With my priorities in the right place, I mustered up some testicles and was about to handle this big nigga—yeah, right—when all my tormentors yelled out simultaneously, “Ohh, shit! Here comes the CO!” What the fuck was I, then? Then they parted like the Red Sea. I looked ahead, expecting some seven-foot-ten-inch corrections officer, when out of the crowd walked this 105-pound, four-foot-something female. She had salt-and-pepper hair and a pair of glasses that she wore on her nose.
“Back the fuck up!” she yelled.
They did. She then grabbed me by my arm and led me away from the crowd. I looked like a kid that got his ass beat, whose momma had to take him away from all the other kids at the playground. She then yelled at the other female officer who had let me in.
“Ooooh, girl, they sent me a big one this time. That’s fabulous,” she said.
An inmate yelled out from the upper tier, “Look at that nigga’s gut. You mean more like Flabulous!” The inmates laughed loud and hard.
The rest of the day went pretty much like that, and when it was over, I tore the gate off its hinges getting the fuck out of there.
CHAPTER 7
UNDUE FAMILIARITY
For the next couple of days we went back to the Academy, and classes went on, with boring instructors telling us the dos and don’ts of being a corrections officer Academy-style. They told us not to mess around with the inmates, emphasizing that we would jeopardize our jobs by bringing things to inmates or fraternizing with them in any way. The instructors told us point-blank that these individuals (the inmates) don’t care about you or your family. They don’t have anything to do all day but scheme on you. They focus on what they can get from you or what they can get you to do for them. Then the instructors gave us all kinds of examples of how we could get into trouble, like undue familiarity. Let me explain. You’re now a corrections officer. You now have peace officer status. Whoooo! You now have just a teensy bit more police power than the average Joe. As an almighty corrections officer you’re going to be held in high regard and expected to uphold the law, mainly in the jails but also to some extent on the streets as well. This means that your life, as you know it, is over. Juju and Toejoe, your best friends since grade school, can no longer be a part of your life if they have felonies. You’re not to associate with any known felon. That means if your grandmoms was a gangster in her heyday and accumulated some felonies, by Corrections guideline’s you can no longer go visit her in the projects for Christmas. If your neighborhood is anything like mine, that would be anybody in a fifty-mile radius. That means if you are seen hanging out with people that have felonies or you’re seen in pictures with said individuals, you can be brought up on charges and could possibly lose your job.
This is what didn’t really make sense: How did they really expect us to turn off our feelings and emotions toward people who had been a part of our lives before we obtained this job? I knew right away that this was going to be a problem for me. I was told that officers, such as myself, who were born and raised in neighborhoods where there was a large contingent of individuals with criminal backgrounds would see at least five to ten people they knew within the first week of working in the jails. If you encounter someone that you know, you’d better see them before they see you because they will shout you out. I was told that the professional way to deal with this is to write a report to administration requesting that the inmate be moved to another facility. Again, like I said, if your neighborhood was like mine, you were going to see a lot of inmates that you knew. That’s a lot of report writing, and to some officers it sort of raised a red flag as to what kind of person you were if you knew a lot of these kinds of people.
The other conventional way of handling the situation goes as follows: If you see an inmate that you know and you know that this particular individual not only knows you but knows all your dirty little secrets, you must approach this inmate and let him know that you’re an officer now and that he can’t expect any special treatment. If he gets loud and disrespectful then you take matters to the next level. You smack him, spray his face with mace, and yell, “Man, I told you about coming in and out of this place! Now respect my job!”
Slight exaggeration, but close to the truth. Corrections wants you to treat inmates like inmates no matter who they are. As a corrections officer you’d better learn how to balance personal life with job life or you’re going to be in a world of trouble. It’s simple. You got this job with the purpose of getting ahead in life and bettering your situation. People sell their souls for opportunities such as these. You have lived in the projects all your life, kept your nose clean so that when jobs like these became available, you qualified. You’re in now and you’re not going to blow it. Yeah, baby, just cruise the next twenty years and you’re in the clear. Hello, pension!
CHAPTER 8
USE OF FORCE
The next rule that instructors gave us that I found confusing was “Use of force.” This is the right-to-kick-ass rule.
They gave us different scenarios of when to use force and how much. Many of the Caucasian recruits paid close attention to this lesson, foaming at the mouth and shit.
It made sense to me that if you’re working in a jail—excluding inmate employees—a hostile environment, that you should be able to defend yourself. The first thing that was said was that you should always try to defuse a hostile situation. We were to utilize our IPC (interpersonal communication) skills. Talk your way out of either giving an ass-whipping or receiving one. Either way, they wanted us to talk first. I thought to myself, So let me get this straight, if I am working in a housing area and Jerome Thomas, aka Killa J from the group home, is standing in front of me with several bodies laid out in front of him and blood dripping from his mouth because he bit off someone’s ear, I am supposed to utilize my IPC skills and say, “So, who do you think the Knicks are going to get in the trade this year?” After all the horror stories I’d heard and after my first visit to the jail, I just couldn’t grasp that they would have me talk to the inmate instead of handcuffing him to a pole and beating the spit out of him. Just kidding.
