Kraig Lewis is still outraged over his arrest and conviction. 

“I didn’t have no record, I had my whole life ahead of me,” Lewis told NY1. “I was in my last semester of grad school.”

He wanted to be a lawyer, but he says his life got derailed by the NYPD and a gang takedown based on a secretive database police keep. 

It was 2016, police and the feds swept up 120 people in the Bronx who they said were involved with gang violence. It was one of several large gang takedowns across the city at the time. 

“Thrown in jail for two or three years of my life, with a degree, trying to be a lawyer,” Lewis said. “That’s what I deserve because of a database?”

The NYPD’s controversial gang database is a list of thousands of individuals police claim are members of gangs. The now 30-year-old says he was unfairly placed on the list and argues the database has far too many people on it just because of who they hang out with and what they look like. 

While doing a handshake with a friend that some would call a gang handshake, Lewis explained, “That doesn’t make him gang, he’s not Y-G, he’s not Blood. But, you are going to arrest him for a handshake?"

Explaining more about his arrest, Lewis said, “I was in grad school with braids and my pants sagging off my behind.”

Hanging out in Haffen Park in the Eastchester neighborhood where he grew up -- some call it the Valley -- he admitted that he wasn't an angel. He was seriously cut in the face when he was a teen.

But, he maintains he was not the violent person the police and feds painted him as. 

“I got friends, I’m not gonna sit here and act like they were the most innocent,” Lewis said. “But, when you talk about the individual, I was not the murderer that they were trying to put away. Due to the conspiracy and me not telling, that’s how that works. You are going to fall like collateral damage.” 

Lewis said, at the time he was arrested, he was performing music that he hoped could make him a star while in college in Connecticut. 

He showed me a music video he made that starred a young Cardi B as she was on the verge of super-stardom.

Lewis goes by the rap names Kay Murda and Flock. The NYPD and prosecutors say plenty of gangs make music about real life violent acts they commit.

"It is a group of Black men, we are striving,” Lewis said. “If it’s 10 of us, we doing music, I’m going to call it a music group. You are going to call it a gang.”

Lewis said he helped to promote numerous charity events, even some calling for an end to violence. He was excited to have a brief encounter with Hillary Clinton as she campaigned for president at his college, University of Bridgeport.

In a selfie standing in the school's gym, you can see Lewis as Clinton is in the background speaking on stage.

That was just three days before he was arrested. 

“They initially said I ran up in the building and shot two individuals, but I got shot in the process. Then I healed up and went back again and I got shot again,” Lewis said. “So looking in the courtroom I think they got the wrong guy, because I never got shot. I don’t know what y’all are talking about. You just put two shootings on me.”

Although he was initially facing a potential life sentence, after sitting in jail for two years, several charges where dropped. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges of having 300 pounds of weed. He was then released.

“They flipped me on my head, 'stay there young man. You thought you were something.' I thought I was everything,” said Lewis.

Lewis has new music videos out and still has dreams of making it big in music as well as becoming a lawyer. He added that he wants to help stop gang violence and stop police from arresting the wrong people for that violence.

The Department of Investigation is probing the NYPD gang database practice. The agency says it's in the final stages of the investigation. Some City Council members are considering legislation to ban the secretive database.

Meanwhile, the NYPD maintains the database is an effective tool to keep track of violent gang members. Police say, at a time when gun violence is a serious problem in the city, advocating for the gang database to be abolished is misguided.