PRISON VOICES

RSS feed for this page
Essay by Billy Wayne Sinclair
E-mail Billy Wayne Sinclair  Billy@JohnTFloyd.com 

November 13, 2007

YOUTH VIOLENCE

INTRODUCTION: The Prince of Death Cometh Again

The time and place do no matter. The night outside was cold. A biting wind made a wino hunker down under a worn jacket collar trying desperately to rescue yesterday’s memories. The rigors of life had reduced him to nothing more than a restless soul trying to find a place to spend a warm night. He lay down in a rat-infested alley and froze to death in the midst of rotting garbage. He was not mourned or missed. The only hint of concern for his passing was the curse of an orderly in the coroner’s office who had to hose down his filthy body.

The Prince of Death, as life’s passing was called by Thomas Wolfe, often rescues many lost souls from the unconscious brutality of life. It touches those wretched souls who no longer live with any joy or hope but merely survive day-to-day under the constant beat of wings of desperation. A failed life is a difficult thing to endure, much less survive. Failure does not lend itself to compassion, understanding, or renewed hope. It tirelessly consumes the living soul, like the dirt of the grave relentlessly consumes the dead body.

The Prince of Death has many faces – some decent, sparing a diseased body of suffering; others unspeakably ugly, horribly produced by parasitical seeds of violence. That was the face the Prince of Death wore when it invaded the privacy of Harriet Snow’s small, three room apartment nearly three decades ago. A grandmother of fifteen healthy children, the 74-year-old had lived a simple life never once harming a solitary soul. She had escaped the fate that the King of the Brobdingnags told Gulliver during his travels that man’s history is a “heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst side effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition could produce.”

Earlier on that fatal Wednesday morning Harriet’s daughter – a big-boned woman named Sarah – stopped by her mother’s little apartment and left a week’s supply of groceries. She had spent the last six years helping her mother. Harriet’s social security check did not cover all the monthly bills. Sarah often wondered what happened to the elderly who lived solely on social security income and who had more bills than money. Sarah’s husband was not as sympathetic. He was uncomfortable with the weekly grocery expense incurred by Harriet’s need to eat, but as long as it came out of Sarah’s paycheck, he at least said nothing.

Sarah was the last human face Harriet saw. After he daughter left, Harriet locked the door with one of the three locks that kept her safe from the outside world. After so many years of living in fear of a neighborhood infested with crime and violence, Harriet could no longer bring herself to venture outside. Since her husband’s death four years earlier, the little apartment was the only solid comfort she had left in life. She had made a solemn choice that she would rather stay in her little apartment haunted by fear rather than live tortured in the nursing home Sarah had so often spoken about. Sometimes, when the urge to walk to the nearby deli or sit in the afternoon shade on a park bench just one block away enticed her, she would cry out in anger and frustration because she could not safely leave her apartment. She had been reduced to looking at life through welded mesh-wire that covered the only window in the apartment.

Harriet did not hear the slight shuffling sound at the door or see the door knob turn. She sat in a worn rocking chair, knitting and thinking about the time she and her husband had quarreled over a burnt supper. She loved that man – never once in 41-years had the false promise of beckoning temptation caused her to betray that love. The knife blade slid silently into the crack of the door. Metal touched metal. Harriet did not hear. The knife blade shoved the tongue of the lock back into its shell. Harriet had forgotten to snap the safety chain. The door knob turned and the door opened with an undetected squeak. Harriet kept rocking. Three stealthy figures crept silently into the apartment – a coward’s footstep, just like the traitor’s betrayal, usually go unnoticed.

A hand clasped tightly across Harriet’s mouth. A bursting flash of terror and fright sent her world into total darkness. When she regained consciousness, Harriet recognized bits and pieces of her apartment blurring past her in a reeling kind of motion. She tried to get up but couldn’t. She screamed but a stuffed rag in her mouth stifled the sound. The terrifying realization struck her that her hands were tied to the head post of her bed. Her vision, perhaps because of the fear surging through her senses, suddenly cleared. She saw the three young men – no, she thought, they were no more than boys – ransacking her apartment. She watched one of the pillagers deliberately throw Sarah’s framed photo to the floor and grind a heel into it. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she watched the young hoodlums rip her little apartment loose at the seams. She was watching a force so brutal, so sinister, so evil she could not fathom it.

