Corruption Officer

by Gary L. Heyward

  After we stopped laughing he said that he was going to let me know what was going on around here. Biz informed me that Rikers Island was a city inside the city. He told me that the COs here were making money, and he wasn’t talking about their paychecks. He went on to say that some of his boys had gotten chick COs to bring them weed, razors, and all sorts of things. Some even gave up the pussy. I didn’t believe him, because what I was told was that inmates lie on their dick all the time when it comes to fucking these female officers. I mean, it might have happened on a rare occasion, but the way that he was talking, it was like it was SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). He continued that he knew that a hustler like me was going to make a lot of money in here. I stared at him like he was crazy and said, “Ya see that’s why I barked on you the way that I did earlier. Nigga, you of all people know where I come from. I ain’t fucking my shit up for nothing.” He said, “Gee, ain’t no way that you can get caught, because you would be fucking with your right-hand man right here,” pointing to himself. And there it was. I knew there was a reason for why he was giving me the rundown in this place, for the gas-me-up sales pitch. I ain’t tear the nigga’s head off right then. I just told him that I just got this job and that I wasn’t fucking it up for nothing.

  Convinced I was taking my job seriously, Biz moved on to a more moderate request. He said, “Look, Gee, I hear you and respect that.” The nigga’s lying. But he went on, saying, “On the real, a nigga is fucked up in here, so could you look out and hook me up with some cigarettes, not for me to smoke but so that I can juggle them.”

  “What the fuck is juggling?” I asked.

  “Juggling is when the inmates trade the cigarettes between them for whatever, weed, food, and for phone calls (called clicks). Look around you, Gee,” he pleaded, “everybody’s smoking.”

  I did notice and I had just seen my A officer give her worker, an inmate, a cigarette a minute ago. What am I going to do?

  I evaluated the situation. First, everybody was smoking. Second, they sold them in commissary, so it wasn’t a crime for an inmate to have them. Third, the senior officers were giving them to the inmates anyway. Plus, I felt bad about barking on him this morning and this was my man Biz. I told him, okay, I’ll hold him down this one time. He told me to go to his apartment, which was two floors down, and see his sister. And that she would give me a pack of cigarettes for him. Another reason I agreed to look out was that I had been seeing his sister around the hood and her ass had gotten fatter. She would often ask me when I was going to let her babysit my offspring again, meaning give me a blowjob. I definitely had to go check that out. I thought it was no big deal doing it, because it was only cigarettes.

  CHAPTER 11

  CORRECTION OFFICERS’ BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION

  I had been on the job a few weeks. I was getting to know a lot of the officers and they were beginning to show me the ropes. I had already caught the eye of a few honeys that worked there and I had started to spit some game to them. Getting my muthafuckin’ mac on and shit. One day while I was at lunch some old-timers snatched me up in the locker room and schooled me on how shit went around there—as far as pussy was concerned. One old-timer looked at me and laughed, then said, “Nigga, you having the time of yo life. Just look atcha, runnin’ round here, up in all these bitches’ faces telling ya corny jokes and shit. These dumb bitches justa laughin’ and key keyin’ at every little thang ya say. Ya gotcha hair all blown out and duddied up lookin’ like a broke ass Steve Harvey and shit.” Again he broke out into a loud hearty laugh. Of course this nigga was old, bald, and fat, so my thoughts were that he was just hatin’ because it was my time to shine. So I just sat back and let Cooley High talk. He went on to say, “Looky here, yahoo, you ain’t fuckin’ funny. These bitches are just playing you like they play all these other Joe security fake-ass new niggas runnin’ round here! They know you ain’t have shit before ya got this job. They know how much ya make, how much ya bringing home after taxes and all that. Ya going round screaming that Harlem World shit!” He snickered. “They know you ain’t got no car and ya probably still living witcha moms.” He looked at me and saw that I was stuck. How the fuck this nigga know all that? He said, “Yeah, nigga, you’re the new kid on the block, the new meat!” He laughed hard and loud. “Don’t be fooled. None of these bitches are innocent. Let me guess, they just throwing da pussy atcha, huh?” he questioned. I nodded. The brother actually sounded a little upset over the whole issue. It was like he was talking to me but never seeming to be looking at me. He was always off into his own thoughts as if he was reminiscing about when he used to be me or something like that.

