I was a dopehead for a long time, and back when i was 16 i use to go cop on the street in the hood. I would go walk around the block cold-coppin, didnt even have no cell phone or nothing back then so i would just hit the block and wait to get holla'd at . You know you good when you hear the "Yeeeeeeeeeeeooo!" or the more discreet kinda quiet "Yerrp" from inside a doorway or around the corner and then go pickup. After the boys picked me and my man up but didnt charge us just took us in for "loitering in a known drug area" we stopped hittin the block for a while and stuck to doin other thangs for a year or 2. other than once or twice riding with dopeheads to give them a ride to cop and picking up somethin for myself on a rare occasion , and it was always mad sketch since the last experience I had had made me finally realize like "yo, the cops actually watch this shit. it aint just a easy one two three type thing." so i got sketch for a while.
Especially the thing is if you stay out the hood and stop copping for a while you dont know where its hot no more. when you there everyday you know wat blocks is hot and when the narcs are out watching, where they do their surveillance from wat corner, the time of day they do it, the cars they use, and you able to avoid them like clockwork. but when you stop goin there for even a month or 2 nevermind a whole year, EVERYTHING changes. Areas that use to be hot, are deadzones with no dealers to be found. areas that use to be real low key low risk are now the new targeted super hot areas. its all different ,and you taking a BIG risk goin in cold not knowing wat the fuck is up.
I got back into dope tho by the time i was 19 and decided I was stayin out the hood becuz I knew all those things So i would only buy it from other kids I knew used , who would go do the copping and i would buy it off them in a safe place like meeting up at their job or their house or a parking lot. And let me tell you, the sketchy-ass "meet me in the FoodTown parking lot" becomes straight up safe-seeming when you used to coppin on hot-ass dope blocks in Paterson and shit. the idea of meetin in a supermarket parking lot on a main road in a non-ghetto area starts to look might fuckin good to you, so i never had much of a problem with that type of pickin up.
But in 08 everything changed. I had been coppin dope in the hood back in like 03, 04 and it was a very different game back then , it was WAY easier, the dope was super pure, the cops was non existent, it was a whole nother life back then. but then I met this kid Steve (Rest in peace yo, still miss your crazy dumb ass even tho I shouldnt considerin all the trouble we got into together). He started askin me for rides to cop and shit like that and so one day, me and my man gave him a ride to Paterson and it was the first time i had been there to COP in years. (I was always in paterson to see family and friends and shop,etc but wasnt copping no drugs there no more til i met this kid.)
So we gave him a ride to go see his dealer and we hopped right off the exit off Route 80 and in les than 5 minutes, was on the block , his dealer is right there in the middle of the street waiting and we dont even stop the car, just slow down and drive past and he toss the dope in the window and handed the dough out to his boy and then we bounced, took a few turns and was right back on the highway again. And i was like damn, that was easy. It was so different than how i did it when i was a teenager walkin the block waitin for a holla. And I had been nervous and scared and shit but damn, when we did it like that I started thinkin hey I can get used to this. I still wasnt down with drivin myself, but i didnt mind riding with people who was coppin, it didnt feel so sketch.
After a while i was willing to give him rides in my car and sometimes I would ride with him in his car too and it was a regular thing we did a few times a week. I knew that the cops was around and it was somethin that we did had to look out for but it didnt feel like a really imediate, REAL threat u kno, more like jus somethin to keep in the back of ur mind.
eventually i got mad bold and just started goin by myself when my boy steve wasnt around, i had all his dealers numbers and they knew me so i would meet up with em all the time everyday I would leave my Beauty school on my lunch break and take the 5 minutes drive to the dope spot an cop and be done just like that.
but then, for the first time i got popped , the boys had been watching the dope spot I was coppin at doing surveillance and they watched us cop and all that.
so after that happened yo, I was fuckin shook. I wasnt down to drive myself to cop no more, i would only ride shotgun (somehow I thought that was safer , that if i wasnt driving and was only a passenger i would not get arrested or some dumb shit like that, by playing the ignorant , naieve girlfriend who just got dragged along and dont know wats going on8) )
Anyways, kept coppin but by that time i was much more cautious. But like anything, after the shock wears off, you kinda just go back to normal and after not too long I was pretty much back to feelin careful, cautious, but not all scaredy-ass or nothing when we'd go cop.
Fast forward 3 months and I got popped again, this time not in the hood but i got hit with distribution charges becuz i had been gettin investigated and my phone was tapped cuz i had been dealing and setting up 50-100+ piece orders of OC from canada and I guess it was some kind of big investagation after I got setup by some piece of shit narc. (the case and sentencing is long over, so I can speak freely about it, esp. since i aint involved in nothing like that at all these days no more and aint been for over 2 years.)
