Chapter 16: Will this ever end??
River CI Annex — The Box, Dorm P
This is part of a series. For more please go to the Table of Contents.
P.R.E.A., Part 2
The following Saturday, a week after I’d put in my request to the prison law library for five copies of Form XYZ, they showed up. After a long strategy discussion between me & Star I made up my mind as to how to proceed. First I wrote down on a separate piece of paper my entire “detailed allegation” against Cornbread. That way I’d always have on hand the exact testimony I was submitting. I could refer to it if any question came up in the future.
Then I submitted the same testimony on two copies of Form XYZ — one to be submitted as my appeal for the Senior Classification Officer’s denial of my transfer, and the other to go separately as my official PREA allegation to the State PREA Investigator. These two submittals couldn’t be blocked or made to disappear by the jail officers because, at least in my state, the jail officers never got their grubby hands on them. Instead, every weekday morning an outside officer walks thru the jail carrying a padlocked “grievance & appeal box” and when she passes by your cell she will take your grievance or appeal on Form XYZ and slide it into that locked box in front of your eyes to assure you of its security. Then she walks out the front door of the jail with her Box-Full-Of-Form-XYZs which all go on their merry way un-tampered with. Fuck you, corrupt jail officers!
I made these two submittals sequentially on Monday & Tuesday of the following week, the first two days the grievance & appeal box was passing thru the Box. Then, with Star urging me on, I wrote what I thought would be the coup-de-grace for my PREA allegations — a “legal mail” letter to an organization called Just Detention (yes that’s the actual name of the organization, and if you are part of my target audience you might want to look it up and have its address written in your prison Bible should you ever find yourself in a situation like mine).
In this letter I described again my PREA allegation exactly as I had in Form XYZ, and further asked for their assistance in calling the same officials I’d asked my ex-wife & brother to call and email in my behalf. Had my PREA investigation been initiated? Were my allegations being taken seriously? Had my transfer to a different prison been approved? And because this organization is headed by an attorney you write to them at the attorney’s address, which means my letter went out as sealed “legal mail” this time, picked up and sealed in front of me by the “legal mail officer” and could not be tampered with by the jail officers. Fuck you again, corrupt assholes!
This letter was finished by the end of Tuesday night, ready to go out Wednesday morning when the “legal mail lady” came through. At that point I’d have done everything I could do — everything Star had taught me — and it would just be a matter of waiting for the wheels of justice to grind away.
Then on Wednesday morning, just one week after Star’s Protective Custody Hearing, an officer came to our door and said, “Inmate Star — pack your shit! You’re being transferred!” And just like that — she was gone! Goodbye Star Extreme — I’m really gonna miss you.
Later that same morning the legal mail lady came by and off went my letter to Just Detention — Star’s last lesson in working the prison system to your advantage. Thank you, Star.
The shit hits the fan
The next morning at about 11:00 an officer came to my door and said, “Z — cuff up!”
“What’s going on?” I asked as he cuffed me.
“You have an interview.” He brought me out to the jail front office, where I was presented to two male officers and a female staff person. None of them identified themselves but I recognized the woman as River CI’s Senior Classification Officer (SCO). She was the only one who spoke.
“I received an email from your brother, who says that inmate Cornbread sexually harassed you on this compound. Is that true?”
YES!! My brother had done as I asked — and just as I suspected, this was the first time the SCO was even hearing about this, a week and a half after my first PREA allegation. She’d been totally blindsided by it! (And notice, for the first time an officer referred to Cornbread by name, not just by his bunk number).
“Yes ma’am. The details of my PREA allegation are in my appeal to the State Central Office.” I wanted her to know I’d already gone over her head with my allegations. She asked me to briefly state my allegations for her, which I did as she dutifully wrote it down on an official witness statement form. But I ended again by saying “the details of my PREA allegation are in my appeal to the State Central Office.” She had me sign the witness statement form, which was difficult to do while handcuffed behind my back. Then it was back to my cell.
Hurray — the wheels of justice were in motion. But I have to admit — after that I heard exactly nothing about my appeal, or about my PREA allegation, for a long time except when I received a notification that the Central Office had in fact received them.
