Doing Time (30 page)

Someone in the cells called out, “The guards are locking themselves in the bathroom! What the hell's happening?”

“They've got control of L Corridor! There are guys running around with masks on! They've got the keys! They've got the fucking keys!”

The rumble from the corridor began to grow like a rolling thunderstorm: muffled screams, the pounding of feet running through the halls, glass shattering and showering the floor, and echoes of loud ramming sounds as though heavy steel bars were battering down the walls. There was a louder crash, and then orders were yelled. “Open these cells! Let's get these doors open, and get these people out!”

By now I knew that the block I was in had been taken over, but I didn't know by whom. An icy dread swept through me. My first thought was that there must be a racial war.

Keys that the block officers had abandoned were thrown to the prisoner now manning the control panel. The eighty cells in the L Corridor were instantly opened. I grabbed a metal tray for a weapon and headed out of my cell. Down the range I could see several teams of masked convicts converging on the block. Each man was armed to the teeth: baseball bats, chains, and shanks of stainless steel, two foot long and honed to a point as fine as an icepick. These men meant business.

“Everyone out! Get the fuck out of your cell!” they yelled as they moved from cell to cell. “If anyone is caught trying to hide in their cell, kill the motherfucker! Let's go! Let's go!” I watched each man closely, trying to read his intentions from his eyes and body signals. If they tried to move in on me I'd go over the range to the first floor. The jump was nothing, and there were too many of them to even think about dealing with them head-on. My adrenaline shot to flight mode. I put my foot on the edge of the range, ready to go over. They came closer checking me out, and clearly not rattled by my metal tray. Then I saw both black and white skin showing through their masks. I was relieved. Blacks and whites wouldn't be working together if this was a race riot. “Everything's cool, brother,” one said. “But we still want everyone out in the hall, so if you need to get some of your things together get them now and leave the block.” I didn't recognize any of them, nor did I want to. Still I inched closer to the edge of the range.

“Be cool, bro. You've got no problem here,” another said.

With that, I moved out, heading quickly down the range and out of the block. Something this big and unbridled could quickly get out of hand. My best bet was to get out to the rec yard where my road dog was. I knew what he was about and that we could look out for each other.

I stepped into L Corridor and into a world of chaos. Each of the 632 cells had been opened, and hundreds of convicts, some masked and armed, swarmed through the hallways like angry hornets. Faces were intense with fear. Eyes darted from face to face, face to hand, looking for weapons or any signs of danger. When eye contact was made, it was brief and concealed. No one wanted his concern to be misread as a threat or challenge.

“You men get something into your hands!” one guy kept shouting. “Let's get busy tearing this fucking place down!” He ran from window to window swinging a steel bar and smashing glass. I moved closer to the gym, hoping to find the exit door open, then spotted my friend Val from one of the other blocks. “Val!” I hollered as I worked my way toward him. “What the hell is this shit?”

“I don't know what's up, Paul. I just got out of the shower and the place was crazy!”

I told him my plans to head to the rec yard and he fell in beside me. Down the hall we came upon a body lying in a puddle of blood. There were punctures all over the guy's face and upper torso. Someone had pinned a guard's badge through his skin, a sign this was a snitch and that snitches would find no peace in L Corridor this day.

“Who is it? Can you tell who it is?” I asked my homey as I stepped around the blood.

“No, rap. Too much blood.”

By the time Val and I made it through the hallway to the gym, it was too late. The exit door was already barricaded, wired shut, and guarded by several masked and armed convicts. Since this was the only available exit, it meant that Val and I were locked in for the long run.

We knew that the riot could erupt into a full-scale bloodbath at any time, and it was imperative that we arm ourselves as quickly as possible. We grabbed the first suitable thing we saw: pieces of heavy pipe. As we made our way back up the corridor, the heat and closeness of danger hung like a wet wool blanket.

“We're stuck in this shit for however long it lasts,” I said to Val. “We've got to watch each other's back.”

