The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (34 page)

“To you and me, eating at Burger King isn’t a big deal,” Slack said, recalling the incident. “But to a guy who’s been locked up for ten or fifteen years, it’s a real
treat. It makes them feel like they are still part of the outside world.”

Slack also wanted to make a point. “Some U.S. marshals and other lieutenants pull a cheap trick on inmates during these outside trips by telling an inmate that he’ll get fed when he gets to prison. Only when the inmate finally gets there, he finds that the kitchen is closed and he’s out a meal. Meanwhile, the marshal pockets the money that he should have spent feeding the inmate. It’s not right, and I want inmates to know I don’t play that game.” Slack’s supervisors decided to forget about the Burger King incident.

Neither Warden Matthews nor Associate Warden Connor gave Slack a choice about overseeing the Cuban units. Lieutenant Monty Watkins would be his second-in-command. They told Slack that he would take charge of the Cubans on September 20.

Slack knew that the guards’ morale in the Cuban cellblocks was miserable and that the detainees were more raucous than ever. He didn’t know how much time he would have to familiarize himself with the Cubans and figure out how to improve things. As it turned out, he didn’t get any time. Late in the afternoon that Slack took charge, the Cubans in C cellhouse rioted.

The riot in C cellhouse began shortly after five
P.M
. as guards served the Cubans their evening meal. Each white Styrofoam container pushed through the cell bars contained a sandwich made of two pieces of white bread with a mixture of chopped ham and mayonnaise inside. There were potato chips and a piece of fruit. One of the Cubans complained about the meal. Another joined him, and soon it seemed as if all 257 Cubans in the cellhouse were screaming and throwing their food out onto the tier. Ham spread, bread, chips, and fruit were splattered against the floor and walls.

“When they ran out of food to throw, they began throwing feces and urine,” the Hot House’s newly arrived captain, David Ham, explained, “and when they made it so we couldn’t do our job, it was time for a show of force and we moved in.”

Associate Warden Lee Connor ordered Lieutenant Monty Watkins and his SORT team to go from cell to cell and handcuff every Cuban in the cellhouse. Anyone who refused to cuff up would be chained in a four-point position to a bed. There would be no exceptions, and Watkins was told to ask each inmate only once to comply. SORT began a methodical march through the cellblock.
The Cubans had seen SORT back in June when they had first attempted to riot. The team’s actions now didn’t intimidate them—at first. But as the SORT team moved along the tier, the detainees saw the guards were carrying a new piece of equipment—black riot batons. The clubs were three feet long and had a shiny chrome ball the size of a marble attached to their ends. These metal balls had a humane purpose, according to the manufacturer. If a guard jabbed an inmate in the rib cage, the ball would slide off the rib without breaking the bone and would instead tear the intercostal muscle, causing intense pain but no permanent damage. The clubs were something new for the Cubans to think about.

By the time the SORT team had put six Cubans into the four-point position, the cellhouse began to quiet down. By midnight, Cuban orderlies had cleaned the tiers, and the only sign that there had been trouble was the fact that six inmates were still chained to their beds.

Lieutenant Bill Slack had watched the disturbance, but it had been Connor who had called the shots. The next morning, Warden Matthews toured the cellblock with Slack and told the lieutenant he could have all the manpower and whatever extra supplies that he needed to keep the Cubans under control. Matthews was as determined as he had been when the Cubans first arrived to make certain they did not riot. After Matthews left, Slack went on another tour of his own. With an interpreter at his side, Slack stopped at each cell, introduced himself as the new lieutenant in charge, and then, as his guards watched in amazement, asked the Cubans for their help.

“I need you to be patient and give me a chance to improve things,” Slack said. “You got to give me some time. You got to realize if you as an individual or a member of a group set fire or tear this place up, then our money and time will go toward repairs rather than increasing things I want to do for you.”

No other lieutenant had ever introduced himself to the Cubans or asked for their cooperation. Most of the Cubans didn’t respond, but a few demanded to know what Slack planned to do for them.

