Pelican Bay Riot (2 page)

I heard Popeye scuffling around in his cell, then heard the drop of a couple of welding rods land a couple inches from the bottom of the cell and looked down for a second to see two ice pick shanks poking out under the door for me if necessary. I watched the Mexicans, they weren’t coming for me, I didn't need them and I saw them slide back under as Popeye’s foot dragged them back. The Mexicans were heading for the stairs across from us. That meant they were headed to the Crip gangster Blacks in the other showers. Time slowed down. I looked at the gun tower for a second and realized they still weren't paying attention. Popeye said, "Here goes World War Three.", just as the action started.

The Mexican from Tijuana acted normal in his greeting as he led the way and gave the Mexican from L.A a shadow to hide in. The Mexican from Tijuana clapped hands in a handshake with Danger who had his arm sticking out the steel bars enclosing the showers. His black arm got slammed at an angle against the steel bar at his elbow and the Mexican kept pushing it that way and I heard the bone fracture and Danger screaming in pain. He tried to resist by arm wrestling his arm back into the safety of the shower but it was useless. His fractured arm wouldn't respond it was uselessly folded at the elbow. The other Mexican came out from behind and thrust a thin steel ice pick at an angle through the shower bars into Danger’s face as he leaned away to use the steel bars for protection while at the same time still trying to get his fractured arm back through the bars. After getting hit in the cheek just below his eye he backed hard enough to free himself.

The other Black Crip T-Rock fired punches at the second Mexican attacker. The steel bars enclosing the shower were blocking any further action and the outraged T-Rock yanked the door open, yelled, and slipped in shower shoes. The second Mexican took advantage of his slip and used his left arm to hold the shower door open and with his right hand jabbed the steel into T-Rocks shoulder. T-Rock gathered himself with even more rage. The warrior took the ice pick poking as if it were only bee stings and fired so many punches the Mexican backed out of the shower but closed the door on the forward charging T-Rock. He made it through the narrow closing door but took the impact on his shoulder and head and was made even more furious. His anger alone separated him from the two attacking Mexicans. Incited by his partners rage, Danger came running out of the shower with his fractured arm hanging at an unnatural angle. The sound of the block gun was next, "BOOM!"

I slid down Popeye’s cell with my back against it to sit on my haunches and realized inmates in cells were yelling and kicking their cell doors. I looked at the tower and saw the smoke from the tip of the rifle and at the same time heard the alarm send a siren of decibels in screeches that rose and fell. Another tower guard at the control booth yelled into the microphone, "GET DOWN! GET DOWN!", then ran to the opening in the tower window with another rifle.

The two Black Crips were engaging the Mexicans with punches, kicks and grapple throws with arms going everywhere and all four inmates were bouncing off cell doors with the fight going further away from the tower down the tier. Prison guards poured through the vestibule and got as close as they could and fired block guns, then pointed canisters of pepper spray at them from four feet away and a stream of painted orange followed the combatants still fighting and bouncing off cell doors. The gun tower yelled into the microphone, “GET THE FUCK DOWN! LIVE ROUNDS COMING!” I saw the four inmates fighting hesitate for a millisecond, like they knew what they'd heard from the tower changed this melee into deadly consequences or life sentences but they kept fighting for honor waiting for the other side to back down first. "BOOM", the block gun spoke, then "PING", a live round ricocheted, and it was enough. All four inmates sprawled out on the floor just as another army of prison deputies with gas masks came pouring through the vestibule with plastic shields thrust in front of them.

Popeye said, "That was weak."

Twenty minutes later the four inmates were led out of the building in handcuffs and the building's occupants inside cells emanated energy that blew rage, frustration and confusion through the air like wind. I walked up the stairs wondering if any Mexicans or Blacks heard Popeye say in disgust, "That was weak." I agreed with him, it was weak. Not the battle, the reason for it and the position it would put every single one of the inmates in, along with the deputies, along with the families of both, along with the communities outside the prison walls.

My cell door popped open and I took a last look with my shirt over my mouth. The tear gas fog floated slowly in a cloud and I could see the canisters it came out of under the tower still whispering gas. Almost every inmate and guard coughed and felt the sting burning their eyes.

Down the tier from the canisters the floor was painted orange in a path the pepper spray extinguishers’ sent that followed a line that went up and on a few of the cell doors the combatants bounced off. Blood stains soaked some of the floor and stained a few of the cells. Almost every cell still had a bald head with a pair of eyes at their cell doors studying the building the way I was with shirts bunched up covering their mouths.

Chapter 3

My cell mate Damon was at the cell door staring at the wreckage and moved out of the way for me to enter. He stood at 6'3 with a long angular body that ended in a large bullet shaped head. He has pale aqua blue eyes that always scrutinized life and now bore into mine as he asked, "How long do you think we will be on lock down?"

The cell I stepped into was 8 feet wide by 10 feet long with 2 bunk beds against the rear wall that stretched to a stainless steel sink and toilet I was standing next to. I knew he knew the answer to the question he'd asked. From this point on we would be taking mental bets at every turn to predict every development so we could anticipate danger and deal with it before it dealt with us. Being on lockdown meant finding ways to be productive with the time in slow motion on a shelf, otherwise you go insane. We were going to have to play more chess, do more reading, do more writing and a lot more pacing the cell while the prison administration followed procedure after an act of violence, in this case, a race war, this was the new challenge. "We'll be locked up tight for 2 weeks."

Damon nodded his bullet head and said, “Then the prison administration will decide if the Whites can get yard.” I nodded, “Then if we get yard the Whites will work in the kitchen and feed the yard. Yeah that’s how it will go.” Damon saw me smile and knew why and said, “We will have all the juice.”

