All the nasty stuff some police are saying about him, Whiting maintains, amounts to persecuting him in the present for mistakes he made in the past. "When I was released from the penitentiary, I said, 'Well, let me go out there and try to become a productive member of society.'... So I'm trying to be social. I'm trying to conform to the rules of society. But the government and the police and everybody, they don't want me to become sociable. They're trying to antagonize me, provoke me, to try to keep me criminalized, try to role-cast me as some type of drug dealer or something."

Darryl Whiting denies that he's ever been a drug dealer. "No. That's something that I really, really dislike. Drugs. 'Cause of what is does to some people." Or that he tried to force his way into women's apartments at Orchard Park or threatened them if they refused to let him. "Get one person to say I said that. I mean get one person.... Other than what you may hear in the street, or what somebody's saying, but you know how you get propaganda, false rumors." Or that he put out a contract on a cop. Or that we was involved in any way with murder. "I'm a religious man, right. And I try to abide by the 10 Commandments as much as possible. And one of the strongest Commandments is 'Yo, thou shall not kill.'... As the Commandments say is how I abide. As much as I possibly and physically can."

Whiting says he's been a member of an Islamic sect known as the Five Percenters since 1966. His Muslim name is Rasheem Allah. "We don't consider ourselves totally righteous...we strive to better ourselves" is how he described the group in the first interview with the Phoenix. Later, he clarified that: "A Five Percenter is a poor, righteous teachers.... We teach freedom, justice, and equality to all human beings on the planet Earth."

Darryl Whiting believes he is a misunderstood man. People see his Mercedes (which, along with an impounded Porsche, is the only car he acknowledges owning) and his gold and they jump to conclusions. It's "part of our cultural thing, coming up, you know, with gold and jewelry, this is our trait. It doesn't automatically mean that you're a drug seller." It also serves a basic business purpose, he says. "This is what gets people to invest in your business, to invest in your ideas, by you showing the air of success." He allows, "Things aren't always what they appear to be."

The local gun-possession charge, for example. "What happened in this case there, right. Okay, I'll speak on that one, lemme see. [Corona Enterprises vice-president David Waight steps in and interrupts the interview, saying, 'Stop the tapes.'] No, they ain't got to stop the tapes, if I want to stop I'll tell 'em to stop, 'cause I ain't trying to hide it. I want this to come out, 'cause it's the same thing that happened with my brother. I took the gun from a kid. Right. And I was gonna turn the gun in, you know what I'm saying? He said it was his brother's gun. I said, 'Well you tell your brother to come get the gun, 'cause he [sic] had pulled it out on somebody.' And I said, 'You know, if your brother don't come get the gun, then I'm turning the gun into the police.' And before I got to turn the gun into the police, the police just grabbed me."


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 See all articles by: RIC KAHN