Corruption Officer (30 page)

“Oh, baby, don’t stop, don’t stop!”

I am in the parking lot of Rikers Island and I have a female
C.O. riding me in the back of my van.
 
I
am grinding myself deep inside her when her cell phone rings she reaches for it
to look and see who it is and says to me, “It’s him. I have to answer,” while never
dismounting me.
 
I purposely wait until
she gets to talking to her husband and start to grind inside her some more.
 
She feels me and hits me on my chest for me to
stop.
 
I don’t and it starts feeling good
to her until her eyes roll in the back of her head and she drops the phone and
begins to say my name over and over again the shit felt so good.
 
All I heard her saying was, “Oh, Heyward.
 
Oh, Heyward!”
 
Then it turned to just straight, “Heyward!
 
Heyward!”
 

Then I opened my eyes and realized that I was dreaming I was
still a C.O. and that I had a grip on myself that would make a boa constrictor
proud.
 
Even more embarrassing was the
light that was being shined in my face from the C.O. that was standing in the
window of my cell laughing and waving his hand back and forth signaling to me
that he caught me jerking off.
 
He then
said, “Get dressed.
 
We need you to move
some property.”
 
Humiliated at the
thought of being caught, I got up washed my hands and threw on my greens.
 
It was in the middle of the night and I was
wondering what inmate property had to be moved right now?
 
He told me to follow him and we went to the
next floor to the unit above my unit.
 
He
told me go to cell 3 and bag up
all the
inmate’s
property that was in there.
 
I thought
that it was kind of strange to have me doing this at this time so I asked him,
“Why am I doing this now in the middle of the night?”
 
The C.O. said, “The inmate just hung himself
and we need his stuff packed and inventoried.”
 
I stood there for a minute in the doorway of
this tomb looking around and taking in the view.
 
I begin to pack the inmates stuff and as I
was doing so I overheard the C.O.s in the corridor talking about him just being
some young punk who couldn’t do his time and took the easy way out.”
 
Then one said to the other, “Hey, look at it
this way,
he
beat those charges.”
 

I was angered by their comments.
 
I felt that inmate or not this person was a human
being and even if he was to live the rest of his life in prison he still
deserved a little empathy in the wake of his death.
 
As I began to cleaning and packing his cell I
reflected on all the inmates who I came into contact with since I started
dealing with jail from Biz to Flocko to Moe and everyone in between.
 
We all made decisions that landed us in a
system that allowed us to be controlled.
 
That’s the main ingredient of jail control.
 
Naturally, when we become adults we control
our own actions whether coming or going, we decide whether we’re going to make
a right turn or a wrong turn.
 
But when those
actions go against the laws put before us then it is determined that people who
break them need to be controlled and that’s were jail comes in.
 
Jail takes away your freedom not only
physically but it takes away your right to decide what’s best for you.
 
You no longer can eat, sleep, and drink when
and what you want.
 
You no longer have
the rights of the basic citizen.
 
Some
feel that jail is modern day slavery because of the way inmates are treated.
 
I beg to differ because even though inmates
get beat unjustly and are forced to do things against their will ultimately
that person before they became an inmate decided to do wrong.
 
Slaves did not have such an option.
 
When people don’t think about the consequences
of their actions and break the law, they put themselves at the mercy of an unbalanced
court system and then at the mercy of individuals who at times have the power
to be judge, jury, and executioner called Corrections Officers.
 
It’s an unfair check and balance system
because the effort to govern Corrections Officers is not as intense as the
effort to govern and correct inmates, so this sets up an atmosphere where
individual rights can be violated and justice
very seldom
prevails.
 

As I finished packing the deceased inmate’s belongings, I
could only think about the amount of people who became inmates that have or are
going to share his same fate.
 
If I had
any advice to give to any one I’d say that prison is never an option and prison
should be feared at all times.
 
As corny
as it may sound prison should be thought about every time a person thinks about
doing something wrong.
 
Now I know
incidents happen that sometimes unjustly land people into prison and things
like wrong place wrong time can’t be controlled but at all cost jail should be
avoided.
 
My message to the youth would be
that jail is not a badge of honor.
 
There
is nothing glorifying about being controlled or about being a gangster because
I’ve witnessed even the toughest person get backed down and beat.
 
The youth need to realize that they are not
invincible and that they have nothing to prove to anyone.
 
And for every person out there that thinks
they’re tough there’s, at
minimum ,
thousands of
inmates who would prove them wrong.

As I drag his belongings out of the cell, I vow to myself
that once I get released I am never coming back here again.
 

Then the months blew by and it was time for me to be
released.
 
I was thankful that I only had
a twenty month sentence because I knew that it could have been worse.
 
The day before my release a C.O. handed me a
letter from Albany and when I opened it, I read that they were now granting me
work release.
 
I shook my head because to
me this meant that all along I could have gone to work release and that all
that talk about me being in protective custody and the serious nature of my
crime was just crap.
 
Albany blatantly
said that even though I qualified, they don’t want me to get work release.
 
I still had the same charges but the only
difference is that they made me stay and do my time.
 
