Читать книгу Prison Puzzle Pieces - Dave Basham - Страница 8

Our next meeting was when he was transferred into B-West. He was unemployed at the time. Nobody wanted to hire him because of his reputation and most were afraid of him. Nobody wanted the headaches that came with having him around.

He talked one of our sergeants into hiring him as a barber. The problem was that he couldn't cut hair. He would get friends to come to him for haircuts and intimidate others into coming to him in order to get some business. I was in charge of the swampers, so I wasn't happy with having a barber that had no skills. Inmates were complaining to me that they wanted a qualified barber. I asked the sergeant why he had hired Boomer. He said he deserved a break. I had a lot of respect for both of the sergeants that were in this block at this time. I needed a solution. We are only allowed two barbers in each unit, but I needed two good barbers. Our other barber did a good job, but quit, leaving me with one unqualified barber. I wanted to hire the best barber in the institution and use him to train in Boomer properly.

The job posting went up and two really good barbers applied. After asking inmates and officers what they thought about these guys, the consensus was that they were both very good and that one was the best barber in the entire institution.

I wanted to hire both of them, that way the best guy could train in Boomer and we would have two qualified barbers while Boomer was learning. Problem was that we were only allowed two barbers per cellblock, but I had a plan. I could divide the utility position, miscellaneous jobs, up between all three barbers and still have the correct allotment of swampers. When I bounced my plan off the top sergeant, he liked the idea and told me to go ahead with it. The best guy was known to not be the most agreeable person in this world of many abrasive attitudes. The top sergeant said he knew him well and was fine with him. When I found out where he was housed, I went to talk with him. I told him my plan and he liked the idea.

Another plus to having the three barbers was that greater diversity was able to be achieved. Now we would have a white, black and Native American barber.

The best barber was white and a witch, so that's what we'll call him. I found out that there were a few witches in the prison. Being a witch is considered to be their religion. They are called wiccans and get whatever special privileges that religion recognizes in being necessary to be able to worship in their own way. This allows these guys to be able to keep special herbs and teas in their cells. If you want to be able to get these herbs and teas, you just have to become a witch. These witches worship in the chapel during what they call Wiccan Ceremonies.

When I told Boomer what I was planning, he didn't believe me. He had been lied to by officers too many times before. He went to the sergeant that hired him and told him Basham was going to fire him. That sergeant came to me and asked me what was going on. I told him. He said, "Really?" I told him I liked what he had done with hiring Boomer, but that I needed him to be able to do the job. He liked the idea and told Boomer that I could be trusted. Boomer knew enough not to trust anyone in here, but he had no choice but to wait and see. He definitely was not pleased with me. He saw me as just another officer screwing with him.

When Boomer saw the posting announcing who got what jobs he was convinced that I was going to fire him.

When Witch came in, he worked on training in Boomer. Boomer was a quick study. Any thing Boomer put his mind to, he could do well.

Witch quickly became lazy and uncooperative. He was supposed to be putting in five hours of work each day, but was only putting in about five hours per week. As long as my swampers did their job, they had no problems with me. If they didn't do their job, they would find out that their lives would be much more peaceful if they just went ahead and did it. Firing people wasn't my first choice with these guys, but if I had accumulated enough documentation on their violations and didn't feel they would eventually turn around and do the job, I had no problem with canning them. I was constantly on this guy to do his job. He filed a grievance on me. The night sergeant reported to me that he was refusing to do his job. Witch said he didn't have to do it because the associate warden said he didn't have to. I informed him that if she wanted to allow him to sit around doing nothing, she can tell me that and until then he would either do the job, quit or I'd have to fire him. He applied for and got a different job elsewhere. From that time on he was my enemy and made it known. He never did anything to cross the line with me though. He was just a major pain in the ass.

Once Witch was gone, Boomer came up to me and thanked me for how I had handled everything. Never again did he ever doubt anything I said.