Dateline: Monday,
February 16, 2015 10:35 PM
The guards conduct
their master count at 10 p.m. each
night, going from cell to cell with their list, calling out each person’s name
in turn, and each of us responds by calling out our prison number. They verify
that no one is missing, then cut off the glaring lights, and we go to sleep.
This night was different. The lights didn’t go out.
At 10:55 p.m. about
twenty-one prison guards and two drug sniffing dogs bum-rushed the day room
area of our wing, which contains twenty-eight two-man cells. “Everybody strip down to your boxers, lay
face-down on your bunks, don’t look around or you’re going to confinement.”
Great. Another one
of these drug interdiction ransacking
shakedowns. The stormtroopers have arrived.
While we lay
face-down on our bunks for the next fifteen minutes, the dope dogs ran in and
out of every cell, upstairs and downstairs. They’d been sniffing other housing
areas for several hours — we’d seen them pass by our building a couple of times
— and must have been tired. When they came in and out of my cell two or three
times, futilely sniffing for contraband, both dogs panted heavily. I dared not look.
I didn’t want to risk going to lock-up on
the house for disobeying an order.
A scramble. The
dogs detected a suspicious scent upstairs. They took the two young black men
out of the cell, searched their belongings, and found drugs hidden. Lock-up for
one.
Once that was
done, they herded us all into the day room to sit on benches while the
stormtroopers ransacked each cell, one-by-one. I grabbed a spot on a bench
where I could see into my cell if I surreptitiously turned my head and watched
with my peripheral vision. A tall, young prison guard entered my cell and began
to methodically ransack all my belongings.
A few months ago,
when I had been subjected to retaliation and reprisals by guards at another
institution for having filed an official complaint against another guard for
reprisal, I used the term “ransacked”
to describe what that guard did to my belongings. When my wife filed a
complaint to the Florida governor’s office about my mistreatment and resulting
solitary confinement, a state prison inspector investigating the complaint
asked me to define what I meant by “ransacking.”
Let me be precise in describing how this “correctional
officer” conducted his “search.”
First, he removed
the pillow case, tossed it and my pillow on the floor, and stepped on it as he
stripped the sheets and blanket from my thin mattress. Nothing under the
mattress. Sheets and blanket on the cell floor.
Next, he opened
the lid of the floor locker containing several dozen legal envelopes with court
papers, transcripts, and other documents. One-by-one he dumped out each
envelope on the floor, tossing the envelope aside, not even looking at the
contents. An envelope of family photos got dumped out and scattered, along with
a couple of magazines and books. Then he lifted out my Bible, flipped through
it, and dropped it, open, on the growing pile of papers.
My laundry bag
containing personal clothing, sweatshirts, pajamas, socks, boxers, and
t-shirts, got dumped in the corner. The young guard intentionally placed his
boot on my Bible as he stepped out of the cell for a moment, apparently winded.
Two more guards
joined him outside my cell, fist-bumping and laughing, having fun. If this had
happened “on the street,” in the free world, it would be called home invasion.
In prison, it is called business as usual.
A fourth young
guard carrying a black back pack joined the first three, then all four crowded
into my cell. These cells were originally designed for one man, but with
stacked bunk beds, they are overcrowded with two men inside, let alone four.
They cavalierly stepped on the dumped-out papers, and the first one appeared to
intentionally step on my Bible again. I wondered what had happened to him to
cause him to show such contempt and disrespect to a holy book.
The fourth guard
set the black nylon back pack on the jumbled pile of my belongings, leaned over and unzipped it.
Uh oh! This is the part where he takes out the contraband and plants it in my
mattress. I craned my neck around, staring directly at the men, unconcerned that
they might see me looking at them. I didn’t care at this point. I’d been
hustled out of view when crooked guards planted a knife in my mattress at Cross
City C.I. several months before. This time, I wanted to be an eyewitness. I did
a “Psst” sound toward my cellmate, who sat with his head facing the floor. He
looked at me. I nodded toward our cell.
The guard took out
a bottled water, twisted the cap, and took a drink. False alarm.
One of the new
guards reached into the bunk locker and pulled out my blue mesh canteen bag
filled with various food items I’d bought at the inmate canteen that day. He
dumped it out on the floor, and the other guards strewed the floor packets
around, looking through them. The first guard picked up a “L’il Chub” sausage
($1.38), ripped open the plastic wrapper, and ate it in about three bites. You
can get hungry shaking down and ransacking prisoners’ belongings. Another guard
opened a packet of banana cookies (79¢), took out a couple, then handed the
open pack to another guard. They rummaged around for several more minutes, my
view blocked by the two standing in the narrow doorway, then moved to the next
cell.
I didn’t recognize
any of the guards, and learned later that the twenty-one-plus stormtrooper team
had come from Suwanee C.I., a notorious prison west of here, well-known from
the prison grapevine for setting up, assaulting, and brutalizing prisoners.
With their I.D. cards covered up or missing, it was impossible to get any names
of the anonymous guards. Their identities protected, they acted boldly, with
impunity. In a warped exchange program, an anonymous stormtrooper team from
this prison will reciprocate and visit that prison for a corresponding
ransacking at another time.
