In His Own Words

On the anniversary of his tragic death, Jennifer Gonnerman gives #KaliefBrowder the chance to tell his story. Read his words & share them

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

These tweets are from the @newyorker piece: In His Own Words https://t.co/wOx7umeJzq #kaliefbrowder #neverforget

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

JG: I met #Kalief about nine months after he got out of jail. This was early in 2014. We'd get together near his lawyer’s office.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

JG: Usually, Kalief showed up wearing a hoodie with one earbud in his ear, the other dangling down.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

JG: He came across as shy and quiet, but when I would turn on a tape recorder, he would talk, sometimes for two or three hours at a stretch.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

JG: Not just about his time in jail, but about his life before, when he was still just a sophomore in high school.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: I'm not going to talk to you and tell you I was a good kid and did all the work. I did do my work, but I did fool around with the girls

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: and the kids, playing in the hallways. I was a kid, doing what kids do, playing around in the bathroom,

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: sometimes I’d get the hallway pass, play around in my friend’s classroom, whatever.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: The teacher would be like, “Get out.” I'd be like, “Ahh. Chill, Miss. I'm going to go to my class.” Stuff like that.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

JG: Like flirt with girls in the hallway kind of thing?

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: Right. Right.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

JG: #Kalief’s life as a high school student ended late one night in May of 2010.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: To be honest, I thought it was just a routine stop and search, well, #stopandfrisk.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: When they came out the car, they told me and my friend to put our hands on the wall, and I just thought it was a search.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: “Don’t worry about it. You're just going to go to the precinct.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: We just want to figure out some things. Most likely, you're going to go home.” I know I didn't do anything, so I said,

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: “All right. I’ll go to the precinct, but then I'm going to come home,” but it didn’t...

I never went home.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

JG: #Kalief was taken over the bridge to #RikersIsland, where he entered a whole different reality.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: That whole #RikersIsland thing is one big misunderstanding. The right and wrong is weird in there.

[In His Own Words @KaliefBrowder]

KB: What's right to them isn't right, and what's wrong isn't wrong. It took a whole lot of getting used to in there.