The three young cretins stood around Harriet’s bed. They laughed, slapped hands, and made vulgar jokes about things Harriet held decent and sacred. Her thoughts reached out to God, but after one of the hoodlums tore her dress from her aged body, she knew death would be a relief. “What have I done to deserve this?” her mind screamed. She could no longer watch as the “boys” undressed and prepared for the ultimate violation of human decency. “God help me – please save me from this thing!” Her silent pleas went unheard by the rest of the world, perhaps even by God himself.

The homicide detective was familiar with violence. He understood the leading cause of murder was a trivial argument or sex – a dispute over a drink spilled on a shined pair of boots or a wife involved with a lover. But the murder before him forced him turn and retch up his last meal in a blood-soaked corner. Blood was everywhere – on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Most people can not picture how much space eight pints of blood can splatter and cover when it is spread by maddened violence. The detective finally summoned enough strength to examine Harriet. The first thing he saw was the broken scissors stuck in her mutilated neck. She had been savagely stabbed more than 100 times with the scissors before they broke. The entire frontal portion of her skull was missing, torn away by a vicious blow from a claw hammer. Crime lab technicians were still removing fragments of bone and flesh from the walls and ceiling.

“What kind of animal would do something like this?” the detective asked a uniformed patrolman standing next to him.

“It was three kids, sir,” the patrolman responded, unable to tear his sight from the broken scissors. “We spotted them coming out of the building. One of them was covered with blood. We gave chase and they surrendered without any problem. Two of them are fourteen years old – the other one is fifteen.”

“Don’t call those animals ‘kids’!” the detective spat. “Anybody who’d do something like this ain’t a kid. He’s a threat to everything that is right and normal. This is calculated evil.”

The detective paused, noticing the crushed photo on the floor.

“You kill or cage whatever could do a thing like this,” he said, letting his hand sweep the entire room. “Damn, man, do you realize what they did to her?”

“I do now, sir,” the patrolman replied. “It makes me wish I had been judge, jury and executioner a few moments ago.”

“God, I know what you mean,” the detective said. “But you do that and they’ll crucify you. Every bleeding-heart liberal in this city will pounce on you like a swarm of bees. I’m sick of due process, Miranda, and judges who know as much about crime and the streets as a retarded baboon. I’m sick of seeing old people live in terror and law-abiding citizens afraid to walk the streets at night. We don’t have law and order in this country – all we can do is keep the lid on this melting pot of discontent and lawlessness. I’m sick of the vested interests – sick of the boards, commissions, and investigations that try to nail our asses to the wall while we keep them safe. I’m sick of this job, this badge. It once made me proud but now it only makes me hate.”

“What do you think they are going to do with the little bastards?” the patrolman asked.

“Nothing,” the detective responded. “Not a damn thing. In fact, I can see the scenario now. The judge will put one of the fourteen year olds on probation – the system always looks for one in the pack that they feel is not as guilty as the others. The other fourteen year old will get his little ass shipped off to a reform school for a couple years. The fifteen year old will be charged as an adult, but his public defender and some assistant district attorney will strike a plea bargain and the punk will plead to manslaughter. The judge may even find a way to keep him charged as a juvenile just so he doesn’t lose his ass in the penitentiary with the older cons.”

“And what about her?” the patrolman asked, pointing to Harriet’s body being wheeled out on a stretcher.

“It’s over for her,” the detective said. “There’s not a damn thing in it for her. The most concern she’s gonna get out of the system is right here at this bloody moment. You’re angry – I’m angry. The rest is a cleaning operation, People will read about it tomorrow over the paper at a fast-food restaurant and they will get a little more afraid and they will curse us for letting it happen. But then they’ll go to work, pinch someone else’s wife on the ass, and forget about it. They’ll leave it to the system – and all the system can do is incarcerate those three little evil-bred bastards they got down in juvey. While those animals curse and spit in the face of the system, the system will give them understanding, treatment, and a thousand ways to justify what they did to that old lady. We don’t have the courage to respond to what they did to her, so, in the final analysis, the system will grind the whole bloody mess into oblivion.”

