Читать книгу Prison Puzzle Pieces 2 - Dave Basham - Страница 4

PROTECTION ORDER, YEAH RIGHT!

FALSE ESTEEM

Inmates will often call us lower level corrections officers, sergeant or even lieutenant in order to suck up to us. Some officers don’t catch on to this, but as soon as I heard this my radar would go up. I’d be waiting for the request that they would want me to ignore a policy. My response would be something like, “You know I’m not a sergeant, so what is it that you want me to let you do that you know you shouldn’t do?” They would smile, sometimes continue on and sometimes just walk away.

Sometimes I would tell them that I was just a pee-on. I would point to a spot on the floor and say, “See that little piece of crud on the floor? That’s me.” I’d point to my foot and say, “That’s the DOC.” I would smash my foot on the floor on the spot I pointed to and grind it around on that spot. “That’s how significant I am.” This got them laughing and made my point.

Eventually, things changed. When I gave them my “You know I’m not a sergeant” response, I would get answers like, “I know, but you’re my sergeant.” “You are to me.” “You know you’re the one that really runs this place.” I’d just smile. These things were good to hear. These perceptions were out there because I was aggressive in doing my job and taking care of any problems that arose. I wouldn’t just brush them off like many other officers.

WHY ME

One day an inmate who was the top man in one of the major gangs approached me. He said there was a protection order out on me. I had to laugh at that one. I was wondering what the heck this guy wanted. He told me it was legit. He explained that he and all of the other gang leaders got together and decided to put a protection order out on me. (This was not necessarily all at one time or place, basically they achieved communications with each other and reached this consensus.) He said that because of the way I did things, the way I handled myself and the way I treated everyone that they wanted me to stay around. He said that they knew I would do my job and that if I found a violation, I would address it. They knew I would be writing people up and sending them to the hole and they were fine with that. They knew if I issued out discipline to anyone that they had it coming. They knew that anything I did was on the up and up. He said that they couldn’t rely on that from anyone else. He said that if someone came to me with a problem, they knew I would do my best to solve it. In short he said, “We know that we’re better off with you here than without you here.”

He said that they couldn’t protect me from the crazy inmates or those not affiliated with any gang, but other than that, I would have no problem with anyone from any gang. It was ordered by all of the gangs and that no gangster in their right mind would dare to defy this order.

What caused them to do this? Well, I was being me. I was enforcing policies, writing up lots of reports and pissing off lots of people that wanted to get away with things. I was writing up several people a day. Not necessarily full reports, but at least documenting violations in their files. Some of these people were starting to organize to take me out; and not on a date. The gang leaders knew they didn’t want this to happen, so they squelched it by issuing their order.

In order to make me believe what he was saying, he spoke about a problem I had solved for an inmate. This inmate came into the institution and into my block the beginning of April. He got a job out in industry. You had to go outside to get to an industry building. He came to me and asked if I could get him a coat. He said that he wasn’t issued one and that when he tried to get one from laundry, they wouldn’t give him one. I called down to laundry. They told me that they don’t give out coats after March 31^st. Nobody entering the institution April 1^st or later gets a coat until fall. This was an exceptionally cold April. As officers, we had coats and most were wearing them inside the institution. After stating these facts, they still wouldn’t do it. I informed the inmate of what had transpired and told him I wasn’t giving up. I went down to laundry to speak to the sergeant. I told him this would be one less coat he would have to issue in the fall. He instantly became real angry, started yelling at me and turned red in the face. This guy was flipping out on me. As I was leaving, I could hear him continue to yell and swear at me.

It was time to try a different approach. I started making phone calls to those higher and higher up. I tried anyone who I thought might have the remotest chance of helping. I ran into the warden in the hallway and was turned down by him. This was my last shot.

The only thing that I could find on the institutions jacket policy was that they were issued between October first and March thirty first. I found nothing stating that an exception could not be made for situations of an extreme cold spell and an inmate receiving a job outside after March thirty first. Common sense would seem to dictate that we treat people humanely. I found that my views and the views of those controlling this place were often quite different.