Joffrey
That same afternoon after my interview I was moved to a new cell. While I’d been with Smith and part of the time I was with Star we’d been in Cell 11 of “Quad 3” (see diagram). Then Star & I got moved to Cell 1. Now they moved me to “Quad 4” of the jail, this time to Cell 16 — which I have to say had the best view of the main room you could ask for out of the tall skinny window of my door. Anything that happened out there, I could see.
My new roommate, however, was the worst piece of shit I’d had yet in any of my times in the Box. For this story I’ve named him Joffery after the most evil sadistic character in Game of Thrones, which I was reading at the time. We took an almost instant dislike of each other. Like the G.O.T. character, this Joffrey was a young white punk — 25 years old with all the emotional maturity of a teenager. He immediately suspected I must be a chomo. I immediately knew that any nuance about my charges would be lost on this asshole, so I denied everything and dusted off my old “cover story” for him — the one in which I got caught taking a bribe to arrange for the approval of a big slimy downtown redevelopment project. To my relief he bought it with surprising ease.
Everything else, however, went horribly. He took almost everything I did or said as some sign of “disrespect” toward him, but on the other hand the idea that he should have any respect toward me never crossed his mind. I had put in a canteen request with a small amount of food included. When that order showed up he insisted I “share” it with him — translation, he ate it all.
I had put in a request for some of my property while I was with Star and one of the things I now had was my little prison radio — which Joffrey “permanently borrowed.” In fact when he was dumped back out on the compound, which was (mercifully) one week to the day after I arrived in Cell 16, I asked him for my radio back and he said, “Yeah — no chance of that!” and walked out the door with a big smirk on his face. He must’ve known I’d be so happy to have him gone I wouldn’t want to rock the boat over a little thing like my radio. And yes, he was right about that.
Joffrey had a Bible, but I never bothered to ask if I could pick up reading where I’d left off. Instead I finished reading Game of Thrones Book 3 — Storm of Swords, after which Joffrey tossed a book called The Second Chair by John Lescoart onto my bunk and didn’t ask for it back when he left.
More of my property showed up while I was with Joffrey and one of the things included in that was my entire handwritten draft of this story. I had no intention of letting him know anything about it so I quickly stuffed it away in my locker and never touched it again while he was there.
But then Joffrey did leave — late in the afternoon, three days before Christmas — and it turned out I had those three days all to myself with no roommate, so I pulled out all my paperwork. I kept myself busy all three of those days including Christmas Day completely reorganizing what had been Chapter 4 of this story, breaking it up into two chapters and putting some of the material in separate essays on toochie and making friends. By the afternoon of Christmas Day it was all ready to be sent out, to flood my editor on the “outside” and begin the laborious multi-step process it took to get it from my prison cell to you my on-line audience.
“Christmastime In The Box”
O it’s Christmastime in the Box
Yes it’s Christmastime in the Box
Will Santa stop by on his sleigh
Drop off an Inmate Package, then go on his way?
(probably not …)
But it’s still Christmastime
Christmastime, Christmastime –
Yes it’s Christmastime in the Box!
Smith returns
Late in the afternoon of Christmas Day my cell door opened and in walked a new roommate — it was Smith, the same roommate I’d had when I first checked in to the Box almost two months before! I thought he was supposed to have been transferred but he said there was some kind of paperwork mix-up and he got dumped back on the compound. There he’d lasted 11 days, during which time he had two confrontations with the gangster he’d given up the first time he checked in — who was really pissed off at him now. Then on Christmas morning several of that guy’s gang brothers beat Smith up in the dorm bathroom (not too badly), stole most of his stuff out of his locker and warned him to get the fuck out of their dorm and check in — which of course he did!
However, when Smith tried to check in Captain Chaos to him NO! — We don’t want any check-ins on Christmas and if you don’t go back to your dorm I’m gonna give you a Disciplinary Summons for “failure to obey a verbal order!” Nevertheless when they finally did let Smith into the jail they put him back in a cell with me — a “check-in cell” — so I told him that means you must be a check-in too. Stop worrying, I said.
Well I was wrong about that! Two nights later (very late) our door popped open and suddenly I was getting moved! Why? As I looked at our door on the way out I noticed Smith did not have a yellow tag — Captain Chaos must really have decided to give him a Disciplinary Summons! Where was he going now?! I never did find out.
