Читать книгу Brilliant Minds in Captivity - Roger W Upchurch - Страница 6

Home is where the heart and soul are

The body is only imprisoned.

Before I got here, I thought that everyone in prison needed to be there. Now I know that is not the case for a lot of people. They may have done knowingly or unknowingly made a mistake and the Federal Prosecutor got them indicted guilty or not. Another feather and quota for them. The punishment is way too severe in most cases for first-time nonviolent so-called crimes I think most that you should get is one year and maybe some home confinement or something rather than warehoused in a camp, playing cards, basketball, baseball, Cornhole watching TV, watching movies, reading, eating great food and taking naps every day. What a life while your spouse or family struggles to make ends meet. I forgot some inmates must work jobs in the BOP and get starting pay at twelve cents an hour.

There is a lot of talk about prison reform and sentencing reform and one bill that passed the house with a lot is up to get a vote in the Senate if Senator McConnell will bring it to the floor for a vote. President Trump said that he would sign it when it got to him. This bill has a lot of good things in it including any First Time nonviolent inmate that is sixty years or older will get released after two-thirds of their sentence served, and that includes me. You can find more about it at www.firststepact.org.

It is true that as a criminal in prison, the prison will make you a better criminal. Who needs to go to school, this is a school for stealing, lying, cursing and some teachers are the officers?

I keep telling my temporary friends that I do not lie, cheat, or steal and did not curse much at home. These teachers are so good in here and it does rub off. They are very consistent as they say about every other word.

I am sure that there are a lot of men and women that are in prison by association, in a conspiracy which they did not do anything wrong or maybe at the wrong place at the wrong time. The Federal Government, DOJ can indict and put people in prison just because someone said that he or she did something or were with them on crime. They do not need proof or evidence that you did commit a crime. They take someone else’s word for it, hearsay. You cannot do that in a state case, the jury or Judge must prove that you are guilty by evidence. In the Federal DOJ, you are Guilty Til Proven Innocent.

Yesterday Tom Brady and New England beat Jacksonville to advance to play the Eagles in this year’s Super bowl. The Super Bowl is in Minneapolis Minnesota. Another cold-weather Super Bowl. Last year it was in New York it did not turn out well.

When it was in Indianapolis a few years ago the weather there was and no colder than fifty degrees the whole week.

My company Daddy Real Entertainment was going well, and we had our bands on three stages in Super Bowl Village which were Georgia street that was closed off. There were several stages and tents set up for bars. There were several national acts in the Village including “Bret Michaels”, “Here Come the Mummies” and more. Madonna performed at halftime and she put on a great show. Super Bowl was the highest-rated Super Bowl ever. The New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots for the Championship.

Indianapolis has a grand tradition of putting on large events and is in the running for another Super Bowl.

One reason is that there are so many dining spots, bars, and shopping within a brief walk from arenas, which is Bankers Life Fieldhouse where the Indiana Pacers of the NBA play, and Lucas Oil Stadium home of the Indianapolis Colts.

Indianapolis has the third most conventions in the US and the Convention

The Center is all tied right there together. The state-of-the-art Indianapolis Indians baseball park, the Indianapolis Zoo, and a few museums there. Indianapolis has the headquarters for the NCAA and host the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament every four years and usually a regional game every year. It also hosts the Big Ten Football Championship every year

There are fourteen fine steak houses downtown including St Elmo's which is world renown for is Hot, Hot, cocktail sauce.

It is so hot it burns your nose. Sometimes at halftime of the Pacers games, they have a contest of a few people and to see who can eat the most in an amount of time, they are brave people.

Indianapolis has become a magnificent vacation spot as well. It second only to Washington DC for the most monuments in the United States. One of the best Children’s Museum in the states. Indy downtown has a lot of nightspots with live entertainment including the Slippery Noodle which is the oldest blues bar in Indiana, and it is said that it is haunted in the basement there. Who Knows!

Indy also has the largest Christmas Tree in the States. Lights hang from the top of the monument on the circle.

They also have the DEA office and that is where you can go and get the picture taken and fingerprinted if you get indicted by the Federal Government. Just thought that I would throw that in.

The Indianapolis 500 Indy car race is the largest sporting in the world and estimated that around 400,000 has attended the race on race day. It is a full month of May festivities starting with the Indianapolis 500 Parade, time trials, qualifying, and the pit races before the event. The "Snake Pit" is an area that in the past was an area that bikers came to and partied, and it was crazy. It is the biggest party in the world. Also, anything goes, sex, drugs, drinking, and some even saw part of the race. They had cleaned up the Snake Pit up the last few years and moved the snake pit to a different location within the track and now have large concerts there on Carb Day. Big national acts such as Toby Keith, Bret Michaels, Aero Smith, and many more. There even was a Rolling Stones concert at the track but it was not on race day.

If you have never been, I would say it needs to be on your bucket list even you are not a race fan, you will not be sorry.

My company Daddy Real Entertainment was a sponsor of Sarah Fisher's car a couple years in a row. My logo was in her mirror and in a lot of other print material, I heard that the DEA questioned her about me and that I sponsored her car with dirty money. I wonder what she thought about me. Maybe I will call her when I get out. Peggy, Shelby, Ryan, and I went to the race for two years while I was a sponsor and we got passes for Sarah's suite and it was great because it was boiling hot and we could watch the race in a cool suite, and all the free beer and food you can eat. We had pit passes which we could be in the pits with the crew, but it was about 120 0 on the track so we did not go down there.