The scream pierced the apartment building like a siren’s blast. The detective and the patrolman raced into the hallway. Sarah had backed against the wall and was sliding down it. Her face was ashen. Horror had drained it of all color. She had rushed up and pulled the plastic from her mother’s head. She would carry that moment of horror for the rest of her life.

The detective sucked in his breath, reached down into the deep recesses of his mind for more strength, and walked up to Sarah. He picked her up, knowing that a broken mirror can never be pieced together again.

A SOCIAL RESPONSE TO YOUTH VIOLENCE

In the 1970s when Harriet Snow was so brutally murdered youth violence had turned the nation’s big cities into urban arenas of fear, suspicion and distrust. Former Houston Police Chief B.K. Johnson told TIME Magazine (March 23, 1981) that “we have allowed ourselves to degenerate to the point where we’re living like animals. We live behind burglar bars and throw a collection of door locks at night and set an alarm and lay down with a loaded shotgun beside the bed and then try to get some rest.” Former Louisiana Corrections Secretary C. Paul Phelps said that “the most dangerous creature in the world is the 16 or 17 year old kid who comes from the ghetto. It makes no difference whether he’s white, black, Hispanic or Chinese.”

FBI statistics in the 1970s showed that the peak ages for violent crimes were from 15 to 17 years of age. In 1974 more than 77,000 juveniles were arrested for one of the violent crimes listed in the FBI’s Index. TIME reported that “young people commit most of the violent crime in America. Fully 57% of all arrests for such offenses in 1979 were criminals under the age of 25; one fifth were under 18.” The 25 year olds arrested in 1979 were 17 years of age in 1974; the 18 year olds arrested in 1979 were 13 years of age in 1976.

In 1980 there were some 4000 murders committed in New York and Los Angeles alone. TIME pointed out there was “something new about the way that Americans are killing, robbing, raping and assaulting one another. The curse of violent crime is rampant not just in the ghettos of depressed cities, where it always been a malignant force to contend with, but everywhere in urban areas, in suburbs and peaceful countrysides. More significant, the crimes are becoming more brutal, more irrational, more random – and therefore all the more frightening.”

Today the Center for Disease Control reports that youth violence is even more widespread in the United States. It is now the second leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 10 and 24. The following CDC figures reflect the scope of the problem:

• 5,570 young people aged 10 to 24 were murdered in the U.S. in 2003 – an average of 16 per day.
• More than 780,000 violence-related injuries in young people aged 10 to 24 were treated in emergency rooms in the U.S. in 2004.
• 36 percent of high school students in a 2005 nationwide survey reported being in a physical fight during the preceding 12 months.
• 7 percent of high school students in the 2005 survey reported they had taken a gun, knife, or club to school during the preceding 30 days.
• An estimated 30 percent of the nation’s school kids between the 6th and 10th grade report being involved in bullying.

The CDC reports that youth violence has far-reaching social implications. It increases health care costs, decreases property values, and disrupts social services. The center has put the cost of youth violence at more than $158 billion each year. The CDC has established a list of primary factors that increase the risk of youth violence which includes but is not limited to the following:

• Prior history of violence
• Drug, alcohol, or tobacco use
• Association with delinquent peers
• Poor family functioning
• Poor grade in school
• Poverty in the community

In 2001 the Houston CHRONICLE conducted a survey that found only one in 4 people in Harris County supported the death penalty for juveniles who committed a murder when they were 17 years of age or younger. Nationwide that same year just 26 percent of the people polled supported the death penalty for juveniles.

In 2005 the United States Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to execute a person who committed his crime when he was 17 or younger. At the time 19 states allowed for execution of 16 year olds, although Oklahoma was the only state that had executed someone who killed while that young since the death penalty was resumed in this country in 1976. Texas had set the age for execution at 17 years – and, along with six other states (Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia), the state executed seven such murder defendants, including one from Harris County.

In the 2001 CHRONICLE article Houston criminal defense attorney Stanley Schneider pointed out that in more than 300 Texas statutes 17-year-olds are considered children. He said that most Texas laws consider 18 years of age as the year of adulthood. 17 year old Texans cannot vote, join the Army on their own, drink legally, or consent to an abortion without parental permission.