Val looked around, nodding his head. “Cool, rap. Let's get our asses out of the mainstream,” This was too big to be safe.

“Listen up! Everyone shut the fuck up for a minute!” yelled one of the Masks as he marched through the hallway. “Everyone move against the wall! We gotta keep the middle of the corridor clear. Let's get together on this!”

The crowd flanked the wall as two other Masks walked down the center and announced: “Lucasville is ours! This is not racial. I repeat, not racial. It's us against the administration! We're tired of these people fucking us over. Is everybody with us? Let's hear ya!”

Hundreds of fists shot into the air as the prisoners roared their approval. I felt relief sweep over me. I was now a little clearer about what was happening. What I didn't know was that we were locked into what was soon to be one of the nation's longest and bloodiest riots.

Teams of men were assigned to barricade and guard each block. Two men were stationed in the day rooms to watch the rec yard; two were stationed in each of the range's top cells to watch the roof. L-2 was the only block that hadn't been opened. I overheard someone say that one of the prisoners had broken a key in the lock to keep the rioters from taking over. One of the Masks found pickaxes and busted the glass and the steel frame from the window casing. Twenty minutes later, L-2 was taken.

“Okay, get the bitch who broke the key in the lock! He wants to play police? We'll show him what's up!”

The prisoner had locked himself in the stairwell with the block officer, hoping that the brick-and-steel enclosure would keep him safe until help arrived. The Masks attacked the block wall with forty-five-pound weight bars and a heavy pickax, and within minutes the concrete wall gave way. The guard and the prisoner were dragged out. The guard was blindfolded, but the prisoner was hit with bats, weight bars, and shanks. A coroner's report later revealed that not only was his skull crushed, and numerous other bones broken, he had also been cut from neck to belly and gutted. His body was dragged to the end of the corridor and dumped on a pile of wet blankets near another body, both of which would later be hauled out to the rec yard.

Meanwhile, guards were being grabbed wherever they could be found. Several managed to break away and make it to safety, but others weren't so fortunate. Some were thrown onto the floor and hit so hard that they couldn't get back up. I didn't know if they were alive or dead as they were dragged into one of the cellblocks. During the first hour eleven were seized, blindfolded, and dressed in prison blues, inmate uniforms. The convicts beat some of the guards so badly they released them for fear that they might die. Of those seized, seven would be taken hostage for the duration of the riot; one would be killed.

The rioters covered all of the windows with blankets and then searched every cell for food. With more than four hundred prisoners and seven guards to feed, food would be essential. Everything we found was stored in an empty cell that became the kitchen. That first night cookies, chips, and cake were given to anyone who was hungry. Although I hadn't eaten all day, I wasn't hungry. I remember thinking that I'd get something to eat when it was all over. Little did I know it would last another ten days.

On the second day the prison authorities shut off the electricity and the water. Soon, all food was gone. The deprivation of food and water, coupled with the stress, began to take its toll. People lost weight at an alarming rate. Several men got so thirsty they drank from the fire extinguisher. Men began to divide into factions and surround themselves with their roads dogs for protection in case the unpredictable happened. It was impossible to get any sleep. I would lie on a mattress, my mind racing. Just as I was on the edge of sleep, my eyes would pop open and I'd sit up to make sure no one was creeping up on me. I'd go through this routine over and over.

By now, state highway patrolmen, SOCF (Southern Ohio Correctional Facility) security, and FBI agents had circled the prison, along with more than a thousand heavily armed National Guard personnel. Army helicopters flew overhead. Sharpshooters lined the roof.

“We were concerned that the troops would launch a full-scale assault as they'd done in the 1968 uprising at the old Ohio Penitentiary. If that happened many of us would be killed indiscriminately, bystanders shot dead with no distinction between them and the ringleaders. I also knew that somewhere inside L Corridor there were seven hostages, and they were the only thing that stood between life and death, bullets and negotiations.

