The Bomb and the Cage: Doree Anne (3 page)

I looked for an officer that might be outside their car, someone who would say something to those visitors. I saw Officer Mendez by his car putting on his equipment and I told him about the van. He didn’t seem as concerned about the matter as I was. Maybe if he wasn’t so young and in such great shape, he would feel the way I did. It turned out that he wasn't the right one to talk to because when we passed by those good for nothing visitors he didn't say anything to them but “good morning”.
Good morning? There was nothing good about my morning.

***

I never liked having to walk through that metal detector. I was obviously not in the greatest shape and if you touched the sides of that dang machine, it would start beeping. It’s not easy for someone of my statue to walk through a metal detector without touching the sides; after all, it couldn’t be more than two and a half feet wide. A few years back, there was a time they didn’t even have a metal detector. People just took your word and
trusted
you. Had people become less honest? Maybe so, because since they put in a metal detector I’ve heard several officers talking about how contraband has gotten much worse.
If you build it, they will sneak it
.

Officer Mendez went into the back of the control room to report the van illegally parked and I made my way to medical. There was no point waiting for him for two reasons – one, I was out of shape and would slow him down and two; he always went to staff dining for coffee before heading to medical. So I walked at my slow pace to medical which took me about ten minutes.

Today was no exception and by the time I made it in the door, Officer Mendez had only been a minute behind me. I had just enough time to get the keys from the nightshift nurse and get a pass down before he came in to do his first round. The night had been uneventful and the same three inmates were still down here, all of them were in the infirmary, which was just a large room with eight beds. In the corner, there was a four-foot high wall that came out five-feet and behind it; there was a shower and two toilets. Across from the infirmary, there were three empty isolation cells. The officers used those cells for inmates that were a real problem or had something that could be contagious. I hated working when the isolation cells had inmates in them because for some reason the inmates felt like they couldn’t be seen from inside. The inmates would try to stand at the cell door and stare at you, sometimes even masturbate at you, the officers called this
gunning
, which I guess made sense.

Chapter 5

09/18/2004 0745 Hours

Sgt. John Williams

I was supposed to be working the recreation yard this morning but the confinement sergeant called in sick. This was starting to be an every other weekend habit and it always seemed to be on the weekends we were paid. Confinement is considered the worst post in the prison, housing the worst behaved inmates. The kind that were disrespectful to staff, liked to fight, or just didn’t give a damn about anything. It was also the farthest away from the front gate, which meant late relief and a longer walk to the car.

When people think about prisons, there always seems to be two extremes; one where they see inmates behind metal bars with officers walking around with
Billy Clubs
, and the other where inmates are in cells relaxing in the air conditioning watching television. None of those are true for Florida prisons. The inmates didn’t get personal televisions and the televisions that were in the dorms, didn’t have cable. There wasn’t air conditioning just blower fans. This meant working confinement on dayshift was brutal and you got zero relief from the heat. At least on the other two shifts it was dark half the shift, which lowered the temperature. To make things worse, the one-year rotation for staff in the unit wasn’t followed. The sergeant and two officers in the two hundred-man unit worked there until they either screwed up or promoted up.

Worse, when I got to confinement, I saw there was a group of four inmates in restraints sitting on the bench just inside the unit. Since they didn’t have any property with them, it meant that they were coming into confinement and no one had processed them yet. It didn’t take long to process an inmate. Night shift was just lazy and figured they could get away with piling on more work for us.

The unit was once a max unit called
Delta Dormitory
. Some of the officers that worked there still called it by that name. However, I had only been working at the prison a few months when they changed it from a max custody housing unit to the confinement unit so I knew it as, that or
The Box
.
The Box
was a two story concrete building that had one hundred cells that housed two hundred. On a good day, the count was around a hundred and fifty. The highest I’ve ever seen it in my seven years of service was three-hundred-twenty, which was during a hurricane. Since it was solid concrete, it was also a hurricane shelter.

You could tell it was solid concrete by the way it heated up in the summertime, which in Florida is all year round. The thing about Florida weather, even on the hottest day it was still wet. That humidity would make you sweat and once you started, it was next to impossible to stop.

“Good morning Sergeant Williams.”, Sergeant Brooks said to me while handing me his keys. “You got a total of a hundred and eighty inmates present and that includes the four new gains sitting on the bench.” He pointed to the group as if I hadn’t seen them. “It was a boring night with nothing to report.  Have a wonderful day and I’ll see you in sixteen hours.”

“Hopefully you won’t.”, I said. Sergeant Brooks smiled and then walked out of the unit and I joined my crew for the day, Officer Jacobs and Officer Roberts.

Jacobs was new and most of the old timers didn’t care for him. He was a white country boy in his early twenties that was big into weightlifting, which showed. He was five foot eleven and built like a house. He was very high tempered which was a bad mix with being new. Inmates always try the new officers. When you’ve been a correction officer for any length of time, you’ll learn that you get respect by giving it. It can take years to build a good rapport with the inmates, and a second to lose it. Jacobs hadn’t had a chance to build any because he was quick to be an asshole. I was sure Jacobs would find his place here; it was just going to take longer than normal.

Roberts on the other hand was in his mid-fifties and approaching a wonderful retirement. He planned to spend it with his wife Sarah in an RV traveling around the country. He had a ton of respect from the inmates and staff even though his reputation was spotted with various disciplinary problems. I heard stories about him losing his temper with a young inmate when he first started. I never heard the story from him and doubted that I ever would. If the rumors were true; he shared more with Jacobs than I’d care to know.