"But a 17-year-old commits a crime and they're thought to be mature enough to face the death penalty," Schneider said. "We all know 17-year-olds, many of them don't have the sense to come in out of the rain. We all know that 17-year-olds are mature one moment and act as children in the next. They don't understand the nature of their conduct. At what point does a child become an adult? Is it by virtue of their birthday?"

While Harris County was denied an opportunity to execute the more than two dozen juvenile killers it had sent to Texas’ death row before the 2005 Supreme Court ruling, the “war on juvenile crime” declared by the county in the 1990s has resulted in half of the convictions of all juveniles tried as adults in the state of Texas coming from this county. The CHRONICLE reported that this disproportionate rate of “juveniles-tried-as-adults” convictions occurred “despite youths here accounting for just 15 percent of all the juvenile crime in Texas, according to a review of state and local statistics.”

Section 54.02(a)(2)(B) of the Texas Family Code allows juveniles over the age of 15 to be tried as adults. Over the past decade Harris County has prosecuted more juveniles as adults than Bexar, Dallas, Tarrant and Travis counties combined, reported the CHRONICLE. In 1996, when the “war on juvenile crime” was declared, Harris County certified 170 juveniles to be tried as adults. The number declined steadily over the next decade to approximately 55 a year between 2003 and 2005. The certification process has become so perfunctory in Harris County that, as the CHRONICLE reported, judges certified 90 percent of the requests by prosecutors to try juveniles as adults.

“Most juvenile offenders facing certification are poor, so their court-appointed attorneys, who struggle with heavy caseloads, may not have the time or resources to challenge prosecutors,” reported the CHRONICLE.

A CASE EXAMPLE

In Adams v. State, 180 S.W.3d 386 (Tex.App.-Corpus Christi 2005) the appeals court dealt with a case involving three juveniles convicted for the murder of Megan Mae Adams’ grandmother. The juvenile court waived and then transferred jurisdiction of the case to the criminal district court. Id., at 393. The appeals court in detail set out the background facts concerning the strangulation death of Jan Barnum, Adams’ grandmother:

“On or about March 5, 2003, at approximately 5:00 p.m., Adams and co-defendants Macias and Lozano, juveniles, were detained by juvenile investigator Miguel Hernandez for criminal trespass at a vacant house near Adams' residence. After being released, the three put into motion plans to run away to Louisiana where Adams had relatives. They initially intended to travel by bus, but then decided to use Jan Barnum's car. Barnum was Adams' maternal grandmother. Their plan was to wait for Barnum to fall asleep before taking the car. When it took too long for Barnum to fall asleep, a plan developed to kill her. As Macias waited in the bathroom, Adams led Barnum through the hall of the apartment they shared. Adams was present while Macias used a ribbon to strangle Barnum. At some point, Lozano entered the apartment and observed Macias strangling Barnum. Neither Adams nor Lozano took any action nor attempted to prevent or stop Macias from strangling Barnum. With Adams driving, the three fled in Barnum's car and drove first to a truck stop, then to the residence of J.R., Macia's girlfriend, and then to a convenience store.

“Bernardo Aguilar, an employee of the convenience store, was working the night shift. He reported to police officer John Vargas, who was at the scene, that three juveniles at the store looked nervous and suspicious. Aguilar indicated the juveniles had come into the store for gas and an atlas. Officer Vargas recognized the juveniles from earlier in the day and suspected they were again runaways. He called dispatch to report three possible runaways and requested that another officer be sent to the location. Officer Javier Gallegos was dispatched to the location and confirmed that all three juveniles had been reported as runaways. Officer Gallegos placed the juveniles in the patrol car to take them to their residences. Macias was released to his stepfather. Lozano was released to his aunt. Adams attempted to stay with Lozano; however, Lozano's aunt refused because Adams had not been staying with Lozano as Adams stated to Officer Gallegos.