All along, I had kept the inmate informed of my failures. He was appreciative, but frustrated and cold. He was able to see officers and inmates wearing coats inside the institution and he was being denied. All we needed was for this guy to contact some civil rights activist and there would be hell to pay. It just so happened that when I thought this guy was screwed; I wound up having to send someone to the hole. My assignment was to pack up the property in that guy’s cell. He had a coat. Linen, towels, coats and such were not personal property that got packed up and inventoried. It was just tossed into a bin and returned to laundry when the bin was full. People took items out of this bin all of the time; they weren’t supposed to but it happened a lot. I placed the coat in the bin, informed the inmate, and opened his cell so he could retrieve it. This way I was covering my ass, because I didn't actually give it to him. Anyone could grab it. I was just making sure he had first dibs.

The gang leader informing me of the protection order, and other inmates, were aware of this and other things I had done. He said that when I caught them at something, they expected to pay the consequences. They knew with me they would get fair treatment.

This protection order thing seemed unbelievable, but I thanked him and went about my business. What made me believe it, was that immediately my reports went down drastically from a few a day to just a few a month. When I gave people a heads up on a violation, they listened, complied and didn’t get all up in my face about it. I was amazed that one guy in this place held so much power that he could align all of the gangs on a common issue like this.

This guy never asked for any favor or expected any. He just appreciated an honest hard working officer that viewed his job responsibilities the way I did.

INMATE CODE

There are a lot of inmates in this joint that I gained a lot of respect for. With the training I got from my Inmate Mentor, I knew a lot of what these guys had to deal with in order to get by in this place. I also realized that there was a whole heck of a lot more that I would never know. I could appreciate their convict codes. I could appreciate that they had the common sense to make exceptions to them at times. It is a strange world that exists behind these walls. At times they had to take care of business that was in violation of institution policies. The inmates knew the rules and knew they would be fine if they followed them.

An example of a time someone broke a rule was when they had smuggled cheese into the unit in preparation for a celebration. The guy was supposed to make someone else hold the cheese until the day the celebration rolled around. He chose not to do that. By holding it himself, he was able to eat some of it whenever he wanted some. Unfortunately for him, because of his reputation, it was likely for his cell to be inspected. His cell was inspected. The cheese was confiscated for evidence. He was taken to the hole. The celebration pulled off but without the cheese. The consequence for him not following their code was to be beaten. He did not try to stay in seg to avoid the beating. He did not try to assault an officer in order to get sent to Oak Park to be locked up in a box and avoid his beating. When he was released from seg, it was phrased to me that he came in and took it like a man. Instead of being looked down on, he gained credibility because of accepting the consequences rather than trying to find a way out of it.

THEY KNOW MORE THAN WE DO

Because of how the gang leaders thought of me, they wanted me to have more power. They wanted to see me get promotions, so that I could lead others in adapting my style. One day, the man that headed up instituting the protection order, approached me and told me that he had information that he would give me if it could get me promoted to sergeant. I told him that becoming a sergeant was strictly done by seniority and that I would probably not be around long enough for that to happen. I said if he wanted to inform me of what it was, I would deal with it appropriately. He declined. He said that the information was mine only if it would get me promoted, but that after it went down, he would let me know that was it. He assured me that no one was in danger.

Months later, half a year or more, it went down. A group of officers had been bringing in marijuana. One guy had started bringing it in. Inmates that weren’t getting any found out about it and wanted some. The officer was told that if he didn’t bring some in for them that they would snitch on him. More and more inmates found out and wanted his pot. The officer took in another officer to help with his business. This kept growing. More officers became involved. Many more knew of it and kept their mouths shut. This was all happening on third watch, the 2pm to 10pm shift.

On my watch, 6am to 2pm, the smell of pot was intense in the unit. It was so bad that I would invite officers from other units to come into my unit and walk through inhaling deeply so they could get high. Obviously a slight exaggeration, but you could almost always smell the pot somewhere in the unit. Just walking through the cell block, you knew we had a major problem.

At one point, the institution had enough evidence that when the officer that had started this smuggling endeavor came in, the police were there, cuffed him up and hauled him out. Instantly another officer that had been involved decided he was too sick to work and went home, never to be seen again. This effectively stopped this flow of drugs.

The inmate that had approached me about being a sergeant told me that this was the information that I would’ve received. Only he told me that there were four others involved and that one of them was a sergeant.