GARY L. HEYWARD
Gary Heyward was born and raised in New York City's Polo Grounds Projects in Harlem. At the age of nineteen, he joined the United States Marine Corps and became a decorated war veteran, serving during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm from 1990 to 1991. After receiving an honorable discharge, he began a career as a New York City Corrections Officer, spending ten years working at Rikers Island.
In May 2006, Gary was arrested and later convicted for selling drugs throughout the jail system. During his incarceration, he discovered a passion for writing and began documenting his life experiences. After his release in 2008, he continued developing his story and, in 2015, published his memoir, Corruption Officer.
Inspired by the book and his extraordinary life journey, Gary later began writing a screenplay adaptation of Corruption Officer. That screenplay has since been developed into a proof-of-concept pilot episode designed to showcase the potential of the project as a television series. The pilot serves as the foundation for a larger series currently being developed, bringing Gary's powerful true story from the page to the screen.
In this shocking memoir from a former corrections officer, Gary Heyward shares an eye-opening, gritty, and devastating account of his descent into criminal life, smuggling contraband inside the infamous Rikers Island jails.
Gary Heyward’s life changed forever when he received a letter from the New York City Department of Corrections announcing he was accepted into the academy for new recruits. For the Harlem-born ex-Marine, being an officer of the law was the ticket he’d been waiting for to move up from a low-wage security job and out of the Polo Ground Projects in New York City—and take his mother with him.
Heyward was warned of the temptations he’d encounter as a new officer, but when faced with financial hardship, he suddenly found himself unable to resist the income generated from selling contraband to inmates. In his distinctive voice, Heyward takes you on a journey inside the walls of Rikers Island, showing how he teamed up with various inmates and other officers to develop a system that allowed him to profit from selling drugs inside the jail.