“Better food and more of it,” Slack told two Cubans in one cell. “I got some ideas about televisions too, but I can’t do any of it if you don’t give me some time.” And then Slack said something that both his own guards and the Cubans found astounding.

“You got to trust me,” he told the Cubans. “I’ll never lie to you. My word is good, and I expect you to keep your word, too.”

Several hours later, after he finished talking to every Cuban in the cellhouse Slack left for a meeting with Connor. “We got to have a special meal tonight for the Cubans,” he explained. “I gave them my word.” Slack had been forced to take the Cuban-unit job. He had been promised whatever manpower and money he needed to keep the Cubans in line. But he didn’t want more guards or more money. He wanted better food, and by personally promising the Cubans that they would get better food, Slack had put his bosses—as they say in prison—“on front street.” If Matthews and Connor wanted Slack to succeed, it was up to them to cajole the food administrator into bettering his performance. When the guards delivered the evening meal that night, it arrived in the same Styrofoam containers as always, but when the Cubans opened them, they found two sandwiches, crackers, a candy bar, a piece of chicken, and an apple. There was nearly twice as much to eat as the meal served the day before, and all of it was fresh. The next morning, Slack once again went by each cell personally and asked about the meal. “I kept my word,” he told each Cuban. “Now you keep yours. I need more time. You need to be patient and things will get better.” In a single day, Bill Slack managed to accomplish what no other lieutenant had been able to do during the entire ten months that the Cubans had been at the Hot
House. He got the detainees to cooperate with him. While there would be isolated incidents during the next few weeks, there were no group demonstrations and for the first time the mood within C cellhouse began to improve. The Cubans couldn’t quite figure out Slack, and neither could many of the guards.

Slack knew that one meal wasn’t going to appease the Cubans for long or make them trust him. He had to move quickly or his negotiated truce would collapse. He continued to push for better food. “If all a guy has to look forward to every day is a meal,” Slack explained, “he gets really upset when it is not good or it’s not served on time.” Slack did some checking and discovered that the Cubans were generally fed meals made from whatever food was left over from the meals served the main prison population. If the American convicts ate hamburgers on Wednesday, the Cubans got meat loaf on Thursday. Slack also discovered that most of the meals were served late, and that when the Cubans did get food prepared especially for them, it was generally something the American prisoners would have refused. An example: sauerkraut, a dish that few Cubans had tasted and fewer ate. Slack began to complain—a move that outraged the food administrator. But Slack didn’t care. He pressured his bosses for better food and he got it. For the next several weeks, Slack personally tasted each meal, and he called the kitchen every day, half an hour before it was time for the Cubans to be fed, just to make certain that everything was on schedule. Only once did Slack catch the kitchen trying to serve the Cubans a meal that didn’t meet his standards. Slack rejected it and Connor and Matthews backed him up.

Once the food situation was improved, Slack turned his attention to finding ways to keep the Cubans busy. He asked Matthews for permission to buy several color televisions. The cellhouse already had a few television sets, but they were in the recreation cages where the Cubans were allowed one hour of exercise per day. Most
of them never got to watch television for a full hour, because they were being moved to and from their cells during that period. The hour limit also made it impossible for them to watch a complete movie or sports program. Slack suggested that additional television sets be purchased and mounted on the cellhouse walls in strategic positions so that the Cubans could watch them from their cells. He asked for money to buy several video players so he could show Spanish-language movies rather than English ones. Matthews approved the requests.

Next Slack turned his attention to personal telephone calls. An inmate never knew when he would be able to make his once-a-month telephone call, because he couldn’t be certain when a telephone would be brought to his cell. It depended on how busy the guards were and how many other inmates were waiting. When the inmate finally got the phone, he was given time to dial only one number. If no one answered, he was out of luck. Slack set up a schedule and kept a list of inmates whose calls didn’t get through, so that they could place a second call.