  There were four or five elderly—I mean senior—officers changing their clothes. Some were bald, some with salt-and-pepper hair, some even had wooden teeth. Yes, wooden teeth, with all the benefits we get. There were others from the senior citizens corrections committee who overheard the officer, who looked like Rollo from Sanford and Son, talking to me and invited themselves into the conversation.

  “Rufus, what are you doing talking to Baby Milk here? He ain’t got enough time on the job to rate conversation,” one of them said.

  They laughed.

  “Nah, I was just trying to let the youngun know how stupid he was looking around here and I was pointing him in the right direction,” Rufus said.

  Another officer said, “Like you know.”

  They laughed.

  “Seriously, you can’t be running around here like you never had pussy before. Believe me, you’re gonna get your fair share of ass in due time, more than you can handle. Shit, everybody is fuckin’ everybody! Officers, captains, deputies, everybody! Check it, you see all these female officers around here? A lot of them are loose with it. Even the bucktooth snooty bitches give up the ass on any given Sunday. Yeah, they all come in here the same way, like, ‘I ain’t fuckin’ none of these niggas.’ ” He laughs, then he says, “I give them a three-month grace period before one of these officers has a finger in that pussy either on post or in the cocking lot—parking lot.”

  Another officer interjected, “Nah, all of them ain’t that easy. It took me ’bout a year and a half to hit Officer Fredricks.”

  “You hit Fredricks?” Rufus asked with a stunned face.

  The officer frowned and said, “That ass is old news, but it took me awhile.”

  “Ain’t she married?” Rufus again questioned in disbelief.

  The officer gave a da-fuck-wrong-witchu look and responded, “Yeah, and?” Then he turned to me and said, “Engaged, married, single, Baptist, Catholic, Muslim. It don’t matter, ’cause if dey come up in here, dey fuckin’. Sometimes it’s all about timing. Sometimes, if you work with them long enough the pussy just falls into your lap. Like I said, I was working with Fredricks for a minute before I popped her in the bathroom on overtime on the midnight tour. One night she came in to work drunk and upset about her husband leaving her because she worked too much. She went on to say that he felt that ever since she started this job it became her life. Everything is about the job, the parties, the niggas, everything! She said he had his shit packed when she left home to come to work. Yeah, that night she was in pretty bad shape and me being the loving and caring coworker that I am just sat there and listened, of course, after I went and got a fifth of Bacardi that I had in my stash.”

  They laughed and gathered around like all men do when we are about to hear some shit about a woman fucking that we want to fuck.

  “I just sat there pouring her drink after drink, waiting patiently with my dick in my hand. Shit, after the captain made his tour and took a couple of shots to the head I knew it was on.” He continued, “I had that ass hemmed up in that bathroom damn near all night! I ain’t stop till they called the house out chow!”

  They all burst out laughing. I sat there attentively listening, then another officer jumped in and said, “As soon as the chicks come through those gates from the Academy
it’s open season. It’s a whole new world to these broads, because the Island is its own city and has its own rules. Watch, once you’ve been here awhile you going to be coming to work to hang out, drink, and fuck. This place is the ultimate getaway.”

  They laughed loud and hard.

  “It’s almost impossible to get caught cheating, especially if your chick ain’t on the job,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It’s one way on and one way off Rikers Island and if you ain’t no CO, then after visiting hours, you won’t be able to come to a jail to check up on your spouse. And if they try and call, nine times out of ten, if you don’t want to be found then you won’t be found. You will be good to go once you get yourself a jail wife,” he said.

  “A jail wife?” I asked.