After that, I was more cautious about coppin my dope on the street becuz I knew that I could not afford to get hit again with this case pending I didnt want to get locked up. I was much more paranoid , but i still wasnt at that level yet of my nerves bein completely shredded and goin crazy everytime i went to cop. I was just more observant, more careful, avoidin certain spots and times of day, using more of the "friend who cops for you" whenever i could, and I changed towns. I started coppin in Passaic instead of Paterson. the dope there was a few dollars more per bag, but i was happy to take the hit on the price becuz it was such a non-hot area. One of my girls LaLa lived in a certain project complex in Passaic. I was over there all the time chillin with her and I knew alot of the niggas who was always chillin on the corner and i would bullshit with em alot. People in the PJ's all knew me cuz i was the only white girl who was over there everyday, not for drugs who actually chilled there and had friends there. Anyways, my girl told me her cousin was slangin dope , i had lied and told her I was sellin it to the whiteboys who was paying mad dough per bag, so i needed a more safer reliable connect than my Paterson peoples, so she set me up with her cuz.
So I started coppin there, and i felt mad safe since if i ever got fucked with by the boys i could say " I am here to see ______ _____ in apartment ___ __" and you can ask any of these dudes around here do they know me, wats my name, "Oh yea thats LaLa's girl, she always over here, na she aint no dopehead", etc. It was pretty safe to me and I was still always on the lookout and a little bit nervous but I knew i had a great alibi since my friend DID lived there and I was well known around the projects as her friend and not a feen.
But eventually one day i couldnt get ahold of him, and i took my friend V and we went to go find a new Paterson d-boy late one night. we found a guy and copped some fire from him and got his number, and he became the guy i used for almost a year after that, everyday sometimes twice or 3 times a day.
there is a Dunkin Donuts on route 20 in Paterson. I got a friend who works there, so I would drive and park my car in the DnD and then I would walk up into paterson from there. bein on foot was safer, i was never scared when i would walk to cop. it was a good amount of blocks in, not right there, so dont even think of trying to figure out where I was coppin at in relation to the DnD. It wont give you no information about wat block it was, since it was not real close by. Anyways, it was winter by that time and I would be bundled up in my jacket and shit like that, and alot of people mistake me for bein Puerto rican in paterson. When I was wrapped up in my jacket and winter clothes and you couldnt barely even see my face, I usually passed just fine as just another paterson girl walkin to the store. I would walk up to the spot, cop, then go to a near by bodega and get somethin from there, a drink or w/ever, and so i would have a bag and i would walk back to the DnD with my bag and shit looking like i lived around there and had just made a trip to the store.
The first few times I did it i was a lil sketch, but after I was doin it for a while I actually got really fuckin good at it. I was never shook at all. Police drove right past me all the time not even slowing down. I blended in really good and becuz i was so totally completely calm I did not give off no kind of sketchy vibes. That was prolly the most comfortable I ever been when copping, back when I use to take my lil walks up to the dopespot in the winter.
Soon , my man told me it was safe to drive and eventually convinced me to start getting rides up to the spot. My BF would drive us up and we would be in and out in 2 seconds. In a car, it was very close to the highway and it was easy to get right back on 20. But when we started doin it in the car, I definately started to be more and more paranoid. It was alot less safer to be in a car, with 2 white people driving in that area and stopping for 2 minutes, waiting for him to come to the window and then handing off the dope ad money and leaving, than it was for a girl who nobody even realized was white to walk alone up the street with a shopping bag and nobody even noticed me anyways. I started getin nervous before we would cop around that time.
then I got hit again, with possession of a brick, after stupidly sitting in the DnD parking lot shooting up in the car not even bothering to go into the bathroom, and the state boys rolled up on us and booked us.
As soon as we got out and ROR'ed, we went back to where the cop had left our car, and met up with our boy again and copped 3 more bundles
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
THAT was definately a super sketchy coppin situation but in a way it was relaxed aswell since we had alredy got popped once that night, and it wasnt too likely that it would happen again, plus no cop would think that we would be that stupid to go right back to the same spot again the minute we got released.
We kept coppin after we got arrested for that 3rd time with the brick, but thats when i started bein in full-on scared-to-cop mode. every time i went i was just praying for the moment it would be over and I would be safely up the highway, far away from the paterson exits, becuz the narcs dont follow you that far once you hit 80, they pull you once you get off the ramp and onto the highway usually if they were followin u, so once you get off 80 onto 23 or watever other road you are taking home, you usually safe. It started to get so nerve racking that I couldnt even ride to cop no more. I would have my BF drop me off at the Dunkin where i would chill with my boy who worked there for a while til he went up the road to go cop and came back to scoop me up, becuz at that point he had only been arrested for heroin once and i had been popped 3 times recently for opiate buying or selling, all in the past like 8 months. I couldnt risk another arrest, so i wouldnt ride with him. (seems selfish, I know, but its like he was at equal risk whether i was there or not, so when u think about it it really aint.)