What Slack was doing was not extraordinary. Improving the meals, buying televisions, making certain each inmate got a telephone call were simple ideas. Still, no one before him had tried them. He came up with the changes, he said, by simply putting himself in the Cubans’ shoes. “If I were a detainee, I’d be pissed off too,” Slack said. “Some of these men have been locked up for eight or nine years for small things they did in Miami and they are caught in a bunch of red tape and politics.” This didn’t mean that the detainees weren’t dangerous. Slack considered the Cuban units to be the most threatening cellblocks in the prison for guards. But in one sense, what the Cubans had done on the streets, and whether or not they rioted in Oakdale and Atlanta, didn’t matter. “The bottom line is that if you treat these men like animals, they will definitely act like animals and
we will all pay the price. If you treat them like men, maybe, just maybe, they will respond like men.”

Slack soon discovered that Cubans in C cellhouse were telling Cubans in D cellhouse about him, but he wasn’t certain how, because detainees were prohibited from corresponding with one another. He found out that the Cubans were beating the prohibition by putting a fictitious address on the envelope and writing the name of the person that they actually wanted the letter sent to in the space reserved for the return address. When the post office returned the letter to Leavenworth marked
ADDRESS UNKNOWN
, it was automatically delivered to the Cuban in D cellhouse.

Slack began improving working conditions for the guards too. Some had been inside the Cuban units ever since the detainees arrived. This included several who had worked for Shoats and who were now under suspicion of brutality. Slack suggested that one third of the guard force be replaced immediately, another third be moved out in three months, and the final third in six months. He suggested that no guard be allowed to work longer than one year in the Cuban units, including himself. “This is simply too intense and stressful.”

After a few weeks, Slack made his most controversial decision. In the past, the Cubans had been placed in cells at random. No one had ever asked or cared whether they liked their cellmates. Each day as Slack walked the tiers, Cubans asked him for permission to move to different cells. Many of the Cubans were homosexuals, and Slack knew that some of the men were interested in changing cells because they wanted to be with their lovers. Others wanted to move in with their cousins, brothers, and friends. Slack decided to allow the Cubans to pick their own cellmates, but he required them to maintain several weeks of good conduct before he agreed to any changes and he then made both men promise that they would not fight if he put them together. Slack’s decision to allow Cubans who were flagrant
homosexuals to cell together outraged some guards. Behind his back, they called him a weak sister, and accused him of ignoring the bureau’s regulations against homosexuality. Slack claimed he was being pragmatic, simply trying to make the Cubans understand that they were responsible for how they would be treated. If a Cuban followed the rules, he got extra privileges. If he didn’t, he got nothing special.

An incident on September 24, four days after Slack took charge, dramatized the new attitude that Slack brought to C cellhouse. A guard asked him for permission to chain a Cuban to his bed because the detainee had refused a direct order. Slack decided to investigate. According to the guard, the Cuban had refused to cuff up and leave his cell so it could be searched for contraband. But the Cuban told Slack that he had been saving the granola bars served at mealtime and didn’t want them taken away. He had thirteen bars, and he knew the guard would confiscate all but five of them, the maximum a detainee was supposed to keep in his cell. Slack looked at the Cuban. The detainee knew that if he disobeyed an order, he could be put in a four-point position, yet the granola bars meant so much to him that he was willing to risk it.

“Ask him if his cellmate has any granola bars,” Slack told the interpreter.

“No,” the interpreter replied. “His cellmate ate all of his granola bars when they were served with the meals.”

“Okay,” Slack said, “tell him to give five of the bars to his cellmate. Tell him he can keep five bars for himself. The other three he has to give away to another inmate or eat right now.”

The interpreter relayed the suggestion to the anxious Cuban, who quickly agreed and began eating granola bars. The Cuban then stuck out his hands to be handcuffed, and thanked Slack. It seemed like a good compromise to Slack. But after he left, the guard who
shackled the prisoner was irritated. “He shouldn’t have negotiated. We should’ve four-pointed this prick. He let that Cuban beat us.”

Sitting in his office later, after working fifteen straight hours, Slack wearily defended his solution. He was exhausted. For the past hour either the telephone or guards had been interrupting him repeatedly as he tried to complete a two-inch-high stack of paperwork before going home. “A few granola bars aren’t worth a confrontation, at least not to me,” he said. “It’s not worth risking either the inmate or an officer getting hurt.”