Frank Simmons

I wanted to, it was $150,000 cash. And if I wanted to be relocated, they'd relocate me if he got charged. And I testified.

You know, they were saying that they had two, they already had two reports of this green fund and about Paul being crooked and all that.

92, 93, maybe. That's when he started making a name for himself. You know, people knew. You had to watch out for him. You know, if he didn't like you, he was on you. Yeah, I stayed away from him.

I went down at a fish house and talked to some friends of mine that, you know, to get their advice on what I should do. And one of the...

presidents of the fish company um was like yeah rat on him fuck paul put him in jail he belongs in jail the other guy who i'm very close with was like no i don't think that's a good idea you know you know just just you know do your thing plead your case try to try to do it that way

I'm not going to rat on somebody to get myself out of trouble. To me, that's a broken rule you just don't do. So Frank doesn't bend.

So then he went back and said, yeah, my client's not a rat. He don't want to, you know, whatever. So then they started saying, oh, well, if you don't cooperate with us, we're going to look into charging him with the RICO Act. Because I had, like, I had a lot of charges. But Frank's mind is made up. Whether it be ratting on the cops or ratting on someone, whatever, I just, that wasn't me.

I didn't want to rat, but I didn't want to do 24 years either. I wanted to play.

I'm letting you know what's going on. That they're investigating these guys. They know about these guys being crooked and they know about the Green Fund and they know all of that.

Robocop. Yeah, everybody knew. You know, Robocop. They knew you were talking about him. Do you think it was a fitting nickname? He thought he was, you know.

I said, listen, buddy, I know how it fucking works. You know? I know how it works. If you guys called the DA and said, hey, listen, you know, we're going to give this guy a plea, something came up, blah, blah, blah. They're going to do what you want. That's pretty much how it worked back then.

I was like, this guy got a lot of fucking nerve coming back here, you know? And he was like, hey, Simmons, you did the right thing. Thank you. And I turned to him and I said, go fuck yourself. Like, don't thank me. I didn't do anything for you. You know? Don't thank me. That was like, I was pissed. He could have said anything else, but not thank you.

Because I didn't do anything to keep him out of trouble. But he, that, you know, that was his way of saying, whew, you know, dodged a bullet there. Don't thank me, buddy. You can go fuck yourself. That was it. And he was like, oh, yeah? And he left.

All right, so my brother, my older brother, called me. I want to say it was on Wednesday. And he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he said, I got a phone call. They're on to you. You better smarten up.

So I had actually made arrangements for everything that was in that house to get moved on Saturday.

I pulled in the driveway, put the car in park, and I had a gun to my head. I had the window down about six inches, and they were like, don't move. And I was like, okay, I'm not going to move. Who's there?

Ten others, yeah. There was a shitload of them. They have a warrant. They were surprised because they thought they were just coming for weed and they ended up finding coke and ecstasy. So they were like partying up. They were like happy.

There was $33,000 in the safe. And then they just started passing out money, $1,000 stacks, just passing them out, passing them out to everybody.

Paul was passing out $1,000 stacks to everybody, and then he turns to me and he says, that's what we call the fucking Green Fund. Thanks, buddy. That's how that went down.

I mean, I can't say much at that point. I was just like, keep it, let me go. You know, I knew I was fucked.

If you read the newspapers, they said I was the kingpin. But I just kind of overseen everything, you know, as a whole, so that way it kept it in line.

I was facing a lot of time, you know?

Snitch, informant, CI. You didn't want to be labeled a rat, not around here.

They said they'd relocate me, give me money, because that was the concern. I was like, what are you worried about? What am I worried about? I'm going to rat on a cop? Like, I've got to live around here. Every single cop in the city is going to be after me.

I was more of like a high-end, like, I wouldn't go give you a little bag. I was selling 10 pounds, 20 pounds, you know what I mean? He dealt in more than just pot. We never kept it all in the same place, of course, but... and then we'd just distribute it. And then when it was gone, we'd get more. Were you rich? Did you feel rich? I was dumb. That's what I was.

to go in the Marines, go to Desert Storm, and then come back and apply for the New Bedford Police Department.