***

We conducted a count and called it in to the main control room. After that, we stripped out the group of new gains. Strip searches were a way of life in corrections. I couldn’t tell you how many I’ve had to strip search and after a few years, you almost do it on autopilot.

“Strip down to your boxers. Hand me your clothing and shoes.” You search the clothing carefully making sure there wasn’t any hidden contraband while at the same time being extra careful not to get stabbed by a needle or cut by a razor blade that might be hidden. Then once the clothing is searched you set it somewhere away from the inmate just in case you missed something. You’d do all this while maintaining eye contact.

Then came the second part of the search, the
strip
part.

“Take off your boxers and hand them to me.” You repeat the same process as before. Sometimes in the waistband of the boxers, they will cut tiny slits and stuff it with things like - drugs, needles, razors, and every now and then a homemade knife or as we like to call it, a
shank
. For the final part of the search, there were many ways to do this and each way based on how you felt. If he wasn’t a problem, you’d say, “Spread your arms out, wiggle your fingers, open your mouth and take your left hand and run it through the inside of your mouth. Run your hands through your hair. Lift up your penis and balls, turn around, spread your cheeks, squat, and cough three times, lift your legs and wiggle your toes.”

If they had a bad attitude or you just felt like being a jerk then you did the penis, balls, and ass first and made them run their dirty hands through their mouth last. They always looked at you as if you were crazy, but they didn’t have a choice. They had to do as you said. In prison, the officers always have the final say, or at least they did now until some bleeding heart liberal finally gets it their way and we start giving hugs to every rapist, child molester, and murderer that comes to prison. It’s a sad world we live in and it’s getting sadder every day.

Chapter 6

09/18/2004 0911 Hours

Officer Ted Bryant

I worked with Unit 5, in
Zone 7
, which covered the stretch of
Highway 27
from a mile before
Clearwater Correctional Institution
to Main Street
in
Clearwater
. We were a traffic unit but did get the occasional house call. It was a small town and with a Sheriff’s Office covering the area, we never got too busy.

On the edge of our working zone, there’s is a hotel called
The Palace
and it was
off of Highway 27, on the opposite side, a car dealership that sold handicap vehicles and a gas station. Farther north was the Sheriff’s Office responsibility.  This was near the exit for the
Turnpike
, which was another reason to be a hangout spot for us. When people got off the
Turnpike
, they tend to forget to adjust their speed. I once pulled over a guy on Highway 27 going eighty miles an hour. I don’t know who was more shocked, for going that fast, or me when my radar gun started freaking out when he pasted.  

There wasn’t much in our zone. We stayed away from the prison since they handled their own business, which wasn’t much, and my partner took care of the other side past the prison. I’d pull people over for speeding and drove through each of the three parking lots at least eight times throughout a shift. It was while I sat in the parking lot of
The Palace
when I heard the explosion from
Clearwater Correctional Institution
.

The explosion felt like it was next to me. My ears rang while I looked around, searching for the cause. I couldn’t see the prison but it was the first thing that came to mind. There was a water treatment plant on site run by the inmates.
CCI
was a wastewater training facility, one of only two in the state. What if one of the inmates made a mistake?

“
Unit Five
to
Unit Thirty-Two
, come in!” My radio crackled to life.

“
Unit Thirty-Two
go ahead.”

“Did you hear that bang? Sounds like it came from your side.” I put my car in gear.

“Sure did, sounds like it came from
CCI
. I’m heading that way to check it out.”

“Okay, I’m tied up right now with an accident about a mile from
Main Street
. I will be on my way shortly.”

“Okay, take your time; I’m sure it’s nothing too bad. It was loud but it could have been a transformer.”

“A transformer, are you serious? I heard it loud and clear from at least four miles away.”

“Okay, maybe I’m just underestimating it a little. I’ll see you soon.”

I pulled out of the parking lot when there was a second bang. The world slowed down for a moment and became blurry. Then it began to spin. I had forgotten to check traffic before pulling out. There was a semi-truck in the South bound Howard. He clipped the front of my cruiser, and sent me into a spin. I was lucky that it was just my front bumper.

The semi-truck stopped about a hundred yards down the road. I opened the driver side door to the sound of metal scraping metal and got out. I checked the damage to the cruiser and there wasn’t much, except for my front bumper and metal bars being ripped off completely.

I heard the sounds of the emergency tone, which was a series of long drawn out notes coming through my car alerting that there was an emergency. The dispatcher I knew as Edna came through after the emergency tone ended.

“All law enforcement, fire fighters, and ambulances report to the area of
Clearwater Correctional Institution
to assist.”

I heard the sounds of an ambulance and looked north to see one coming from the direction of
Leefield
. They pulled up next to me.

“Hey!”  I yelled at them while the passenger side window came down.

“You okay?” The passenger asked. I could barely make out the question because he and everyone else inside were wearing gas masks. It was standard post 9/11 procedures for paramedics when there was a risk of terrorist activities and/or chemical weapons.

“Yeah, just shaken up a little.”

“Meet you at the prison then?” Before I could respond he continued. “A bunch of people injured. If you’re not hurt too bad we’re going to keep heading in that direction.”

“Go ahead; I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

The ambulance pulled onto Highway 27 kicking up loose gravel. I needed to check on the semi driver before I left for the prison. I got in my cruiser and drove to the semi while staying on the side of the road. The short ride there felt all right except for the steering wheel, which was badly out of alignment.  I stopped just behind the semi I was left with the sinking feeling that I was going to see a large suspension for this accident, because the truck was painted a bright red color.
How could I have missed this?
I took a deep breath and got out of my car as the driver side door of the semi opened and a large man got out and ran over to me as I got out.