I laughed to myself. We used juice like apple, pineapple, or any other for making wine. We used syrup or jelly or anything else we could get with sugar to turn fermented juice into wine. Then the more refined drinkers such as ourselves would take that fermented juice made wine and distill it into pure white lightning. We'd build a jug by turning a container that once held syrup into a distillery by attaching a plastic trash bag and sealing it to a vent hole where the handle used to be, then fill the jug with wine and seal a homemade heating utensil in it to make the plastic bag blow up into a balloon with pure clear drops of condensation that pooled into the bottom of the bag where we would cut the plastic and drain it into a cup in what tasted like cheap vodka.

I had to get back to more serious business, "Yeah we'll have all the juice but you know the prison administration will probably get rid of our two Mexican Mafia reps and we'll have to start over with diplomatic relations." My cell mate's bullet head nodded. "We'll probably get some youngster Mexican gang banger tryin to make a name and think he can by pressuring us."

I had been to this rodeo too many times. My cell mate Damon had almost as much experience. From this point on we would take turns being posted up at the cell door watching everything the Mexicans did. It would pay off to find out which Mexicans had the most influence if we were right, and the two Mexican Mobsters got taken to the hole before the next round. The Black race might want to go at it no matter what. You never knew. Sometimes they were more prone to diplomatic relations when possible. They could live with how well T-Rock did and squash a second round of race war. He came out with authority and backed up the attacking Mexicans and the Black race could say they won round one even though the Mexicans took the initiative. This was why the Prison Administration would likely remove the two validated Mexican Mafia reps; it would make it so the Mexicans suffered a blow. I followed this line of thinking.

"Without the two Mexican Mafia reps the youngsters might decide a war with the outnumbered Whites is easier than the Blacks who have as many numbers as them."

Damon said, "36 Mexicans, 32 Blacks, 22 Chinos and 10 Whites in this building. Hmm."

Chapter 4

For the next two weeks Damon and I spent time in shifts at our cell door watching everything. In the morning after breakfast was brought in carts and slid in our cell an hour later the Prison Administration would come and discuss developments among themselves. Occasionally, prison guards would let us know a few things. After they left, I would watch every cell communicate. Most of the Blacks did a lot of yelling from one cell to another. Most of the Mexicans did a lot of fishing. They would send a line that would fly out from under their cell door to another cell that carried a message, some wine or drugs or weapons. We could see who the more experienced Mexicans were by how the other Mexicans formed around certain cells.

Every couple of days, Damon or I communicated with Popeye downstairs. This time, it was my turn and I set up a little ramp made out of a magazine and pushed it a couple of feet away from the bottom of our cell door and slid my fishing line that started with an empty toothpaste container out of the cell with enough force to watch it slide on the ground and hit the ramp and fly in the air over the railing to the cells on the floor beneath us. I felt the line getting pulled into Popeye’s cell, heard him yell a couple of minutes later, “Pull”, and pulled our line back into the cell with his message tucked inside the toothpaste container just as the I.G.I, Inmate Gang Investigators, we call the Goon Squad entered the building.

Damon came to the cell door to watch with me. The Gooners were dressed in uniforms slightly different from the regular prison guards. Their uniforms were a darker green and had insignia stitched into the shoulders and chest of their uniforms to represent that they were Inmate Gang Investigators. Some of the regular prison guards didn't like them because they acted like gang members to them, like they were better than. That often provided a relationship between a prison guard who worked the building and an inmate that guard had respect for who might be the target of the I.G.I. Gooner.

Many times the inmate was being falsely accused of being a high ranking gang member and the prison guard would occasionally warn the inmate they were being investigated and to make arrangements to go to the Hole-Ad-Seg. That was happening below without the warning. Both Mexican Mafia reps were stripping down in their cell. We watched each Mexican squat and cough and put only boxer shorts on to get hand cuffed through the tray slot in the middle of the cell door.

Then the lead Gooner pounded his hand on a panel above the cell door to signify to the tower guard he was ready for the cell to get popped open and we watched both Mexicans walk out of the building with hands cuffed behind their backs. For the next two hours the I.G.I Gooners lived in the cell they had just vacated going through every piece of the former Mexican occupants mail, clothes, store goods and other belongings until piles of state issue clothes littered the floor outside the cell and plastic bags of belongings the inmate Mexicans owned were the only thing left.

When the trail of I.G.I Gooners and the rest of the guards cleared the building you could feel all the inmates thinking about how the changes would affect the building. Damon backed away from the cell door and picked up the chess board. When he looked at me I nodded I would play but waited until he looked me in the eyes. I said, “Time to figure out who will replace the Mexican Mobsters and call shots for the rest of the burrito.”

Chapter 5

For the next two weeks the prison administration slow dragged deciding the next move. We, the White race should have been off lockdown and running the building and kitchen for the guards, but we weren’t. There is something about being stuck in a cell for 24 hours a day that leads to resistance and violence. We were getting irritated with being powerless.

We continued to spend time in shifts at the cell door monitoring the Mexicans to gain awareness and an understanding of who was going to be the Mexican shot caller. The welfare of the White race depended on observing and being diplomatic, or observing and reacting in time. It wasn’t looking good. Most of the Mexicans in our building were regular guys who used or sold drugs, with some who beat or stabbed people for drug control, with some who weren’t so good.

At least the good ones tried to maintain honor with their word and were brought up to respect elders and as much of society as they could while being poverty stricken without a skill set to pay bills any other way then with dope. Some even had compassion and understanding and were prone to peaceful solutions…The bad ones were the gang bangers without any of that honor at all. Damon and I called them the predator gang bangers. Most of the gang bangers had a misguided honor but the bad ones were straight evil. You could feel it, you could see it in their tattoos, and you could see it in their eyes.