We started drinking every day. We started hanging out. We had a big crew, and it just took off from there.

We used to follow them follow us. Like, you know what I mean? We used to drive around behind them and let everybody know where they were.

I had a pager and cell phone store back then. Beepers were pretty popular.

One hand went with the other. Back then, you were either a doctor or a lawyer or a drug dealer if you had a pager, you know?

Paul was like a pretty boy back then, you know? What makes you say pretty boy? Well, you know, he was like always had his hair nice, always had like, you know, I don't know. Just to me, he looked like a pretty boy.

We were all just pissed off that they were so crooked and they could get away with it. So we were like, you know, how can we let people know? So when somebody came up with the idea, let's make T-shirts and everybody can wear the T-shirts. So that's what we did.

That lists the 10 questions. It says, how much money did you pocket in last night's raid? Number two, if it wasn't for snitches, where would you work? Number four, when was your last drug test? Now these all have a story behind them too. How many innocent people did you set up in the last month? What is your brownie point status with the lieutenant?

How many times did you lie in court under oath this month? And number 10, where would you spend your well-paid time if there were no donut or pizza shops? Because they were always there. Was it hard to find somebody to print those out? It really was. That was the hard part. But eventually, they did. And we sold them for 20 bucks a piece. We probably sold about 100 of them. I don't know.

I always had three, four grand in my pocket, but I'd go out and spend two, three grand a night at the clubs. Whether it was the drinking clubs or the strip clubs or whatever it was, we spent money.

We thought it was pretty funny. We sent one to the DA. We sent one to the chief at the time. Bunch of guys wore them in court, and the judge flipped out and made them put them inside out. We sent one to him, of course. To who, Paul?

And they had a room upstairs for the Knox. It was like a big room like this with all their desks. And they had us all handcuffed to the wall. So I'm literally sitting there like this, handcuffed. They put on the music over the loudspeaker. Another one bites the dust. And they were all dancing around.

And they had all our cell phones and our pages on a table, like right there in the middle of the room. And every time one of the pages would go off, they'd grab it and they'd go make a call because they were trying to do buys.

So I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I look and there's a phone hanging on the wall, like right here next to me. So I'm like, nobody's looking. I grab the phone. There's no dial tone. I hit nine. I get a dial tone.

So I said, go to the store, shut my pager and phone and shut everybody's stuff off. Because he could go right to my store and go on the computer and shut it off. When I hung up the phone, Paul seen me come over, rip the phone right out of the wall, fucking threw it. Who did you call? And I'm like, your mother. And maybe 10 minutes later, all of our pages and everything stopped.

They were so pissed. They were so pissed. And they knew. He knew right there. He's like, that's the phone call you made. Yeah.

So then they ordered pizza. For you? Nope, for them. I'll never forget it. I had $21 in my pocket. That's it. And he took it and ordered pizza with it. Out of my pocket. And even said, hey, we're ordering pizza with that money. So when the pizza came, I was like, yo, can I get a slice? And he's like, what? And I was like, can I get some cheese?

Yeah, I mean, I was very, very well-liked, very well-known. Like, I could go anywhere in the city. All the different projects, and I was good with all the top dogs in all the places.

So he come over thinking I was going to rap because that was the word back then. Hey, can I get some cheese? Meaning I was going to rap. So he says, well, what do you what do you got to tell me?

I said, I ain't fucking going nowhere, bro. I got nothing to say to you.

Possession with intent to distribute, trafficking, possession in a school zone, cultivating. And my charges were added up to 18 to 24 years on a mandatory sentencing.

You didn't want to run into them. You tried to stay away from them. Like if we knew they were on the Ave, we'd go to the South End. If we knew they were in the South End, we'd come to the North End. I'd get a call, hey, the Knox are out full force tonight. They're all over. So, all right, let's get out of here. We'd go to Boston. We'd go to Providence.