Corruption Officer (29 page)

“Johnson, Peterson, Jones!” a C.O. was calling out a list of
names that were getting off at this particular jail.
 

Then the bus pulls off and we’re on the road again.
 
I had been shackled and riding a prison bus
for a few hours and still had no clue as to where I was going.
 
Finally I hear my name called I get up and
shuffle my feet to the front of the bus.
 
I get off at this stop alone.
 
I am escorted into a van and then it pulls
off.
 

As I am being driven to my destination I am surveying my
surroundings.
 
It appears to look like a
large college campus, a lot of grass and a lot of buildings and gates.
 
We pull up to a building that looks real old
but clean.
 
The grass in front of it has
been cut and the hedges trimmed.
 
It has
a porch in the front of it and on that porch stood two Corrections Officers.
 
I was taken out of the van and made to stand
in front of the two Officers so they could inspect me as they went over my
paperwork. Then one of them looks at
me,
leans his head
to the side and spits.
 
Some of it hits the
ground but some was still hanging off his lip.
 
He says to me, “You’re a big boy.
 
Welcome to Oneida.
 
Am I going to have any trouble out of you?”
 
I say, “No.”
 
He then says, “You heard of Rick Jacobs, the guy that is in the papers
for a hate crime against Blacks?”
 
I say,
“Yes, I was just with him downstate.”
 
Then he asks, “Did you have a problem with
him?” I answer “No.”
 
Then he said, “Good,
because his co-defendant is here and we don’t want any problems.”
 
I am thinking to myself, ‘Once I see the counselor
and he checks my folder I am not going to be here that long.’
 

They escort me up some steps and into a cell.
 
They ask me if I had any questions for them
and I said, “When can I see the counselor?”
 
One of them answered, “He will be here first thing in the morning.”
 
Then they allowed me a phone call so that I
could tell my family where I was.
 

I called my mother and she had a million questions for me, “Are
you at Shock?
 
Are they sending you to
work release!?”
 
She was just as excited
as I was.
 
I told her I had just arrived
here and that I wouldn’t find out until tomorrow.
 
She wanted to go on but I had to tell her that
I had to go.
 
I hung up the phone then
they took me to my cell and slammed it shut.
 
That night I didn’t sleep.
 
I felt
that I had finally arrived at a place where I could get some answers.
 

The next day, early on the morning, my cell was opened and I
was called out to see the counselor.
 
I
walked into a room with a White gentleman sitting on one side of a table with a
folder in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
 
He motioned for me to sit down and I did.
 
He then said, “I am going to talk and tell
you everything you need to know.
 
Please
don’t interrupt me. This won’t take but a second.”
 
I nodded that I understood.
 
He then said, “You have been sentenced to two
years and have been sent here to Oneida Correctional Facility’s Protective
Custody Unit due to your high profile case and the position of Corrections Officer
that you held.”
 

Then he dropped the bomb, “Although this is your first
offense and you qualify for many early release programs, you will not be
afforded any of them here because they require you to have a certain amount of points.
 
In order to get the points you have to be
programming here first and we don’t have any programs for you to take in the Protective
Custody Unit.”
 
He then grabbed my folder
and proceeded to get up and leave!
 

“Wait a minute,” I said, “I have some questions!”
 
He turned and looked at me and said, “I just
told you everything that you needed to know.”
 
I was panicking because it was like he wasn’t
going to answer any of my questions.
 
I
asked him, “What about the Shock Program or the work release program?”
 
He looked at me like I was stupid and said,
“Did you not just hear what I said?
 
You’re
not getting any of them.
 
You’re going to
do the rest of your time right here in P.C.”
 
I said, “But the Judge said that I could get
Shock if it’s available for me.”
 
He
looked at me puzzled then turned to walk out of the room.
 
He yelled back at me, “I didn’t see that in your
folder.
 
I have to look into it.”
 
And like that he was gone.
 

I was told to return to my cell.
 
I did as I was told but the C.O. on duty saw
the look of anger in my face and said, “Uh-oh, here comes trouble.”
 
For the first time since going through this
ordeal I wanted to be locked in.
 
I
wanted to be isolated.
 
All I had inside
of me was pain and rage!
 
I had all the
points to get work release and the Judge recommended the Shock Program for me
but somehow some way they were making sure that I did the full two year
sentence!
 

I sat on the edge of my bed and my eyes begin to swell up
but I vowed that I was not going to cry.
 
I am not going to crumble again.
 
I took a deep breath and lay down.
 
I now thought about my family.
 
I know that my mother is going to feel this.
 
I have to lead her into believing that I am
alright and that everything is still okay.
 
I decided not to tell her right away.
 
I just told her that they were still trying to
figure out where to put me.
 
Technically,
the counselor did say that he would check into seeing if the Judge recommended
it for me.
 

A few days passed and I slowly began to open up and talk to
a few inmates.
 
I knew all about
protective custody and the type of inmates it housed.
 
I knew that you had your rapist, your
pedophiles and ex-gang members that have dropped their flags.
 
I made it my business to try not to find out
anybody’s charges but in this place everybody talks.
 