  “Yeeeah, man,” he said. “If you hook up with one of these shorties and y’all really feeling each other, she becomes your jail wife. She knows about your wife if you got one and you know about her man, but inside here y’all belong to each other. Everybody in the jail knows it and don’t say shit at correction’s officers functions when you show up with your real peoples. Shit, I done seen niggas leave their real wives for CO pussy.”

  “I done seen officers fight each other at roll call over dick and pussy that ain’t even theirs, looking real stupid,” Rufus chimed in.

  “I saw an officer have a shootout in the parking lot after getting caught cheating. Of course his wife and mistress were both on the job. Shit, if them bitches get smart all they have to do is check ya pay stub to see if overtime is on it,” another officer said.

  “That ain’t necessarily so,” says another officer, “because I fucks them while they at work, straight time, overtime, it don’t matter. There’s so many offices and down-low spots in here, you can get a quickie in broad daylight if the broad is wit’ it.”

  I give them a look like, “Y’all crazy.” One of them yells from the row of lockers next to us and says, “If somebody is married to one of these COs in here, they know when their shit gets shaky at home. They know when their people’s normal movements have changed. They know when they start acting different because of this job. They know when COBA (Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association) done turn they lil asses out!” Everybody laughs.

  CHAPTER 12

  BITCH ASS NIGGAS

  After the officers finished getting dressed and left, I sat there in the dirty locker room soaking up all the stuff I’d just heard. I looked around and noticed that I was sitting in the cemetery, a row of beat-up lockers that were sealed with tape, with the words “Rest in Peace” written on them. Later I found out that when officers pass away on the job, their lockers are taped up with all their belongings inside. To me it was a bullshit jailhouse ritual, because I also heard about officers acting like scavengers and breaking into these so-called sacred lockers and stealing their contents. I’m sure there were a bunch of officers walking around with dead men’s uniforms and no guilt whatsoever.

  I was about to leave when another officer came into the row where I was sitting. He asked if he could sit down and talk to me. He was a tall man with a slender build and a bald head. Well, I thought he was bald until I noticed that he had one long braid attached to the back of his head. It looked like the barber shaved everything but that one braid. Somebody needs to beat that barber’s ass. He sat down and began to talk.

  “I overheard y’all’s conversation,” he said.

  Then he looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said, “Yo, don’t listen to those muthafuckas. A lot of them niggas are bruised, bitter, and just plain ol’ beat up. Sure, they will sit here and talk all the shit in the world about the females around here, but nothing about their trifling asses. A lot of them just walk around here mad because they fucked their lives up. You see, Rufus,” he said, “he’s what you a call a BAN.”

  “What’s that”? I asked.

  “A bitch ass nigga. The type of CO that never was nobody before this job, got bullied in high school, and never got no chicks. You know, the type of nigga who always wound up sitting in the living room or in the car while you’re in the room fuckin’. The muthafucka never could fight until he took up martial arts, and now he comes on this job to get vengeance on all these cuffed dudes in here who remind him of who and what he really is deep down. Then you have Kev,” he went on, not realizing that I didn’t know these guys by their first names. “He is what you call an SAN.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “A stupid ass nigga. He diddybopping around here still trying to live out his heyday. The nigga damn near fifty and he’s still dyeing his hair, buying gold chains and rings and shit. Muthafucka been on the job over ten years and don’t own nothing, no property, no bonds, no CDs, nothing. He just buys mink coats and gator shoes and hits every CO party, hemming up these new naive broads that come through here. The nigga ain’t even smart enough to go to the dentist. All this nigga’s teeth are just rotten and missing on one side. He can only chew on the left side of his mouth.”

  We both laughed out loud.

  “Watch ’im the next time he’s trying to eat a piece of rib or something. It’s like torture to his ass! Chris and Paul are FANs.”

  I asked his ass what that was.