”Adams asked to be taken to the home of her ‘uncle,’ Andrew Narvaez, who informed officer Gallegos that Adams was staying with her grandmother and that he knew where her apartment was located. Officer Gallegos followed Narvaez to Adams' grandmother's apartment. En route, Adams repeatedly insisted that she needed to speak with Narvaez privately, which Officer Gallegos permitted when they arrived at the apartments where Barnum lived. Adams whispered to Narvaez that an intruder had broken into the apartment and strangled Barnum. Narvaez then told this to Officer Gallegos who then requested an ambulance, a supervisor and backup. He obtained a key to the residence from a security guard on duty because the windows and doors were locked. Once inside the apartment, office Gallegos found Barnum's body facedown in a bedroom. It appeared that she had been strangled. When juvenile investigator Santiago Solis arrived at the scene, he found, among other things, four to five strands of brown hair about two inches long, grasped in Barnum's right hand.

”Officer Michael Mata was also dispatched and arrived at Barnum's apartment where he found Adams inside Officer Gallegos' patrol car. Mata read Adams her Miranda warnings. Adams volunteered that an intruder strangled her grandmother. Officer Mata transported Adams to the police department. Adams was taken before the juvenile magistrate and then returned to the police station where she gave a statement to police. Macias and Lozano also appeared before the magistrate and gave statements regarding the events of that evening, up to and including Barnum's death. “The three statements were admitted in evidence.

”In his statement, Macias admitted he murdered Barnum but explained that he did so at Adams' request. Macias stated that Adams gave him the ribbon he used to kill Barnum. In her statement, Adams admitted she was present during the attack but stated that the decision to kill Barnum was solely Macias' decision. Lozano admitted in his statement that he walked in during the attack and although he told Macias to stop, he did nothing to attempt to stop Macias. He admitted that, prior to the attack, as the two waited for Adams outside the apartment, Macias told him that Adams wanted Macias to kill Barnum. Lozano did not believe Macias had the courage to kill Barnum and did nothing.

”At trial, Macias testified in his defense. He admitted he killed Barnum. He testified that, while Lozano and he waited for Adams outside Barnum's apartment, Adams gave him a ribbon with an attached medal, to use in the assault. Macias removed the medal, threw it on the lawn, entered the apartment, and waited in the bathroom. Adams walked through the hall and Barnum followed her as the two argued. Macias sprung from the bathroom and, using both hands and the ribbon, strangled Barnum until ‘her hands stopped moving.’ He testified that, at one point, he momentarily stopped, but Adams threatened to call the police and accuse Macias of attempting to kill Adams if Macias did not finish what he started.” Id., at 394-95.

In addition to the statements made by the three juveniles, the State presented significant evidence that there was ill will between Adams and her grandmother which had led to prior confrontations. Macias’ girlfriend testified about an earlier plan by Adams and a boyfriend to put cockroach poison and Nyquil in Barnum’s drinking water in order to kill her. The boyfriend in this plot also testified that Adams “hated [Barnum] and she wanted her to die.” Id., at 395.

There is little doubt that the murder of Jan Barnum was a coldblooded act inspired by Megan Mae Adams’ hatred of her granddaughter. This was not a “juvenile act” from which violence inadvertently happened. It was murder, and the conviction for it led to Adams and Macias both receiving life sentences and Lozano receiving a 15-year manslaughter term. The adult criminal court had jurisdiction to try, convict, and sentence these juveniles as adults pursuant to Section 54.02(a)(2)(B) of the Texas Family Code which authorizes a juvenile court to transfer “a child” over the age of fifteen for prosecution if (1) the child is alleged to have violated a penal law of the grade of felony, (2) so long as no adjudication hearing has been conducted concerning that offense, and (3) the requirements of Sections 53.04 through 53.07 of the Family Code are met.

CONCLUSION

States no longer execute “juvenile killers.” They send them to prison for long periods of time; some to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. In 2002 the FBI reported that there were 16,200 murders committed in this country – a significant decrease from the approximately 25,000 murders committed in 1979 when Harriet Snow was so brutally murdered. Still, in 2002, 1300 murders (or 8% of the total murders) were committed by juveniles - some 69 percent of them committed by a killer with a firearm.

In Philadelphia this year (through October 12) some 315 murders were committed – with an increasing number of them being committed by juveniles with firearms according to local law enforcement officials. A 14-year-old Philadelphia youngster posted his motto on a MySpace page: “Mess with the Best, Die like the rest.” He listed in interests as “shooting … war, the North Hollywood shoot-out, bank robbers, the Columbine massacre.”