A lot of them were C.O.s like me, some State,
some Federal; some raped little girls, some raped little boys.
 
I had to be mentally strong in order to be
able to sit down and eat at the same table with some of these dudes.
 
After I found out why they were here, I was
judge, jury and executioner where there would be blood.
 
I met an older Muslim inmate named Paul that
told me a lot about the procedures in the jail.
 
He told me that they say that no one can sign out of protective custody
in Oneida Protective Custody unit but he’s seen differently.
 
He said that I am not the right color.
 
Paul was here for murder.
 
He tried to rob somebody and when the person
saw that he had a gun the person fainted and hit his head on a curb and died.
 
Then Jason Chris’s hate crime co-defendant
said, “That’s a lie I’ve seen several inmates sign out and get programming and
go home.”
 
I sat there absorbing all that
was being said.
 

The next day I ask to speak to the counselor and when he
came I questioned him on finding out about Shock for me and his response was,
“By the time you get the paper work from the Judge proving that he gave you the
Shock Program, your two years will be up and you’ll be home.”
 
Then he said, “You have a work release board
coming up.
 
Maybe they will send you
there.”
 

I thought to myself, ‘Yes, a glimmer of hope.
 
I could still get out of here.’
 

Days passed and I had finally received notification that I
was to go before a board to determine whether or not I would be allowed to go
to work release.
 
I did my research and I
knew that I had more than enough points to go to this program.
 

On the morning of my board, I shaved my head and put on my
cleanest inmate green uniform on.
 
Somehow
I thought that if I looked well kept, that they would see that I could do work
release easily.
 
I was escorted over to
an office building.
 
Then I was told to
go in and sit outside an office in the hallway until they called for me.
 
I said the Lord’s Prayer while I sat there.

“We’re ready for you now,” they said.

I got up and went inside.
 
Once inside I was instructed to sit in a chair
facing three people, two White ladies and one White gentleman.
 
One of the ladies read my charges out loud and
then they started asking me a series of questions like, “Why did you do it?
 
Do you have any regrets or remorse for doing
it?
 
If you had the chance, what would
you do differently?”
 

I answered them as professionally and as humbly as I could.
 
The two ladies told me that I was the prime
candidate to go and that they would recommend me to the Superintendant.
 
I was feeling good.
 
I had a Kool-Aid smile on my face and
everything, thinking, ‘Finally, someone that will have some sympathy for me and
see that I really just made a mistake!’
 
Then one of the ladies asked the man who had been sitting there quietly
throughout the whole interview does he have any questions for me and he said, “Yes,
just one.
 
How long were you doing it
before you got caught?”

Denied!
 

I am sitting in my cell reading the decision from the board.
 
I was told that they normally take two
or three days before they decide what they’re going to do.
 
My results beat me back to my cell.
 
It was like after all that questioning and
all that,
“You look like a good
candidate,”
they already knew before I got there that they were not going
to let me go.
 
I am sitting on my bed frustrated
because I can’t get any solid answers
 
from the counselor as far as the status of my minutes from court that show
that the Judge gave me the Shock Program.
 
I dig deep within myself and rationalize that I should expect this kind
of treatment, and that, as a member of law enforcement, I am held in a higher
regard than a regular civilian.
 
Yeah,
there are no different laws as far as punishment is concerned when you break
the law.
 
This is showing me that if you
break the law as a law enforcer they’re going to make sure you get the maximum
sentence.
 
I know that that Sergeant
probably felt that I should have gotten more time for this crime so he was not
going to let me just slide out of prison that easily.
 

Over the next couple of months I went to several boards for
different early release programs and the reason for denial was always the same,
“The seriousness and the nature of my crime.”
 
I realized that the Judge can recommend
anything but it’s up to the people in Albany to decide what’s going to happen
to you once you get incarcerated in New York City.
 
I began to see a lot of White inmates that
were ex-Corrections Officers sign out and get the Sex Offender Program which
was a requirement for them in order for them to be able to go home.
 
This made me
upset.
 
I
would try and sign out and take the
risk to go to general population so that I could receive some type of
programming so that I could get work release and I’d be denied with the excuse
that, “No one can sign out of Oneida’s Protective Custody Unit.”
 
I began to fight by writing the Superintendent
of the jail, and Albany questioning why the White ex-Corrections Officer sex
offenders get to sign out and receive the programming that they need and be
allowed to go home early, but the Black ex-Corrections Officer drug dealer has
to stay and do all of his time when he qualifies for every early release
program that you have.

I began to document everything that was happening from my
denials to taking down the inmates’ names and numbers, so if I’m ever asked to
back up my claim of discrimination I could show exactly the inmate’s name and
where they went after they signed out.

There was one situation where an inmate was a relative of
the female named Deborah Jordan who made the decisions on who could go and who
had to stay in protective custody.
 
He
wrote to her, and she granted him permission to go to work release, and he was
White, and he was an ex-Corrections Officer.
 
This made me feel that Albany uses discretion
as a way to discriminate.
 
I could not
see it any other way.
 
I was a C.O.
 
He was a C.O.
 
I was a safety risk for the facility.
 
