# The Making of a Criminal: How One Boy From Trinidad Became Part of Brooklyn's Most Notorious Crime Family

## Part One: A World Turned Upside Down

The household Dexter Isaac entered when he arrived in Brooklyn bore no resemblance to the structured West Indian world he had left behind in Trinidad. Back home, the pattern had been immutable, almost sacred in its predictability: fathers labored while mothers maintained the household; children either pursued education or hustled their way toward independence. It was an order, even poverty maintained its dignity and rhythm. But America—and Brooklyn especially—seemed to operate according to an entirely different moral code, one where the conventional markers of respectability held little currency.

The Folks house, where Dexter found himself living, ran backwards by every traditional standard. Mrs. Daphne Folks alone carried the legitimate financial burden of the household, rising before dawn to work as a home attendant, her labor keeping the electricity flowing and the rent paid on time. Uncle Sun existed in a perpetual state of economic parasitism, drifting in and out of the house like a ghost with no particular destination or purpose. He never held a job. Instead, he materialized intermittently bearing small quantities of marijuana and an endless series of requests for spare change from anyone within earshot. His children—Uncle Sun's offspring—existed in a different stratum of criminality altogether, each one entangled in various schemes and hustles that required their constant relocation. Dexter noticed this early: they never stayed anywhere long enough for the neighborhood to memorize their faces.

It would take time for him to understand that movement itself was a survival strategy.

The Folks family represented something Dexter had never encountered in his island childhood: an organized criminal enterprise structured not around individual desperation but around family legacy and inherited reputation. They were professionals in the most literal sense, pursuing their trade with the systematic approach of craftsmen. This realization would come gradually, but the foundation was laid the moment Patrick arrived.

## Part Two: The Arrival of Dada

Patrick—known throughout Brooklyn and Jamaica alike as Dada—descended upon the Folks house during a winter that Dexter would never forget. The man carried himself with the kind of quiet confidence that required no explanation or justification. He was smaller than most of the men Dexter had observed in America, standing perhaps five foot eight with a slim build and long dreadlocks that marked him as Jamaican the moment someone laid eyes on him. His brown skin bore the kind of burnished quality that comes from sun and hard living. But it was his reputation that preceded him into every room.

Dada was a killer. In Jamaica, he was feared. In New York, among the growing Jamaican diaspora that had begun to reshape Brooklyn's criminal landscape, he was respected. Whispers followed him through crowds. Enemies gave him wide berth. To a teenage Dexter, still negotiating his identity between two worlds, Dada represented something intoxicating: a man who had transcended the arbitrary rules that governed ordinary existence.

The two formed an immediate bond despite their age difference. Perhaps Dada recognized in the younger man a similar hunger for status and power. Perhaps he saw potential. Whatever the reason, their connection was forged instantly and without sentimentality.

What cemented their relationship, however, came within days of Dada's arrival in America. He had been in the country less than a week when he acquired two brand-new firearms. Not the tired, worn-out revolvers that Brooklyn hustlers typically scrounged together through back channels and corrupt police. These were clean guns, pristine, tools of someone with serious connections. A Smith & Wesson .38 caliber and a nickel-plated Colt .45—weapons that gleamed with newness and possibility.

Without ceremony, without explanation, Dada handed both guns to Dexter. The younger man was expected to stash them, to keep them safe, to ask no questions. The simplicity of the gesture communicated everything that mattered: Dada trusted him. That trust was currency. That trust meant Dexter had already begun his ascension into the inner circles where serious money moved.

## Part Three: The Move to Crown Heights

By this time, the Folks family had migrated again, this movement another manifestation of their peripatetic criminal existence. They had abandoned their previous address near Winthrop Avenue and Flatbush, relocating to a larger operation: a spacious four-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a building on Carroll Street near Rogers Avenue, in Crown Heights, just up the block from Medgar Evers College. The location was strategic. The neighborhood was West Indian, the streets networked with safe houses and hideouts, the population diverse enough that unfamiliar faces wouldn't draw excessive attention.

It was in this apartment that Dexter's real education began.

Dada occasionally brought him along to visits, but soon Dexter began going on his own volition, drawn irresistibly toward the raw magnetism of the criminal energy concentrated within those walls. The primary attractions were Clinton and Donovan, Dada's younger associates who embodied the kind of aggressive criminality that fascinated teenagers hungry to prove themselves. Clinton specialized in burglaries, conducting them with methodical precision. Donovan lived for stick-ups—the adrenaline rush of confrontation, the immediate transfer of wealth through implied and explicit threat, the dominance asserted over victims.

The larger family unit included others, each with specialized roles in their criminal enterprise. Derek focused on robbing major drug dealers and running extortion schemes. Leroy, whose light complexion had earned him the nickname "Color Reds," also targeted drug dealers, understanding that their product and cash made them ideal victims. Howard, a quiet, heavyset man nicknamed "Double," provided security, his imposing physical presence and watchful eyes ensuring that internal threats never materialized.

This was not a family in any conventional sense. It was an organization, a unit of coordinated criminal enterprise, bound not by blood alone but by loyalty, shared profit, and mutual obligation. They had enemies scattered across Brooklyn—rival crews, territories disputed, insults issued and stored for future retaliation. The atmosphere within the apartment crackled with the tension that accompanies genuinely dangerous people living in proximity.

For Dexter, it proved irresistible. His mother was there, certainly, and Carl—the paternal figure who attempted to maintain some gravitational pull toward legitimacy. But no teenage boy with ambition burns to remain in such conventional orbits when the streets offer immediate possibility and respect. The Folks family filled a vacuum that traditional family structures could not. They offered him belonging, purpose, and a clear pathway to the only kind of success that mattered in his immediate world.