On a serious note, I did learn that you just can’t go around the jail beating up on inmates for no reason, because if your Is are not dotted and your Ts are not crossed you can get in a lot of trouble. You are to use force as a last resort if everything else has failed. And by all means try to avoid a physical altercation with an inmate. In jail? Yeah, right.
In the following weeks we were given lessons in hand-to-hand combat. The movements were called “kodagash” and “comealong.” It was bullshit training that I knew half these petite women, and men, for that matter, would never be able to use if the shit really hit the fan. Muthafuckas were fat and out of shape and using muscles that had lain dormant for years. It was kind of comical seeing them try, though, because you knew that three months of training was not going to help. Then there were the practices using fighting movements with riot gear on. This shit was bulky and awkward and it really took some getting used to before a person could maneuver in it effectively. Some of us know-it-alls felt that the gear would more likely hinder us than help us. Chicks were upset because no matter what, they had to put that helmet on. One chick had her hair up in a bouffant like Marge Simpson and she had to put the helmet on. Adding insult to injury, another female recruit yelled out, “Ooooh, that looks expensive!” Yeah, they did not want to sweat out their hairdos and perms. But hey, would you rather get bust upside yo head with no protection?
We were also trained with police or security guard nightstick lookalikes. Again, some of us more knowledgeable recruits thought that they would be best if used like the baseball bats in the movie Warriors. But there were rules to this shit. The instructors shouted “Move!” with every movement; the rear strike, the front strike, the comealong, the what-the-fuck strike. The nigga-you-must-be-crazy strike was most effective when corrections officers outnumbered the inmate or the inmate was shackled.
One day we took a break from class to go to lunch. We all filled our bellies and then fell asleep on the instructor for the second half of the day. Some recruits here were talking trash to one another about the class when one recruit took it to the extreme. He jokingly blurted out, “Shut the fuck up before I shove a plunger up your ass.”
All of a sudden, dead silence. I mean crickets were squeaking. Even the instructor stood there in disbelief. No, this muthafucka didn’t! Oh, hell no! It didn’t help the situation that he was white and the one he shot the comment to was black. It didn’t help that it was in the wake of the Abner Louima incident. And it didn’t help that he was in arm’s reach of me, either. No, no, no, no, no. None of these circumstances helped his ass at all. The instructor moved quickly after assessing the now-hostile situation and quickly escorted the inmate—I mean recruit—out of there! The next day, BAM! It was all in the papers. We never saw that recruit again and we received all sorts of training on what to say and how to act in the workplace.
You can’t fail in the Academy unless you really do something drastic to get kicked out. Even if you fail a written test, they will let you take it again till you pass.
At the end of the Academy, right before we graduated, the instructor gave us a speech stating that basically the stuff that we were being taught was to cover their asses when we got inside the jails.
He told us that the real breakdown is that we are telling you how to do this shit. You ain’t necessarily going to do it this way when you get inside the jails, but if you fuck up, don’t say that we ain’t teach you the right way to do it. These lessons are to cover our asses, not yours, when you fuck up.
All in all, some of the Academy was informative and some was pure bullshit. But ya boy graduated, and was now a bona fide corrections officer on his way to Rikers Island.
CHAPTER 9
NEW JACK CITY
“On the gate,” a large CO yelled to another officer, who was inside the main control station, also known as gossip central.
The officer frowned and then turned the switch that opened the front gate. I was grateful to the other officer because this was my first day at my assigned jail and I had been standing at the gate for fifteen minutes to get in. Here we go with the bullshit. The jail I was assigned to was called C76, aka “the community center.” As I walked in along with a slew of new officers, all we heard were comments from the senior officers.
“How many of these fuckin’ jacks did we get?”
“There goes the fuckin’ overtime.”
One officer sniffed the air and said, “Aaah, you gotta love that fresh Academy smell.” Another said, “Smells like shit to me. One of you muthafuckas lost your nerve already?” They all laughed. After roll call, I went to my assigned area and when I got there I said to myself, “Okay, big G, enough of the bullshit, get in there.”
“Open the gate!” I yelled.
A small female CO came running to the gate, then stopped and said, “Shit, nigga, you yelling like you the police or something.” Then she unlocked the gate and opened it just enough for me to brush up against her to get by. Now my heart was pumping. This is it, no more Academy scenarios, no more recruit shit. This is my debut as a corrections officer. I walk in to relieve the B officer, the secondary officer, and before I can formally introduce myself and take my mandatory count of the inmates, he tears the gate off its hinges getting the fuck out of there. The A officer, the primary, says to me, “Pick a side to go on, A or B.” The housing area has two sides, which hold thirty to fifty inmates in each. I pick one. She opens the door to let me in, then slams it behind me. No conversation. I was warned about the bullshit senior officer/new officer rivalry. It didn’t matter to me because, guess what, I got the job, mootherrfuckerr!