Raymond
I was moved three doors down to Cell 13 (see diagram above). My new roommate was Raymond, a 69 year old white man just starting his eight year sentence. He had lasted a grand total of two days on the River CI Annex compound before having to check in! He made it clear right away that he didn’t want to discuss his charges. Translation: he must have been there for child porn or worse.
Raymond had been in protective custody nearly as long as I had, he’d been denied his transfer and was pursuing his appeals just as I was, but he wasn’t a PREA case so his appeals were nearly exhausted. Sure enough, just three days after I arrived in his cell there was a knock on our door and the words, “Inmate Raymond, pack your shit! You’re going back out on the compound!”
As you can imagine, Raymond was beside himself with terror, but dutifully packed up. As he was standing there waiting for the officer to come back and lead him away I said, “Now that you’re leaving I’m going to ask you, are you and I here on similar charges?”
“I don’t want to discuss my charges,” he repeated.
“That means the answer is yes,” I said. Right after that he was gone. I was by myself again two days before New Year’s Day, and it looked like I was about to spend at least part of all three major holidays (i.e. Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year’s) alone.
Then in the middle of the night I got a new “neighbor” next door in Cell 12 (see diagram above). He’d been shipped in from Aaron Burr Correctional Institution where he’d been lit up, sprayed with hot sauce, taken into custody and charged with assault & battery on a correctional officer and incitement to riot! So now I had a “Bones” gangster for a neighbor with a red tag on his door and a sign that said in big block letters, DO NOT REMOVE FROM CELL UNLESS HE IS ON CAMERA PER MAJOR DICKHEAD. Naturally this gangster liked to get on the door all the time and talk to his gang brothers, so my time alone in my cell wasn’t as peacefully as I might have wanted. At this point I also had run out of reading material, so I started re-reading Storm of Swords (which wasn’t so bad even the second time thru).
Shrek
At about noon on New Year’s Day (just as they were handing out lunch) my door opened and in walked my next roommate, Shrek. He was a 35 year old white man with just over one month left on his two year sentence for “failure to register a new address as a sex offender.” When I heard that it made bells go off in my head and my first thought was, there is a lesson for me if I don’t ever want to come back to prison — DO NOT fail to register a change of address!
Shrek had to check in because he really had racked up a $150 toochie bill and also because he had hung with and infiltrated several gangs besides his own (the “Crazy White Boyz”) and now it seemed like everybody was after him including his own gang brothers who swore they were going to cut his gang tattoos from his body! He was in fear of every run-around, all of whom he thought were passing information about him back to his dorm, and he kept a close eye on every new guy coming into the jail, afraid that this one had been sent in to kill him. But as they say, “It ain’t paranoia if somebody really is out to get you!”
Aside from all that, Shrek turned out to be a pretty easy-going guy! He quickly realized that I, at least, was no threat to him, and after getting to know him for a couple of days I felt comfortable enough to explain my charges to him when he asked. He returned the favor by telling me about his strange sex life role-playing as a child for pedophiles (see Inmate Profiles, subheading Wilbur). He claimed I was the first fellow inmate he’d ever told about this in his four trips to prison. Was any of this true? Don’t know.
Shrek hadn’t checked in to the Box hoping for a transfer. Instead he wanted nothing more than to spend his last month of incarceration in protective custody and then get escorted out to the main gate by an armed corrections officer. After that he figured he’d be safe enough. It was a simple request, right? Still, he worried that he might be denied at his Protective Custody Hearing and dumped back out on the compound.
Now that I had all kinds of experience with the PC appeals process I sat down with a calendar and walked him thru it, assuring him that even under the worst case scenario his appeals couldn’t possibly be exhausted before he went home. He was not going back out on the compound.
Boredom — good; Excitement — BAD
Shrek also brought news from out on the compound. It seemed like things were going from bad to worse — in the last couple of weeks there’d been at least one stabbing out there every single day! This news just reinforced my conviction that I was glad to be sitting in the boring old Box right now. Toward the end of the week after New Years the jail really started to fill up — on Thursday alone they brought 17 new guys into the Box.
