Читать книгу Prison Puzzle Pieces 3 - Dave Basham - Страница 6

During my first couple of months working in the prison, an inmate passed by me as I was working the door post. As he raced by me in a perturbed manner, he angrily stated, “You have to do something about that.” He was pointing back from where he came. He was up the stairs before I could ask him what he was talking about.

I observed no problem in the flag area. There were just a lot of people enjoying their afternoon socializing. I observed the inmate on the second tier acting irrational. He was talking to an inmate next to him and pointing to me.

As he was coming back down the stairs, I motioned to him to come over. He stated again that I have to stop “that.” He would come toward me and then turn around leaving in the middle of his incomplete sentences, so I was unable to understand what he was trying to tell me.

He was halfway up the stairs when I ordered him to stop. I went to the stairway and he came down a couple of steps. I told him he had to settle down. I guaranteed him I was here to do my job, but he had a responsibility to inform me of what he was upset about or I couldn’t help him.

After I got him to settle down, to quit interrupting, to quit running off and to listen, he rationally informed me that he was upset that the people on the flag were too noisy. I informed him that I would check it out, talk to the sergeant and do whatever was possible to solve the problem.

He said he was worried about being outed, that they may have seen him talking to me. I informed him that I would try to handle it in a way to avoid that from happening.

As he was going back up the stairs, he said something about a fight possibly breaking out in this group where he came from. I watched from where I was and saw no evidence of this. A short black inmate was one of the loudest and most animated of the group, but nothing to suggest that trouble was brewing. I believed this to be a ploy to get some action by punking out the new guy, me.

I had been in this cellblock for a short time the day before and didn’t notice it to be any noisier now. I thought about radioing the sergeant, but really had no actual problem. The group was close to me, so I decided to walk toward the group to see if that would change anything. Nothing changed. They didn’t seem to try to cover anything up, as someone who is guilty of something would do.

A couple officers saw me move toward the group and came to my location. They jumped all over me saying that I shouldn’t be as far away from the door as I was. Had I not been so new to the job, I would’ve jumped right back at them. I was not far from the door and there were no inmates between the door and me.

The presence of 3 officers coming from different locations caused enough curiosity so that the group was focused on us. This caused their chattering to die down without us ever saying anything to them. This was good for the inmate’s safety that talked to me.

The officers and I moved back closer to the door where I filled them in on what was going on. No officer had tried to quiet the place down and this was their regular cellblock, so I had no reason to believe the volume was excessive. However, I felt I owed it to the inmate to check the situation out, as I did not know what was acceptable in this block.

I filled the officers in on a guy that did seem suspicious throughout the day. It was a Hispanic guy with a tattoo around his neck. He would separate other inmates away from their group and talk to them, all the while keeping a close eye on me. They felt it was nothing. They just didn’t want to do anything.

About a month later, I was in this block again. Some guy was cutting another guys hair on the flag on the back side of the ice machine by the door.

Those same two lazy jerk officers came and yelled at me. They said that I should’ve gone to where those inmates were and not let them continue. This was in about the same place as I had gone previously when they got on my case.

All they had to do was to inform me that cutting hair in this location was not allowed. It was their responsibility to inform new people on the things that we don’t get informed about in the academy. It is also their responsibility to inform anyone not permanently assigned to their block of what they want enforced and what they didn’t want enforced.

My education had continued however. I now knew of two officers that I had no respect for, two officers that I would not seek advice from, two officers that I would never trust. These are the things they can’t teach you in the academy.