As soon as I got in there, I remembered how not impressed the inmates were when I made my first visit on OJT, on-the-job training. So I tried a different approach. I walked in quietly and took my count. In the Academy we learned that the count was the most important thing. This lets you, and the facility, know how many inmates are in your control at a time.
I was in a dormitory-like setting with beds lined up next to one another. I did as I was instructed to do in my Academy training. I proceeded to tap each sleeping inmate as I went by to observe if they moved or not, to make sure that they were still alive. All I heard from the startled inmates as I did this was “What the fu—!” Then, when they realized it was me, the CO, and not another inmate named big Smiddy trying to get some ass, they gave me the look like, “Oh, it’s the CO.” I’d heard that some officers who have been on the job awhile get comfortable and don’t take mandatory counts when they assume a post. As a result, sometimes a dead inmate could go unnoticed for a long period of time. And the CO would have a lot of explaining to do.
“Ms. Jordan!” one inmate yelled out to the A officer.
“What!?” she responded.
“Could you call off your man Dudley Do-right. He walking around waking muthafuckas up,” he yelled.
Then he glared at me and said, “Shit, nigga, tapping me like that while I’m sleeping could get your ass hurt!”
Then, before I could respond, the officer called me to the officers’ station. She proceeded to scold me right in front of the inmates.
“Everything that you learned in the Academy, forget about it. It’s a whole new ball game in here. So, sit down somewhere,” she said.
Then she waved me off like she was busy, like I was in here just to start shit. She left me standing there looking stupid with all the inmates snickering and laughing at me.
Already I was bored to death. Outside these walls I may have seemed like this almighty corrections officer, but I was beginning to feel more like a glorified babysitter. This can’t be all there is to it with this job, just sitting here all day doing nothing.
A few days go by and I’m slowly but surely getting the hang of this. I’m at another assigned post sitting down bored. Some job. The only fighting I’m doing is fighting sleep.
Then I hear someone say, “Gee?” Uh-oh, that can only mean that this is someone who knows me from the streets. I look and it’s my man Biz. I knew that I would see people from the street but I did not think it would happen so soon. I instantly recalled that if I saw someone I knew I would have to put my foot down and enforce my status. Even if it was Biz, who my moms babysat when we were little and whose sister I used to smash out. This used to be my right-hand man back in the day. I had to let him know that I was a CO now and that he couldn’t just be calling me Gee like that. How was I going to tell him this? I thought to myself, Shit, nigga, this is your job now, your Michael Jordan sneakers for your kids, and someday your new house. Hell, this is your ghetto no-limit pass, your badge. I looked at him square in the face and said, “My name is Officer Heyward!” I told him that in here that is what he should call me and not to forget it. He stepped back in shock. He had the look like, “No this nigga didn’t.” He must have been thinking, This nigga used to come to my house for sugar. I gave this lil nigga sneakers to wear to school—him and his brother. Wait until I call my moms and tell her that Gary Heyward from Public School 46, Miss Eldridge’s class, is standing here fronting. I know that he also thought that the real reason I seemed to be fronting was that I used to date his sister, and the word on the streets was that her head game was trash.
He slowly backed away and went and sat on his bed. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was still in shock at how I acted and still staring at me. I knew that this was just the beginning. I wondered how many more times I would have to ignore my ghetto heritage, how many more times I would have to look my friends in the face and sell out my soul for the sake of my newfound livelihood. How many more times?
CHAPTER 10
REMINISCING
The day carried on and I was doing more stupid new jack shit like checking the doors and windows to make sure that they
were locked and secure. I could see Biz out the corner of my eye watching me and figuring out a way to approach me. He finally came up to me the correct way, the way a friend who knows your history is supposed to approach you. A friend who knows that you’re trying to hold down a job and do better for yourself. A friend who is not supposed to take it personal or blow your spot up when you act all professional and shit. He said, “Ah, CO, can I speak to you for a moment?” I said, “Yeah, what’s up?” He apologized for approaching me the wrong way and we sat down and talked. We began to reminisce about our youth, from plastic coin food stamps—the black ones, fifty cents; the red, twenty-five cents—to drinking out of a fire hydrant on a hot summer day. That was before they started selling bottled water. Whoever thought of that is a fucking genius. He brought up the time when we were in several gangs, such as the G-force and Zulu Nation, and we got chased home by a rival gang called the Ball Busters. I remembered when we played this game on a chick named Tracy where we blindfolded her with a sock and placed different items in her hand. She was supposed to guess what they were. I put a frank in her hand and she guessed frank. This nasty nigga Biz put his dick in her hand. You should have seen her squeezing and scrunching her face up trying to guess what it was. When she finally got it, she let out a yell and ran and told her mother. Talk about lil niggas getting their asses beat. Me and Biz ain’t come outside for two summers. Yeah we were some crazy muthafuckas.
Corruption Officer Page 3