  “They’re faggot ass niggas. These red, white, and blue bleeding muthafuckas will do anything for this job. This job is their life! If you ever looking for them, you will find them standing on top of Corrections Mountain with the CO flag wrapped around them blowing in the wind. Do me a favor and don’t ever talk disrespectfully about this job to those George Washingtons, because they will be ready to fight. This job is their reason for living. Everything they do revolves around this job in one way or another. This piece of dirt we standing on is their reason for living. They go to every CO party, every cookout, every sports event and all dat. They give their kids names after the jails like Rosy for Rose M. Singer and Benny for the Bing and all dat. The shit is crazy, man,” he said, chuckling to himself. “To them, in their world, if you ain’t a CO you’re an inmate, point-blank.”

  Then he looked at me and said, “All of them muthafuckas got caught up in here chasing pussy. How do you think that they can tell you all so well about what’s going to happen to you? It’s because they have been through it and still going through it. Divorce and child support ruined them. They can’t get through the day without a drink and a lot of times they take their frustrations out on these inmates because they have the power to do so. All because they wanted to fuck everything that moved up in this bitch.” He paused, and then said, “Just like you.”

  As he got up to leave he said, “Tell me something.”

  I gave him a look like, “What?”

  “Which one are you going to be?” he asked me while walking out.

  CHAPTER 13

  GUNSHOTS

  I had made my way to the COs’ kitchen after being schooled in the locker room when I heard CO Spiff yell “Johnson! Johnson!” in the face of an inmate that was on the serving line in the officers’ kitchen.

  “What!” yelled CO Johnson from the back of the kitchen.

  CO Johnson walked out to the front to confront CO Spiff.

  “Tell this stupid inmate to give me two pieces of chicken!” yelled CO Spiff at the top of his lungs.

  Spiff stood there with a large Tupperware bowl he had brought from home. No orange serving tray for him. I wondered to myself, How is it that we go to these inmates’ cells or dorms where they sleep and toss their belongings all on the floor, rip up their pictures from home, and sometimes unnecessarily destroy sacred personal items during our random searches, then expect those same inmates not to piss or spit or worse, bust a nut in the food that they serve us? Most of the time the kitchen staff are unsupervised. So they can easily plan and execute revenge in their own little way if they really wanted to.

  CO Johnson ordered the
inmate to give CO Spiffy Spiff another piece of chicken (Spiffy Spiff is what he had marked on his inmate-issue green cup). Spiff reached over and took the inmate’s identification card off his shirt. He put it in his pocket, knowing that every officer the inmate encountered for the remainder of the day would give him hell for not having his ID card. Stupid shit.

  I got my food and began to think about all the things that had been said in the locker room while watching all the other officers around me. Some were asleep, some were watching television, and a couple of female officers were bringing male officers lunch. I learned that that’s the first telltale sign that they’re fucking. I laughed to myself, because in here trying to be low-key is impossible. Then I heard a typical CO conversation from a table full of officers who reeked of liquor and cigarettes.

  “So the mate kept talking shit, going on about how he was going to fuck my mother when he got out, how he was going to have my sister sucking dick for a living and all dat!” said one male CO to a female CO.

  Her response was sucking her teeth and saying, “Sheeeiit!”

  She was making a face like no way the inmate would say that to her.

  “I just let him talk. I didn’t say a word. Since we were in the intake area, I just processed him and let him go to court,” the male CO said. “Then about six that night, that muthafucka came back from court and I was waiting. I hurried up and processed all the other inmates and left his black ass for last.” The female was now in his face drooling. He had her full undivided attention, like she got off on these stories.

  “After everybody was gone, I had Officer Smith handcuff the mate to the bars of the cell. You should have heard that nigga complaining. ‘What is this? I’m tired. I just came from court! Why am I still here?’ Then his face turned pale white when he saw me walk into that cell and lock it behind me. You should have seen him squirming, trying to get loose from them cuffs! He was a big nigga, too. I slowly put on my straightliners, you know, my black leather gloves with the metal inserts. Then I proceeded to whip his ass! Piyow, right to his jaw! I repeated to him all the shit that he said to me that morning with every punch. ‘Piyow, you’re gonna fuck my moms, right? Pow, that’s for my sister. You remember her, right?”