That is how I
describe “ransacking.” What good
would it do to file an official complaint? The top officials at this prison,
the warden, assistant warden, colonel, and shift captain, came in while the
ransacking was proceeding, “skinnin’ and
grinnin’,” as they say in prison, greeting and shaking hands with their
blood brothers, but left well before the shakedown was completed, at almost
half-past midnight.
We were locked in
our cells, the floor covered in trashed belongings. I was tired. I made a
feeble attempt to sort out some of my things, dug out my sheets and pillow,
made my bunk, and lay down, putting off the clean-up until the next day. Such
hostile actions affect everyone negatively. I had a difficult time getting to
sleep.
The next morning I
got up, put on my headphones, and turned on my radio for the news. That was
strange. My radio was dead. I’d just replaced the little batteries the week
before ($2.75 plus tax). No way they were dead already. I turned the radio over
and checked the compartment. No batteries. They’d stolen my batteries, too! How
petty, I thought.
A couple hours
later a guard told me to pack up, my custody had dropped, I was moving to an
“open dorm,” a convenience store-sized room crammed with ninety-two or so bunks
and prisoners. Close quarters.
The Florida D.O.C.
dropped my custody from “close” to “medium” in 2009, where it had remained,
except when a hostile classification officer at Okaloosa had manipulated the
state computer to put me back at “close” for awhile, until the computer
corrected the error.
Having “medium
custody” brings few actual benefits, except to show that the prison system
considers me, with a 2017 parole date, “low risk.”
I’d hardly gotten
settled in my new accommodations when I noticed the catchy phrase, “A Clean Prison is a Happy Prison,”
painted on one of the walls (who thinks up these things?). Then, on the large
blank wall at the north side of the building I saw words meticulously painted
in twelve-inch letters, the new D.O.C. motto, I supposed, since it seems to be
posted everywhere: “Changing Lives to
Ensure a Safer Florida” and below that in smaller letters, the words: “Trust — Respect — Accountability — Integrity
— Leadership.”
A couple of
prisoners nearby looked at me oddly when I burst out laughing. (There are a lot
of crazy people in here, so such occurrences are common). They went back to
their card game and ignored me.
Looking at those
words, I thought about the stormtroopers’ visit the night before, and wondered
how that aligned with the hollow words on the wall. How could their repressive,
destructive actions change lives, and ensure a safer Florida? It seemed that their very acts
worked to counter the motto’s intent by creating anger and hatred in many people
offended by the Gestapo tactics. True, thanks to the drug dog’s work, they did catch
one prisoner with contraband, one out of fifty-four, less than 2%.
Other men
complained of losing canteen food items, too. It appeared that the Suwanee
stormtroopers considered their shakedowns to be an authorized buffet, to snack
on whatever they chose. Any complaints would be denied, as they always are, and
probably unleash additional reprisals and repercussions. The courts call that
threat a “chilling effect” on one’s
First Amendment rights to challenge government actions.
After moving to
the open dorm, over the next several days, we were subjected to additional
senseless ransackings, apparently a regular and frequent activity. Absolutely
no contraband was found on any of these, just prisoners’ meager property tossed
around and scattered.
They got away with
it. But what did they lose? “Trust,
respect, accountability, integrity, and leadership?” That, and much more.
Among several
hundred thousand state employees, the prison guards are at the very bottom of
the barrel in peer respect and esteem. The ones who try to do a good job are
tarred with the same brush that blackens the reputations of those who misuse
their authority to abuse prisoners or conduct illegal activities, in small ways
like stealing canteen items and more serious ways such as smuggling of drugs,
tobacco and cell phones. Morale levels are at an all-time low. And there is no
end in sight. What kinds of personalities are drawn to work in such an
environment? To a considerable extent, it’s those who derive personal
satisfaction from abusing their authority.
The feds use
psychological testing and screening to filter out many disturbed guard
candidates. The state does not.
Twenty years ago,
when I was at Sumter C.I., near Bushnell, the feds built “Coleman,” a new
federal prison, and solicited Sumter C.I. staff to apply for jobs at higher pay
and better benefits. Most of the best employees took advantage of the
opportunity and left state employ to go to the feds.
One notable
exception was a short, potbellied guard nicknamed, “Spanky,” who worked in the recreation department. I asked Spanky
why he hadn’t joined so many of his comrades and gone over to the feds. “I applied for a job over there with them
feds,” Spanky said, spitting a long stream of brown tobacco juice on the
ground. “They gave me a mental health
evaluation with some woman doctor. She said I was psychologically unfit to be a
correctional officer.”
I smiled. “You know, Spanky,” I said, “I have a lot of respect for those feds.”
Back to the
present. In the week following the midnight ransacking and my move to the open
dorm, we were subjected to two more ransackings, this time during daylight
hours, by local guard crews. On one occasion, a prisoner inside the dorm
shouted out the window to a friend passing by on his way back from chow, which
caused an angry sergeant to summon 6 or 7 officers to come into the dorm to
ransack our belongings yet again. The sergeant specifically said that since one
man had yelled out the window, we would all have our belongings trashed to
teach us a lesson. “Everybody on your
bunks and open your lockers.” We did so. 93 men were subjected to group
punishment because of the actions of one person. In the guards’ eyes that seems
fair and makes perfect sense. In my eyes, not so much; in fact, not at all.
Charlie
