Recap: Latest ‘Lockup’ episode focuses on Wichita gangs

The second Wichita episode of the final season of the popular MSNBC show, “Lockup,” aired Saturday, and it was a doozy.

The theme: the rough-and-tumble world of Wichita gangs, or as one gang member described it in the episode, “the lifestyle.”

The show was filmed in the Sedgwick County Jail from September to October 2015. Film crews came back in December to shoot some additional footage.

Overall, the storytelling wasn’t quite as smooth as the first episode, but that’s probably because the episode tried to juggle far more plotlines at once.

The only character that returned from the premiere episode was pastor Tina Gilmore, who works as the lead chaplain at Wichita’s Christian Ministry to Offenders Inc.

Here’s more information on the real Wichita people featured in episode two of the six-episode season:

Marquel Dean’s reformation

Throughout the episode, Dean is labeled one of Wichita’s “most notorious gang leaders,” and not without warrant – in 2013, he was on the Top 10 wanted gang members list by the Wichita Police Department. But the light in which Dean is portrayed in the episode is not that of a hardened gang member – the 29-year-old Dean tells the cameras that, through a “revelation of God’s majesty,” he decided to disavow the gang life. Dean, who was known on the streets as C-3, said he hates being called by his street name these days. He has a close relationship with pastor Tina Gilmore, often leading his fellow inmates in prayer. The episode was filmed while Dean was awaiting results of a murder case from 2013 – the killing of James Gary at a warehouse party. Dean was eventually found guilty and was sentenced to life plus 258 months in prison.

A heated confrontation

When rival gang members are housed together, fights can start suddenly over seemingly nothing. The episode highlights a fight – caught on security cameras – between 23-year-old Rogelio Soto, a member of the South-Side Surenos, and 22-year-old Donnell Hill, a member of the Bloods. Soto throws a cup of hot coffee in Hill’s face and proceeds to pummel Hill, though Hill – partially blinded by the attack – fights him back. Sedgwick County sheriff’s Deputy Landon Hoheisel is seen breaking up the fight in footage from a body camera worn by Sgt. Malcolm Link. In the jail’s medical clinic, Hill receives treatment for second-degree burns to his neck and chest, and is told he may have vision loss because of it. Hill is adamant to the cameras that it’s simply part of “the lifestyle,” quipping that “it’s a minor setback for a major comeback.” In a separate interview, Soto claims he didn’t even know Hill, having only been housed with him for a few days. During the interview, a “senior member” of the gang sits obscured in the background, telling Soto what he can or cannot say as part of the gang’s “media policy.”

A lesson on gangs

Sedgwick County sheriff’s Deputy Michael Clopton had some interesting things to say about gangs in Wichita in the episode. He says Wichita has not only gang members from the traditional West Coast gangs – Bloods Crips, Surenos, etc. – but also gangs from Chicago, Milwaukee and other Midwestern areas. The episode reveals one of the main ways police keep up with a gang member’s activities when they’re in and out of the jailhouse: by keeping a photographic log of their tattoos. Cpl. Charles Brown says most gang members let police photograph their tattoos because “they’re proud” of them.

Leader of the house

Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter fared pretty well in this episode, coming off as a hard-on-crime law enforcement man who still has compassion for even the most veteran criminals. The episode makes multiple references to Easter’s efforts as a Wichita police lieutenant to crack down on street gangs in 2007 using federal RICO laws. The episode shows a one-on-one meeting between Easter and Dean in the jail cell (during which all of the inmates’ eyes are glued to their cell windows). Though the meeting with the man Dean said was “the archnemesis out there” was “awkward for real,” Dean told the cameras, it was a nice moment for Easter.

The return of Pastor Tina

Let’s hope pastor Tina Gilmore is a recurring character in all the remaining episodes of the season. In this episode, she admonishes the congregants at her prison ministry for their “anti-snitching” ways. In jail and in their gangs, inmates say they are bound to a no-telling code – at one point Dean tells the cameras he wouldn’t even tell police if someone had shot his own mother. Gilmore adds some common-sense wisdom to the show and is a delight every time she comes on screen.

A double-amputee fighter

An amusing – though not quite as attention-holding – subplot in this episode is a profile of inmate Jeremy Honeycutt, 35. He has been wheelchair-bound since he was 6 years old, the result of an accident with a train, he said. Despite his handicap, he says he swims, plays basketball, fights – all that stuff. The only real action in his storyline is a bathroom fight he allegedly is involved in that’s caught partially on the main jail pod camera. Dep. Cristy Brent reports hearing the fight while she’s stationed at her post, but Honeycutt is adamant it was only a verbal argument. He’s disciplined for it, and that’s about it.

This story was originally published January 23, 2017 at 7:14 AM with the headline "Recap: Latest ‘Lockup’ episode focuses on Wichita gangs."