others in his situation.

After I cover a little history in the first few installments, my blog posts will have a different take on Rick’s imprisonment. My work will focus largely on the paper trail. What did they REALLY have on Rick? This blog will explore in detail things that happened AFTER he went to prison. The big question of course is, why is he still in prison? He appears to be the victim of a vendetta by powerful people.

I’m using the Michigan and Federal Freedom of Information Acts to get copies of reports in official investigative files. It’s a slow and tedious process.

I can tell you there’s quite a story there and much of it hasn’t been told before. Let me warn you these blog posts won’t be short. They will have a lot of detail and background. I hope you will take the time to read them. If you are reading this, the blog is now live and online.

The blog is called Informant America and it can be found at http://www.thedimedroppers.com/"

Vince Wade, a former investigative TV reporter in Detroit, has launched a blog that will initially focus on the wrongful, ongoing imprisonment of [[former) teenage drug dealer Richard Wershe. - http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/artic...g#.VQt-dWbD_cc