Now they could put it in their books that they
gave me work release so it would appear that they don’t discriminate, but the
dates don’t lie.
 
At this time I did not
care.
 
I folded the paper up and put it
away so that when I looked at it again it would further motivate me not to come
back and be controlled.

When I touched down, I was greeted by my son who had out
grown me.
 
His telephone rings and it’s
my mother checking to see if he has seen me yet because everyone was awaiting
my arrival.
 

When I get inside the apartment I’m greeted by my mother who
holds me tight for a very long time and the tears just start rolling down her
face and mine.
 
All I feel is the
unconditional love that she has for me and the pain that I have caused her.
 
I know that as usual I owe her a debt that I can
never repay.
 

The next day I report to my Parole Officer and he gives it to
me straight letting me know that I have an uphill battle ahead of me.
 
He tells me that jobs are tight, that we’re in
a recession, and that I have a felony as an ex-law enforcement person and that I
lost a City job.
 
He told me that it was
mandatory for me to get employment as a part of my parole conditions and if I
failed to do so that I could be sent back to prison.
 
I take in everything that he’s saying but I
still remained positive because I knew that I would do whatever it took to make
things right again.
 
If I had to work two
fast food jobs, I would.
 
It didn’t
matter.
 
All that mattered to me was that
I was home and that I was given a second chance.
 

While I was in prison, I had filed for a job and received a
letter to report to it to see if I qualified to begin processing for it.
 
When my Parole Officer saw the letter he told
me that he might have to stop me because the job was a good one and that could
mean that I would be back on my feet too fast and then start selling drugs
again.
 
In my mind I thought that parole
was supposed to encourage you to get a job as soon as possible and to get back
on your feet.
 
Besides, I didn’t need a
good paying job to sell drugs again.
 
Nevertheless
he let me go to the orientation and that’s when I found out just how dirty the
D.A. was.
 

My charges were attempted drug sale in the third degree and bribery
receiving in the third degree.
 
When an
employer looks at my application, they will see the more serious charge first the
drug sale charge and some would figure, in this day and age, that they might be
willing to take a chance and give me a job.
 
Once they see the bribery charge, it would prompt them to scratch their
head and figure that the normal Joe Blow standing on the corner hustler was not
going to get that type of charge.
 
Then
they would ask me who I was or what position I held that would put me in a
position to be bribed.
 
Once I tell them
my story, trying to be truthful and not lie, my interview would be over.
 
So that was the last dagger that the system
gave me, let’s make it hard for him to get employed again and maybe he will
slip up again and land back in prison.
 

Well, to make a long story short, that didn’t happen.
 
In fact to show how good God is, upon
completing my parole obligation, not only did I land a job I landed another City
job with a pension and benefits!
 
Now I
walk around as an example to let people know that you can bounce back from
prison and just because you went to jail it’s not the end of the world…

Preventive measures that can be taken to try and prevent
Correction Officers from bringing drugs inside the jails:

1.
     
 
Perform random strip searches on Officers as
they enter the facility or at least randomly pat them down.
 
I know that this sounds crazy because these
are Officers that we’re talking about but if the Department of Investigation is
getting information that a particular jail has a lot of outside contraband
being found then this could deter someone from bringing anything in.
 
It’s like the random drug testing, a C.O.
won’t take the chance because he/she knows that any day they could be called
for a drug test, and a random search would have the same effect.
 
(That’s if they actually do it sometimes to
show the Officers that they are serious).

2.
     
Perform
random locker searches and make sure it’s on the same day as the strip search
of an Officer but not the same Officer.
 
Once
again you want the Officers thrown off guard and not able to predict who or
when these searches were going to take place.
 
Not to make light of what I did but a lot of
times I received phone calls letting me know when and where the search was
going to be so this helped me to prepare for them if they came in my area.

3.
     
Make
it mandatory that Officers from different jails come and man the front gate
post at jails they’re not assigned to with a supervisor present there all
day.
 
Don’t allow Officers to get
comfortable with one another this way.
 
They’ll be more prompt to do the job right.
 
Also, have the supervisor come in from another
jail and not the same jail that the Officers come from.
 
This way they will be prompt not to show
favoritism to the Officers that they don’t work with everyday.

4.
     
When
a housing area is being searched by a drug dog make sure the dog sniffs out the
Officer’s station.
 
A lot of times when I
knew that the search was coming, I would hide my stuff in the Officer’s station
because the dog never came in there to search.

5.
     
Last
but not least, randomly send Officers down to the Inspectors General’s office
for questioning even if the Officer is not accused of anything.
 
Just send them down and ask
them
questions about the jail, you’d be surprised what you
might find out.
 
Also don’t make it a
secret.
 
Let them be notified at roll
call so that everyone knows that they’re going down to be questioned.
 
This way Officers will be leery about doing
anything against the rules if they know that there is a chance another Officer
will tell on them.

I know that these suggestions sound crazy because Officers
of the law are supposed to have integrity.
 
So, I am going to end this with this fact, I went to jail in May of 2006
and since then there have been over 30 Officers caught doing what I did.
 
Make me a liar when I say that they will never
be able to stop a CORRUPTION OFFICER!