Anyways, that went on for a while til I went with him one time for some reason and we got fucked with by some narcs. we had been sittin for a while waitin for my man to bleep us to come up and they seen us sittin and was tryna bust us but we aint had shit yet, so we got off with a "get the fuck outta here and dont never let us see u here again or well lock you up" warning.
after that, my nerves was so fucked I couldnt do it no more. I really just couldnt take it. The anxxiety was so strong that I just couldnt handle the shit no more and i had to stay off the block i was just too much of a mess. When i was dopesick and riding to go cop, any cop that stopped us woulda locked us right up there just becuz of me becuz when i was sick it was sooooo much harder to control the anxiety. I was a liability to anybody i was in the car with , pretty much. with 2 pending cases and felony prison time on my plate I just couldnt mess with the risks no more. it was gettin hotter and hotter in the area we was coppin at, too so that made it even worse.
My man started meetin up with a friend of ours, and we would go to see his boy instead of our man. His boy was cheaper, and also he had bike. he would come ride to meet you in less sketchier areas, so it was a good look. My BF would go to our friends house to scoop him up and I would wait there at his house, while both of them would go ride to cop together. and even then, I was nervous for them, scared they would get popped, etc, so i was even nervous when *I* wasnt even the one coppin. It always worked out fine tho, i would chill til they got bck in like a half hour total then we would all go get high together and that was that.
that was the last copping arangement I had before I had to quit dope after my 2nd dirty piss test on probation and almost catching a VOP.
After like 5-6 months of not using dope at all i used a handful of times once my probation loosened up and i was only goin once every few wks instead of every wk. but i refused to go nowhere near the hood. I woudl only meet with a very legit, secure, trustworthy friend of mine who did all the copping work himself and then I would meet him in a secure public location type of thing.
With so much on the line, my 2 concurrent probation sentences (meaning that if i violated, it would count as a double VOP automatically), my arrest records, the fact of how much thin ice i was on with my PO if i hapened to fuck up again, honestly it even felt a little scary to me to meet up with my friend in a crowded, busy public parking lot, but i realized it was much safer than how i use to do shit.
I think that the worse trouble you get in and the more you got to lose, the scarier coppin gets.
I never got scared before meeting up with a friend at their house for some pills or trees or w/ever. the standard kind of meetups, with friends in a parkin lot, at a house, etc, was always super safe to me considering the kind of coppin i was usually doin, so I aint never been nervous about that type of pickin up.
But the more deepr into shit that I got, and the more the risks became bigger and bigger, the more i got shook when I would go to cop my dope in the hood. Its a risk even if you got a clean record, and i think that alot of ppl dont realize just how much of a risk it really is. when you do it evertyday it becomes easy, it aint nothing to you, it aint no different than if yuo went into the liquor store for a bottle of tanqueray. Just a regular transaction, all good. you get immune to it, it becomes so normal to you that you forget that you are in a place that you "dont belong" (For me it was never so much like that becuz I lived in paterson at one time, got tons of friends and family there and know my way around like the back of my hand. I dont live there no more, but I still go there for clothes shopping, to hitup the beauty supply stores, when i want some good spanish food, to visit people, my mechanic is there, etc, and all type of shit, so I was never "out of place" like the other white kids who would come from the suburbs and shit, but the cops did not see that, they just saw that i was white and assume i didnt belong.)
So you become comfortable with it and forget the risk you are really taking. Once you got a bad jacket tho, and you risking more than a first arrest, it gets much worse. Instead of risking gettin cuffed and charged with possession and doing PTI and its over, you risking violating your probation, gettin your plea deal revoked, gettin re sentenced to prison time PLUS the time you get for the VOP, etc....it just turns into a nightmare when you consider the shit you got to lose , once you been popped a couple times and keep copping the block is THE WORST place for you to be. its natural to be nervous becuz coppin in the hood is really like a real life verrsion of a video game but instead of risking dyin and havin to go back to the beginning you are risking your freedom and lots more. Shit gets real risky and will just run your nerves thru a fuckin cheese grater and a blender and sandpaper and all that shit. you would be lucky to have any ability to relax and control your anxiety at all by the time you been thru all that shit and are still copping.
I use to have some nerves of steel, i could stay cool thru anything. i could talk my way out of anything too. i definately had that shit on lock and got myself thru alot of sketchy situations by stayin smooth. But over time you stay in that game too long yo and you will even lose that ability. It sucks becuz I use to be able to be all slicklike...smooth at all times, always keep cool never show no paranoia or nothing, but after bein thru all that shit i turned into a nervous wreck anytime i got nowhere near the dope block.
You'd really need someone you could trust, but that's a nice set up. Totally inconspicuous too, I can't imagine anyone ever noticing it.
