Читать книгу Prison Puzzle Pieces 2 - Dave Basham - Страница 56

The filthy unorganized cluttered cells slowed things down. It takes a lot more time to go through a cell like this than it does a clean orderly cell with only what the institution allows in it.

An inmate that kept his cell in good shape was generally happy with me after shaking down his cell. I was able to leave it in the exact condition that it was in when I entered it. They could not even tell that I had been in there. It would take only a few minutes to shake down a cell like this. I appreciated it and the inmate appreciated how fast I finished with his cell and that nothing was disrupted or tossed around. After some officers went through cells, it looked like a tornado hit.

A cell in bad shape could take 30 to 45 minutes to shake down. This would upset the bosses, but if anything was missed, it would be my tail on the line and not theirs. Often we were told to speed up. This meant that they wanted a less efficient job done. I never saw a block shaken down as thoroughly as what I had been told it was to be done.

There were messy cells with a lot of items that the inmates were not allowed to have in their possession. At times, if the bosses were pressing for a faster shakedown, I would try to pass off cells like this to officers that didn’t really give a damn and would let a lot of things slide. This was for the benefit of all involved. I needed to be consistent. If I did a schlocky job, I would not be doing my job as it was expected of me. An inmate with a lot of violations that were not security related would hate to see me come to his cell. I even had some guys with cells like this that saw me come to their cells that said, “Oh no! Not you!” These guys knew I was only doing my job properly. Most knew that I didn’t find a lot of the things they had as being a problem, but they knew I would follow policy. They would thank me when I was able to get someone else to take their cell.

In my defense, there were more guys appreciative of the way I shook down their cell than those who weren’t. These were the guys that followed policy.