He was a safety risk for the facility.
 
The only difference was that he was White so
he got to go to work release.
 
You know I
wrote his name and numbers down so that I could have it as an example for the
law suit that I was about to file.
 
I
chuckle to myself because I used to remember hearing inmates threaten to sue
the department over their rights being violated or abused and now here I am
trying to do the same thing.
 
I also
remembered not caring if an inmate sued because of how hard the system makes it
for an inmate to sue especially if they don’t have any money.

The procedure is called an Article 78 and an inmate has to
pay for the paperwork to be processed.
 
It
might cost only $75 dollars but try saving that up as an inmate who sometimes only
made 17 cents a day.

Time had passed and I was going through the motions of the
everyday routine. I began to lift weights but really wasn’t into it.
 
I could care less about coming home all
muscled up.
 
I really refused to adapt to
any prison mentality.

I sat and associated with a few inmates only
occasionally.
 
One day I was sitting down
talking to Paul and he begins to tell me about his wife on the outside that he
met on the visitors’ floor.
 
He told me
that he was on a visit with a family member and she was up there seeing someone
with a girlfriend of hers.
 
He said that
they stared at each other the whole visit and that when the guy that her friend
was visiting went to the bathroom, he went to the bathroom also and gave him
his address to give to her.
 
They have
been together ever since.
 
He said that
they have two babies and that in the other jail he was in he managed to get her
pregnant twice while having sex on the visitor floor.
 
Then he said something that threw me for a
loop.
 
He said that last year they took
vacation together that they went to Hawaii and had a good time.
 
I raised my eyebrow in disbelief because he
had a bid of 16 to life and had been down twenty eight years.

He told me to wait right here that he had the pictures to
prove it.
 
I waited and when he returned
he opened up a scrap book and showed me the pictures.
 
He began to narrate where they went where they
slept in a hotel and all of that. I took my eyes off the photos and looked at
him to see if he was serious and he was.
 
While he was talking, Jason who was sitting
behind him looked at me and waved his hand under his chin indicating for me not
to say anything.
 
Then he mouthed that if
I did Paul would want to fight.
 
I looked
at the photos one more time to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing while
Paul didn’t miss a beat in his narrating.
 
Paul then got up and said, “I am going to show
you the year before that when we went to California.”
 
I knew then that jail had given him some
serious mental issues.
 
With the way he
spoke you would have sworn that he went to these places but when you looked at
the scrapbook all you saw were pictures of his wife and pictures of him both
cut out and pasted on a picture of Hawaii.
 
Jason whispered over to me before Paul came
back that he lives and breathes for these pictures so please don’t get him started
by telling him that he didn’t go to these places.
 
I laughed as I got up to go to the bathroom.
 
I looked back at Jason and said, “Yeah.
 
Okay,” as I went through the bathroom door.
 

Then all of a sudden I was grabbed in a choke hold from
behind!
 
I struggled with whoever was
attacking me by trying to loosen his hold around my neck!
 
Then we both fell to the ground and I managed
to get loose as I stood up and saw that it was a new inmate who had only been
there a couple of days.
 
We were both
breathing hard and he was blocking the doorway.
 
Then he went into his pocket and pulled out a
shank.
 
I could see in his eyes that he
was high.
 
He kept mumbling to himself
repeatedly saying that he had to do this.
 
He had to do this he said over and over again.
 
I had no defense for the knife that he
had so I just took a stance and prepared myself to try and grab the knife
before he could try and cut me.
 
Then the
C.O.s busted through the door and grabbed him!
 
They were trying their best to wrestle the
knife out of his hand but it seemed like this inmate was a little too strong
for them. Then finally they managed to pry it loose from him and handcuff him.
 

By this time I knew the routine and was already lying on the
floor with my hands behind my head.
 
They
cuffed me as well and took me back to my cell and locked me in.
 
I sat there thinking about this second attack
on my life and at the same time hearing the Officers outside in the corridor
talking about how high that inmate was.
 
All
I could do was think about how many times I had gotten inmates high just like
that while I worked the 7 to 3 tour.
 
Then
I left and went home leaving the next Officer to come on duty and have to deal
with them.
 
I thought about the Officer
coming to work and having to deal with an agitated, irate inmate all due to the
fact that I brought in drugs.
 
For the
very first time I really stopped and looked at my actions staring me right in
my face.
 
A lot of people, inmate, or Officer
could have gotten hurt because of what I did for several years.

 
I’m deep in thought
reflecting on everything I did and am going through in this self inflicted
situation and I come to one conclusion. God is punishing me for my actions, not
only for selling the drugs but for everything, for the way that I was living
period, for the way that I treated my mother, my kids, and the people who were
around me.
 
For the way I sexed some of
my fellow Officers’ wives behind their backs and everything.
 
It just seemed like everything was coming
back to me one way or another.
 
After
awhile I had to use the bathroom and I noticed that I had no tissue so I went
to the window of my cell and caught the attention of an Officer passing by.
 
I called out to him and asked if I could have
some tissue and he waved me off and kept walking then yelled back, “Wipe your
ass with your hand!”