Then on Friday all hell broke loose out on the compound. That afternoon there was some kind of riot or disturbance in one of the dorms and suddenly they were bringing in a whole bunch of gangsters & thugs until every holding cell and shower stall (often used as overflow holding cells) was full of them — not to mention all the check-ins that resulted from this riot and the guys still over in Medical getting treated for their wounds! Nevertheless this activity did provide some evening entertainment on what would otherwise have been just another boring Friday night in the Box. After the 10:00 PM “Master Count” Shrek continued to watch the show while I went to sleep thinking this was just another fine mess for the jail officers to clean up.
Instead, in the middle of the night Shrek & I and about 25 other guys — all yellow-tagged check-ins — were all awakened and told to pack our shit! Where were we going?! It turned out the jail staff had gone over to the River CI Main Unit and emptied out Quad 1 of Building A, which was a jits close-custody dorm” with a floor plan exactly like the layout of the River CI jail in Building P. All of us 25 or so check-ins were loaded into 10-passenger vans and dropped off at Building A, and when we walked into Quad 1 it was completely empty and every cell door was open.
“Everybody get in front of a cell door — one inmate per cell!” a jail officer ordered. Shrek & I had stuck together on the ride 0ver and now stood next to each other in front of adjoining cells.
It was just at that moment when I heard the officer call out, “Some of you guys have to go upstairs. Cornbread, you too — get up there!” I turned and there he was! He’d been standing not far from me and I hadn’t had my wits about me enough to see him! As I watched him climb the stairs I realized he must’ve served his disciplinary time, got dumped back out on the compound, then had to check back in again — this time as a real yellow-tagged check-in, not under some bullshit disciplinary pretense like he had the first time. But there he was — the very man who’d threatened my life and tried to extort me — going upstairs to a jail cell just above my head!
Then the jail officer called out, “Everybody get in your cells!” and when we did the doors all closed automatically. To make room for all the new gangsters at the main jail, they’d created a “check-ins only overflow jail.”
What now?!
Why check-in only? And why us? There were plenty of other check-ins over in the main jail, so what did we have in common that made us different from all the others? Over that weekend I listened as the other inmates got on their doors to discuss this very question. I didn’t participate in any of this discussion (except with Shrek who was next door) but I was very interested in what was being said.
It soon became clear to me that nobody had any real inside information about this, but everybody was coming to the same conclusion: We must be the check-ins they’re getting ready to ship! The logic of this argument was, we were only going to be here a few days after which this whole quad will be empty again after which it goes right back to its former function as a part of the “jits close-custody dorm.”
For me this speculation was exciting but also set off alarm bells. I wanted to get transferred all right, but what if I got loaded onto the same bus as Cornbread?! That would be a very bad thing indeed! I decided to do two things: First, I used an Inmate Request form to write a kite [definition #1] to the prison warden expressing my alarm about the possibility that this might happen. Second, I again wrote letters to my ex-wife and brother asking them to call/email the warden expressing similar concerns. I assumed the jail officers would see all this on its way out.
Aside from listening to the uninformed speculation of my fellow check-ins, however, there was nothing to do, and except for an occasional conversation with Shrek I was alone again, this time for who knew how long. I continued to read Storm of Swords for the second time. At least that was something.
Then just a few days later on Wednesday morning, right after breakfast an officer came to my cell and said, “Z, pack your shit. You’re leaving!” When they popped the door open and I walked out carrying what property I had in my pillow case I was greatly relieved to see that only one other inmate from the check-ins overflow jail was going with me that morning — and it was NOT Cornbread. Nothing else mattered. We became the first two guys to get out of there. Aside from saying a quick goodbye & good luck to Shrek I didn’t care what happened to the rest of them.
I should point out here that I was leaving with absolutely no resolution to either my protective custody appeal or my PREA allegations. In fact no PREA investigator had ever come to talk to me. Instead, just as Star Extreme had predicted, when the River CI jail staff got sick of my shit and needed space they shipped me. Good riddance!!
The two of us were escorted to the River CI Main Unit bus pick-up & property room where we were joined by about a dozen or so inmates from both the Main Unit and the Annex. But what did not join us was any of our property-in-storage, which remained just out of reach at the Annex property room. When I asked about that an officer said briskly, “Your property will follow you to your new camp.” I knew that was a lie — it would probably take a month or more of persistent effort to pry my shit out of that hell hole and get it to wherever I was going.
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