I had paid her $10,000 for each year with the so-called dirty money they said.

Indianapolis is home to the US Nationa1s drag race championships every year, a Professional Hockey team, and a professional Soccer team the Indy Eleven.

Basketball is big in Indiana and New Castle where I am from is a basketball town and their high school is the biggest high school gym in the world and holds around 10,000 people. Two of the well-known basketball players from New Castle are Kent Benson, who played in the NBA and mostly for the Detroit Pistons, and Steve Alford who is a coach and was the coach for UCLA. Kent was on the Indiana University 1976 NCAA basketball championship team with an undefeated season and is still the only undefeated team as of this day to win a championship. Steve Alford played on the 1987 national championship team New Castle is home to the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Butler University in downtown Indianapolis is a smaller school but went to the final NCAA basketball championship game two years in a row a few years ago and lost both, but it still was a magnificent accomplishment.

The movie Hoosiers about a small-town high school basketball going to the final game and beating a large powerhouse in Muncie

Central High School. This is one of the great movies and it starred.

Gene Hackman.

There are great colleges here including, Butler, Indiana, Purdue, Ball State, Notre Dame, Valparaiso, Evansville, Indiana State, and many more.Fishers Indiana a suburb just north of Indianapolis is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and the economy in Indiana is great and the building is crazy in commercial and homebuilding.

There are great parks here including Brown County State Park, which is by Nashville Indiana, a quaint village town with many shops and restaurants.

Indiana Dunes in northern Indiana is a national park and there are many casinos throughout Indiana, including French Lick which has two large hotels, a championship golf course, and used to be a place where a lot of gangsters hanged out years ago, including Al Capone, and John Dillinger and Presidents and other celebrities. French Lick is also home to Larry Bird an Indiana basketball icon.

I sat down with a man we will call Phil and here is Phil's story:

Phil said that he had an eye disease, and he has had it for several years since he served. He started going to the Veterans Hospital eye doctors, and they told him he had a problem. They declared him legally blind, but not totally bling. He had gone too many doctors, and they all said that he had a problem, but that they could not pinpoint the problem. They were so bad that at times he could hardly see and had to use a cane.

Since they listed him as legally blind, they got him on Disability Insurance. He drew disability insurance for several years. For some reason, his eyes would get better and he could see a lot better. They would be that way for a while and then start to slowly get worse again. Sometimes they got so bad he could only see shadows. Phil had an eye appointment at the Veterans Hospital, and it was when his eyes were better. He drove himself to the hospital and as he was parking a security man that knew Phil and knew why he was going there. He had told someone that Phil was driving and that if he was legally blind, he should not be driving. Somehow this info got into the insurance records and the insurance company alerted the authorities. The Feds had him to go to another eye doctor and this eye doctor said that he could not find anything wrong with his eyes. Several Doctors had said that he had a problem, and it comes and goes. After investigating him for a period they indicted him on Insurance fraud. The Feds were scaring him like they do with everyone telling him he could do twenty years and so on. They coerced him into a plea deal, and it was five years in prison and two years home confinement. The judge gave him that and $800,000 in restitution. He came here at the camp and when he went through his physical; they check his eyes and they thought that he had a problem. So, several people said that he had a problem and one said that they could find nothing. He says that he is getting an appeal together.

My Thoughts :

It looked like he was seeing all right to me and I watched him and as I watched him; he was walking fast and always walks around the compound. Maybe they have not started getting worse yet. He may have taken advantage of the insurance company, but the eye doctor or someone approved the disability insurance so is that his fight. Maybe he should be more careful just in case. No matter what went on the crime does not fit the penalty. He said that it was not near $800,000 that he received, and he should have got only one year and one-year home confinement, as he is not a risk to do anything like that again.

Pete came to my room about five minutes before the 4 pm count and said that there were a few books that are lying sideways on top of other books and they all should be upright like all the others. I do not lay them sideways and I have not seen them that way before. He said that the horizontal ones are always on my shift; I told him I would not do that and would make sure they are all the way they are supposed to be. That night they were all fine when I left, and then the next night I went into the library to work and there were some books horizontal again. Someone playing tricks on me.

Pete left and came back and accused me of breaking someone’s earphones. That really pissed me off, I went off on him and said that there were some books that were horizontal and were on his shift and I did not break anyone's earphone, and why would you accuse me of that. I said that you are wrong and keep your mouth shut.

A little later he came back and apologized to me and said he knew it was not me now that broke a guy’s earphone as he was told the old man did it, Well the old man was doctor Ron who is eighty years old and he broke them. He also apologized about the books and says that it happens all the time. I have found out here at the camp that "You have to stand up for yourself and if you do not, they will run over you"

Sometimes I think some inmates think they are wearing blue suits rather than those green ones.

In the TV room, guys think they own a chair and or a space the chair is in. Sometimes they set their cup or headphones in the chair to mark their chair. It is stupid it should be first there gets the open chair. Anyway, there was a cup that had been in this chair all day and after the 9 pm count, I went to the TV room and sat the cup on the floor and sat in the chair. I thought if the owner of the cup came and wanted to sit there, I would get up, no big deal. Pete came in and says that is Joe's chair and he might come back so he told me to move. I said no if he comes, he can sit here tonight. Also, Joe lives in another dorm and has no right to his chair in our dorm. He did not come in tonight and I did not move.