## Part Four: The Education of the Streets

Donovan became his primary mentor in this criminal education, and the lessons began immediately. Dexter found himself riding shotgun on robberies throughout Brooklyn, a navigator and backup in enterprises that grew increasingly systematic and audacious. The routine became familiar: they would commandeer a cab—a common vector for robbery at the time—and direct the driver toward Pitkin Avenue in East New York, where they would relieve him of his money and possessions. The cab would then deposit them at one of Donovan's friends' houses, where they would smoke marijuana and decompress before heading back out to hunt again. Broad daylight robberies, mugging pedestrians, snatching shoppers—the streets offered endless victims.

Pitkin Avenue itself served as a kind of open-air marketplace for criminality. The stretch extended for blocks, lined with retail establishments, a perfect hunting ground for crews with initiative and nerve. Each successful robbery led to another hunt, the adrenaline creating a feedback loop that sustained their predatory lifestyle.

After their work, they would migrate to a pool room located on Bergen Street near Strand Avenue in Crown Heights. The establishment was owned by a Trinidadian Indian and functioned as an unofficial headquarters for the neighborhood's hustle community. Here, hustlers congregated between jobs, planning their next scores, exchanging information, establishing temporary alliances. Adjacent to the pool room stood a bar run by the Jaguars, a fast-growing Black motorcycle crew that represented an entirely different species of criminal organization. The Pythons occupied a similar position in Brooklyn's criminal ecosystem. Within this pool room, fortunes were made and lost, enemies were designated, and plans for serious violence gestated.

The entrepreneurial spirit of Dexter's circle extended beyond simple robbery. In one memorable winter, Dexter accompanied Kevin, Johnny, and C-star on a trip to Long Island. They had stolen a vehicle specifically for an ambitious commercial burglary operation. Their target: PC Richard and Sun Electronics stores, which, at that time, operated with minimal physical security—alarms but no window bars or other substantial barriers.

They backed the vehicle directly up to the storefront window somewhere around one or two in the morning, while heavy snow fell steadily. Three men smashed through the glass and entered the store with practiced efficiency. VCRs and radios were passed out in a coordinated assembly line, the stolen merchandise quickly filling both the trunk and the interior of the vehicle. Within minutes, they vanished back onto the highway.

VCRs were valuable commodities then—retail prices ranging from eight hundred to twelve hundred dollars. In Brooklyn, they moved at roughly half retail value, brand-new price tags still visible, a premium for legitimate-appearing merchandise. Every snowy night meant another store, another haul. Eventually, retailers began installing gates, but by then, the operation had already generated substantial profit. The hustlers adapted further, selling empty boxes containing only bricks, resealed and pitched to unsuspecting victims. The mentality underlying these crimes was purely transactional: if you could profit from deception, you did.

## Part Five: Love and Loyalty

Bergen Street was also where Dexter encountered Lake Shawilliams, a woman who would represent his first genuine romantic connection in America. They became inseparable, true ride-or-die partners in the parlance of street life. Their relationship proved serious enough that they eventually cohabitated, sharing space and building something that resembled genuine partnership. Unlike the disposable relationships that characterized much of the street world, their connection endured. It became foundational to his emotional life, stable ground in a landscape of constant predation and threat.

## Part Six: Territory and Violence

The formal headquarters of their criminal enterprise was a pool room situated on President Street between Nostrand and Rogers, close to the Carroll Street apartment where the family's operations centered. The block itself had a distinctly West Indian character, the population predominantly Caribbean immigrants and their American-born children. Stolen vehicles were perpetually available, parked on corners, ready to be activated for whatever job required immediate transportation. Two blocks away, Eastern Parkway ran through the neighborhood—the same stretch that hosted Brooklyn's legendary Labor Day parade each year, an event that drew massive crowds and significant police presence.

One Labor Day, Mayor Ed Koch made an appearance, surrounded by security details. What happened next demonstrated the pent-up fury that existed in the community toward the city's leadership. Without warning, beer bottles began flying—hundreds, perhaps a thousand, creating a projectile barrage that pursued the mayor throughout his walk. The West Indian community had made its position clear: Koch and his administration had no legitimate standing in their neighborhood.

The pool room economy depended on accessibility, on knowing the right people, on being known yourself. The appearance of an outsider—a Jamaican who had no history in the community, no reputation, no connections to established crews—created immediate tension. This man opened what appeared to be a weed shop, maintaining a bulletproof counter behind a fake grocery store display. It was a clean operation, professional, almost invisible to anyone not looking specifically for it. The problem was that nobody knew him, and he wasn't from the block.

Durability proved impossible. He lasted approximately one month before his presence generated interest from Donovan and his associates. Donovan began plotting his removal, understanding that this unknown operator represented either a challenge to their territorial dominance or an opportunity for expansion through violence.

One day, when Dexter traveled from Vanderbelt to the pool room to spend time with his crew, he arrived to find Donovan, Clinton, and Rodney engaged in serious discussion. The plotting was advancing toward execution. What happened next would become characteristic of the violence that defined Dexter Isaac's education in Brooklyn's criminal underworld.

The story of Dexter Isaac is ultimately the story of how American cities—through a combination of immigration, poverty, marginalization, and the explosive profitability of the underground economy—create professional criminals. It is the story of how a young man from the Caribbean discovered that the violence he witnessed in his adopted country operated according to principles he could understand, and how that understanding became the foundation for his eventual role as one of Brooklyn's most feared operators.

His journey from observer to participant was neither remarkable nor unique. It was almost inevitable, written into the economic and social architecture of the world he entered.