Social apologists offer a laundry list of environmental reasons (some call “excuses”) to explain why America’s children are so violent. Many of these reasons are not only socially unacceptable but pose a dangerous threat to a sane and reasonable criminal justice system. But at least one reason – violence spewing from the entertainment industry through videos, musical lyrics, computer games, movies, etc. – has produced a new breed of “criminal terrorists” who have been weaned on a cinematic morality that fosters a lawless social attitude that “mess with the best, die like the rest.”

Violent children are the product of parental neglect/abuse, stressed out and dysfunctional educational institutions, morally bankrupt religious institutions, hopelessly corrupt political institutions, and unspeakably violent and abusive juvenile institutions.

The warning signs have long been in the public arena. In a 1973 Reader’s Digest article, former Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Jesse L. Steinfield estimated that 40 million children between the ages of 2 and 11 watched television on an average of 3 ½ hours per day and would see over 100,000 incidents of violence and 13,400 deaths before they reached the age of 12

Youth violence, therefore, is not a new phenomenon. Big city “gang rumbles” captured the nation’s news media headlines in the 1950s. Americans were torn between outrage and fascination over that kind of gang violence as evidenced by the success of the West Side Story. But gang violence today is markedly different than it was in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It has changed from simple gang rumbles to vicious attacks, and murder, on innocent bystanders as part of some “initiation” ritual.

There is no question that there is an increasing need in this country for social protection from juvenile predators – whether they are like the “animals” that murdered Harriet Snow, the “mess with the best-die like the rest” street thugs in Philadelphia who shoot anything that moves, or the Megan Mae Adams who kill family members. The nation’s criminal justice system must find a swift, certain, and rational way of responding to these offenders. Trying them as adults, imposing harsh sentence, and placing them in violent-infested state prisons ruled by gang violence, homosexual rape, and official corruption is not a rational response. It simply reinforces a violent criminal ethic.

Perhaps placing the “juvenile predators” is currently the only criminal justice option available to most states. But the nation’s political and educational institutions must step up to the plate and pick up the slack for the failed family unit. This means increased vigilance and restraint over child being victimized by domestic violence, subjected to sexual abuse in the family, and exposed to casual drug use and “entertainment” violence in the “rap-drug” culture.

Juvenile predators, the “mess with the best-die like the rest” thugs, mirror the soul of the society that produced them. They are born babies; they are made predators. Public rants from law-and-order politicians and hate-filled demands for vengeance from crime victim advocates are not the answer. They only fuel the cycle of social violence.

America does not need any more social “wars” – “war on terrorism,” “war on crime,” “war on juvenile crime,” “war on drugs,” or even wars on poverty, teen pregnancy, truancy, domestic violence, and bullying. America needs responsible, decent, and honest actions by its political, educational and legal systems that produce a society whose citizens respect law and order, due process, and equal protection of the law for all people. The “us-against-them” mindset afflicting this nation – Democrats/Republicans, liberals/conservatives, Christians/Muslims, color against color – inevitably produces hatred, mistrust, and violence among its diverse population. It creates a “free” society as fraught with tension, paranoia, and corruption as an imprisoned keeper-kept society. Such a society becomes a prisoner of its own making.

SOURCE NOTE: Portions of this article previously appeared in THE ANGOLITE (March-April 1981), the official newsmagazine at the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Written by Billy Wayne Sinclair

 

 

[ Back to top ]

Site menu:

John T. Floyd Travels To All Criminal Courts
In Texas

Phone
(713) 224-0101

Toll Free
1-866-374-1327

Email
jfloyd@JohnTFloyd.com

Principal Office
440 Louisiana,
Ste. 1900
19th Floor
Lyric Centre
Houston, TX 77002

All other locations by appointment only

City Links

• Angleton
• Austin
• Beaumont
• Brownsville
• Conroe
• Corpus Christi
• Dallas
• Del Rio
• El Paso
• Federal Crimes
• Fort Worth
• Galveston
• Hempstead
• Houston
• Laredo
• Lufkin
• Marshall
• Midland
• Mc Allen
• Pearland
• Richmond
• San Antonio
• Sherman
• Sugar Land
• Texarkana
• Tyler
• Victoria
• Waco

In case of EMERGENCY after hours and weekends, please e-mail at jfloyd@JohnTFloyd.com