A team of convicts set up a phone line and established contact with the prison staff and the SOCF negotiator, who got things off to a bad start by calling the convicts “a bunch of clowns.” The convict negotiators connected a tape recorder to the phone line so that those inside could be kept informed of the progress.

Eventually, however, the state woke up to the seriousness of the situation and flew in a special adviser from Georgia. He turned the talks around with a high degree of professionalism and won the guarded respect of the prisoners.

“We want every stage of these talks covered by the news media, sir,” said one of the convicts. “We know how the prison administration operates, and we don't trust any of them. If this isn't covered by the media, the state will do nothing but stall and renege on any progress made.”

News coverage would restrain the outside troops from either rushing the prison or killing the convicts once this was over. But the state wanted the situation kept under cover, with only select information reaching the outside through their own public relations office. Not surprisingly, the state released a story alleging that the riot was a racial war and that the prisoners refused to let the media talk to a convict spokesman. When they did allow one of the major Ohio newspapers to speak to a convict by phone, they quickly pulled the plug when he began to list the prisoners' demands.

Inside the prison, the convicts rigged up a PA system using a tape player and two large speakers taken from the rec department. They set these up near the windows facing the large media camp in from of the SOCF. A tape recording was played: “The prison authorities want you to think that this is a racial war. It is not! Whites and blacks have united to protest the abuses of the SOCF staff and administration. We want the FBI and we want a peaceful ending to this …”

The tape played on, listing demands. A SWAT team was sent to remove the system, but the speakers of the battery-operated tape player were set up so that they could be reached only from inside. Every time the tape would start to play, officials sent up helicopters, hoping to drown out the sound of the message.

Another group of convicts began painting messages on bed sheets and hanging them out the windows. Prison authorities tried to move the media out of the area, but it was too late. The cameras of the local and national news caught all of it. The next day, the painted sheets made front-page news.

Meanwhile along the hallway inside the prison, several prisoners were laid out with broken bones or other serious injuries. A few of the convicts built a makeshift infirmary and went to every cell collecting any medication or medical supplies they could find. Using the stage area of the gym, they rolled out a dozen or so mattresses for those too f ucked-up to walk. That first night all of the mattresses were full. One of the wounded was bleeding so profusely that I didn't think he'd last the night.

A self-appointed medic found a needle and thread and went to work stitching up the guy's neck. In an hour he was stitched and laid out on a mattress. He was one of the lucky ones who would live to tell his story. The unlucky ones were piled on top of each other like a heap of dirty laundry. A few days later the bodies were wrapped in blankets and dragged out to the rec yard. Two of them thought to be dead jumped up as soon as they were laid on the grass. They ran straighr toward the National Guard, who didn't know whether to shoot them or run from them. A guard thought to be dead lay in the yard for several hours while numerous convicts who had clustered there kicked and assailed him. When the coast seemed clear, he hobbled over toward the fences, where armed guards covered him as he made his way across the yard to the K-side gym. One of the prisoners who was running across the yard was the prisoner Val and 1 had seen earlier lying in the corridor with a badge pinned to his body. How he managed to lie perfectly still for all of those hours, including the painful moment while the badge was being stuck to his body, is still a mystery.

When the prison authorities saw all of the bodies dumped in the rec yard they began to realize that this was more serious than they'd thought. So, when negotiations continued, attitudes were more strained.

“We want food and water! You people think we're playing games. We'll bring this fucking place down!” the convicts demanded.

“Listen up!” the negotiator responded. “We're working on food and water. We'll get it together and I'll call you back as soon as it's ready. Just hang on for a couple of hours.”

Several hours later the supplies came and were left in the yard. A team of Masks brought food and water to the prisoners and rationed them, greatly reducing the tension inside. The downside was that prison authorities would now try to use food as a bargaining chip. Their mistake was in thinking that now they were in a position where they could call the shots.